Capsule reentry heating plugin

Space capsules have been utilized with great success from the beginning of the manned space program in the U.S. and other countries. They have a proven design, cheaper price tag compared to the Space Shuttle and, with the decline in use of the Shuttle, they could prove to be an attractive alternative moving forward. Reentry vehicle stagnation point heating rates and deceleration values are of particular interest with these types of reentry vehicles and trajectories. I have created a simple example of a plugin tool that can be used inside of STK that will allow users to supply some basic reentry parameters for both the trajectory as well as the capsule design in order to estimate heating rates and deceleration values, or G-Loading.  A video of the plugin can be seen here:

STK provides this method so that users can create their own custom toolbars and menus with the User Interface Plugings (or UiPlugins). These have been used extensively with STK 9 not only by customers, but even AGI business partners to take advantage of the plugin structure to provide analysis tools for end users.

Examples of these include:

• AGI Movie Timeline Tool - Product Description
• STK/Analyzer -Product Description
• AGI/ArcGIS Exporter Plugin - Watch Video

UiPlugins are a great way for integrators to create more customized workflows and take advantage of the .NET framework for working with other APIs and the Visual Studio IDE for designing easy-to-use interfaces.

STK's Help System contains more information regarding UiPlugins and their options and the STK Install provides code samples of basic UiPlugins that can be explored by going to your STK Install location and browsing the following path: <STK Install Directory>\CodeSamples\Extend\Ui.Plugins

The Reentry Heating Plugin can be downloaded here: Reentry Heating Plugin Download