New necessary condition is derived for optimality of intermediate-thrust arcs of rocket trajectories in vacuum; this condition, together with previously known necessary conditions, ensures absolute optimality of "sufficiently short" intermediate-thrust arcs; for inversesquare central fields, condition reduces to requirement that primer vector must point inward, its radial component must be negative; intermediate-thrust arcs that satisfy new conditions cannot join to arcs of finite maximum thrust, nor join directly to arcs of zero thrust, except in very restricted set of special cases; they are, therefore, of theoretical rather than practical importance.
Optimality of intermediate-thrust arcs of rocket trajectories
AIAA J
AIAA Journal ; 3 , n 6
1965
5 pages
Article (Journal)
English
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Low-Thrust Rocket Trajectories
NTIS | 1986
|Low-Thrust Rocket Trajectories
NTIS | 1987
|