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.


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    Title :

    Optimality of intermediate-thrust arcs of rocket trajectories


    Additional title:

    AIAA J


    Contributors:

    Published in:

    AIAA Journal ; 3 , n 6


    Publication date :

    1965


    Size :

    5 pages


    Type of media :

    Article (Journal)


    Type of material :

    Print


    Language :

    English