Orbiter - Simply Amazing

[bagtaggar]

I'm not sure how many of you here have messed around with this (and to some this might be old news), but I think it's an excellent educational tool for physics classrooms. I managed to convince my old high school teacher to add it to the curriculum and give "assignments".

What the heck am I talking about? An amazing free space simulator designed by a NASA engineer. It's called "Orbiter", and you can download the base files at this website:

http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/orbit.html

I had a friend who wrote a physics paper based entirely on a mission to Pluto he successfully pulled off in orbiter.

There are also thousands of add ons for the software available all over the net, like spacecraft, locations/bases, MFDs, graphics upgrades, etc. Good stuff! Here are some screenshots:

http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/images/gallery60.jpg

http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/images/gallery66.jpg

http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/images/gallery65.jpg

http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/images/gallery59.jpg

[StaticEngine]

It's a very cool app, although I for one found it difficult to do anything other than get to Orbit and land (even then, not so successfully), without spending an entire day doing prepatory calculations.

But then, I'm no rocket scientist.

[bagtaggar]

If you go through some of the tutorial mission checklists, you can get a good feel for what to do (how long to perform the retrograde burn at apiapsis, etc).

I know there is a downloadable MFD out there that allows you to really quickly perform transfer orbit calculations for interplanetary trajectories. I never use it, I play the game visually. I've managed to get in the general vicinity of the moon (after running out of oxygen and fuel) using the Shuttle A.

My math isn't up to par for any of the really tricky stuff.

Still soooooo cool.