Serway & Jewett — Physics and Measurement: Problem 5

You have been hired by the defense attorney as an expert witness in a lawsuit. The plaintiff is someone who just returned from being a passenger on the first orbital space tourist flight. Based on a travel brochure offered by the space travel company, the plaintiff expected to be able to see the Great Wall of China from his orbital height of 200 km above the Earth’s surface. He was unable to do so, and is now demanding that his fare be refunded and to receive additional financial compensation to cover his great disappointment. Construct the basis for an argument for the defense that shows that his expectation of seeing the Great Wall from orbit was unreasonable. The Wall is 7 m wide at its widest point and the normal visual acuity of the human eye is \(3 \times 10^{-4}\) rad. (Visual acuity is the smallest subtended angle that an object can make at the eye and still be recognized; the subtended angle in radians is the ratio of the width of an object to the distance of the object from your eyes.)