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Ulrich Walter
Astronautics
The Physics of Space Flight
Third Edition
Astronautics
Ulrich Walter
Astronautics
The Physics of Space Flight
Third Edition
123
Ulrich Walter
Institute of Astronautics
Technical University of Munich
Garching
Germany
Cover: The Space Shuttle Atlantis launched on February 7, 2008, to ferry on its 29th flight the
European science laboratory Columbus to the International Space Station. (Used with permission of
NASA)
This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
This book is dedicated to the astronauts and
cosmonauts, who lost their lives in the pursuit
of space exploration
Preface to the Third Edition
This textbook is about all basic physical aspects of spaceflight. Not all have been
covered in the past editions. So, what is new in this third edition? First, there are
new sections covering new topics, such as
– Sections 1.2 and 1.3 dealing with the physics of a jet engine and general rocket
performance have been widely extended to more sophisticated effects.
– Sections 7.4.5 and 7.4.6 describe two general solutions to Newton’s gravita-
tional equation of motion.
– Section 7.7 studies stellar orbits, which are not subject to the standard but more
general types of gravitational potentials.
– Hypersonic flow theory for reentry vehicles is expounded in Sect. 6.2 as a basis
to understand how lift and drag come about and in particular how both depend
on the angle of attack, the most important control parameter to guide a winged
body through the flight corridor (see Fig. 10.22).
– Accordingly, the reentry of a Space Shuttle, which in this book even more
serves as a case study, is explained in Sect. 10.7 in greater detail and in terms of
NASA terminology.
– In Sect. 8.1, the different basic types of orbit maneuvers are discussed and
exemplified.
– A new form of solution of Lambert’s problem is derived in Sect. 8.2.3, which is
visualized in Fig. 8.8.
– Section 8.4.3 discusses modern super-synchronous transfer orbits to GEO.
– Relative motion in near-circular orbits is examined in Sect. 8.5.4.
– The virial theorem for bounded and unbounded n-body systems is derived in
Sect. 11.1.2 and used to discuss the stability of an n-body system.
– Section 12.3 (Gravitational Perturbation Effects) has been revised and greatly
extended including other and higher order perturbation terms.
– Chapter 14 has been radically revised: There is a new Sect. 14.1 on orbit
geometric issues (eclipse duration and access area) and a fully revised Sect. 14.2
on orbit determination.
vii
viii Preface to the Third Edition
Textbooks are subject to continuous and critical scrutiny of students. So is this one.
Having received many questions to the book in my lectures and by e-mail, I
constantly improved and updated the content such that already after three years it
was time to have also the reader benefit from this. You will therefore find the
textbook quite revised as for instance rocket staging (Chapter 3), engine design
(Section 4.4), radial orbits (Section 7.5), or the circular restricted thee-body prob-
lem (Section 11.4). But there are also new topics, namely Lambert transfer
(Section 8.2), relative orbits (Section 8.5), and orbital rendezvous (Section 8.6),
higher orbit perturbations including frozen orbits (Sections 12.3.6 and 12.3.7),
resonant perturbations and resonant orbits (Section 12.4), and relativistic pertur-
bations (Section 12.6.2). Along with this also the structure of the content has
changed slightly. Therefore the section and equation numbers are not always
identical to the first edition.
Nevertheless the overall structure still serves the same intention: It is set up for a
two semester course on astronautics. Chapter 1–7 (except Sect. 1.4), Section 8.1, and
Chapters 9–10 is the basic subject matter an aerospace student should know or have
been exposed to at least once. The sequence of the chapters is first rocket basics
(Chapter 1–5), thereafter a flight into space “once around”, starting with ascent flight
(Chapter 6), then space orbits (Chapter 7) and basic orbital maneuvers (Section 8.1),
interplanetary flight (Chapter 9), and finally reentry (Chapter 10). The second part
of the textbook is more advanced material, which I lecture together with satellite
technology in an advanced course for true rocket scientists and space engineers.
The careful reader might have noticed that the book now comes with a subtitle:
The Physics of Space Flight. This was decided to provide a quick comprehension
of the nature of this textbook. In addition, because the Space Shuttle and the ISS are
running examples in this textbook, a picture of the launching Space Shuttle Atlantis
was chosen as a new frontispiece. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find an equally
attractive picture of my Space Shuttle Columbia.
ix
Preface to the First Edition
If you want to cope with science, you have to understand it – truly understand it.
