Orbiter: The shape of things to come (eventually)

The creator of Orbiter Space Flight Simulation ,Dr. Martin Schweiger, posted this YouTube video yesterday on the forum.

I tend to stay away from beta versions of s/w...too much like work.  I tend to think a lot of ATM s/w is released so we field techs can finish finding all of the bugs  The video shows the current progress for the next major release/version of the simulator.

My jaw didn't really drop open until 31 seconds into it.  I can't wait to start using it...especially for further YouTube videos of my own.

Simply phenomenal !

45th Anniversary of Earthrise

OK...so I've done this bit with Orbiter about 3.5 years ago while developing the Apollo 8 Scenario Pack for AMSO.

I've also blogged on the iconic photo known as, "Earthrise", before too.  See here.

But the people at Goddard Space Center have come out with a new video based on new findings.

Besides, this Tuesday (Christmas Eve) is the 45th anniversary...



Here is the direct link to the YouTube Video: http://youtu.be/dE-vOscpiNc

More multimedia can be found on this page as well: http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/a004100/a004129/

Comet C/2013 A1 (Siding Spring) and Mars

(Last updated 05/11/2013.  Click on image to enlarge.)

The screenshot above was generated using the freeware space simulation Orbiter.  It depicts Comet C/2013 A1, aka Siding Spring, during its closest approach to Mars on October 19, 2014.

Also used to generate the above screenshot was the Horizons Web Interface, maintained by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology.  I generated the ephemeris with this web interface, and then plugged the numbers into an Orbiter scenario.

There's only an observational arc of 211 days - so there WILL be a really decent fly by - with enough refinement to the projected orbit (for now) to say it WILL NOT hit Mars.

Per SpaceObs.org:

Since C/2013 A1 is a hyperbolic comet and moves in a retrograde orbit, its velocity with respect to the planet will be very high, approximately 56 km/s. With the current estimate of the absolute magnitude of the nucleus M2 = 10.3, which might indicate the diameter from 10 to 50 km, the energy of impact might reach the equivalent of staggering 2×10¹º megatonnes! This kind of event can leave a crater 500 km across and 2 km deep. Such an event would overshadow even the famous bombardment of Jupiter by the disintegrated comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 in July 1994, which by some estimates was originally 15 km in diameter.

Stay tuned, Dear Reader (if any).  As new observations over time refine the orbit of this comet, I plan to update the screenshot and/or post a short video derived from an Orbiter scenario.

Edit: 

A short video:

Simulation is...

Credit to Dr. Richard Gran, director (ret.), Advanced Concepts, Grumman, and member of the Apollo Lunar Module Digital Autopilot design team.

Credit also to MathWorks.


 Simulation is...

The creation of a model that can be manipulated logically to decide how the physical world works.

Simulations answer questions.

Excellent video on the subject.

Lunar Base Niven v.3.0 FIXED!

I released ver. 3.0 knowing it had a flashing issue with the animated vessels.  I searched both the old M6 forum and the current Orbiter-Forum for solutions and came up with nothing.  I figured that not only would I get smart a$$ comments (here and here) but I would also get helpful suggestions (here and here).

From the 1st suggestion posted by Loru (change COG to >0), I was able to quickly find that it also needed the landing points changed in the original Spacecraft3 config file...as suggested by woo482.  As I was running out of time yesterday morning and had to leave for work, I did manage to get the issue resolved but yet not upload said changes until this morning.  A quick recompile via the DLL converter and changing the documentation and the zip file...and an update on the "Hangar".

Being indebted to both Loru and woo482, my humble and small thanks was to include them in the credits.

Reinforcing my comments about disco, I offer the following chorus from April Wine's, Wanna Rock, originally released on the album, Nature of the Beast:

Don't waste my money driving 'round in a car
Save my money for electric guitars
Disco music's just a social disease
If it don't rock me, then it ain't gonna please me

I flatly refuse to boogie till I puke!  I'll puke FIRST!

Here's the song on YouTube:



Better a smart a$$ than a dumb a$$!

Lunar Base Niven v.3.0 RELEASED!

Yes, it is RELEASED!

From today, it will only be available from Orbit Hangar.

Enjoy, Dear Reader (if any)!

Lunar Base Niven for Orbiter 2012 is finished!

It is completed, and available only on my website until Monday, February 6.  On Monday, I will release it on Orbiter Hangar Mod.

Why until Monday?  Because I turn 50 then.  Yes, I'll be officially an old fart.

Refer to the blog title image for a peek.

Lunar Base Niven 2012 updates

I finally had enough time and ambition to start adding the finishing touches to my Orbiter add-on surface base, Lunar Base Niven.  As of now, I've been working about 3 weeks on it, and estimate another 3-4 weeks before it is done.

