This assignment was inspired by XKCD What if? #24: Model Rockets
Over the past 50 years, spaceflight has become more technologically advanced. While NASA's prospects on manned spaceflight have fizzled out, commercial spaceflight is just around the corner. For the low, low price of $250,000, you to could travel to the edge of space and back. However, one does not necessarily have to wait that long to get to space, or spend that much money...or do they?
Estes is a company that makes model rocket engines. One of their most powerful, but commonly available, model engines is the E9. The E9 engine provides 28.5 Newton/second of thrust. Given that an average human being weighs about 160 pounds, let's figure out how many model rocket engines are needed to lift the human off the ground.
This is a pair assignment. Pick your partner, and inform me by the end of class on Sept. 6th, 2013. You should create a directory called assignment1 in cs120/assignments for this assignment. All code written for this assignment should be stored in that directory.
Create a program called lift_off.py
. This program should
print the information about lifting a human off the ground. In
particular, your program should print:
Remember 1 N = 1 kg/s. For a vertical launcing rocket, lift-off requires the thrust to exceed the the gravitational force (9.81 N/kg) on the object being lifted. You can assume weightless rockets, though this is generally a bad assumption.
Your program should include the traditional header, use appropriate variable names, and nicely label all values printed to the terminal. Submission are to be done through cseval.roanoke.edu through the Assignment 1 link. Both partners must submit through cseval!
Each week, additional exercises related to the assignment will be provided at the end. These exercises are typically more challenging than the regular assignment. Bonus points will be provided to students who complete any of the "Hacker" level assignments.