Planetary Transfer Calculator

by T-A • 7 years ago

99 26 7 years ago

wurst_case• 7 years ago

I'm writing a Sci fi novel and I can use this to help me build narratives! So cool!

malms• 7 years ago

Does that use the real trajectories of the planets (such as give by the JPL ephemerides) or or eliptical approximations ?

waynenilsen• 7 years ago

A mouse over description for TMI MTO MCO and MOI would be great, those acronyms are meaningless to me. Edit - found as labels under ΔV Breakdown heading

jessriedel• 7 years ago

Could also use an explanation of what it means to "calculate a transfer". Like, the ΔV? The travel time? All possible parameters? Frustrating that if you click on "What It Does", it doesn't clarify.

foxyv• 7 years ago

Most orbital calculations are "optimizations." You are looking for either the best time or most efficient orbit that your craft can achieve. Most of the time you are guessing at initial conditions that will produce a desired orbit and then moving down a gradient to a local optima.

Other times you are looking to predict the velocity and position of an orbital body at a certain time. Since there are many large planets in the solar system this requires non-linear differential equations that can only be solved (at this time) using an approximate calculation using methods such as the Euler or Runge-Kutta method in a computer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runge%E2%80%93Kutta_methods

app4soft• 7 years ago

Stellarium[0]

[0] http://stellarium.org

Sharlin• 7 years ago

Stellarium is a planetarium software. It doesn't help you calculate interplanetary transfers, so if you're just mentioning it because it's a tangentially related and undeniably great piece of software, you might want to elaborate a bit.

karthie• 7 years ago

Still gotta wait for 11 years approx to reach Saturn even travelling in high speed.Long wait will try to post a reply back from Saturn once i land there safely.

SketchySeaBeast• 7 years ago

You know Saturn is a gas giant, right?

cardiffspaceman• 7 years ago

WFSMC? Working from Saturn's Metallic Core?

rcuv• 7 years ago

If you're interested in this kind of stuff, the NASA General Mission Analysis Toolkit (GMAT) is open source and is actively used to do navigation analysis for multiple missions which are currently flying.

http://gmatcentral.org/

dpcx2• 7 years ago

I've often seen artist renditions of how our solar system looks, and a lot of people complain that it isn't a flat disk, that all of the planets are trailing behind the sun as it flies through our galaxy. What I've always been interested in is what that then looks like in our section of the galaxy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4V-ooITrws is probably the best example of the trailing nature that I've seen. Does anyone have suggestions for the movement through the galaxy bit as well?

crossman• 7 years ago

That video has some flaws which are covered in this helpful article from Phil Plait https://slate.com/technology/2013/03/vortex-motion-viral-vid...

jkubicek• 7 years ago

It’s wrong. And not just superficially; it’s deeply wrong, based on a very wrong premise.

If you read further down in Phil Plait’s article, the video is based on a conspiracy-theory-style paper written by a crazy guy.

dpcx2• 7 years ago

Are there examples of better videos? I haven't seen any, and I'd really love to. I want to understand what our solar system actually looks like, and the video I linked is the closest thing I've seen (even if wrong).

fsagx• 7 years ago

Fun! A way to add gravity assist and multiple gravity assists would be a great feature.

joshuak• 7 years ago

Track Starman and his Tesla from the Falcon Heavy test, and the Monolith from 2001. Switch to "The Expanse" mode and calculate transfers with Epstein Drive.

A++

odysseus0113802• 7 years ago

Greetings. I'm a complete idiot when it comes to space. Still trying to wrap my head around "direction," navigation and just how to see or look in space. Would love a portable version of this program. Finally, can someone offer up the difference between Planetary Transfer Calculator and Space Engine? Thanks

mpwoz• 7 years ago

Someone already mentioned it upthread, but I highly recommend playing "Kerbal Space Program" to gain a better intuition of orbital mechanics. I'm no rocket scientist but that game really helped me wrap my head around how things like orbital transfers work without actually learning any of the math behind it.

odysseus0113802• 7 years ago

Thank you very kindly. I will take a look at it post haste.

wdfx• 7 years ago

Interestingly a transfer from Earth to Jupiter ends up with Jupiter coming up on the ship from behind at twice it's velocity - I would never have guessed that to be the case, one always imagines a ship arriving at a somewhat relatively static object.

drspacemonkey• 7 years ago

Basically, everything in space is a moving target.

If you'd really like to nail home an almost intuitive understanding of orbital mechanics, I recommend Kerbal Space Program. Imagine Minecraft NASA. You plan, build, launch, and fly space missions using a simplified physics model. It's insanely fun and addictive, as long as you can get past the frustrations of early failures.

I cannot recommend this game enough. I've got hundreds of hours in, and I'm at the point where I've got huge spreadsheets carefully planning out mission parameters to spec the requirements for my new heavy launch platform to colonize the solar system. I'm even assembling a long-term research station in orbit that will eventually be parked around a gas giant.

ahakki• 7 years ago

What you actually want is KSP modded with Principia to give you an n-body simulation of the solar system.

https://github.com/mockingbirdnest/Principia

Planetary Transfer Calculator

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