SIMPLIFIED ESTIMATION OF TRAJECTORY INFLUENCE IN PRELIMINARY STAGING STUDIES

摘要

Staging is a fundamental step for any launcher pre-design process. The total incrementof speed to deliver is a key factor of these studies; it depends mainlyon the characteristics of the orbit to reach, and also on losses induced by gravityand atmosphere. The estimation of these losses generally requires to performa trajectory optimization, which convergence is not always guaranteed;the goal of this paper is to present a quick and robust methodology allowing toestimate losses, with a reasonable accuracy. Description, design and test of thismethodology are presented.