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Modern aerospace vehicles, such as the space shuttle, other launch vehicles, and long-range ballistic missiles, do not discriminate between atmospheric and space flight. Most texts on flight dynamics, however, make this artificial distinction and therefore do not simultaneously cover aircraft and spacecraft. Bridging this gap in the literature, Atmospheric and Space Flight Dynamics is a unified presentation, demonstrating that the two disciplines have actually evolved from the same set of physical principles.
Preface.- Introduction.- Attitude and Kinematics of Coordinate Frames.- Planetary Form and Gravity.- Translational Motion of Aerospace Vehicles.- Orbital Mechanics.- Perturbed Orbits.- The Three-Body Problem.- Rocket Propulsion.- Planetary Atmosphere.- Elements of Aerodynamics.- Airbreathing Propulsion.- Atmospheric and Transatmospheric Trajectories.- Attitude Dynamics.- Attitude Control Systems.- Advanced Modeling and Simulation Concepts.- Numerical Integration of Ordinary Differential Equations.- Answers to Selected Exercises.- References.- Index
This book combines in a unified presentation both atmospheric and space flight dynamics in an introductory but rather broad level. The approach followed is very interesting and is well-suited to either teaching undergraduate students or complementing first-year graduate students. In fifteen chapters, topics like orbital mechanics, including some perturbations and details about the restricted three-body problem, rocket propulsion, atmospheric and transatmospheric trajectories, attitude and control are considered in a clear presentation. This condensed book even has some introductory explanations of kinematics and nice details about modeling the planetary atmosphere or the Earth's gravitational field, which makes it self-contained. The approach followed in each chapter is useful and direct with a list of objectives, many worked examples, exercises and a final summary. Another interesting fact is that the book contains the implementation of the computations, in the way suggested by the author, using MATLAB code. This provides a distinct interpretation of formulae; moreover, it is not an obstruction for non-MATLAB users since the code is easy and easily movable to other programming languages. --Mathematical Reviews "This is a textbook for both undergraduate and graduate students studying aerospace and astronautics engineering. In fact the book is unique as it treats both atmospheric and space flights, namely, aircrafts and spacecrafts...Each chapter starts with aims and objectives and ends with a short summary and exercises which are solved by using MATLAB and Simulink codes." --Zentralblatt MATH
