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Will it have realistic physics? And by realistic I don't mean video game realistic, but actual rocket science physics like Orbiter has.

Of course there already a kick ass simulator called Orbiter Space Simulator for free at http://www.orbitersim.com./ If NASA had any smarts they would contact the guy who built that and try to save themselves some $$$.

They should talk to the guy from Orbiter. It is absolutely incredible what this man has achieved. His (free!) space flight simulator not only does a great job with the physics involved (yes, orbital rendezvous' are really tricky), but also looks incredibly good on screen.

Did anyone else notice that the picture in the story appears to be a screenshot from Orbiter Spaceflight Simulator? (it's free by the way, and very cool)

About gameplay physics: yes, I know a game that comes close to "real-universe physics in a space environment," meaning mostly that momentum is conserved. And it ain't Orbiter, although that one is a riot. Guess what: the game is actually fun. Link to game (Bonus: game is based on Babylon 5).

Your intution has mislead you about the size of even what we call "Low Earth Orbit".

I agree. A very instructive example is to use the space simulator Orbiter to take off from the ground and go to e.g. the international space station. It is harder to find than your intuition tells you. And you still have all instruments and the known orbit of the space station to help you.

This is not really a reply to your post, it is rather a supplement.

This makes virtually no difference to the effort required to transfer an object to Mars from Earth. The orbit would be an elliptical transfer orbit

I'm glad that you pointed this out.

Listen up everyone, space travel is not about straight lines. Download orbiter and fly a few trips to mars yourself. It will all become clear.

Ascent isn't what they were worried about. When in space, gravity accelerates things very quickly, and there is no such thing as terminal velocity (well, until you get near light speed, then relativity does Wierd Shit(TM)). They came down faster than they went up.

Ascent has problems of its own, but heat is never really a problem, they tend to worry about the pressure exerted by the air as they pass Mach 1. This is almost always (Possibly just always, but I don't know the specifics for every rocket in existance, so i'm not sure) the most stressful portion of the launch, termed 'MaxQ' (You'll hear it called out if you ever listen in on flight controllers during a launch, NASA TV (DirectTV and Dish Network both have it, as well as streaming from nasa.gov) is a good place to watch one, if you can find one, I'd almost garuntee Deep Impact will be shown.)



Slowing down too fast in reentry has its own nasty problems. When you slow down, gravity pulls you deeper into the atmosphere, and the heating gets worse. Reentry vehicles are designed to fly a certain profile through the atmosphere, deviations can be deadly. Too steep is certainly bad, as is too shallow. You won't skip out into space, you'll go up and come back down, except this time you'll be much steeper, which, as I said before, is bad for your health.

I'm sure Rutan will come up with something, but I wouldn't be all that surpised to see the feathering taken out, and lots of shielding put in. The composite materials may pose a problem even then, though. The heat shielding takes the brunt of the heat, but all of it gets quite hot, possibly more than they can take.

And there is no need to explain orbital mechanics to me, see my .sig :P

(And i'll shamelessly plug Orbiter for other space geeks, its a great sim, and free)

When you fly it?

The most recent version of the apollo spacecraft add-on (NASSP 5) has a partial working AGC built into the navigation system.

• Fund space elevator research, and other low-cost LEO launch technologies
• Propulsion systems
• "Living off the land" technologies for other locations in the Solar System.
• Search for extrasolar earth-like planets
• Unmanned interstellar probe technologies

There's a group in the Orbiter space flight simulator community who wants to write a working version of the DSKY Apollo flight computer for Orbiter. While not source code per se, there are some who want to write a virtual machine in C++ to run the DSKY binary code.

In my experience flying orbiter, the Lagrange points are a real pain in the butt to get to. Not that it wouldn't be worth it, but still something to consider.

Acrux, Alcor, Zeta Ursa Major, Alcyone, Alya (double star), Antares, Izar, Menkent, Polaris, Pollux, Prima and Secunda Giedi, Sadr, Vega. More than 10 :D.

[shameless plug] If you're curious to see how they look like, go here: Some pictures of deep space objects [/shameless plug]

But I think you are right. The level of general education decreases over time. People read less (I know people that don't remember when was the last time they opened a non-techhie book). They use odd source of information and believe all the crap that's fed into their brains through the tv sceen or (some) websites (see the hoax: "Conspiracy Theory: Did we actually land on the moon ?" -- I don't remember the address, but a google search wil reveal it).

