42 - Spacecraft Simulation

For my novel, I was struggling to find rocket simulators that allowed setting an initial velocity for the rocket. Most of them presume a starting velocity of 0. So, tangentially related, here is my calculator that allows users to provide an initial speed for the rocket before burning its onboard fuel:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;autonoma.ca&#x2F;calculators&#x2F;rocket&#x2F;payload&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;autonoma.ca&#x2F;calculators&#x2F;rocket&#x2F;payload&#x2F;</a><p>Source file containing most of the delta-v calculations:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;autonoma.ca&#x2F;calculators&#x2F;rocket&#x2F;payload&#x2F;Rocket.js" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;autonoma.ca&#x2F;calculators&#x2F;rocket&#x2F;payload&#x2F;Rocket.js</a><p>Being able to see all the TeX equations rendered with KaTeX on a single page is quite convenient.

Can I see it in action?<p>Would love to see it model the optimal suicide burn from Lunar Lander <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;moonlander.seb.ly&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;moonlander.seb.ly&#x2F;</a>

A lot of 42&#x27;s usage comes from it&#x27;s proximity to NASA Goddard&#x27;s cFS, the most widely used (and in my opinion, best) open-source flight software framework out there. However, many space companies move towards using their own simulation stack, especially when it comes to using the models for driving hardware-in-the-loop (HITL&#x2F;HIL) simulations with things like fault injection for mission operations drills.<p>Other open-source solutions for this include:<p>* Nyx - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;nyx-space&#x2F;nyx">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;nyx-space&#x2F;nyx</a><p>* Basilisk - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;AVSLab&#x2F;basilisk">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;AVSLab&#x2F;basilisk</a>

This is really cool, does anyone know how it compares to NASA Trick? <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;nasa&#x2F;trick">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;nasa&#x2F;trick</a>

It’s somehow a shame that this has have a core written in C, but there really isn’t an alternative. It’s a really neat project! It looks like its designed to be used from Matlab or Julia, which is a fascinating pairing.