Method for Updating Physics Vectors

I want to implement realistic physics for spacecraft in my game. I want to be able to access velocity, position, and acceleration vectors quickly and work with them mathematically with minimal delay and without necessarily altering the actual spacecraft's values.

As of right now, within the control script I am just writing Vector3 values for position, velocity, and acceleration and updating them every quarter second with a co-routine. Then I copy over the scripted values to the gameobject's values.

Is this a recommended way of doing this? Is there a better option?