Orbiter newbie but not new to human spaceflight

[moonbasebetty]

Hello everybody,

My name is Betty . A short biography is available over at

http://bettydonelly.com/moonbase/about/

Please do take a look at this bio - a photo of myself is included on that page.

I'm new to Orbiter but over time I've slowly been accumulating some basic knowledge about orbital mechanics and such, so I believe it won't take too much time to learn to fly in space.

Still, i take these matters seriously and so the learning curve I set out for myself will still be rather steep.

So far, i reached orbit a couple times, managed to circularise orbits and landed the Delta Glider on the Moon's Brighton Beach base from orbit using the instructions from Go Play In Space, a well written resource.

I must say I actually landed next to the pad , so further training is in order.

As you can tell from my short bio, the website is dedicated to the construction and operations of a lunar base and somehow I have this idea that i could use Orbiter in combination with that or other future projects of mine, although how exactly remains to be seen.

My interests in Orbiter involve trajectory planning before actually flying missions so I will be on the lookout for dedicated software or Orbiter add-ons for this purpose plus i would love a flight data recorder for Orbiter 2010 which exports data to some kind of text file or file which supports graphs for post-flight evaluation purposes.

Dreaming further into the future I would love to see a multi-user Orbiter system come online but specifically geared towards creating teams to support missions, complete with audio or video conferencing capabilties.

Thanks for letting me be part of the Orbiter Forum community

Signing off :thumbup:

moonbasebetty

 

[boogabooga]

My interests in Orbiter involve trajectory planning before actually flying missions so I will be on the lookout for dedicated software or Orbiter add-ons for this purpose plus i would love a flight data recorder for Orbiter 2010 which exports data to some kind of text file or file which supports graphs for post-flight evaluation purposes.

:hello:

Well, in Orbiter there is IMFD and TransX:
http://users.kymp.net/p501474a/Orbiter/Orbiter.html

http://www.orbithangar.com/search_quick.php?text=TransX&submit.x=0&submit.y=0

I myself prefer IMFD because it has a very powerful map feature.

If you are a bit more serious, you can try NASA's GMAT:
http://gmat.gsfc.nasa.gov/

Programming skills may help a little for that.

Then, if you are willing to shell out money, there is AGI STK, FreeFlyer, and so on.

 

[martins]

[...] plus i would love a flight data recorder for Orbiter 2010 which exports data to some kind of text file or file which supports graphs for post-flight evaluation purposes.

That functionality exists already in Orbiter, by using the flight recording facility (Ctrl-F5). It generates data for position, attitude and in-flight events for each spacecraft in the scenario. The format of the generated files is described in Doc/Technotes/RecorderRef.pdf.

If you feel adventurous, you could even write a plugin that transmits flight data to other applications in real time. I once wrote a proof-of-concept addon which exported flight data to Matlab during the simulation using the DDE (direct data exchange) protocol, which plotted the trajectory in Matlab while it happened.

DDE is obsolete, but it should be easy to write something similar using more standard network protocols. I think there are already existing addons using that for various mission-related purposes.

 

[Donamy]

Welcome !!

 

[Ripley]

Welcome to OF, moonbasebetty!

 

[jroly]

Hello moonbasebetty,

That is very good you were able to travel from Earth to the Moon and land, it means you already learned a lot.

 

[moonbasebetty]

Thanks for the warm welcome!

Thanks guys, I feel at home already with such a warm welcome.

I will certainly look into IMFD and TransX. I already went through half of the TransX documentation.

But I am no programmer although I will gladly take up some of the learning curve involved to become one since my plan eventually would be to create a simulated space economy model to see if it would work in real life. I am thinking about setting up and maintaining bases on the Moon and elsewhere with populations that have to export products derived from the utilisation of local resources to pay for importing resources for local use.

I am also thinking of using universally compatible standards wherever possible and basically I have a lot of ideas but with no programming skills I would love to see a multi-user platform for Orbiter as I mentioned in my first post where teams or team members could tag up using audio or video conferencing and tasks could be delegated and so on.

Simulating a fully functional space economy will certainly speed up the coming online of a real life space economy if we could take away feasibility fears of aspiring space entrepreneurs and show them models that work.

I took a look also at the Trajectory Optimization Tool but first I'll plunge into TransX and IMFD.

Thanks again for the useful information.

By the way, I did land on the Moon from lunar orbit, didn't yet fly from Earth to the Moon, that too is next on my agenda.

 

[Ren Dhark]

Welcome to Orbiter moonbasebetty

Dreaming further into the future I would love to see a multi-user Orbiter system come online but specifically geared towards creating teams to support missions, complete with audio or video conferencing capabilities.

I'm hosting a public 'multi-user Orbiter system'. You will find all about Face's Orbiter Multiplayer (OMP) here and here.

 

[PhantomCruiser]

Welcome to the forums Betty
It looks as if you are off to a good start.

Regarding moonbase construction. I think the 3D printing robot constructor is a pretty neat idea. It certainly saves weight, and if the materials can be developed in situ a flock of 3D roving printers and bulldozers should be able to build a habitat in reasonably short order. I don't know if I'd trust one to build an airlock door, but that's a problem that can be solved later...