Joost Hubbard

Joost Hubbard

Current MEng Aerospace Engineering student at Queen Mary University of London.

Simplifying Jupyter Books Creation: A Windows Users Guide

1 minute read

Published:

Over the summer in addition to personal research, I have been working as an active contributor to both a spacecraft dynamics textbook and a computational dynamics textbook created using Jupyter Books to complement modules taught at the Queen Mary University of London. As our project continues to evolve, we’ve recognized the need for a streamlined process to build and preview Jupyter Books locally on Windows machines. This capability is crucial for our team members to review their contributions before submitting pull requests on GitHub. To address this need, I’ve developed a comprehensive tutorial that walks through the process step-by-step.

Read the tutorial

Why This Tutorial?

While the Jupyter Book documentation is extensive, it can sometimes be overwhelming for newcomers, especially those working on Windows systems. Our tutorial aims to provide a concise, Windows-specific guide that allows contributors to quickly set up their environment and start building books locally.

Key Features of the Tutorial

  1. Prerequisites: Clear instructions on setting up Python and Pip on Windows, including troubleshooting steps for common PATH issues.
  2. Step-by-Step Guide: A detailed walkthrough of the book creation process, from installation to building.
  3. Windows-Specific: Tailored for Windows users, addressing platform-specific nuances.
  4. Practical Examples: Uses a sample book to demonstrate the process, making it easy for users to follow along.

Looking Ahead

This tutorial is just the beginning. As we continue to work with Jupyter Books, we may discover more efficient workflows or encounter new challenges!

For those interested in diving deeper into Jupyter Book capabilities, I recommend exploring the official Jupyter Book documentation. Our tutorial serves as a quick-start guide, but the full documentation offers insights into more advanced features and customizations.

If you encounter any issues or have suggestions for improving the tutorial, please don’t hesitate to reach out. You can contact me directly at j.hubbard@se21.qmul.ac.uk.

Happy book building!

Update on progress; impulse vs non-impulse simulation

1 minute read

Published:

Building upon my prior work using the Clohessy-Wiltshire equations to create a trajectory simulation for a target and chaser satellite (as discussed in blog post 2), the next step was to utilize and develop this code to compare the effects of impulsive and non-impulsive manoeuvres modelling. This somewhat spiralled into me writing a short paper to summarise my work (still in progress but attached to this post nonetheless).

What if? (Its a book not a question)

less than 1 minute read

Published:

On and off over the past few months I’ve been reading ‘What if?’ by Randall Monroe. Since the book is so popular it feels almost pointless to explain it, but I will just in case. The premise centres around providing logical, scientific solutions to absurd questions, think things like: ‘What would happen if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90% the speed of light?’. These topics are covered in a way to keep the reader engaged, using humour while still actually answering the question somewhat accurately.

Clohessy–Wiltshire Simulation

1 minute read

Published:

The initial goal was to create a code snippet that to simulate the collisions between two objects in LEO, making use of the hill clohessy equations for relative motion. This is to be used to simulate the collision between the robotic arms and any debris it may want to capture. In addition, it could be used to estimate the required force needed to push the debris out of orbit. A final use could be to simulate rendezvous with the target.