On Fri, 2003-10-03 at 21:28, Randall Clague wrote: > On Fri, 03 Oct 2003 10:20:44 -0700, Pierce Nichols > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > Long burn time passively guided rockets have a tendency to do rather > >extreme gravity turn maneuvers that result in lots and lots of > >horizontal velocity at burnout. Hence, the slant range and dispersion > >are greater. > > OK - this matches both my observations and my intuition. But, I don't > see why this is so. Mathematically, it seems to me that a gravity > turn is independent of whether the vehicle is under power; and that , > second for second, the trajectory will look the same, powered or not. > What is different is the proportion of the flight that is powered. > > Can someone resolve this paradox?
I think there is an unstated assumption here. The long burn time comes with lower acceleration. The gravity turn looks identical second for second along the horizontal (with a bunch of simplifying assumptions), but is quite different in the vertical. Dave -- David Masten <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> _______________________________________________ ERPS-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.erps.org/mailman/listinfo/erps-list
