Technical Documentation

OpenRocket was originally written as the Master's thesis of Sampo Niskanen at Helsinki University of Technology. The thesis currently functions as the technical documentation, and will be updated in the future to account for further enhancements. The thesis is licensed under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND License.

Development of an Open Source model rocket simulation software (PDF, 1.3MB)

Table of contents:

1. Introduction

2. Basics of model rocket flight

3. Aerodynamic properties of model rockets

4. Flight simulation

5. The OpenRocket simulation software

6. Comparison with experimental data

7. Conclusion

A. Nose cone and transition geometries

B. Transonic wave drag of nose cones

C. Streamer drag coefficient estimation