• Question: Do you write computer programs to design your models?

    Asked by eoinconnolly to David on 13 Nov 2012.
    • Photo: David McKeown

      David McKeown answered on 13 Nov 2012:


      Yep! It takes a mixture of mathematics and programming skills to make the spacecraft models I work with. For simple models I write it all in code using Matlab, which is software a lot of engineers use to do research. For more complex models I use different software called ADAMS, which is specially designed to make it easy to figure out the dynamics (how things moves when forces act on them) of complicated things, this allows me focus on thinking of ways of turning on the rockets to move it about. This is called “control” and all the control stuff I program from scratch (again mostly in matlab)

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