Hypersonic vehicles may eventually allow dramatic reductions in flight times for both commercial and military applications. Direct access to Earth orbit without the use of separate boosting stages may also become possible as scramjet-powered aircraft enter service. Maintaining controlled flight is among the greatest challenges facing the development of hypersonic vehicles. Complex interactions among the airframe, propulsion system, and vehicle aerodynamics prevent each vehicle sub-system from being developed independently. Because of this, computational flight simulations are a vital tool in the development of hypersonic vehicles. Dynamic models of these vehicles tend to be highly complex and multi-disciplinary due to strong interaction between aerodynamics, propulsion, structure, and controls. The goal of control-oriented models of hypersonic vehicle is developing reduced-order models with "sufficient fidelity" to capture mission-critical control-centric phenomena.
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