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oddjobmj
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Homework Statement
A space vehicle is in circular orbit about the earth. The mass of the vehicle is 3300 kg. The radius of the orbit is 2RE. It is desired to transfer the vehicle to a circular orbit of radius 4RE.
An efficient way to accomplish the transfer is to use a semielliptical orbit (known as a Hohmann transfer orbit), as shown. What velocity changes are required at the points of intersection, A and B? Express the change in speed as the percentage of the speed just before the change.
Unfortunately I am not given the figure that this problem refers to.
Homework Equations
Δv1=[itex]\sqrt{GM/r_1}[/itex]([itex]\sqrt{2r_2/(r_1+r_2)}[/itex]-1)
Δv2=[itex]\sqrt{GM/r_2}[/itex](1-[itex]\sqrt{2r_1/(r_1+r_2)}[/itex])
v=[itex]\sqrt{GM(2/r-1/a)}[/itex], where a is the semi-major axis.
The Attempt at a Solution
I thought this was pretty straightforward but apparently my answers are incorrect. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. My interpretation is that the satellite is in orbit at 2RE=r1, we need to get it into a transition orbit and to do so we increase the velocity by amount Δv1, we then stabilize this orbit at 4RE=r2 by increasing velocity once more.
Plugging in the knowns to the above equation I get:
Δv1=865.2 m/s
Δv2=725.7 m/s
Now I need to represent these changes in velocity as percentages of the velocity just before the given change. The initial velocity can be found using this equation:
v0=[itex]\sqrt{GM(2/r-1/a)}[/itex]
In this case, being a circular orbit, r=a=2RE
v0= 5592.8 m/s
Also, the velocity after the first velocity change is v1=v0+Δv1=6458 m/s
So, the first answer should be:
[itex]\frac{Δv_1}{v_0}[/itex]=15.47%
and the second answer:
[itex]\frac{Δv_2}{v_1}[/itex]=11.24%
I also tried entering these as the decimal equivalents and tried simply using the initial velocity as the divisor when calculating my percents. None of this worked. Perhaps I have A and B mixed around because I don't have the image but I believe it is more likely that I made a mistake.
These answers are wrong. Any suggestions? Thank you!
EDIT: The reason I am given the extra variables in the initial problem is that there was a part before this that asked me to calculate the required energy to make the transition from 2R to 4R which I solved correctly.
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