STS-122: Columbus Goes to the Space Station

[shorty943]

Originally Posted by Greg

My first guess would be that the folks at ESA aren't putting a high priority on providing updated information on their web site, especially since they're no doubt all very busy getting ready for the launch of Columbus.

It also could be that the actual payloads they're flying are proprietary. It must be nerve-wracking to do industrial research with the whole world watching!

I should imagine they are a little busy.
I know what is like during a ships "annual survey" for her seaworthiness tickets. Every single piece of equipment is pulled down, checked, inspected, and rebuilt. It's a full rebuild-launch, every year, of any commercial ships life.
Then we cross all appendages, as she goes back into her environment.
Did I double check, my full check list, in triplicate?
All mine are still afloat, thank Neptune.

Apparently ESA are running biomedical experimentation, among other things.
So there is a lot tied up commercially, and it stands there is espionage to consider, I suppose. But, that is all industrial research. Any research into a small commercial fortune will attract the less ethically minded. Even our own government funded system here is full of cloak and dagger. The CSIRO.
There is a lot to be gained, by the less scrupulous, if they can back door research. Look at the black market, in the third world countries, in the fake medicines trade. Billions of dollars are being skimmed, for a truck load of nothing more than chalk tablets, supposedly aids drugs.
And that, is just pirating the packaging.

Then there is this little lark. IT, business paperwork and records, and comms.
World communications is a real blackmailers playground now. How does the world communicate now? Like this. Via the WWW.
Who thinks he owns and runs and controls it all? Bill?
Then how come Bill, can't keep the hackers and crooks out?

Yeah, lots of money at stake, and it can make people do the worst of things to get more. Nerve racking is probably as close as I could describe it.

[Greg]

Yeah, I'm sure glad I don't have all that nerve-wracking money!

[shorty943]

Oh yes. I'd just hate to have to worry about all that tax and stock market crashing stuff.

Living on the ground floor means I don't have to jump out of any high windows.

[Greg]

Good point. Jumping out of a first-floor window doesn't provide much in the way of a reward.

[shorty943]

It just doesn't have the same general impact does it?

I find it ironic, that I just can't care, what the rich folk's is worried about.

My bills get paid on time. I can't say I go without in any way.

OK, so I don't drive a Cadillac, or live in the big house on the hill.
Doesn't worry me.

I also don't worry about the 100 billion dollars, wiped off the Australian stock market yesterday. I didn't lose any. I don't think I have enough in the bank to buy A share.

Although, I did hear yesterday some stock had nosedived from $7 to less than 50C in one day. I might be able to afford some of that.

And now for some free stuff.

There is some new stuff over at www.sourceforge.net for the Orbiter simulator.
It appears the ESA Columbus simulator program is now linkable into Orbiter.
So I guess I will now attempt to make my Windows wobble again.
Download and install, a whole bunch of Orbiter add ons.

[Greg]

That's interesting. Being able to put a Columbus into an Orbiter almost screams for the ability to take it out and attach it to a space station simulator!

[shorty943]

Originally Posted by Greg

That's interesting. Being able to put a Columbus into an Orbiter almost screams for the ability to take it out and attach it to a space station simulator!

Uhuh, I think that's the idea.
Once I get everything downloaded and set up, I'll give it a go.

Just as soon as I can actually dock the shuttle, without sending the ISS out past Pluto somewhere!

I have got her back down to Sol3 most times, but this docking is getting me ruffled. Trickier than a carrier deck land on.
With a big ship or even a small boat. You aim to hit or you will miss.
Got to learn to hit softer.

[Greg]

I think the trick is to come to a complete stop just short of the target and then just sort of sneak it in. You have to be be pretty close before you can ignore orbital mechanics and just drive it home.

[shorty943]

That, and a new motherboard for my ailing Athlon.

Big hopes pinned on the only remaining new still wrapped unit left in Australia, being mine on an ebay auction.

Then maybe my flash new FX7600 graphics card will work, along with both my SATA drives at the same time.
Then maybe I can get a frame rate of FPS not SPF like Orbiter is giving me at the moment. It doesn't need a very fast processor but it sure does need some high speed graphics number crunching ability.
And for an application of only about 65 Mb, it sure can take a lot of mods. I ended up with a folder of 1.18 Gb of stuff for Orbiter.
Oh dear, have
This simulator is at least as mod-able, as Sims2, so it seems. It even uses "Blender" or .obj files, to handle meshes and PhotoShopped images for texturing.
Then one can configure just about any scenario one may wish to simulate regarding space flight. Emergency evacs, rescues, a resupply, or just a flight around the solar system
Full hires 3D reproductions of Kennedy Space Center, Meadville, Edwards AFB, the Russians have joined in with some of their launch sites, MIR, all the Sputnik and Soyuz vehicles. Titan rockets send things up. Skylab is still alive and living large. And lifting body flying wings abound. Want your own private collection of NASA flying machines? The entire shuttle fleet? Ever wanted to play with the SR71, I do mate. Oh boy, would I like to fly that big black airplane. Build a base on the Moon, or a Mars base?
Relive the Apollo missions? Play in Stanley Kubrik's Space Oddessy?

That is what Orbiter Space Flight Simulator appears to be, after one day of fooling around. For a free game, in evolution, it is quite amazing.

