My Great and Glorious SPREADSHEET!

--- In spacesettlers@y..., "xenophile2002" wrote:
> Well, Great and Glorious may be a bit much, but I'm still rather
> proud of it. It gets the job done. My pride is tempered by the
> nagging suspicion that there must be a better way to do it. But
> anyway, it gets the job done, it's in the "Files" section, and this
> is how you use it:
>
> See those two spaces outlined in red? Put numbers there. Put the
> number of G's you are willing to endure (or that you are willing to
> subject your payload to) in the space to the right of "G's" (cell
B1)
> and the length of time that you are willing to put up with that
kind
> of acceleration in the space to the right of "Seconds" (cell B2).
> And the spreadsheet tells you how much track-length you used (this
is
> for a maglev thingie), what your final speed is, and even converts
to
> English units! That's all there is to it! Kewl!!

V(f) = V(i)+ a * t
where a is in m/s/s, t is in seconds, and v in m/s
so if v(i) = 0 then v(f) = a * t

d = (v(f)^2 - v(i)^2)/(2*a)

gives the length of the maglev thingy. Note that if v(i) is 0 then
d=(1/2)*a*t*t

(d in meters, a in m/s and t in s)

if you want to express the accelerations in Gs instead of m/s/s,
simply divide the acceleration by 9.81

Note: it is extremely inadvisable to calculate anything to do with
launches, thrust, etc in anything but metric. Not only does this
make calculations easier, it avoids the problem that occurred last
year with that billion-dollar Mars probe...one team working with
Newtons, the other working with foot-pounds, and in the end you have
one billion-dollar pile of scrap metal pancaked in its very own
crater.

:) ed