← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Jerry Abbott
Thread ID: 7896 | Posts: 3 | Started: 2003-07-06
2003-07-06 03:09 | User Profile
I'm a National Alliance member, and I worked for Dr. Pierce the last four years of his life. I continue to edit books for National Vanguard.
But on my off time, I indulge my hobby of celestial mechanics. I'm writing a paper that treats the mathematics of intercept trajectories, or transfer orbits, in the solar system (heliocentric ecliptic coordinates).
I've finished the elliptical orbit case, every step explicit, and a worked example problem. I'm nearly finished with the hyperbolic case, too. But there's a long, messy part where I calculate the delta-vee required at the non-apsidal endpoint of the intended trajectory.
With the ellipse, I knew how to figure the velocity in the transfer orbit at any part of the orbit. But for the hyperbola, I have to offset the mean anomaly by a milliradian on either side of my endpoint, get the heliocentric position vectors at each offset, and do a vector subtraction divided by time.
It would be more convenient to express the velocity (vector) in the transfer orbit at the non-apsidal endpoint (which can be either departure or arrival) directly, without the numerical derivative fussing. Does anyone know how to do this with hyperbolic orbits?
Jerry Abbott
2003-07-06 09:35 | User Profile
sounds like a question for here: [url=http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&group=sci.space.science]sci.space.science[/url]
2003-07-06 09:38 | User Profile
Ask NASA