I was wondering if anyone has a link to the equations of motion that are integrated by Orbiter in order to calculate its trajectories. In particular, I'd be very interested to see how lift and drag are incorporated. Thanks!
Equations of motion used by Orbiter's integrator
- Thread starter Alexrey
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n72.75
Move slow and try not to break too much.
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Look under the technotes folder in the Doc folder. There is one called "state propagation" or something like that. Trajectories are computed from the sum of forces and moments on the vessel.
Lift and drag forces specifically are computed in the vessel's DLL; there are a couple of functions in the SDK that values like lift and drag coëfficients and center of force locations. These could be just values for simple flight models, or lookup tables like in the flight model of SSU.
