Results for “sphere of confusion”

NASA NTRS1976

Disharmony of the spheres - Recent trends in planetary surface nomenclature

Inadvisable departures from tradition in naming newly mapped features on Mars, Mercury, and the moon have been implemented and proposed since 1970. Functional need for place names also has become confused with cartographic convenience. Much of the resulting new nomenclature is neither unique, efficient, nor imaginative. The long-standing classical orientation in Solar System geography needs to be firmly reasserted. The Maedler scheme for designating smaller craters on the moon should be retained and extended to the farside. Names of surface features on other bodies might best reflect the traditional connotations of planet and satellite names: for example, most craters on Mars would be named for mythical heroes and military personalities in ancient history, craters on Mercury might commemorate explorers or commercial luminaries, and features on Venus would bear the names of famous women.

Pike, R. J.↗

NASA NTRS2006

Gravity Modeling for Variable Fidelity Environments

Aerospace simulations can model worlds, such as the Earth, with differing levels of fidelity. The simulation may represent the world as a plane, a sphere, an ellipsoid, or a high-order closed surface. The world may or may not rotate. The user may select lower fidelity models based on computational limits, a need for simplified analysis, or comparison to other data. However, the user will also wish to retain a close semblance of behavior to the real world. The effects of gravity on objects are an important component of modeling real-world behavior. Engineers generally equate the term gravity with the observed free-fall acceleration. However, free-fall acceleration is not equal to all observers. To observers on the sur-face of a rotating world, free-fall acceleration is the sum of gravitational attraction and the centrifugal acceleration due to the world's rotation. On the other hand, free-fall acceleration equals gravitational attraction to an observer in inertial space. Surface-observed simulations (e.g. aircraft), which use non-rotating world models, may choose to model observed free fall acceleration as the gravity term; such a model actually combines gravitational at-traction with centrifugal acceleration due to the Earth s rotation. However, this modeling choice invites confusion as one evolves the simulation to higher fidelity world models or adds inertial observers. Care must be taken to model gravity in concert with the world model to avoid denigrating the fidelity of modeling observed free fall. The paper will go into greater depth on gravity modeling and the physical disparities and synergies that arise when coupling specific gravity models with world models.

Madden, Michael M.↗