Numerical answer
A spacecraft moves in a circular orbit of radius around a planet, with period . A short thruster burn along its direction of motion increases its speed by the factor . The burn is short enough to be treated as instantaneous. Afterwards the spacecraft follows an elliptical orbit with the burn point as its closest approach. The time taken to go from this point to the farthest point of the ellipse, in units of , is
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Answer: 4
Let . After the burn the speed at perigee is . Energy conservation with angular momentum conservation () gives the vis-viva relation at perigee: , i.e. , so and . The semi-major axis is . By Kepler's third law : . Perigee to apogee is exactly half of a period: . Using or is a typical slip. Kepler's second law is not needed: the time from perigee to apogee is half the period for any eccentricity, so only the semi-major axis matters.
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