This holds in particular for astronautics. “To understand” means that you have a
network of relationships in your mind, which permits you to deduce an unknown
fact from well-known facts. The evolution of a human being from birth to adult-
hood and beyond consists of building up a comprehensive knowledge network
of the world, which makes it possible to cope with it. That you are intelligent just
means that you are able to do that – sometimes you can do it better, and sometimes
worse.
True understanding is the basis of everything. There is nothing that would be
able to substitute true understanding. Computers do not understand – they merely
carry out programmed deterministic orders. They do not have any understanding
of the world. This is why even a large language computer will always render a false
translation of the phrase: “He fed her cat food.” Our world experience intuitively
tells us that “He fed a woman’s cat some food.” But a computer does not have
world experience, and thus does not generally know that cat food is nasty for
people. Most probably, and according to the syntax, it would translate it as: “He fed
a woman some food that was intended for cats.”, what the Google translator
actually does when translating this phase into other languages. No computer pro-
gram in the world is able to substitute understanding. You have to understand
yourself. Only when you understand are you able to solve problems by designing
excellent computer programs. Nowadays, real problems are only solved on com-
puters – written by bright engineers and scientists.
The goal of this book is to build up a network of astronautic relationships in the
mind of the reader. If you don’t understand something while reading this book, I
made a mistake. The problem of a relational network, though, is that the underlying
logic can be very complex, and sometimes it seems that our brains are not suitable
for even the simplest logic. If I asked you, “You are not stupid, are you?”, you
would normally answer, “No!” From a logical point of view, a double negation of
xi
xii Preface to the First Edition
an attribute is the attribute itself. So your “No!” means that you consider yourself
stupid. You, and also we scientists and engineers, do not want this embarrassing
mistake to happen time and time again, and so we use mathematics. Mathematical
logic is the guardrail of human thinking. Physics, on the other hand, is the art of
applying this logic consistently to nature in order to be able to understand how it
works. So it comes as no surprise to find a huge amount of formulas and a lot of
physics in this book.
Some might think this is sheer horror. But now comes the good news. Most
of the formulas are just intermediate steps of our elaborations. To understand
astronautics, you only need to engage in the formulas shaded gray and to remember
those bordered black. There you should pause and try to understand their meaning
because they will tell you the essential story and lift the secrets of nature. Though
you don’t need to remember all the other formulas, as a student you should be able
to derive these stepping stones for yourself. Thereby you will always be able to link
nodes in your relational network whenever you deem it necessary. To treat formulas
requires knowing a lot of tricks. You will learn them only by watching others doing
such “manipulation” and, most importantly, by doing it yourself. Sometimes you
will see the word “exercise” in brackets. This indicates that the said calculation
would be a good exercise for you to prove to yourself that you know the tricks.
Sometimes it might denote that there is not the space to fully lay out the needed
calculation because it is too lengthy or quite tricky. So, you have to guess for
yourself whether or not you should do the exercise. Nonetheless, only very few of
you will have to derive formulas professionally later. For the rest of you: just try to
follow the story and understand how consistent and wonderful nature is. Those who
succeed will understand the words of Richard Feynman, the great physicist, who
once expressed his joy about this by saying: “The pleasure of finding things out.”
Take the pleasure to find out about astronautics.
The original version of the book was revised: The correction to the book is
available at https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74373-8_17
Acknowledgements
Key parts of the new Chap. 16 are the two sections of thermal modeling. Thermal
modeling of vehicles in space requires not only high skill, but also a lot of expert
knowledge gathered in daily work. I am happy and very thankful to Philipp Hager
(Thermal Engineer in the Thermal Control Section of the European Space Agency
at ESTEC) and to Markus Czupalla (Full Professor at the Department of Aerospace
Engineering, University of Applied Sciences Aachen, Germany) that they agreed to
contribute these important sections.
I am grateful to Olivier L. de Weck, Bernd Häusler, and Hans-Joachim Blome
for carefully reading the manuscript and for many fruitful suggestions. My sincere
thanks go to my research assistants Markus Wilde, who contributed Sects. 8.5 and
8.6 for the second edition, and equally also for this third edition; Winfried
Hofstetter, who contributed Sect. 9.6 and the free-return trajectories to Sect. 11.4.4;
to my colleague Oskar Haidn for his expertise in Sect. 4.4; and to my master student
Abhishek Chawan at Technical University, Munich, who provided numerical cal-
culations and figures to the subsection Super-Synchronous Transfer Orbits in Sect.
