Space Flight for Beginners by Motes Andrew

Author:Motes, Andrew [Motes, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: AM Photonics
Published: 2015-12-23T16:00:00+00:00

or

where r represents the satellite’s position relative to the center of Earth, and the double dot over r represents the satellite’s acceleration due to gravitational forces—the second derivative of r with respect to time. Or, in other words, acceleration is velocity’s rate of change and velocity is position’s rate of change. If you’ve taken a Calculus class, you should recognize the previous equation as a simple second-order differential equation.

I now write the equation above in vector format to get

.

Vector format means that the distance, velocity, and acceleration are broken down into coordinates in the x , y , and z axes. This format is indicated by the arrow over r .

This equation can be solved iteratively on a computer where each software loop represents one step in time . This is demonstrated by the following two flow charts where the symbol ∫ in the upper two boxes of the first image represents integration—the repeated addition or summation over time. For readers that don’t understand integration, the integral of acceleration relative to time is velocity (r with a single dot over it) and the integral of velocity relative to time is position, r .

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.