And I don't play Quake. I play Orbiter Space Flight Simulator. It's the sort of serious fun that makes you learn some physics and remember some of the math you've forgotten, let alone the joy of flying the Discovery to Jupiter (you know, 2001 - A Space Odyssey) or of a "short" trip to Mars, just to celebrate the occasion (less fuel burn :D).

I want a game with a REAL physics engine (and a space flight sim that really knew physics would be even better).

You could always try Orbiter. http://www.orbitersim.com

Before we continue to crucify programmers, we need to remember how hard it is to really get to Mars, from a purely spacefaring perspective.

From my experiences flying to Mars in Orbiter space flight simulator (FREE!), several problems become apparent:

Mars is a fantastically difficult target to reach for two main reasons. It has very little gravity, and very little atmosphere.

If you shoot for something big, like Jupiter, you find that it is hard not to miss it. It's gravity well is so massive that navigational errors en route are relatively insignificant. Mars doesn't help you very much in this regard. An Earth to Mars flight has to be dead on.

When you get there, you are likely going to want to use the atmosphere to do at least part of the braking maneuver to get into Mars orbit (as most modern probes do). The problem is that Mars has a very thin atmosphere. Think about the sheet of paper analogies with Earth re-entry. Earth's atmosphere goes MUCH farther into space than does Mars'. You have to get dangerously close to the surface (within 50 miles) to effectively aerobrake using Mars' atmosphere. So with Mars, you are more talking about a near-ephemeral gossamer thin 1 cell thick membrane you have to hit the edge of rather than a nice, thick piece of paper.

Nice troll. I do have one bullet left in my mod gun right now, but I have decided to let you off with this warning.

Not everyone who uses p2p is illegally sharing copyrighted works. I have a p2p node that stays slammed offering completely legal and non-porn content. I host linux distros, stuff related to Orbiter space flight simulator (free), and stuff that gets slashdotted. (People still download the Starship Exeter videos).

The node runs slammed 24/7, and I've had to implement traffic control to be able to concurrently use my connection for other things. Why do I go to the trouble? Because p2p is the best hope of ordinary people to share information. The next Thomas Paine probably will not have access to a web server, and if he did post the 21st century version of "Common Sense", it would get DMCA'ed or shut down by the government. The only hope, then, of free speech is going to be p2p, particularly next generation encrypted/anonymous p2p networks.

If I'm smart enough to figure out how to shape traffic so that I can ssh over a 200k upstream connection swamped with p2p traffic, then I'm reasonably certain ISP managers can probably figure it out without finding new and creative ways to tax the first amendment.

Better: Try Orbiter, an awesome space sim that lets you both launch and land the space shuttle, fly super-advanced spacecraft, dock at the ISS, or at a big wheel orbiting the moon, or fly to all the other planets in the solar system. Learn orbital mechanics before you try it though, or you won't be able to go anywhere.

We never did this at my school unfortunately.

But I agree with the other posters who've recommended strategy games. I suppose since this is a school you should try and set a good example - that is, use the facilities for education purposes. Strategy games are educational in a lot of different ways.

I'm partial to anything involving sci-fi so my recommendations are:
Stars! - this is even play-by-email meaning the players wouldn't even need to be in the lab at the same time.
Master of Orion II - it's old so you should be able to find it on the cheap.

Btw, though not multiplayer, Orbiter is a great game that could be very education since after all it's based on realistic physics.

Is there some sort of Force or galactic polls that give people in space a way to dissern North from South, if they even exist in space?

Is that a joke? You tell direction in space the same way you do on the Earth. Pick a reference point and orientation and derive whatever cardinal directions you need from that.

We could be anywhere in the (our) galaxy and if we agreed to face the direction of rotation, aligned with the plane of the galaxy, with the center of the galaxy 90 degrees to our left - north would be up and south would be down. Anywhere in the galaxy. If I told you to meet me 50K lt/yrs from the South Pole you could do it. Well, maybe someone smarter than you could do it.

The same idea works in the solar system. I suggest you download orbiter and play with it. Then maybe you'll understand these things.

You can really get the feel for what's involved in plotting trajectories and getting to the right orbit. It's really good.

And, it's free! (beer)