Practice question · Multiple choice
Newtonian mechanics was superseded a century ago and is what NASA used to reach the Moon. Why is that not a contradiction?
Hints
- Compute v²/c² for a spacecraft at 11 km/s. How large is the correction?
- Ask what error budget the navigation actually had to meet.
Show the answer
B. Because the corrections are around one part in a billion
Why
At 11 km/s the correction is about 10⁻⁹, swamped by uncertainties in thrust and mass. Superseded means the boundary is known, not that the theory is unusable, and knowing where it fails is why GPS applies relativistic corrections while a lunar trajectory does not.
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