Flight Dynamics

Flight dynamics is the study of the performance, stability, and control of vehicles flying through the air or in outer space.It is concerned with how forces acting on the vehicle determine its velocity and attitude with respect to time. For a fixed-wing aircraft, its changing orientation with respect to the local air flow is represented by two critical angles, the angle of attack of the wing ("alpha") and the angle of attack of the vertical tail, known as the sideslip angle ("beta"). A sideslip... See More

Guidance, Navigation, and Control (GNC)

Guidance, navigation and control (abbreviated GNC, GN&C, or G&C and within the context of NASA operations, often pronounced 'Gintsee' or (IPA) ʤɪnsiː) is a branch of engineering dealing with the design of systems to control the movement of vehicles, especially, automobiles, ships, aircraft, and spacecraft. In many cases these functions can be performed by trained humans. However, because of the speed of, for example, a rocket's dynamics, human reaction time is too slow to control this movement... See More