Hi Guys! So I know it’s been awhile since you’ve heard from me, but things have been busy here at AGI. Anyway I’m back with a quick blog that has nothing to do with launch vehicles or missiles. I know, it makes me just as sad as it makes you, but we’ve got a really cool new competition starting up and I think it’s a great thing, so I wanted to talk about it a bit.

So this new competition is the University Grant Competition. It’s for college students (sorry all you aerospace professionals, I know you were excited to get in on the action), but it’s time for university students give it the ol’ college try! (Do you love how awful that was as much as I do). Ok so the competition is for college students around the world to do some creative problem solving with AGI software. What do you need to do in this competition? Well we are asking you to come up with your own problem and then create the solution either using AGI desktop products or AGI Components (for all you programmers out there).  It can be related to aircraft, spacecraft, missiles, whatever you want, you have the freedom to create your own problem and solve it!

So why would you want to do this? Well besides having fun using STK, all the STK experience will look good on your resume, and the winner in each category (there are 5 different you can enter) will get a $1,000 grant and an invitation to speak at the 2010 Roadshow (which also looks excellent on a resume). So head on over to the competition website and get all the details to get you started.  And if you have any questions feel free to ask!

Till Next Time,

Rocket Girl (aka Amanda)

I don’t know if you guys have realized this, but AGI is a pretty cool place to work, especially for an engineer. We were recently named a Top Small Workplace of 2009 by The Wall Street Journal and Winning Workplaces. Not only do we get to work with awesome software (and I’m not just saying that because I work here. Seriously STK is a wonderful software package that lets me do missile intercept analyses by day and design trajectories to the Moon by night. What other software can do that?), but we get to work with great people in a relaxed but exciting environment. No two days are ever the same around here and not many places can say that. I know this may sound like a bad infomercial but it’s true, if you spent just a day here, you’d realize that this place is a breeding ground for creative and innovative work that challenges you all the time. Now the Wall Street Journal talks about the great perks. And believe me, the free breakfast, lunch and dinner, the on-site laundry facility, the gym and other things like on-site oil change are fantastic. But what brings me back every day is the work I do and the people I work with. Like right now, I’m blogging about how great the company is (or dabbling in social media) but when I’m finished with this, I’m going to be working on a missile defense-related scenario and testing out our new version of Missile Modeling Tools. As an aerospace engineer who has a secret love of social media (have I mentioned you can find me on Twitter?), I can’t think of a better way to spend my day. So I figure you may not want to hear just what I and The Wall Street Journal have to say, so I went around the office and found some engineers to talk about why they think this is a great place to work. You’ll hear from Dan Honaker an applications support engineer, Arianne Liepa our training manager, and Frank Snyder a product evangelist (where else can engineer get that awesome title?!) who actually works for us down in Huntsville, AL, but happens to be in town this week, and of course yours truly.

To learn more about AGI’s work environment visit: http://www.agi.com/corporate/employment/. While you are there you’ll notice a link on the bottom left called The Pink Bathrobe Video, if you have a minute or two it’s well worth the watch!
 
Till Next Time,

Rocket Girl (aka Amanda)

We’ve spent some time talking about launch vehicles in this blog; I figured it was time to switch over and talk about how you can do missile trajectory analyses inside of STK. One of the many objects that you can insert into your STK scenario is a Missile Object. So go ahead and open a scenario, go up to the Insert a New Object button and click the down arrow to expand it and select the missile icon.

Now you have a missile object inside your scenario, let’s work on defining it. Once you have the properties browser open for missile object, go to the propagator section and drop down the box to see the different kinds of propagators available. You can see that there are five different methods of defining a missile inside of STK—ballistic, STK external, two-body, HPOP and real-time. Today we are going to take a look at the first one, the ballistic propagator which is just an elliptical path that begins and ends at the Earth’s surface.

In order to define the shape of the trajectory, you need to specify a fixed flight time, initial velocity or altitude. After you set your start time and your step size (remember your step size is the interval between calculated ephemeris output points), we can shape our missile trajectory. First, we have our Launch Latitude and Longitude which can be either in Geodetic or Geocentric. Geodetic is the latitude and longitude of a point on the Earth’s surface determined from the geodetic vertical (normal to the specified spheroid) and Geocentric is the latitude and longitude of a point on the Earth’s surface determined from the geocentric vertical.

There are two ways that you can set your Launch Latitude and Longitude. The first is by simply entering the coordinates. The second is by going to the 2D map and clicking on where you’d like to launch from. Next, we have the Launch Altitude or Launch Radius (Launch Radius is used when you are defining your launch location in terms of Geocentric). After that you have your flight parameter which by default is set to Fixed Delta V, the instantaneous thrust to be applied to the vehicle being launched. Now if you click out your launch and impact points directly on the 2D map, STK will compute the Delta V for you. But you can also specify your Delta V. Here’s a tip, if you set your Delta V to be 0, the minimum Delta V is computed for the launch and impact locations. You can also set:

• Fixed Delta V Min Ecc – the instantaneous thrust, with minimum eccentricity, to be applied to the vehicle being launched. In general it results in a shallower trajectory and may be a better choice when launch/impact points are close or when they are both on side of the descent/accent arc.
• Fixed Apogee Alt – the vehicle’s maximum altitude.
• Fixed Time of Flight – the duration of the vehicle’s flight.

Alright so now that we have our flight parameters defined, let’s look at our impact parameters. We have Impact Latitude – Geodetic or Geocentric, and Launch Elevation. Next is Impact Longitude, or Launch Azimuth. Finally we have the Impact Altitude or Impact Radius. The impact latitude and longitude you can either input manually or use the 2D map click to place. And remember if you use Azimuth and Elevation to specify Impact Location, the only flight parameter available is Fixed Delta V. Here’s a snapshot of what it might look like in STK:

So now you have your missile in there, here’s one more tip for missiles that you might find handy if you are trying to make a video and ever wanted vapor contours. In your missile object properties browser, go down to 3D Graphics -> Vapor Trail. Here is where you turn on the vapor trail, set the size of it, when you want it to start and stop and what part of the model you want it attached too. If you want to take it a step further, you can go up to Model and View the articulations for your model and from there you can turn on the flame texture for the model for added effect! So check it out:

Since we are on the topic of missiles, don’t forget to check out www.agi.com/northkorea for analytical animations and interactive VDFs of the North Korea launch.

Till Next Time,
Rocket Girl (aka Amanda)