RASAero Source Code?

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Neilw

Simulates with KSP
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A few days ago I was working with a university rocketry team and I saw something that hurt my soul. The guys were attempting to optimize their design using RASAero, but since the tools which support optimization in RASAero are limited, they were plugging in values into the program and then copying the output into excel spreadsheets ...hundreds of times.

I still like using RASAero; there are few programs that can generate reliable and accurate results like RASAero can. But the user-interface leaves many things to be desired. We'd like to integrate the the RASAero code with our own design systems and optimization loops. To do this however, we'd need the source code or, at the very least, binaries of the functions.

Does anyone know if these are available anywhere?

Thanks
 
Did you try [email protected] and explain your situation? It's on the website: https://www.rasaero.com/ under "User Support". That would be the place to ask as I don't think the source code it out there publicly but I could be wrong about the code thing. Kurt

Sent an email almost a week ago. Still waiting on a reply. Mostly, I'd really like to know if the creators of the software are open with their source code. I could understand them not wanting to distribute it.
 
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Neilw:

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. I was on a work trip and catching up on RASAero/personal e-mails today.

The source code for RASAero II is not available at this time. We've also had requests for a "batch mode" RASAero II (for Aerospace Engineering Masters Thesis optimization studies, the optimization study being the Thesis, RASAero II being the tool), where an outer shell doing the optimization would call RASAero II multiple times. This is much more likely, but it's another thing that's on the back burner at this time.


Chuck Rogers
Rogers Aeroscience
 
They would be better off making response surfaces with fewer discrete point solutions that cover the range of the design parameters, then spline fitting them. Use the multi-variate spline fitted surfaces in the optimization.


Oh, and use MATLAB instead of Excel, these kids are in college not high school, right?
 
Neilw:

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. I was on a work trip and catching up on RASAero/personal e-mails today.

The source code for RASAero II is not available at this time. We've also had requests for a "batch mode" RASAero II (for Aerospace Engineering Masters Thesis optimization studies, the optimization study being the Thesis, RASAero II being the tool), where an outer shell doing the optimization would call RASAero II multiple times. This is much more likely, but it's another thing that's on the back burner at this time.


Chuck Rogers
Rogers Aeroscience

Thanks for the update! Let me know when the "batch mode" might be ready.
 
They would be better off making response surfaces with fewer discrete point solutions that cover the range of the design parameters, then spline fitting them. Use the multi-variate spline fitted surfaces in the optimization.


Oh, and use MATLAB instead of Excel, these kids are in college not high school, right?

A response surface still requires a lot of points to fill the design space. Doing this by hand still sucks. You need "automation" before you can effectively do "iteration" then finally "optimization."

RockSim has a little-known command line executable, "rocksimc.exe" You give it the .rkt file as an argument, and it returns an updated .rkt file with simulations recalculated. Many years ago, I wrote a wrapper to manipulate the rkt file parameters, run batch jobs, extract data, and do some of my own optimization and goal-seeking routines.

This is the beauty of the Thrustcurve motor guide. It cranks through all motor choices automatically. Simulating more than few motors in OR and RASAero is tedious to say the least, considering all the motors to choose from. A batch mode is absolutely necessary, these days.
 
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