Page 8 of Apogee Rockets by Apogee Components, Inc.

rocksim 8.0 design software rocksim software design awesome models that will gain you attention at every rocket launch plus save money by building them yourself design your own customized rockets and see how high they fly with the fun and interactive rocksim software what does the rocksim v8 software do for you rocksim allows you to take your cool rocketry ideas and flush out the concept to see if they ll be stable when you launch them this is important because you want to make sure all your home-brew creations are safe right this process of selecting parts and arranging them into a rocket to see if it will work is called designing a rocket after you have the basic layout of the rocket you ll probably want to see how it will perform when it takes flight right rocksim was the first software that combines both design and simulation into one seamless program what that means is that you create a drawing of the rocket and simply click a button to see how that design will perform that makes it quick and easy to check the feasibility of your ideas using rocksim you will know long before you actually start cutting parts if the rocket will ing themselves you ve got the same questions right from the beginning rocksim was created to be a true design tool with rocksim you specify the components of the rocket including all the rings and the recovery devices carried inside and rocksim precalculates the weight of the rocket as you are in the process of designing it at the same time it is also calculating the cp location of the model and determining if the rocket will be stable rocksim was the very first model rocket program to do this on-thefly computation and it revolutionized rocketry now you could make changes to your design and see how the cp and cg are affected for example what if you changed the fin location on your rocket doing so changes both the cg and the cp location with rocksim it calculates these changes faster than you can blink your eyes additionally as you design your rocket rocksim performs an estimation of the coefficient-of-drag cd which is used to determine how high and fast your rocket will fly the coefficient-of-drag is broken down into various contributors nose cone and body profile drag base drag launch lug drag and fin drag you can use this feature to tweak your rocket for optimum altitude performance again rocksim was the first and is still the only design program that has this feature without it you can t really tell with any certainty how high or how fast the rocket will travel let alone what the trajectory will look like but besides allowing you to design intricate rockets rocksim simulates the rocket s entire flight from the launch trajectory to finding where they land this is something no other software can offer you how does rocksim v8 work designing rockets with rocksim is a snap it doesn t take a long time at all after you ve learned the basics of the program you ll be creating designs in less than 5 minutes basically there are two simple things you do when developing a new design 1 create the design typically you will select parts from the extensive databases which include your favorite manufacturers like estes quest aerotech loc or pml not to mention apogee components but you can easily add your own custom parts too once a new part has been added to the database you can bring it up for any of your future rocket design too 2 when finished with the design you will then select a rocket motor for it and rocksim will perform a comprehensive launch simulation based on weather conditions you input rocksim not only tells you how high the rocket flies but it will show you what the trajectory will look like plus it will give you other important information like acceleration velocity and downrange drift what makes rocksim v8 different from other programs rocksim has many one-of-a-kind features that are not available in other programs these advanced features are there to make the program the easier to use and/or to allow you to design rockets that are out of the ordinary for example if you wanted to make a rocket that had the appearance of an airplane the two wings and the tail fins would be impossible to design without rocksim because they violate the barrowman stability equations you see in the barrowman equations a set of fins must have at least three identical fins it does not allow a two-fin set like the wings of an airplane-like rocket nor do the barrowman equations allow just a single fin like the vertical tail of an airplane what is more important rocksim plainly tells you whether your uniquelooking design is safe to fly that is the real trick regardless of how neat the rocket looks if it isn t stable it will crash if you launch it another feature that only rocksim has is its ability to run very sophisticated launch simulations this is to give you the most realistic prediction of the performance of your new design we call it dynamic stability analysis and again only rocksim has it the ability to predict how a rocket will fly in windy conditions and what it will do when launched at an angle is what dynamic stability is all about when you know how the rocket will react to different conditions you can take precautions and angle the launch rod appropriately so that you get a better and safer flight dynamic stability is much harder to determine than static stability why because it is not only affected by the relationship between the center-of-pressure cp and center-ofgravity cg of the model but also by the speed of the rocket wind launch angle and even by the shape and mass of the internal components that make up the rocket there are many equations that govern the dynamic stability of a rocket they have techno-speak mumbo-jumbo names like damping moment coefficients longitudinal moments of inertia coupled damping fatios and angular accelerations most people have little desire to figure out what it all means so to make it all easy to understand rocksim creates a movie of the model s flight by watching this flight profile animation even the youngest modeler can see if the rocket is oscillating back and forth or if it weathercocks too far into the wind it is really easy to see the effects of changing the fins using a different rocket motor angling the launch rod or varying the wind speed at launch any of these types of changes will affect the trajectory of the rocket and how high/fast it will fly playing with the flight profile feature is a blast with rocksim it is even possible to simulate an unstable model and watch it do loopty-loops on the computer screen these simulated flights are fun to watch but you wouldn t want this to happen to a real rocket because statically stable view your cool rockets in 3d work successfully that cuts down on mistakes and saves you a lot of money and frustration rocksim speeds up the what-if design process ­ what if i changed the shape or the number of fins on my rocket ­ what if i changed the length of the rocket those are the questions that designers have always been ask 8 see our web site for more product features and item availability

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