1.1 About Orbiter
Orbiter is a space flight simulator based on Newtonian mechanics. Its playground is our solar
system with many of its major bodies - the sun, planets and moons. You take control of a
spacecraft - either historic, hypothetical, or purely science fiction. Orbiter is unlike most commercial
computer games with a space theme - there are no predefined missions to complete,
no aliens to destroy and no goods to trade. Instead, you will get an idea about what is involved
in real space flight - how to plan an ascent into orbit, how to rendezvous with a space
station, or how to fly to another planet. It is more difficult, but also more of a challenge. Some
people get hooked, others get bored. Finding out for yourself is easy - simply give it a try. Orbiter
is free, so you don't need to invest more than a bit of your spare time.
Orbiter is a community project. The Orbiter core is just the skeleton that defines the rules of
the simulated world (the physical model). A basic solar system and some spacecraft (real and
fictional) are included, but you can get a lot more with addon modules developed by other
enthusiasts in the Orbiter community. There are addons for nearly every spacecraft that ever
flew (and quite a few that never got beyond the drawing board), for many more celestial
bodies in the solar system (or entirely new fictional systems), for enhanced instruments, and
much more. The Orbiter web site contains links to many Orbiter addon repositories.
1.2 About this manual
This document is the main help file that comes with the basic distribution of Orbiter. It is a
User's Guide to the Orbiter software - which is to say that it gives an introduction into how
most things work, but doesn't tell you much why they behave as they do. By following the instructions,
you will find out how to operate the engines of your spacecraft, how to use the instruments,
and how to perform the most common missions.
But a big part of the appeal of Orbiter is finding out about the why - why do spacecraft in orbit
behave as they do, what is involved in a gravity-assist flyby, why do rockets have multiple
stages, why can it be tricky to line up for docking with a space station, what do the numbers in
the instrument displays actually mean ... ?
This is where physics comes into the picture. If you want to become an orbiter pro, you will at
some stage need to understand a few of the fundamental physical concepts that form the basis
of astrodynamics and space flight. Luckily most of it is not very difficult - if you learn a bit
about forces and gravity ("Newtonian mechanics") and how they relate to the motion of planets
and spacecraft in orbit ("Kepler's laws"), you will have covered a good deal of it. Of
course, there are always opportunities to dig deeper into the details, so your next steps might
be finding out about the effects of orbit perturbations, attitude control, trajectory optimisation,
mission planning, instrument design - to name just a few.
Eventually you might start to develop your own addon modules to enhance Orbiter's functionality,
write tutorials and help files for newcomers - or even take active part in the Orbiter core
development by identifying and discussing flaws or omissions in the Orbiter physics model
(and there are still many!)
1.3 Getting more help
The help files that come with the main Orbiter package are located in the Doc subfolder below
your main Orbiter directory. Many addons will place their own help files in the same directory
after installation. The Doc\Technotes folder contains a few documents with technical details
for interested readers. They are not required for using Orbiter.
Many people have written documentation and tutorials covering particular aspects of Orbiter.
Some of them can be found via links from the Orbiter web site at orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/ .
Other useful online resources are the Orbiter forum, orbit.m6.net/Forum/default.aspx, the Orbiter
wikipedia entry, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbiter_(sim) and the Orbiter community wiki site,
www.orbiterwiki.org/wiki/Main_Page.
A very good introduction to using and understanding Orbiter for beginners is Bruce Irving's
online book Go Play In Space, which can be found via a link from the Manual page on the Orbiter
web site.
The scientific and technical background of space flight is covered in many textbooks and
online sites. A good introduction is JPL's Basics of Space Flight, at www.jpl.nasa.gov/basics/ .
Among the many online resources for the general mathematics and physics relevant for
space flight, you might find the Scienceworld site useful, at scienceworld.wolfram.com .
編集者：
Design of Spacefrontier(2009-11-29 02:16:22)