hobbsyoyo
Deity
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- Jul 13, 2012
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- 26,575
The pressure wave would still be traveling along the plank at the same speed relative to the rest of the plank as the whole thing was instantaneously accelerated. Nothing would change from the perspective of the plank accept the light coming toward or away from it would be warped severly. The plank would also shrink drastically along the direction of motion, but from the plank's perspective they wouldn't notice this. Also there would be some time dilation effects going on.Hey guys, I have a question.
Say that you're standing 1 lightyear from a button that you want to press. Now, say that there's a wooden plank 1 lightyear long extending from you to the button, almost, but not quite touching it.
Now, I know that pressure waves travel at the speed of sound through a material (so if you pushed the plank into the button, it would take some thousands of years to reach the button).
But what if you accelerated the plank of wood instantaneously from 0 m/s to .999% of the speed of light. In an instant. Would that mean that the plank is accelerating faster than the pressure wave can travel through the material? What would happen, I mean, would the plank like warp in on itself or some crazy crap? This is driving me insane.
But none of that changes the fact that the pressure wave would still be traveling along the plank at the same speed it was relative to the rest of the plank as the whole thing is accelerating together.
They'd return to Earth.
If there where no more burns after the TLI the spacecraft would have reentered Earths atmosphere after going to round the moon and back to Earth. This was done so your scenario wouldn't happen if something went wrong on the way to the moon. Still they could've messed up their burn as long as the craft stays under 11km/s it'd return to Earth. What I dont know is how much error is allowed to still get a free return trajectory
Free Return Trajectory
They were already going faster than 11km/s a second...they had to break free of Earth's gravity well to get to the moon after all. What would have happened is that they would have slung out into space if they were burning uncontrollably in an accelerating manner as they rounded the moon. If they were decelerating uncontrollably as they rounded the moon, they would've either gone into an orbit, or if they burned way too long, they would've crashed.
They wouldn't have come back to the Earth unless they burned in exactly the right manner that would have allowed it, which is not what the question asked. The question asked what would've happened in an uncontrolled burn.