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Orbiter Sim Gets You Spaced
stinky wizzleteats writes "Ever wondered why a space flight simulator never really got off the ground in the PC simulation scene? The answer is that it needed to be free. Dr. Martin Schweiger started the ball rolling a few years ago with Orbiter, a freeware Win32 DirectX based space flight simulator, in which you can fly orbital rendezvous, lunar landing, and even interplanetary missions. The current version has excellent graphics, including atmospheric descent and re-entry effects. There's also a burgeoning community of add-on developers, creating everything from sound add-ons and interplanetary navigation aids to complete working Apollo/Saturn 5 spacecraft. Virtual space agencies have even sprung up, using Roger Wilco and remote telemetry software (virtual mission control) to do Orbiter missions online. You can find the basic Orbiter files at Avsim or Sourceforge."
Really? Why? Have you ever watched NASA-TV? It's incredibly boring and tedious. Why would you want that? Why would you want to be one of the 20 that sit in mission control and monitor telemetry. There's no science. Nothing new. Nothing exciting.
Orbiter does have time acceleration, and most sim-missions have only a handful of people involved. The real fun comes in when something goes wrong. In fact, most of the really fun missions start with that premise - e.g. - we have to rendezvous and dock with a disabled Soyuz module in 48 hours or the crew is dead. Getting the launch window right, and doing all of the necessary orbital maneuvering in time is actually rather challenging, to say nothing of the task of launching efficiently and getting into the right parking orbit. It takes an Orbiter noob some time before they get a fictional ship into orbit, and quite a bit longer before they get their first historical ship into space without crashing back into the sea/siberia.
One of the most fun missions I had was a simulation of the Voyager flight (I took Voyager 2's path), using some of the more advanced navigation tools to set up the gravity assists.