Learn how to land a rocket under real gravity, drag, and fuel-burn constraints
three.jsrigid-body physicscontrol
Landing a rocket is a control problem before it's a physics problem: gravity and drag are fixed, thrust and fuel are the only levers, and running out of either at the wrong altitude ends the run.
Throttle up to slow your descent, but every second of burn costs fuel you don't get back. Worth trying: cut the engine entirely and watch terminal velocity take over, or land with the throttle pinned near max and see how little margin real hardware actually runs on.
The Article tab moves fast and assumes you can already read a differential equation. This one won't. It is a longer path through the same material, starting from what a reference frame is, with each idea introduced properly before anything depends on it.
The outline below is what it will cover. I am writing it a rung at a time, so it will appear in pieces rather than all at once. Rungs that are already written link out.
01
Foundations
The vocabulary, from a standing start. No control theory assumed.
Reference frames, and why mixing them causes most flight-software bugs