the simplest and most reliable approach
My latest project, currently in development. A game of starship design and the many ways to accidentally kill your crew.
See the Space Death Devblog for all the latest updates.
Some sneak preview screenshots to whet your appetite…
A rather stylish online Solar System Orrery.
It is written in Flash I’m afraid, so if you are on iOS you’ll just have to look at the screenshot and imagine the moving planets. Perhaps I will write an HTML5 version using D3.js when I get a chance…
If your tastes are more retro, check out orrery in the marvellous ZX Spectrum Astronomy, including the whole 24-line BASIC program!
It is a great reminder of what you can do with a low-resolution display and a few tens of lines of code. Here is another example showing different trajectories.
A nice Russian Vostok 1 documentary.
Fancy being a Cosmonaut? Check out the centrifuge and ejection testing from 1:00.
When did computer operators stop wearing labcoats?
Rotate spacecraft to align arrows with direction of Earth before reentry!
Does this kind of thing get you excited?
Launch Phase Upon completion of this chapter you will be able to describe the role launch sites play in total launch energy, state the characteristics of various launch vehicles, and list factors contributing to determination of launch windows. You will be able to describe how the launch day of the year and hour of the day affect interplanetary launch energy and list the major factors involved in preparations for launch.
Or how about this…?
Interplanetary Trajectories Upon completion of this chapter you will be able to describe the use of Hohmann transfer orbits in general terms and how spacecraft use them for interplanetary travel. You will be able to describe the general concept of exchanging angular momentum between planets and spacecraft to achieve gravity assist trajectories.
If so, you need to read the fabulous Basics of Spaceflight by Dave Doody, a JPL engineer. You can browse it online, but a free PDF version is also available which has much nicer formatting.
It is very clearly written and has a broad scope, covering all aspects of space travel and exploration.
Highly recommended.
Impressive videos of SpaceX’s Grasshopper vertical takeoff/landing rocket.
Nice touches having a cowboy going along for the ride and a Johnny Cash soundtrack.
I do hope they are working on a retractable swimming pool.
They don’t make documentaries like these any more.
Men in silver spacesuits. Scientists in white labcoats. Giant rockets. Pointing engineers.
IMPORTANT FACTS IN BOLD CAPITALS.
Bizarre soundtracks.
You can see where Gerry Anderson got his inspiration from for Thunderbirds. Not least the fact that he named the Thunderbirds pilots after five of the Mercury 7 astronauts (bad luck Deke and Wally!).
Fabulous original footage at the start of this film.
The Vostok is such a proper looking rocket.
See here for more details about the film.
Lovely model/render of Vostok instrument panel from gagarin3d.com
It is always interesting to see how independent teams come up with different solutions to the same problem. Particularly when they make different design decisions, and those alternative decisions can both be strongly justified.
The early years of the space race demonstrate a fine example in the design of the reentry vehicles.
Soviet Vostok designers settled on a perfect sphere with inherent dynamic stability. No attitude control. It needed an all-round heatshield to protect it on reentry. A low centre of gravity and the laws of physics ensured that the sphere was in the correct orientation when the door was blown off and the cosmonaut ejected at 7,000m.
The American Mercury designers went for a blunt body design, which allowed them to place the bulk of the heatshield at one end of the craft, saving weight over the all-round heatshield approach of the Vostok. This required attitude control to ensure that the heatshield was facing the right way when plummeting through the atmosphere.
For both designs, simplicity was a key factor.
NASA has a great article with more detail…
The Partnership: A History of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. Reentry Vehicles: Spheres vs. Blunt Bodies
bluntbody 