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When discussing the physical state of a thing (e.g. a satellite), you can refer to its attitude state (which, to me, consists of its attitude and its derivatives/rates) and its.... non-attitude state (which, to me, consists of its position and its derivatives/rates).

What word goes there?

I keep thinking kinematic state, but that doesn't make sense because attitude is also kinematic.

Up until now, my simulations have had State which consisted of all six degrees of freedom and their rates. However, I'm trying to split it into 3+3 degrees of freedom to make many things easier (e.g. "propagate the non-attitude state by calculating using orbital-elements and propagate the attitude using an RK4 integrator").

So, as an example:

attitude = object.currentAttitude
print attitude.orientation # quaternion
blaaaaaa = object.currentBlaaaaaa # Agh! What is this called?
print blaaaaaa.position # vector
iAdjunct
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  • "blaaaa"? Good grief... at least use "foo" or "foobar"! :-) As for your problem, which choice of coordinates one would use depends on the application. There is no unique solution for that (or any reason why one would only use one in a single application). If you are talking about space navigation, that's engineering, anyways. – CuriousOne May 05 '16 at 04:26
  • Unclear what I'm asking? Seriously? There's a big bold question there and it's tagged "terminology". Also, it's not really coordinate-system dependent and probably not related to the field it's for: given that the term "attitude" refers to three degrees of freedom and their derivatives, what term refers to the other three degrees of freedom and their attitude? – iAdjunct May 05 '16 at 13:03

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