Deepstar makes real time trip to Mars.

[MattDecker]

This just in, Deepstar has made it to Mars in real time. The ship left Earth at 2:23 AM 7/7/2009 in real time or Fri Jun 19, 11:43 2020 in sim time. And made it to Mars today at 6:08 PM 2/4/2010 or Dec 31 3:01 2020.

It was a long journey and I spent the 7 months building a lunar space station as stuff like that.

 

[loyalj]

Ohhh, very nice. Congrats. Realtime Orbiter is a whole other thing.

7 months?! whoa

 

[Shadow Addict]

Holy crap, you had it running continuously for seven months? I'd be surprised if any Orbinaut had ever done that.

 

[Columbia42]

How did your computer hold up while running Orbiter for 7 months?

 

[fredericva]

Did you use a tool like timejumpMFD, or did you actually leave an orbiter session running for 7+ months?

You should have filmed the whole journey :lol:

 

[sunshine135]

That is surprising. You must have shut down every known service and memory hogging process possible. Still, I find it hard to believe that a Windows session would not devolve into a soup sandwich from a memory leak somewhere. I have no other reason to doubt your accomplishment though, so I will give you the benefit of the doubt. Congratulations!

Now, let me know in the nursing home when you get to Neptune :rofl:


Cheers,

 

[lowerlowerhk]

It makes me think of some lines in Modern Warfare 2:

Makarov: I'll see you in Neptune.
Price: Looking forward to it. Give my regards to Zakhaev if you get in there first.

 

[unknown_orbiter]

That journey must have been full of win and cake... congrats! My only extensive real-time journey was to the Moon

 

[Ark]

They should make the Mars 500 people do that.

"CTD! Back to the beginning everyone!"

 

[JamesG]

Congrads.

"Ding Ding. Deepstar arriving Mars. Ding Ding."

 

[Brycesv1]

and i thought that I had way too much free time o.0

 

[MattDecker]

Well it did crash a lot. I had to restart if from autosave or a quicksave many many times. But I didn't use any time acceleration. And I don't see a return trip happening, 2 1/2 years is a long time to wait.

Hail the probe...

 

[combrown]

Real Time

I am surprised everyone is amazed about realtime.

I would much rather do that.
I can't stand acceleration it completely takes the fun out of these simulators.
And the accuracy I think.

I have done three trips to mars now real time and back.
And now you don't even have to leave it running you can just start it up later and see where ya spacecraft is.

I like sending probes, it's good fun.
I watch them by updating Celestia to see how they are doing.
Course correction on the way if they deviate or my injection was out.

One time I left a Win2000 Bare bones system all fruited up.
Even had solar power with battery backup which kicked over in power failure to keep it running for the mars transit.

No Crashes for the 6 1/2 month trip.
It works if you want it to.
Just plan ahead.

Voyager's, Pioneer, New Horizon's - They are all there.
I like knowing where they are it's humbling.

Cheers guys.

 

[unknown_orbiter]

Show off

 

[Messierhunter]

I've been doing a semi-realtime round trip with landing on mars. I just turn it on about once a week and time accelerate through the past week performing any needed course corrections or adjustments. It doesn't require the highest time acceleration setting, so you do get some small amount of accuracy back, but to me the most important aspect is the appreciation it gives you for how long a trip like that takes. It's one thing to know it as a fact in your head, it's another to experience it and see the trip slowly progressing week by week. I'm on the return leg now with less than 4% main fuel remaining and right on course for aerobraking at earth; I knew from the start that I'd be cutting it close on fuel so it taught me to be very careful with my maneuvers since I had spent so long just getting to mars. Still, I almost panicked when I saw how close I came to running out of fuel on the trans-earth injection burn. There's nothing quite like the feeling of heading home on fumes after a very long journey.

 

[Shadow Addict]

I'd like to be able to do stuff realtime, but honestly I don't have the time/patience for it. My personal fun in Orbiter comes from actually doing things, not waiting for weeks at a time to do things, so I'm not gonna try anything more than maybe a realtime lunar transfer in the future. However, I have the utmost respect for anybody who does spend months going to Mars or something like that; I wouldn't be able to do it.

 

[clickypens]

With the module [ame="http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=4331"]Real Time Update[/ame] you can shut your computer off and resume from where you left off. As far as not being able to do anything in the meantime, I don't see why you can't, for example, send a probe to Mars while you work on a space station in LEO.

I actually want to try this out, now. Seems really exciting, juggling all these things at the same time!

 

[Ark]

Staring at empty space for an interplanetary voyage takes long enough WITH time acceleration. There's really nothing fun about waiting around watching numbers scroll on a screen.

 

[Shadow Addict]

Staring at empty space for an interplanetary voyage takes long enough WITH time acceleration. There's really nothing fun about waiting around watching numbers scroll on a screen.

I totally agree. Even just a Jupiter-Saturn sling takes a loooooooooong time on 100000x accel.

 

[JamesG]

Staring at empty space for an interplanetary voyage takes long enough WITH time acceleration. There's really nothing fun about waiting around watching numbers scroll on a screen.

But it does provide better perspective of the vast scales and time required for interplanetary travel.

I think some of the "Mars Direct" and "Constellation" guys might change their minds if they had to sit thru a real-time Orbiter trip to Mars confined to a small RV/Caravan.