In article ,
Bertil Jonell wrote:
There has been a lot of work done on Hohman and Bielliptic transfers,
but has there been anything on constant-thrust transfers?

There was considerable theoretical work on it in the late 50s and early
60s, when people thought that low-thrust propulsion would be in use soon.
You need to look at some pretty old and dusty sources to find it, though.
As far as I know, there's no single source that includes all of the
significant results.

Analytical approaches only go so far with low-thrust stuff, however,
because it's just plain difficult to deal with mathematically. For real
problems, you end up burning lots of computer time. Good methods for
*that* are still experimental, an active research topic today.

Of course, the
"optimum" in this case won't be lowest deltaV, but shortest time for a
given acceleration?

Could be either, depending on the conditions of the problem. They are
sometimes, but not always, synonymous.
--
MOST launched 30 June; first light, 29 July; 5arcsec | Henry Spencer
pointing, 10 Sept; first science, early Oct; all well. |