Saturn launch vehicle's navigation guidance, and control system

The navigation, guidance and control system of Saturn launch vehicles is reviewed with respect to systems engineering; operational requirements and design aspects determine the synthesis and the implementation of the system, which must fulfill extreme reliability demands. The iterative path adaptive guidance mode, featuring flight path optimization, is presented in its computational form. The launch vehicle dynamics for attitude control cover the rigid-body behavior and the body-bending characteristics of the vehicle as well as the sloshing behavior of the propellants, from which the vehicle control functions are derived. Signal flow diagrams, computational arrangements and specific components such as the inertial measurement unit demonstrate the implementation of the navigation, guidance and control system. Flight simulation has been applied for the design, analysis and verification of the navigation, guidance and control system. The evaluation of the flight results exhibits the excellent overall performance of the system even under unusual flight perturbations.