The optimum maneuver of a space shuttle vehicle reentering a spherical, stationary, and locally exponential atmosphere was investigated. The use of Chapman's modified variables and a rescaled lift-drag polar leads to the formulation of a set of dimensionless equations of motion for flight analysis. The resulting equations are exact in the sense that they are also valid for flight in the vacuum. For planar flight several typical optimum maneuvers are investigated at different altitude ranges, low, moderate and very high. For three-dimensional flight, the procedure to solve the optimum trajectory for maximum cross range is discussed. Finally, using the equilibrium glide condition the maximum cross ranges for entry from circular speed, for several values of E*, and the footprint for E* = 1.5 are computed in this reduced problem.
Optimum reentry trajectories of a lifting vehicle
1978-01-01
Report
No indication
English
Optimum Reentry Trajectories of a Lifting Vehicle
NTIS | 1980
|Optimum reentry trajectories of a lifting vehicle
NTRS | 1980
|Optimum Reentry Trajectories of a Lifting Vehicle
NTIS | 1978
|Optimum reentry trajectories of a lifting vehicle
TIBKAT | 1980
|British Library Conference Proceedings | 1993
|