Sunday, November 24, 2019

physics - Lunar lander: How to calc acceleration in each step


I'm trying to make a lunar lander simulator. I'm going to use a simple Euler integration. AFAIK all I've to calculate is the acceleration in each step, and then I should be able to update velocity and position.


I'm following this page: http://www.braeunig.us/apollo/LM-descent.htm


There's a paragraph I don't really understand:



Although most operations are self-explanatory, a brief description of acceleration is warranted. Acceleration is broken down into vertical and horizontal components, where the vertical component is normal to the Moon's surface. The instantaneous vertical and horizontal accelerations of a moving body in reference to this surface are Av=Vh^2/r and Ah=–VhVv/r. To this we add the accelerations resulting from gravity and thrust. Gravity, of course, acts vertically downward. The vertical and horizontal components of thrust are a function of the pitch angle.




The author is making a much more realistic simulation here and because of that he is not assuming the Moon is flat. He comes up with two initial values for each acceleration component:


    Av=Vh^2/r

Ah=–VhVv/r

1- Seems that Av is the centripetal acceleration, but where does the Ah come from?


2- Are those initial values really needed? In my game the Moon is going to be flat. I thought taking into account thrust/mass and gravity would suffice.


Thanks in advance.




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