I've animated portions of the domes and the doors on the surface locks.  I've added UCGO surface vehicles programmed to visit the outer laying portions of the base (the nuclear power plant, the VLA antennas, and the solar power panel farms).  I've also added UMmu breathable areas to the domes and locks.

Why the name Niven?  I choose it as a tribute to one of my top five science fiction authors, Larry Niven.  I would have choosen Heinlein...but it was already taken.

Here's 2 screen shots, both from the same position.  Remember, dear Reader (if any), click on any of the images to enlarge/download.

During lunar day:

During lunar night:

 As stated in the original documentation:

 Most of the structures are like icebergs with most of the volume below the surface in order to provide shielding against the occasional solar flare and coronal mass ejection.  Each dome is actually a sphere with a diameter of 110 meters. Volume of each is 641,431 m³, which gives the entire habitat complex a total volume of 5.8 million m³. This is about 5 times the size of the Pentagon, or, about 2 times the size of the World Trade Center.

Here's a graphic of the entire base, as published in the original release:

UARS and Chicken Little

Yes...the sky is falling! 

Actually, just UARS (Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite).  But NASA is predicting only 1 in 3200 chance that a part of it will hit a person.  With an orbital inclination of 57 degrees, UARS will reenter and parts of it will strike somewhere between 57 deg north latitude and 57 deg south latitude.  Which covers most of the inhabited surface of Earth...but there's a lot of ocean in that zone as well.

Launched on 09/12/1991, it was designed to study Earth's atmosphere, particularly the ozone layer.  The original mission life was 3 years, and finally decommissioned in 2005 with a de-orbit burn (using up all of its fuel) in December '05.  Since then, it has been slowly spiraling down and latest estimates put reentry happening on September 23, 2011...plus/minus a day.  Dear reader, (if any), may back check facts here and here.

 


Source: SPACE.com: All about our solar system, outer space and exploration

NASA's ORSAT Orbital debris projection:   (pay attention to the parts with a Demise Altitude of 0 km).



Wait for it....now, the Orbiter angle.

A fellow Orbinaut was smart enough to post simulation scenarios for UARS in this thread at O-F.  Note that the scenario was created with and intended for ver 2010P1 of Orbiter.  I downloaded and ran this just for grins and giggles.  My simulation run predicts that Australia (somewhere SW of Brisbane) will get hammered with the debris...again!  I say again, because another piece of US space hardware, Skylab, managed to shower the Aussies with pieces of itself back in July of 1979.  Apparently, the Shire of Esperance fined the United States $400 for littering, a fine which remained unpaid for 30 years.

Here is a screen shot of my sim run (click on image to enlarge):

And a screen shot from Google Earth (click on image to enlarge):

Or visit my web site to download the *.kmz file (UARS Demise) and open that file with Google Earth.

How's this for synchronicity?

The first time I started the scenario with Orbiter, my mp3 play list within Orbiter started playing "Re-Entry" from In the Shadow of the Moon soundtrack.

Rather fitting, and spooky at the same time.

Orbiter 2010 unofficial trailer #2

Again, credit to luki1997a from Poland.

 

Orbiter 2010 Unofficial trailer

I just saw this on the forum and had to post it here.

Credit to luki1997a from Poland:





FOR FREE!  That's the best part.

FOR EVERYONE?  I politely disagree:

Flight Simulator 2004

Frontier 589 over Denver

 I get bored with Orbiter from time to time...or frustrated with the s/w crashes with certain scenarios.  So I revert to Microsoft's Flight Simulator 2004 (A Century of Flight).  I received  FS2004 for Christmas 2003 because I wanted to learn how to fly airplanes.  At first I was overwhelmed by the complexity, and put it aside for a awhile and disappeared into the world of online FPS games.  Then I found Orbiter and stopped playing online FPS games.

 My last foray into the FS2004 world (December 2009) I simulated a round trip flight between Salt Lake City and Seattle.  This because I had planned a vacation there with my wife to celebrate our 25th anniversary.  I downloaded the aircraft we would be flying in, and researched on the Web the actual flight paths used by commercial flights between the two cities.  I had learned so much from Orbiter that it was a lot easier to handle the complexity of FS2004.  Having simulated the flight before hand, it was a lot easier to recognize the terrain during the actual flight.  I could make better guesses about arrival ETAs too.

 I also came to the odd realization that if needed, I could "actually" step in for the real pilots had they become incapacitated.  Having said that, I realize I've seen too many movies from "Hollyweird".

