Question

A space station has a large ring-like component that rotates to simulate gravity for the crew. this ring has a mass m= 2.1×10^5kg and a radius of r = 86.0 m and can be modeled as a thin hoop. before spinning up the ring section, crew members dave and frank dock their ships, each with mass m= 3.5×10^4 kg on two docking ports located on opposite sides of the center of the ring. the docking ports are located r= 31.0 m from the center of the ring. when the station’s computer begins to spin up the ring it has to spin both the ring and the ships. the ships can be treated as point particles. two identical thrusters on the edge of the ring are used to spin up the ring with a constant angular acceleration. The ring-ship system takes 3 hours to reach the angular speed at which it simulates earth’s gravity for the crew on the edge of the ring. what constant force must each of the two thrusters apply to reach this rotational speed?

Answer 1

Here we can solve the given problem use rotational mechanics, and equating two torque equations we can get the desired force.