New Mars Forums

The Kepler Prize was awarded last year, Team Daedalus, led by Kent Nebergall, won it.

Kent used to have a personal webpage up but I can't seem to find it right now. Anyhow if you ask him he'll probably send you a copy of the report - he sent me one.

I can heartily reccommend the Orbiter Spaceflight Simulator available from http://www.orbitersim.com]www.orbitersim.com.

"ORBITER is a free flight simulator that goes beyond the confines of Earth's atmosphere. Launch the Space Shuttle from Kennedy Space Center to deploy a satellite, rendezvous with the International Space Station or take the futuristic Delta-glider for a tour through the solar system - the choice is yours. But make no mistake - ORBITER is not a space shooter. The emphasis is firmly on realism, and the learning curve can be steep."

Yes, the learning curve is steep - but you feel a real sense of accomplishment the first time you actually make it to Orbit in the Delta Glider, or the first time you dock with the International Space Station.

When I started out with Orbiter I knew very little about the mechanics of spaceflight, but now I know as much as a lot of aerospace engineers!

Here's how I started out on Orbiter:

1. Get to low earth orbit in Delta Glider
2. Go to low earth orbit, dock with ISS, and return in Delta Glider
3. Go to the Moon, land, and return in Delta Glider
4. Apollo 14
5. Delta Glider to Mars and back (done this LOTS of times!)

I still can't believe it's freeware.

Right now I'm heading up a team to simulate Mars Direct in Orbiter. We're making some nice progress and have are test flying the Ares rocket and the Hab Module now. We are finalizing our ERV design as well.

This is a little old but here's a render of the Hab Module (it looks a little different from this now)

This has come up as a topic of discussion on our mailing list, so I was curious what the space heads here think.

We are developing a Mars Direct addon to the freeware Orbiter Spaceflight Simulator. We're trying to stick to Dr. Zubrin's plan as much as is practical. Mars direct calls for two types of manned launches with the Ares HLV; one with a manned ERV for a lunar mission, and one with a manned hab module for Mars missions.

If you have to abort during the Trans Mars Insertion burn, you can always use the aerobrake to bring yourself back into a LEO and have someone come pick up the crew. There's no rush since there's three years worth of food, oxy and water on board.

But what happens if you have to abort before LEO is established? I suppose with the ERV you could supposedly land in the Atlantic, the same way as an Apollo capsule would. The hab module on the other hand, is a lot bigger. Would it be effective to fit the Hab with some kind of flotation device? And would the heatshield/aerobrake, designed for Mars, hold up in Earth's atmosphere?

We are considering wiether or not we should launch the Hab module unmanned, and then rendevous with it in LEO before the Trans Mars Insertion.

For our website see:
http://barnstormer.home.mindspring.com/ … ...ect.htm

For Orbiter:
http://www.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/~martins/o … orbit.html