Vehicle Exit From Sled Into Orbit
At the end of the acceleration run, the vehicle stops accelerating, separates from the sled, and enters a departure orbit, while the sled continues to accelerate at 3 gees until it reaches the top of the loop.
Vehicle acceleration does not end abruptly from 3 gees; the horizontal acceleration reduces smoothly from 3 gees to zero gees over one second, a "jerk" of 30 m/s³. If the vehicle and sled are moving faster than orbital velocity, there will be some upwards acceleration force as well, which is relieved towards the end of the "jerk", stretching the "one second" deployment time a little; 52 msec for a one gee upwards deployment force at escape velocity.
The vehicle rides behind the sled heat shield throughout the 6 minute (LEO) to 8 minute (escape) acceleration run. After release, the vehicle will spend a minute???? (LEO) to 30 seconds (escape) punching through most of the remaining atmosphere.
A table of vehicle acceleration and sled-relative position:
inertial |
|
sled-relative |
|||||
velocity |
displacement |
||||||
ax |
ay |
a |
time |
vx |
vy |
x |
y |
m/s² |
m/s² |
m/s² |
sec |
m/s |
m/s |
meters |
meters |
30.0 |
10.0 |
31.6 |
0.000 |
0.0 |
0.0 |
0.00 |
0.00 |
25.0 |
10.0 |
26.9 |
0.157 |
-0.4 |
0.0 |
-0.02 |
0.00 |
20.0 |
10.0 |
22.4 |
0.309 |
-1.5 |
0.0 |
-0.16 |
0.00 |
15.0 |
10.0 |
18.0 |
0.453 |
-3.3 |
0.0 |
-0.50 |
0.00 |
10.0 |
10.0 |
14.1 |
0.583 |
-5.6 |
0.0 |
-1.07 |
0.00 |
5.0 |
5.0 |
7.1 |
0.818 |
-10.9 |
0.6 |
-2.99 |
0.05 |
0.0 |
0.0 |
0.0 |
1.054 |
-17.4 |
2.4 |
-6.30 |
0.37 |
SledRelease.ods . . . LibreOffice Calc attachment
Sled Deploying from vehicle
SledAndVehicleExit.png . . . 2250 pixel wide image
SledAndVehicleExit750.png . . . 750 pixel wide image
SledAndVehicleExit.odg . . . LibreOffice draw original