8.4.3.
My special thanks go to Julia Bruder for her tedious work of translating the
original German manuscript into English. Many expounding passages of this book
would not be in place without the bright questions of my students, who reminded
me of the fact that a lot of implicit meanings that scientists have become used to are
not that trivial as they seem to be.
Many figures in this book were drawn by the interactive plotting program
gnuplot v4.0. My sincere thanks to its authors Thomas Williams, Colin Kelley,
Hans-Bernhard Bröker, and many others for establishing and maintaining this
versatile and very useful tool for free public use. The author is grateful to the
GeoForschungsZentrum Potsdam, Germany’s National Research Centre for
Geosciences for providing the geoid views and the visualization of the spherical
harmonics in the color tables on pages 566, 568, and 569.
xiii
Contents
1 Rocket Fundamentals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1 Rocket Principles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1.1 Repulsion Principle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1.2 Total Thrust . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.1.3 Equation of Rocket Motion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.2 Jet Engine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.2.1 Nozzle Divergence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.2.2 Pressure Thrust . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.2.3 Momentum versus Pressure Thrust . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
1.3 Rocket Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
1.3.1 Payload Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
1.3.2 Rocket Efficiency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
1.3.3 Performance Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
1.4 Relativistic Rocket . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
1.4.1 Space Flight Dynamics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
1.4.2 Relativistic Rocket Equation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
1.4.3 Exhaust Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
1.4.4 External Efficiency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
1.4.5 Space–Time Transformations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
1.5 Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
2 Rocket Flight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
2.1 General Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
2.2 Rocket in Free Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
2.3 Rocket in a Gravitational Field . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
2.3.1 Impulsive Maneuvers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
2.3.2 Brief Thrust . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
2.3.3 Gravitational Loss . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
2.4 Delta-v Budget and Fuel Demand . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
2.4.1 Delta-v Budget . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
xv
xvi Contents
xxv
xxvi Abbreviations
Superscripts
T Transpose of a vector or matrix
Subscripts
0 At the beginning (zero); or
osculating (momentary)
a With respect to the atmosphere
air Atmosphere
apo Apoapsis
B Body system
c Combustion; or
commensurate
CM Center of mass (a.k.a. barycenter)
col Collision
crit Critical (maximal deceleration)
D Aerodynamic drag
div (Jet) divergence
e At exit, or ejection; or
at entry interface
eff Effective
esc Escape (velocity)
ex Exhaust
ext External
EQW Equinoctial coordinate system EQW (see Sect. 7.3.5)
xxvii
xxviii Symbols Used and Terminology
f Final (mass); or
frozen orbit
F Force
G Gravitation
GEO Geostationary
GG Gravity gradient
h Horizontal
H Hohmann
i Initial (mass)
id Ideal engine
I Inertial reference frame
IJK Cartesian equatorial coordinate system (see Sect. 13.1.4)
IR Infrared
ion Ionic
in Initial, at entry, incoming
int Internal
jet Propellant exhaust jet
kin Kinetic (energy)
L Aerodynamic lift; or
payload; or
libration point
LVLH Local vertical, local horizontal (reference frame)
max Maximum
min Minimum
micro Microscopic
n Nozzle; or
normal (vertically to …)
NTW Corotating Cartesian topocentric satellite coordinate system
NTW (see Sect. 13.1.4)
opt Optimal (value)
out Final, at exit, outgoing
p Propellant; or
planet; or
perturbation; or
periapsis (only in the case of epoch tp )
P Principal axes system; or
orbital period
per Periapsis; or
periodic
PQW Cartesian geocentric perifocal coordinate system PQW
(see Sect. 13.1.4)
