Home▸Aerospace Engineering & Orbital Mechanics▸Belly-Flop Descent Lab: Drag Area, Terminal Velocity and the Flip Manoeuvre

🪂 Belly-Flop Descent Lab: Drag Area, Terminal Velocity and the Flip Manoeuvre

Generic large cylindrical vehicle descending belly-first: drag area, terminal velocity vs altitude, fin attitude control, the 90-degree flip and the altitude it costs, then a constant-deceleration landing burn.

Aerospace Engineering & Orbital Mechanics3DAdvanced60 FPS📱 Mobile-adapted🟠 Blender

⚙ Under the hood

A generic large cylindrical vehicle falls belly-first from 70 km at Mach 5: drag area and terminal velocity against altitude (ISA), fin attitude control, the 90-degree flip and the altitude it costs, then a constant-deceleration landing burn. Includes terminal-velocity-vs-orientation and minimum-flip-altitude-vs-torque experiments; all numbers are illustrative.

Space Transportterminal velocitydrag areaflip manoeuvreBlender

3D · Three.js / WebGL renderer · 60 FPS target · runs fully client-side, no install