In his novel From the Earth to the Moon (1866), Jules Verne describes a spaceship that is blasted out of 12,000 yards/s. the Columbiad is 900 ft long, but part of it is packed with poweder, so the spaceship accelerates over a distance of only 700 ft. Estimate the acceleration experienced by the occupants of the spaceship during launch. Give your answer in m/s2. (Verne realized that the "travelers would...encounter a violent recoil," but he probably didn't know that people generally lose consciousness if they experience accelerations greater than about 7g ~70 m/s2.)

The acceleration experienced by the occupants of the spaceship during launch is 282652.782 meters per square second.

Explanation:

Let suppose that spaceship is accelerated uniformly. A yard equals 0.914 meters. A feet equals 0.304 meters. If air viscosity and friction can be neglected, then acceleration (), measured in meters per square second, is estimated by this kinematic formula:

(1)

Where:

- Travelled distance, measured in meters.

, - Initial and final speeds of the spaceship, measured in meters.

If we know that , and , then the acceleration experimented by the spaceship is:

The acceleration experienced by the occupants of the spaceship during launch is 282652.782 meters per square second.

dang that balls went far