A Mathematical Method for Predicting the Design Performance of Single and Multi-stage Rockets

Methods for predicting the performance of rockets are not new, however they often exist only within private organizations and in order to ensure competitive advantage, organizations tend to not share any details about their inner performance models. This open-source method gives students, design-teams and hobbyists a method to obtain baseline approximations for the performance of both single and multi-stage tandem rockets and provides a method which can easily be modified to meet the end-user’s requirements. The method solves for the mass, flight-path angle, velocity, altitude, and down-range distance using a numerical integrator to solve a set of nonlinear ordinary differential equations.