pot Potential (energy)
Symbols Used and Terminology xxix
r Radial; or
reflection; or
radiation
rms Root-mean-square (a.k.a. quadratic mean)
RSW Corotating Cartesian topocentric satellite coordinate system
RSW (see Sect. 13.1.4)
s Structural
S/C Spacecraft
sec Secular
sk Station keeping
sol Solar
SOI Sphere of influence
syn Synodic
t Tangential; or
throat (of thruster)
T Transfer orbit
tot Total
trans Translation; or
transition
TTPR Thrust-to-power ratio
v Vertical
VDF Velocity distribution function
vib Vibration
h Vertically to radial
x Rotation (or centrifugal); or
argument of periapsis (apsidal line)
X Relating to the ascending node (draconitic)
∞ External, at infinity
Effective (thrust), total
Earth
Sun
∇ Spacecraft
Inner (orbit); or
black body
Outer (orbit); or
in orbit plane
£ Diameter; or
cross section
jj Parallel to …
? Vertical to … (A? ¼ effectively wetted surface area)
At orbit crossing
xxx Symbols Used and Terminology
Latin Symbols
a Semi-major axis (of a Keplerian orbit); or
speed of sound; or
acceleration
A Area
Ap Daily global index of geomagnetic activity, 0 Ap 400
b Semi-minor axis (of a Keplerian orbit); or b :¼ L tan ce =ð2DÞ
B Ballistic coefficient (without index: for drag), (see Eq. (6.2.19))
c c :¼ L cot ce =ð2DÞ; or
speed of light
c Characteristic velocity, c :¼ p0 At mp
cp Specific heat capacity at constant pressure
cV Specific heat capacity at constant volume
C Jacobi constant
C3 Characteristic energy, C3 :¼ v21
C1 Infinite-expansion coefficient
CD Drag coefficient
Cf Thrust coefficient; or
skin friction drag coefficient
CL Lift coefficient
Cn Nozzle coefficient (a.k.a. nozzle efficiency)
Cnm Multipole coefficient of the cosine term
dx Variation (small changes) of x
d vjj Differential increase in orbital velocity due to kick-burn in
flight direction
d v?O Differential increase in orbital velocity due to kick-burn
vertical to flight direction, within orbital plane, outbound
d v?? Differential increase in orbital velocity due to kick-burn
vertical to flight direction and vertical to orbital plane, parallel
to angular momentum
Dv Delta-v budget
D Drag force
D Aerodynamic drag, D ¼ jDj; or
diameter
diag(…) Diagonal matrix with elements (…)
e Eccentricity; or
electrical charge unit; or
Eulerian number, e = 2.718281828 …
E Energy; or
(elliptic) eccentric anomaly
Eið xÞ Exponential integral (see Eq. (10.4.5))
fx f function (see definition Eq. (10.4.6))
F Force (without index: gravitational force); or
hyperbolic anomaly
Symbols Used and Terminology xxxi
Greek Symbols
a Thrust angle; or
angle of attack (AOA); or
proper acceleration; or
mass-specific power output of an electrical plant; or
absorptivity (a.k.a. absorption coefficient)
b b :¼ v=c; or
geocentric latitude; or
(orbit) beta angle
d Deflection angle
dð x Þ Dirac delta function
dnm Kronecker delta
dx A finite (not differential) but small variation of x; or
small variation of an orbital element over one orbital
revolution; or
small error of x
dv An impulsive maneuver (kick-burn) varying the orbital
velocity by dv
D Impact parameter
Di Distance of the libration point i normalized to the distance
between the two primaries in the R3BP (see Sect. 11.3.1)
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Although this step was in the highest degree improper, Pinckney
had some excuse for his conduct. Left without instructions in the face
of an emergency which might have been foreseen at Washington, he
argued that his government, which had officially annexed West
Florida, meant to support its acts with a strong hand. He thought that
the issue presented by Cevallos was such as the President was
bound to take up, and he knew that the only chance of carrying the
points which the President had at heart was in energetic action. For
three years he had watched the peremptory tone of France and
England at Madrid, and had been assured by the common voice of
his diplomatic colleagues that threats alone could extort action from
the Spanish government. He had seen the Prince of Peace, after
resorting to one subterfuge after another, repeatedly forced to cower
before the two great robbers who were plundering Spain, and he
explained to Madison the necessity of imitating their example if the
President meant that Spain should cower before the United States.
Perhaps he felt that Godoy looked on the President at Washington
as the jackal of Bonaparte, and he may have wished to prove that
America could act alone. His eager ambition to make himself as
important as the representatives of France and England in the eyes
of Europe might imply vanity, but rested also on logic.
