Mars Vehicle "2500" - Part 1 - Basics

This Mars Vehicle (MV), model "2500" is part of the LEAMOR (Light Extended Apollo Mars Orbit Rendezvous) total mission plan. See the article for general ideas about that Mars mission plan.

Figure 1. Mars Vehicle (MV) "2500" with ablative lower part and heat shield above ablative fuel balls.

LM Descent to the Moon - Part 5 - Powered Landing Maneuver (1964)

(LEM Powered Landing Maneuver, 1964)

[This is a partial reprint of a 1964 technical paper from MIT/NASA, which explains the mathematics behind the 1960's lunar landings. See /1/ for details. LM was called LEM (Lunar Excursion Module) those days and the first landing was to be done summer 1969, 5 years after this paper was written. The strength of this algorithm is that it is real time adaptive to the variations of the parameters from different sources (and also errors). This algorithm was called "E Guidance" due to the E matrix used in it. The basic LM descent guidance logic was defined by an acceleration command which was a quadratic function of time and was, therefore, later termed "Quadratic Guidance". ]

Figure 0. Look angle "lambda" is relative to the thrust axis