Two spaceships that have different masses but rocket engines of identical force are at rest in space. if they fire their rockets at the same time, which ship will speed up faster

Question

Jason Sloan

Physics

10 October, 06:07

Two spaceships that have different masses but rocket engines of identical force are at rest in space. if they fire their rockets at the same time, which ship will speed up faster

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Bradley Odom · Answer 1

Force is calculated F=m*a.

If both ships speed up with the same force, but have a different mass, This means that a also has to be different. If F is the same but ship a has a bigger mass (m) than ship b, then the acceleration (a) of ship b has to be bigger so F of each ship is the same. So the ship with the smaller mass will speed up faster.