How to slow down a spaceship using law of conservation of momentum without a collision?
You would slow down the space ship the same way space ships take off. The law of conservation of momentum states that the sum of momentum in a system does not change over time, expressed mathematically as MiVi=MfVf Where. M: Mass, V: Velocity Initially, you’ll have a single object (space ship) [Mi] moving at a constant velocity [Vi], with the total momentum of the system equal to MiVi. To slow down the space ship, the space ship could launch something in the forward direction. When this happens, the total momentum of the system is equal to Mf1Vf1 + Mf2Vf2, where Mf1 is the new mass of the space ship and Vf1 is the new velocity of the space ship. Mf2 is the mass of the object launched from the space ship and Vf2 is the velocity of the object launched from the space ship. Since we know that, initially, the space ship’s momentum is equal to MiVi and that since it’s conserved (law of conservation of momentum), MiVi = Mf1Vf1 + Mf2Vf2. We are slowing down the space ship so Vf1 needs to be sm
