If you were in a spacecraft moving at 1000 miles/hour in outer space and you turned off the engines, what would happen to the speed and direction of your spacecraft & why?

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If you were in a spacecraft moving at 1000 miles/hour in outer space and you turned off the engines, what would happen to the speed and direction of your spacecraft & why?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Unless the craft encountered an obstacle (gravity, astroid, etc) in space it would continue on its path with no change in speed or direction forever.

However, assuming your putting an object in orbit of the sun/earth/etc, it will slow down and be pulled into the object of highest gravitational pull.

But this can take anywhere between days to millions of years. It all depends on the proximity of gravitation mass and any obstacles.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Nothing. First law of motion: and object in motion stays in motion, in a straight line, until acted upon by another force.

So until a force acts upon your space craft it will continue moving at 1000 miles/hour in the same direction.

Anonymous 0 Comments

To reach a circular orbit, spacecraft must accelerate to more than 7.8 meters per second horizontally.

So, compared to Earth, if your spacecraft travels at only 1,000 miles per hour when its engine cuts out, momentum will carry it along its ballistic trajectory, past the apex, thence a terminal arc until ground impact.

Anonymous 0 Comments

You fly off out of the solar system. Why, because it is literally what happened to voyager 1. You just head off in the direction you are facing and unless you start falling into another planet’s gravity or hit an asteroid, you send off into interstellar space.

Anonymous 0 Comments

The spacecraft would continue moving in the same direction at the same speed. This is because there is no air resistance in space, so the spacecraft would not experience any slowing force. The only way to change the direction or speed of the spacecraft would be to use the engines or some other force (like gravity).

Anonymous 0 Comments

Things in space move a bit like a puck on an air hockey table. Once they are moving, they keep moving in that direction until they hit something, or something pushes on them, or their engine pushes them. An air hockey puck doesn’t have its own engine, but it can hit things (like the table’s bumpers), and it can encounter external forces (like a player’s striker).

Differences that you’ll start noticing after you get to higher grades: An air hockey table is two dimensional, but space is three dimensional. An air hockey table makes the puck frictionless by floating the puck on a cushion of air. Space makes the spaceship frictionless by having practically no air. An air hockey puck still has some friction, but the spaceship has practically no friction. An air hockey puck has no engine, so cannot change its own speed and direction.The spaceship can have its own engine which it can use to change its direction and speed without having to have something hit it. Oh, and when something hits an air hockey puck, the puck bounces. When something hits a space ship, the space ship explodes.

Anonymous 0 Comments

I’m absolutely clueless on these subjects: does one need have the engines on in the first place?

As space is a vacuum does the thrust developed by the spacecraft have any effect? Wouldn’t it continue to move as it was, regardless if the engines was on or off?

Anonymous 0 Comments

Once you reach 1000mph you turn off the engine and its like you’re on a bike going downhill

Technically you’ll slowly slowly slowly slowly down as you hit small debris

But you only need massive fuel to get through earth’s atmosphere. Once you’re out into ‘open space’ you just coast your way to your destination

Anonymous 0 Comments

While the answer is nothing, there is a but… Gravitational pull from objects in space would create some drag on your spaceship, but unless you are flying next to a black hole, the drag would me minor and you would continue more or less in the same direction you were going.

Anonymous 0 Comments

It will continue moving at 1000mph in the same direction until something causes it not to.

Most of space is a pure vacuum. There is no air or other matter to cause friction and slow it down like if it was flying in Earth’s atmosphere. It will keep traveling at that same speed and direction until a force or object comes in contact with it and affects its direction and speed of travel.