The rocket optimization formulation of B. D. Fried is used to ob tain the equations and boundary conditions which will give the maximum energy to a rocket of given specific thrust initially in a circular orbit in a gravitational field. Numerical results are given for a problem suggested by Keith Brueckner and Marvin Goldberger. Our results show that optimization does not lead to significantly better results than the non-optimized case of the thrust always parallel to the velocity.
展开▼
