Title

Fuel-Optimal Retrothrusted Soft Landing Through an Atmosphere

Creator

Juncosa, M. L.

Date

1970

Identifier

AD0718405

AD0718405

Abstract

A simple analysis of the problem of achieving a soft landing for airdrop by fitting the payload with retrorockets, and a direct iterative numerical procedure for determining the switch-on point for minimal fuel consumption, in terms of either time or altitude. Through appropriate reversals of sign, the formulas may also be used for ascent trajectories of full-thrust, vertically boosted rockets where the assumption of a constant gravity field is acceptable. Since the unretrothrusted portion of the descent is identical with free fall, the dynamical equations are integrable in closed forms. For a constant atmosphere, closed form analytic solution is also obtained for the retrothrusted descent. For an exponentially varying atmosphere, however, one cannot escape a numerical integration of the dynamical equations.

Date Issued

1970-12

Extent

33

Corporate Author

RAND Corporation

Corporate Report Number

R-515-PR

Contract

F44620-67-C-0045

DoD Project

Project RAND

Distribution Conflict

No

Access Rights

THIS DOCUMENT HAS BEEN APPROVED FOR PUBLIC RELEASE AND SALE; ITS DISTRIBUTION IS UNLIMITED.

Photo Quality

Not Needed

Distribution Classification

1

DTIC Record Exists

Yes

Report Availability

Full text available by request

Provenance

Borg-Warner

Type

report

Format

33 pages ; 28 cm.