Atmosphere pressure lapse rate

Post Reply
Excarto
Posts: 3
Joined: Sun Feb 17, 2019 5:25 am

Atmosphere pressure lapse rate

Post by Excarto »

Hi all,

I finally had some time to look in to the atmospheric model again, and I noticed that Earth's atmosphere is much too thin. It basically ends around 25km, which is actually less than the maximum altitude of the SR-71! The dry adiabatic lapse rate model from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lapse_rate is used. I like the idea of using a physical model, but I think the simplifications in the model just break down at high altitude.

I propose adding an "empirical correction factor" to the lapse rate. By multiplying the "lapseRate_L" variable in Planet.cpp by 0.4, we get an atmospheric pressure of 0.1 atm at about 17 km, which is in good agreement with experiments like this one:
https://gregklein.wordpress.com/2011/01 ... -altitude/
Post Reply