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Yes, I'd love to see more use of open source software in government. Find me an free software replacement for Systems Toolkit, and we'll talk.

"Court Martial" (and other episodes). They can't maintain orbit without engines.

Guess what, no object in orbit can maintain it's orbit without propulsion. Space isn't a perfect vacuum.

References
D. A. Vallado, et. al.
Australian Space Weather Agency
M. M. Moe et. al.

Now a ship the mass of the Enterprise and low cross-sectional area, won't have a decay time on the order of hours like they show in the show but it's orbit is always decaying.

Now the JJ Abrams Star Trek is riddled with errors.
In the first one there is no way a faster than ship should have problems escaping the gravitational pull of a blackhole if it has not crossed the event horizon yet.
In the second, when the enterprise is falling to earth, all of the crew should have been weightless.

We put together a blog post with a video and interactive WebGL demos that will let you see the path of the asteroid in relation to the satellites in orbit: http://blogs.agi.com/agi/2013/02/04/2012-da14-asteroid-animation/

In addition to Bing Maps, NORAD is also using a new open source, WebGL-based, 3D globe called Cesium: http://cesium.agi.com/2012/11/30/NORAD-Tracks-Santa-Tech-Preview/

This is one of the most significant uses of WebGL to date and will hopefully do a lot to increase awareness of the technology.

Disclaimer: I work on Cesium.

No, that's a disclosure. A disclaimer is 'CAUTION. Cesium is a known mutagen.'

In addition to Bing Maps, NORAD is also using a new open source, WebGL-based, 3D globe called Cesium: http://cesium.agi.com/2012/11/30/NORAD-Tracks-Santa-Tech-Preview/

This is one of the most significant uses of WebGL to date and will hopefully do a lot to increase awareness of the technology.

Disclaimer: I work on Cesium.

well I certainly am not a trajectory analyst or anything, but the guy next to me uses STK to do his analysis (the astrogator plugin). You could be right that they are using Titan to do a swingby, but I've seen some pretty crazy trajectories as a result of unstable orbits around Lagrange points. That is the basis of the space highway.

Are you talking about applications that run on spacecraft, or astrodynamics programs like STK?

I would love to see an open-source STK alternative.

There is an alternative to GE and WWJava, and it is publicly available now. Its called AGI's 4DX application that is available on Windows/Linux/Solaris and in .NET/Java/C++ and more. http://www.agi.com/ and look for the 4DX product. O yeah, I wrote the Java 4DX version on Linux and Unix and ported it too Windows too. In other words, write your own Java "Earth" application and run it on any platform.

AGI (makers of STK) was started by two former General Electric (space division) employees and their software has become industry standard. It is used by most space agencies including ESA & NASA. Note that the price point is high and roughly equal to the engineering time they envison their software replaces. A relatively base model will set you back about $30K USD if you want something with opengl graphics visualization. If you want to plan a mission to Mars you'll need astrogator and probably the visualization so your looking at $50K USD. There are academic discounts of about 20%. For perspective, I'm using STK right now for a Mars mission trade study.

I use the software daily and while I cough at the price and maintenance, it does what it is supposed to do most of the time. Sadly, it does crash a fair bit under windows and they stopped developing for unix a few versions back...