The maths behind Kerbal Space Program?

[jbard]

Hi,

I'm loving the game, and playing about with mods and such. I'm also starting to study physics, and I am interested in the maths behind KSP, and rocket science in general, actually!

The Engineer mod part gives you all sorts of information about your rocket, and I'd like to be able to design something using maths instead of trial and error.

Does anyone know of any good resources for learning about this sort of thing?

-jb

[Excellent]

Look all around the fourms there is plenty of tutorials that give math and if you cant find any go into the wiki and search up the tutorials it will also give you some math

just remeber rocket science is ROCKET SCIENCE

[Anachronda]

http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Dynamics-Aeronautical-Engineering-ebook/dp/B008TVEBL6/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1349724115&sr=1-1&keywords=space+dynamics

Kinda dense, but it's cheap. Other books I've seen on the subject are over $100.

[AncientAstronaut]

Kosmo-Not and I wrote a guide that is currently on the wiki.

http://kspwiki.nexisonline.net/wiki/Tutorial:Advanced_Rocket_Design

[ginsweater]

Second the recommendation for Intro to Space Dynamics.

Orbital Mechanics by Prussing and Conway has very good coverage of patched conics (the method KSP uses to simulate orbits) if you want to get really deep into the math. It's way too expensive on Amazon, but if you live near a university with an engineering program their library will probably have a copy you can look at.

There's also this ebook at www.astronautical-engineering.com which is also way too expensive, but you can read 10-page samples of each chapter and they're fun reads. I'd particularly point to Chapter 7, which has a discussion of the optimal speed at which to ascend out of an atmosphere with the minimum drag losses - I actually managed to save few hundred extra m/s of delta-V getting my interplanetary lifter into orbit by applying the math in that sample.

One of these days I swear I am going to sit down and write a plugin to set up Duna/Eve slingshots.

[sal_vager]

Wikipedia is also a good source on some things

Orbital Mechanics

Delta-V

[Yourself]

Second the recommendation for Intro to Space Dynamics.

Orbital Mechanics by Prussing and Conway has very good coverage of patched conics (the method KSP uses to simulate orbits) if you want to get really deep into the math. It's way too expensive on Amazon, but if you live near a university with an engineering program their library will probably have a copy you can look at.

There's also this ebook at www.astronautical-engineering.com which is also way too expensive, but you can read 10-page samples of each chapter and they're fun reads. I'd particularly point to Chapter 7, which has a discussion of the optimal speed at which to ascend out of an atmosphere with the minimum drag losses - I actually managed to save few hundred extra m/s of delta-V getting my interplanetary lifter into orbit by applying the math in that sample.

One of these days I swear I am going to sit down and write a plugin to set up Duna/Eve slingshots.

I know $80 isn't cheap, but that's a steal for a textbook. I also recommend this book because it's the one I used in Orbital Mechanics. I also took Orbital Mechanics with the Conway that wrote the book (I also had several other courses with him, he's a very good lecturer) also met Professor Prussing a few times but don't think I had any classes with him.

Anyway, I still have my copy so if anyone has any questions about something in it I might be able to answer.

[Elios]

i made a play list of some videos i found on orbital Mechanics

[jbard]

Thanks for the replies! I'm having a look at some of these now... that "Astronautical Engineering" books looks interesting. Is quite expensive though.

The advanced rocket design article on the wiki was good, I'm working through it now.