A couple of astronauts agree to rendezvous in space after hours. Their plan is to let gravity bring them together. She has a mass of 66.0 kg and he a mass of 72.0 kg, and they start from rest 25.0 m apart.

Question

1)Find his initial acceleration.
2)Find her initial acceleration.
3)If the astronauts' acceleration remained constant, how many days would they have to wait before reaching each other? (Careful! They both have acceleration toward each other.)

Answer 1

The forces towards each other are the same and can be calculated with

F = G*M1*M2/R^2

Compute the accelerations F/M1 and F/M2.
Those will be the answers to part (a) and (b). The woman's acceleration will be the larger. Then add the two accelerations.

That will give you the rate that they accelerate towards each other.

(c) [(a1 + a2)/2]*t^2 = 25 m
Solve for t and convert seconds to days.