Helios Space Probe Speed of nearly 300 000 km/h?

Old one this...the rocket thrust pushes against the rocket body, not air. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Thrust goes backwards, rocket body goes forwards.

Keep it thrusting with no air resistance you get big speeds.

Sling it round Mars and throw it out to Jupiter and Saturn by gravitational energy...all free when you get there. And faster than rocket engines.

Or slow it down....use planets as engines....gravity powered.

Some early guys thought rockets can't work in space cos there's no air....hahaha, didn't read the science books. Didn't listen in school. Even some scientists thought it....dumbos. Not you..they studied it. Still got it wrong.

Like some people thought the Earth can't be round cos the Nile would be flowing uphill.

Which way is up?

Towards the sky, not towards the north, silly lot.

They just got used to maps where north is at the top and got mixed up with up and top. Go up the page you get to the top so they thought north is up.

Scientists even...in the Royal Society. Big argument about it and shouting and the meeting broke up.

300 years ago. Even Erastothenes knew better than that....in 250BC.

Professor of Aeronautics in New York said heavier than air flying machines are impossible. When the Wright brothers flew a plane he said...Oh, OK, but they'll never carry more than one person....impossible.

Jumbo jets flying a hundred years later.....300 people in them.

500 mph ...even more at times...six miles up in the sky, in thin air....wheeeee

Oops. How Come?

Hehehe...the pioneers win again. Hint...

Have fun.

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

So in space, where there is no atmosphere to resist the object being pushed by an engine, acceleration is very quick and inertia allows the object, in this case, the Helios 2 probe; to continue at that astonishing speed.

Remember that Helios had to reach escape velocity just to get out of the earth's gravitational pull, so it was already going 11.2 kilometres per second/per second; which is faster than a rifle bullet. And the amazing thing about all these speeds and calculations and so on is that Isaac Newton worked it all out in the late 1600's.

> Thought there is no air in space?

There is no air in space.

> How do rockets propel at their speed and more so Helios 2..so fast ?

Rockets use Newton's third law of motion: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. By expelling hot gases in one direction, the rocket moves in the other direction. No air is needed.

The initial velocity is achieved with a rocket, and then gravity is used to boost that speed, Newton's law of gravitation. All interplanetary probes use gravity assist to get where they're going more quickly.

All of this was worked out by Newton more than two centuries ago. I'm amazed they don't teach this in school!

It didn't get propelled so fast. It was actually slowed down first... that is because of Orbital mechanics, the motion in the gravity field. For getting closer to the sun, you need to slow down first, so you fall to the sun in an ellipse. But when you fall closer to the sun, you get faster - by this fall to just 30% of the distance Earth-Sun, the probe accelerated to its record speed. It is not different to a stone getting faster while it falls to the ground.

Rockets work by the conservation of impulse - they push against their own exhaust. If you eject a ton of exhaust every second at 4000 m/s velocity, you produce 4 Meganewton thrust - about 400 tons of weight on the surface of Earth. this force is the reaction to the force needed for accelerating this exhaust to 4000 m/s inside the rocket engine. Rocket engines actually work much better in space, than they do on the surface of earth, because the pressure of the air acts against the pressure inside the engine and reduces the thrust by slowing the exhaust down before it leaves the nozzle.

Helios 2 was not the fastest probe after the rocket engines stopped, the New Horizons probe to Pluto was faster. But because it fell towards the sun, it became faster.

Spaceflight isn't intuitive at first, for getting closer to the sun, you need to slow down, because you are still traveling at the speed of Earth. And for slowing down relative to Earth and sun, you need to get faster relative to Earth, so you leave its gravity well.

No, it can bend in space due to gravity but not increase or decrease. You cant compare a physical bullet to a wave length (light energy) that does make sense. And I hope your not serious about the bible proving anything wrong or true for that matter. I believe in god more than most people but the bible is 98% BS. Who's to say where is the edge of the universe is or how far. I am not a scientist just a man but asking people to measure the speed of light in space is like me asking you bring me hard core evidence of god, bring me a photo of god with gods autograph on it. How would anybody go about doing both of those.

I also want to ask the same question