Aerospace engineering, explained with real vehicles.
ORBIX is a personal project by Deep Patel, a high school senior who plans to study aerospace engineering. Its calculators run from lift and drag to orbital transfers, and selected results are checked against published tables and worked examples.
Transfer Explorer
Checked against published values
26 of 36 compared values fall within the rounding of the published figure, and the other 10 are listed with a note on each. No value is more than 0.47 percent from the published figure.
First burn delta-v
- ORBIX
- 2,454.59 m/s
- Published
- 2,455 m/s
- Result
- Within rounding
Hohmann transfer, low Earth orbit to geosynchronous orbit. Robert A. Braeunig, Rocket and Space Technology, Problem 4.19.
| Quantity | ORBIX (m/s) | Published (m/s) | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| First burn delta-v | 2,454.59 | 2,455 | Within rounding |
In the same worked example, the second burn delta-v and the total delta-v fall outside rounding by about 1 m/s, because the source rounds speeds before it subtracts them. The worked example measures altitude from a 6,378.14 km Earth radius. The Transfer Explorer above uses the 6,371 km mean radius, so its figures for the same orbits differ slightly.
Three tools to start with
Tsiolkovsky rocket equation
Delta v equals I s p times g zero times the natural log of m zero over m f.
Normal shock
M 2 squared equals gamma minus 1 times M 1 squared, plus 2, over 2 gamma M 1 squared minus gamma minus 1.
Hohmann transfer
v squared equals mu times 2 over r minus 1 over a.