 Now I'm scheduled for a business trip to Canton Ohio.  I leave Monday morning and return Friday night, flying on Frontier Airlines with a layover in Denver both directions.  I've already simulated the entire trip.

  Now having done this with an extreme gaming PC that I built myself and using Windows 7, I realize that it is time to finally upgrade to Microsoft Flight Simulator X.  The Airbus A319 I downloaded to use has beautiful external textures, and I downloaded awesome looking livery for Frontier.  I using the default Boeing 737 panels because there aren't any decent freeware Airbus ones to be had for FS2004.  Plus, the program was based on WinXP and is a little buggy on Windows 7.

 This time, I had learned more about IFR (Instrument Flight Rules) and ILS (Instrument Landing System) to the point where I could set up the autopilot to make the final approach and start the descent to the runway.  That sounds like cheating, but is pretty close to the real world.  The last 200 feet of altitude to the runway I fly manually...I've always enjoyed the landing flare.

 Now you are probably wondering, dear reader (if any), why I'm so much of a geek to do this.  Same reason one climbs mountains, I suppose.

Fox News Houston reports on Orbiter

Not too bad...they mostly got it right.  But "a little complex" is an oversimplification.

http://www.myfoxhouston.com/dpp/morning_news/my_tech_guy/110516-download-free-space-shuttle-simulator

Since this was a Fox News outlet, I'm totally surprised that it even got a mention on Orbiter-Forum.  Most of the community is rabid anti-Fox...sometimes to the point of derangement.

2417 days 18 hrs 29 min 20 sec

Mercury has its first artificial satellite now...another American Space First.

On a more personal note, I finally spotted Mercury with the naked eye tonight for the first time too.  Only took me a little over 49 years.

MESSENGER Mission News March 17, 2011 http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/

MESSENGER Begins Historic Orbit around Mercury

At 9:10 p.m. EDT, engineers in the MESSENGER Mission Operations Center at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md., received the anticipated radiometric signals confirming nominal burn shutdown and successful insertion of the MESSENGER probe into orbit around the planet Mercury. The spacecraft rotated back to the Earth by 9:45 p.m. EDT, and started transmitting data. Upon review of these data, the engineering and operations teams confirmed that the burn executed nominally with all subsystems reporting a clean burn and no logged errors. MESSENGER’s main thruster fired for approximately 15 minutes at 8:45 p.m., slowing the spacecraft by 1,929 miles per hour (862 meters per second) and easing it into the planned eccentric orbit about Mercury. The rendezvous took place about 96 million miles (155 million kilometers) from Earth. “Achieving Mercury orbit was by far the biggest milestone since MESSENGER was launched more than six and a half years ago,” says MESSENGER Project Manager Peter Bedini, of APL. “This accomplishment is the fruit of a tremendous amount of labor on the part of the navigation, guidance-and-control, and mission operations teams, who shepherded the spacecraft through its 4.9-billion-mile [7.9-billion-kilometer] journey.” For the next several weeks, APL engineers will be focused on ensuring that MESSENGER’s systems are all working well in Mercury’s harsh thermal environment. Starting on March 23, the instruments will be turned on and checked out, and on April 4 the primary science phase of the mission will begin. “Despite its proximity to Earth, the planet Mercury has for decades been comparatively unexplored,” adds MESSENGER Principal Investigator Sean Solomon, of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. “For the first time in history, a scientific observatory is in orbit about our solar system’s innermost planet. Mercury’s secrets, and the implications they hold for the formation and evolution of Earth-like planets, are about to be revealed.”

MESSENGER MOI

MOI is shorthand for Mercury Orbit Insertion.  Currently scheduled for March 18, 2011 at 0045 UTC (that's March 17, 2011 at 1845 MDT).

Per the spacecraft's website, a webcast starts at 1755 MDT...my guess is that this will be the only live coverage of the event.  Also available on the website, under "Animation", are two Quick Time movies...the quality is LOTS better than the animations of anything Apollo...waaaay back in the day.

Or, dear reader (if any), if you are hopelessly addicted to Orbiter...then download the scenario pack I just uploaded to Orbit-Hangar.  This is a "little" more interactive.  Plus you get the opportunity to totally FUBAR a multi-million dollar spacecraft (simulated...of course).

A screen shot from the scenario:

How Big Really?

Hat tip to Bob at  http://www.bobsbs.com/ for the link.

This is from a BBC website showing scale of objects against a Google Map of whatever address in the world one cares to supply.

The following images were overlaid, "somewhere in Utah".  After playing with this, I walked outside to get a "down to earth" idea of the scale of the following objects.

International Space Station:

Apollo 11 Landing Site (showing the ground covered by the moonwalk):

 

 Have fun, dear reader (if any).  Your results may (will) vary.

