ksp nasa stock rockets mercury to apollo

With airplanes it’s really easy to define pitch, yaw, and roll because airplanes have such obvious characteristics, like wings, landing gear, cockpit and a vertical stabilizer. On an airplane, pitch is the nose pulling up or diving down, yaw is the nose going left or right, and roll you can think of the wingtips going up or down while the nose stays in the same place. You may have heard the terms pitch, yaw, and roll, especially when talking about airplanes. So let’s start off with a quick overview of pitch, yaw and roll and how they correspond on a rocket. Then you think of other reasons and learn of all these edge cases and come to find out, there’s actually a lot to unpack here!Īnd just to clarify things, we’re specifically talking about the roll program of rockets and not their gravity turn, these are two different things. Where at first the reason feels perplexing, then you hear one explanation and you’re like “Oh, I guess that makes sense”.

Then we’ll look at some unique solutions to orientations, including some rockets that don’t roll on ascent to align with their trajectory. Take a look at launch azimuths and their relationships to trajectories. Then we’re going to dive into why a rocket rolls in the first place. So today, we’ll first define the pitch, yaw, roll and their corresponding axis on a rocket. Just as long as the pointy end is going the direction it’s intended to go, who cares which side of the rocket is facing the Earth and which side is facing space… right? even bother doing a roll? Can’t rockets just tip over in whatever direction they need to go? Do a little pitch here, a little yaw there.

Now, a maneuver like this makes sense when a vehicle is asymmetrical like the Space Shuttle, but why do cylindrical rockets like the Saturn V, Titan, Atlas, Delta IV, etc.

As soon as it cleared the tower, you can see it making a very impressive and sometimes scary looking roll. The best example of this was the Space Shuttle, which had a very obvious and dramatic roll program. “Why do we hear a call out like ‘Roger roll’ or ‘Roll program complete’?” At which point we can see the rocket rotate or roll on its X axis. Here’s a fun question that not only have I myself asked, but I get asked fairly often.

Ksp nasa stock rockets mercury to apollo