A futuristic rocket ship of mass m,rip = 6.0 × 106 kg is sent into space carrying one person with the goal of traveling to nearby stars. The ship uses a newly discovered matter-antimatter drive that converts matter into energy at 100% efficiency. We will take Earth as the rest frame. For parts (a) through (d) you are interested in the portion of the spaceship's travel where it is using its drive to convert matter into the kinetic energy of the ship. (a) What is the speed of the ship when the work done by the ship's drive is equal to 150,000 TWh (the total energy used by humanity in 2014)? (b) How much work must the drive do for the rocket to reach a final speed of 0.95c? (c) How much matter would the drive need to annihilate in order for the ship to reach the final speed of 0.95c? Assume that the matter used in the antimatter drive is collected from the interstellar medium and that the mass of the ship remains constant. (d) When at the final speed of 0.95c, by what factor is the ship's momentum greater than its classical momentum at that same speed.
A futuristic rocket ship of mass m,rip = 6.0 × 106 kg is sent into space carrying one person with the goal of traveling to nearby stars. The ship uses a newly discovered matter-antimatter drive that converts matter into energy at 100% efficiency. We will take Earth as the rest frame. For parts (a) through (d) you are interested in the portion of the spaceship's travel where it is using its drive to convert matter into the kinetic energy of the ship. (a) What is the speed of the ship when the work done by the ship's drive is equal to 150,000 TWh (the total energy used by humanity in 2014)? (b) How much work must the drive do for the rocket to reach a final speed of 0.95c? (c) How much matter would the drive need to annihilate in order for the ship to reach the final speed of 0.95c? Assume that the matter used in the antimatter drive is collected from the interstellar medium and that the mass of the ship remains constant. (d) When at the final speed of 0.95c, by what factor is the ship's momentum greater than its classical momentum at that same speed.
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