Navigation, Guidance, Control and Dynamics Commons^™

Hot Air Balloon Navigation, Dustin Blackwell

Aerospace Engineering

This report describes a program used for navigating a hot air balloon. The program, Balloon_Trip, was written using MATLAB and gives a flight path to follow from a start position to an end position. Balloon_Trip calculates the flight path by taking in wind conditions and then flying through these different winds so as to steer the hot air balloon. The program calculates the flight path by taking into consideration at all times how the wind will propel the balloon while it is rising or falling in elevation. It then takes the most direct and least complicated, if not fastest, …