General Question "e" in numbers ..?

[Seahawk72s]

I've seen "e" used as part of a variable to defne thrust.

MAIN_THRUST=44.3e7
RETRO_THRUST=44.3e7

And used to define radius of planets.

How can I find what it means.?
I looked in the Orbiter and Spacecraft pdfs...with no luck

Thanks..

 

[Mantis]

Exponent - it can also be represented as ^ (although not in Orbiter config files etc.).

 

[donatelo200]

It's scientific notation. It's really handy when dealing with big numbers like 10,000,000,000,000,000 standard to 1e16 scientific notation. I use it when cauculating the mass of planets and big orbits.

 

[Seahawk72s]

It's scientific notation. It's really handy when dealing with big numbers like 10,000,000,000,000,000 standard to 1e16 scientific notation. I use it when cauculating the mass of planets and big orbits.

thank you both...!

 

[N_Molson]

I must say I find it confusing and always write the full numbers in the config files or dlls :embarrassed:

But I'm getting more and more familiar with it !

 

[Izack]

Exponent - it can also be represented as ^ (although not in Orbiter config files etc.).

Not exactly.
It could be represented as *10^, as in 'multiplied by ten to the power of.'

 

[statickid]

yeah just think of it as counting places left or right, as you may already know

 

[jedidia]

I must say I find it confusing and always write the full numbers in the config files or dlls

It's really no rocket sience. Regardless of what the number means, you can think of it as how many zeroes a number would have, that's the easiest way to imagine it. so 1e6 is one million, since a million has 6 zeroes (or let's say digits). 1.1e6 would therefore be 1.1 million. 1e9 is one billion. It's sure handier than writing 1,000,000,000 and a lot easier to read, too.

 

[Urwumpe]

Actually, the exponent expression with "E" has a different meaning, but its commonly assumed to be base 10. In the past, "E" meant machine exponent and depended on the implementation of the exponent in floating point numbers. For constants and device independent code, "D" is always base 10, while "B" would be base "2".