Software to accurately reproduce the landing trajectory of SpaceX's new rocket 'Starship' will be developed
SpaceX, a private space company led by CEO Elon Musk, is
StarshipTrajOpt.ipynb --Colaboratory
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/18MVtu4reVJLBE1RXByQEmu0O9aLXlMHz
How SpaceX lands Starship (sort of) | by Thomas Godden | May, 2021 | Medium
https://thomas-godden.medium.com/how-spacex-lands-starship-sort-of-ee96cdde650b
In the following movie, you can see the reproduction animation of the landing trajectory of Starship by the software created by Mr. Godden. By watching the movie, you can see the high accuracy of orbit reproduction by the software developed by Mr. Godden.
Starship Landing Trajectory Optimization-YouTube
Before explaining the software code, Godden explains the idea of 'optimal trajectory'. According to Mr. Godden, 'optimal' here means 'best' or 'ideal.' For example, when moving from the circle below to the star, the best orbit is to go straight as shown on the left.
It's intuitive to understand that a straight line is the best trajectory, but when finding a trajectory in software, you need to find the trajectory so that the various 'costs' are minimized. When finding the orbit from the circle to the star with software, you can find the orbit that 'goes in a straight line' by searching for the orbit that minimizes the cost of 'distance'.
However, there are various costs other than distance when seeking the orbit of a rocket in the real world. For example, when going straight from the start point to the destination, if there is an area that requires a large amount of cost to pass, software that uses only distance as an index presents a route that goes straight, which is large. Cost will be required.
Therefore, Godden decided to evaluate the cost required for each step on the road and always search for a trajectory that can be taken at a low cost. This has made it possible to develop software that can find orbits while avoiding costly areas.
Based on the above idea, Godden developed software that derives the 'optimal orbit of starship' by evaluating the course and control state of starship every 0.04 seconds. The developed software has succeeded in finding an orbit that is almost the same as the actual orbit of Starship, as shown in the movie at the beginning.
'With the software we have developed, we have succeeded in finding the landing trajectory of the starship, but in the actual landing, we need to control the starship according to the landing trajectory,' said Godden. Emphasizes the need for advanced technology.
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