MOI Animations

More MESSENGER news.

For the unknowing, MOI = Mercury Orbit Insertion.  Scheduled for March 18, 2011 at 0045 UTC.


These animations were posted by NASA / Johns Hopkins Advanced Physics Laboratory on the mission website.

The first one is simple, and shows the spacecraft from a 3rd person perspective...with an inset showing the trajectory.

The second one is also 3rd person, and shows detailed flight numbers.

Hope you, dear reader (if any) have a better experience waiting for the Quick Time movies to download and play.  I found it a bit choppy.

The Solar System to Scale

Be prepared to do a "little" scrolling....

From Space.com:


Source SPACE.com: All about our solar system, outer space and exploration

MESSENGER - One More Month!

One Month Until Mercury Orbit Insertion!

After more than a dozen laps through the inner solar system, NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft will move into orbit around Mercury on March 17, 2011. The durable spacecraft — carrying seven science instruments and fortified against the blistering environs near the Sun — will be the first to orbit the innermost planet.

At 8:45 p.m. EDT, MESSENGER — having pointed its largest thruster very close to the direction of travel — will fire that thruster for nearly 14 minutes, with other thrusters firing for an additional minute, slowing the spacecraft by 862 meters per second (1,929 miles per hour) and consuming 31% of the propellant that the spacecraft carried at launch. Less than 9.5% of the usable propellant at the start of the mission will remain after completing the orbit insertion maneuver, but the spacecraft will still have plenty of propellant for future orbit correction maneuvers.

The orbit insertion will place the spacecraft into an initial orbit about Mercury that has a 200 kilometer (124 mile) minimum altitude and a period of 12 hours. At the time of orbit insertion, MESSENGER will be 46.14 million kilometers (28.67 million miles) from the Sun and 155.06 million kilometers (96.35 million miles) from Earth.

“The journey since launch, more than six and a half years ago, has been a long one,” says MESSENGER Principal Investigator Sean Solomon, of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. “But we have rounded the last turn, and the finish line for the mission’s cruise phase is in sight. The team is ready for orbital operations to begin.”

Engineers recently tested the arrayed-antenna configuration that will be used during the Mercury orbit insertion. During the maneuver, MESSENGER’s orientation will be optimized to support the burn, not to support communications with the team on the ground. As a result, the signal home will be weaker than usual. To boost the signal, communications engineers will use four antennas at the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex — one 70-meter dish and three 34-meter dishes.

“This arrangement is not typical for a maneuver, so we wanted to do a few dry runs before orbit insertion,” says MESSENGER Communications Engineer Dipak Srinivasan, of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md. “We are still analyzing the data, but everything went as expected.”

Since the last deep-space maneuver (DSM) almost a year and a half ago, the primary focus of the team has been on preparing for the orbit insertion maneuver and for orbital operations.  Detailed plans have been developed and vetted through an extensive series of meetings ranging from internal peer reviews of each subsystem to formal reviews with external experts assessing overall readiness. Three of the major reviews were dedicated specifically to the activities associated with the MOI maneuver itself.  

In addition to taking advantage of planned DSMs to practice aspects of the orbit insertion maneuver, the team has conducted a number of flight tests to characterize key subsystem behavior and to confirm the proper operation of various spacecraft components.  Three full-team rehearsals using the hardware simulator have been conducted to practice all activities to be followed during the upcoming maneuver. The first of these exercises mimicked a nominal orbit insertion, and the following two presented anomalies for the team to recognize, analyze, and address.

“Although we feel that the preparations to date – and those scheduled for the next month – have been well thought-out, that the decisions made to define the specific activities were sound, and that the level of review and rehearsal has been more than adequate, we recognize the extraordinary complexity and unique nature of this endeavor,” says APL’s Peter Bedini, MESSENGER’s project manager. “But at this point, four weeks out, we are well positioned for success.  The spacecraft is healthy, continues to operate nominally, and is on course to be at the right place at the right time at 8:45 P.M. ET on the evening of March 17.”

For an overview of Mercury Orbit Insertion and planned orbital observations, go online to http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/mer_orbit.html.

Clyde Space - Good Name!

While browsing Google Reader today, I saw this post on Orbiter-Forum.

Here's the recent news on the company, per the BBC.  They are based out of Glasgow, Scotland.

They claim that they are the first space company with an online store.


Here's their logo:

Why they chose the name, in their words:

Clyde Space is named after the River Clyde, the main river running through Glasgow. At one point in the past, 25% of all of the World's ships were made on the River Clyde; in the future, perhaps the Clyde will be equally successful building spaceships ...

The only downside to this news is that the name is already TAKEN!