The first result of this energetic tone was not what Pinckney had
hoped. Cevallos was outwardly unmoved; Pinckney’s violence only
caused him to lay aside that courtesy which was the usual mark of
Spanish manners. His official notes were in outward form still civil
enough, but in two or three conversations Pinckney listened to a
series of remarks as blunt as though Lord Harrowby were the
speaker. Pinckney reported to Madison the tenor of these rough
rejoinders.[195] Cevallos told him that the Americans, ever since their
independence, had been receiving the most pointed proofs of
friendship and generosity from Spain, who, as was well known,
received no benefit from them,—on the contrary, their commerce
was extremely injurious to Spain; the Spanish government had ten
times more trouble with them than with any other nation, and for his
part, he did not wish to see the trade with the United States
extended. Spain had nothing to fear from the United States, and had
heard with contempt the threats of senators like Ross and
Gouverneur Morris. The Americans had no right to expect much
kindness from the King; in the purchase of Louisiana they had paid
no attention to his repeated remonstrances against the injustice and
nullity of that transaction, whereas if they had felt the least friendship
they would have done so. They were well known to be a nation of
calculators, bent on making money and nothing else; the French,
and probably in the result all the nations having possessions in the
West Indies, would be materially injured by them, for without a doubt
it was entirely owing to the United States that St. Domingo was in its
present situation.
Pinckney received[196] at the same time what he called secret
intelligence on which he could implicitly rely, that Cevallos meant to
create indefinite delays to the ratification, for Yrujo had written that
neither these nor the French spoliation claims, nor West Florida,
would induce the American government to depart from its pacific
system. France had indeed gone to the point of advising and even
commanding Spain to relinquish her claim on Louisiana, and this
was the reason why Spain had so quietly given it up; but in regard to
the spoliations, France preferred not to see them paid, as the more
money Spain paid America the less she could pay France, and
France knew as well as Spain how little serious was the American
government in the idea of abandoning its neutrality.
Pinckney having done his worst, found himself in a position
extremely awkward. Although he threatened to leave Spain, and
proclaimed that he meant soon to demand his passports, he did not
venture to take this last step without instructions. Cevallos,
excessively perplexed by his conduct, could not conceive that he
should act thus without some definite authority. Boldly as Cevallos
talked, he was in truth greatly alarmed by the idea of war. The
French representative at Madrid wrote to Talleyrand that Pinckney
had terrified the secretary beyond reason:[197]—
“The difficulty of making himself understood by M. de Cevallos in a
language with which he is not familiar, excites Mr. Pinckney to fly out
in terms beyond moderation and proper civility. He positively threatens
war, and loudly announces his resolution shortly to demand his
passports. The truth is that he is preparing to depart, and finds himself
almost deprived of power to remain, not only in consequence of his
personal altercation with the minister, but also of the care with which
he has taken the public into his confidence.... M. de Cevallos seems
to me to be quite seriously alarmed at the results this may have.”
Ten days later the Frenchman reported that Cevallos was more
uneasy than ever.[198]
“‘If the Emperor,’ added M. de Cevallos, ‘would but say a word,
and let the United States understand that he is not pleased at seeing
them abuse the advantages which they owe to their strength and to
the nearness of their resources over an ally of France, this would
reconcile all difficulties, and save his Majesty the necessity of exacting
satisfaction for an insult which is as good as inflicted.’”
The Frenchman, having no instructions, contented himself with
suggesting that the Emperor had more pressing matters on hand.
“‘So,’ said M. de Cevallos, ‘France will have caused our actual
misunderstanding with our neighbors, and we are to expect no
service from her influence!’”
While Cevallos thus invoked the aid of France, the news of
Pinckney’s war slowly crossed the Atlantic. No sooner did it arrive
than Yrujo in the middle of October, shortly after his attempt to
seduce the patriotism of Major Jackson, wrote to the Secretary of
State a formal letter,[199] repeating what had already been said to
Pinckney at Madrid. Madison’s reply was studiously moderate and
conciliatory.[200] He explained as best he could the offensive
language of the Mobile Act, and announced that a special minister
would soon reach Madrid, to hasten the adjustment of all territorial
disputes; he deprecated the demand for an abandonment of the
French claims, and argued that such a condition of ratification was
not supported by international law; he urged Yrujo to give
assurances of an unqualified ratification, but he said not a word
about Pinckney’s performances, and gave it to be understood that
Pinckney would be recalled. A few days afterward he wrote to
Monroe, ordering him in haste to Spain. “The turn which our affairs at
Madrid have taken renders it expedient in the judgment of the
President that you should proceed thither without delay.”[201] In
another letter, written at nearly the same time, he was more explicit:
[202]—