Guidance, Navigation and Control · Guidance Laws · M8-L2 · Advanced
Fly the Polynomial Descent
Bench log · Hopper on the test range
11:15. Hopper's descent was programmed on the ground: a smooth acceleration history from 200 m to a stop. On the first flight the engine gave 8% less than commanded and the vehicle reached the ground at 19 m/s. The operator also wants the descent shortened to save time, and the engineers do not know how short it can be.
You will see why a programme fails and a recomputed law does not, write the law, and compute the shortest descent the engine allows.
Your task
Lab complete: post-mortem
You have passed every stage. Now connect it back to the theory and move on:
Output
What Python can I use?
Plain Python 3 with the standard library and the course library gnckit (import gnckit as g: transfer functions and margins, state space and LQR, the Hopper model, quaternions, a convex solver). NumPy is not available in the browser. Your code runs in a background worker: an endless loop is stopped after a few seconds and the page stays usable. It runs in your browser and is never sent anywhere.