Newtons Three Laws and Force Question

ahhh_david
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Homework Statement

A rocket that weighed 98.1 N when put together on Earth is attached to a 1.00 x 10^3-kg signal relay in intergalactic space. The rocket develops a constant thrust (i.e., it pushes with a force) of 10.0 kN. Compute the resulting acceleration.

Homework Equations



a=F/m

a=acceleration
F=force
m=mass

The Attempt at a Solution


10.0 kN --> 100 N
100 N / (98.1 N )(1.00 x 10^3 kg) = 1019.367992
The answer should be 9.90 m/s^2. I don't understand why it's not coming out to that though.
 
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Hi ahhh_david and welcome to PF.

ahhh_david said:
10.0 kN --> 100 N
I don't understand this. 10.0 kN = 10,000 N not 100 N.
 
oh...oops that's the problem, thanks!
 
To solve this, I first used the units to work out that a= m* a/m, i.e. t=z/λ. This would allow you to determine the time duration within an interval section by section and then add this to the previous ones to obtain the age of the respective layer. However, this would require a constant thickness per year for each interval. However, since this is most likely not the case, my next consideration was that the age must be the integral of a 1/λ(z) function, which I cannot model.
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