Manned Spacecraft Design Principles

Figure 6.45 Approximate lift and drag characteristics for the Space Shuttle Orbiter in hypersonic flight (M>5).

However, we may use the STS-5 trajectory results to assess the behavior of numerical solutions to the equations developed thus far. In Figure 6.46, the nominal velocity history for STS-5 shown in Figure 6.41 is compared to numerical solutions of Eqns (6.34)–(6.36) for the simple case in which constant lift and drag coefficients are assumed to exist throughout the flight. Using a nominal mass m=90,000 kg, a reference area S=250 m², and a drag coefficient C_D=0.86 yields a normalized B′=mg_E/C_DS=0.0406 atm which corresponds to flight at ...