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Gravitational Slingshot , John Dykla, Robert Cacioppo, Asim Gangopadhyaya
Gravitational Slingshot , John Dykla, Robert Cacioppo, Asim Gangopadhyaya
Asim Gangopadhyaya
The slingshot effect is an intriguing phenomenon that has been used effectively by NASA to send spacecraft to outer edges of the solar system. This phenomenon can be satisfactorily explained by Newtonian physics. However, if it is presented as a problem involving four-momentum conservation, the methods of relativistic kinematics easily lead to the conditions necessary for an accelerating as well as a retarding scenario. This problem provides an example that showcases the frequent utility of relativistic methods to analyze problems of Newtonian mechanics.