First go here http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/ for a look see at the home page, then follow any link to one of several sites, to get the base game and the 1.1 patch. And the SDK, if you feel like it.


Then have a look here

http://www.moonport.org/addons/


and here, (this is a large mod site)

http://www.orbithangar.com/searchres...ult&StartRow=1


And then there is this site

http://www.ibiblio.org/mscorbit/index.php


And of course, there is now a new, new, space flight sim. Found here,

http://www.shuttlesim.be/index.php

in alpha test release.

[Greg]

Amazing stuff! I had no idea that fans were coming up with such accurate and detailed simulations of all those spacecraft, or even that they could do things like that.

It looks like a very strong community of fan artists is developing around Martin Schweiger's original Orbiter with people of all levels of talent. It will be interesting to watch the newer artists grow in their talent, which I'm sure will happen if they don't get discouraged or distracted.

[shorty943]

Originally Posted by Greg

Amazing stuff! I had no idea that fans were coming up with such accurate and detailed simulations of all those spacecraft, or even that they could do things like that.

It looks like a very strong community of fan artists is developing around Martin Schweiger's original Orbiter with people of all levels of talent. It will be interesting to watch the newer artists grow in their talent, which I'm sure will happen if they don't get discouraged or distracted.

It would appear that way. I am amazed at what is available in a free simulator. So far I have only got to page 55 of the OrbiterHangar downloads section. About halfway through looking at what they have.
It seems to be as open ended as Microsoft's Freelander is supposed to be, and with a real world "astro-chap" doing the programming.
Well, time to hit the books about this one. Sims2 was a just dive in and fool with it thing. This one actually needs some study.

But, it does need one hell of a lot of graphic card grunt. And a mere 1 Gigabyte of double data rate memory is just not enough workbench for the new release.

My Athlon 64 bit 3400 Mghz CPU with 1 Gb of DDR2 RAM and my MSI FX5500 with 256 Mb of VRAM is giving me 1 frame per second at the moment.
I'm not joking, I used the inbuilt utility to check it. It's bad.

The last release worked nicely for me, this new one is hungry.
It wants my nice shiny new NX7600 graphics card but my motherboard freaks when I install it.


If I want to fool with this sim, and I surely do, then I have to upgrade my rig. I can't run Shipsim 2008 on this machine either, and even Sims 2 doesn't like water on lots or in 'hoods, with this current FX5500 video card.

I'd better make sure I win that ebay auction, for the only brand new still OEM sealed, MSI K8MM V class motherboard left in Australia.

[Greg]

Ohhh... dear... it sounds like I'd better get a new graphics card before I even try this thing!

[shorty943]

Originally Posted by Greg

Ohhh... dear... it sounds like I'd better get a new graphics card before I even try this thing!

click the link named "orbiter S\W" on the Orbiterhangar site front page.

This takes you to the archive for the 05 and 03 and 01 versions.

The add ons and mods for the earlier versions start at about page 45 to 50 in the downloads section.

I am about to try the 05 version, now that I have found all this stuff, to see if that works properly on my machine now.

[Greg]

Is that a hint that the earlier versions don't need a superduper graphics card?

I'm thinking that I'll just wait until I install a new card. I've been wanting one for a long time so that I can get my sims to render correctly, so pretty soon I'll have to bite the bullet and invest in updated graphics.

[shorty943]

Originally Posted by Greg

Is that a hint that the earlier versions don't need a superduper graphics card?

I'm thinking that I'll just wait until I install a new card. I've been wanting one for a long time so that I can get my sims to render correctly, so pretty soon I'll have to bite the bullet and invest in updated graphics.

If you're like me, and still use an older single CPU machine, with an AGP slot for graphics, then the best you will get is an NVidea 7000 series or the ATI equivalent, and these need extra power fed from your PSU, via a 4 pin "Molex" connector, just like the one's that power your hard drives.
$250+\-, here in Aus, mine was 260. An MSI made unit, to match the MSI motherboard. Probably need to upgrade the PSU as well. I had to.
Mine is a 480 watt Thermaltake. Designed for the job.
It just copes.

Upgrade. It should be a cuss word.


Alas.

The new version of Orbiter just wont run with less than 2 Gigabytes of RAM, or, on anything slower than 2.2 Gigahertz.
And it demands at least an NVidea 7000 series mid range card at minimum for graphics. That's a FX\NX7600 or equivalent ATI card, at the least.

I actually got a test frame rate of 1.02 seconds per frame.

But, it does do a lot.

[Greg]

Oh dear. It sounds like I'll need more RAM as well as a new graphics card to run Orbiter.

When I bought this machine I figured 1.5 gigs was enough for anything!

[shorty943]

Originally Posted by Greg

Oh dear. It sounds like I'll need more RAM as well as a new graphics card to run Orbiter.

When I bought this machine I figured 1.5 gigs was enough for anything!

Hah. I seem to recall some "expert" at IBM saying "who would ever want more than 640Kb of memory".

Now?" Vista won't run on less than 1 Gb.
And that is just the operating system.
Most new machines seem to come stock standard with at least 2 Gb of Double Data Rate RAM. At almost 1,000 Mhz operating speeds. And it is ridiculously cheap to buy. This new fast DDR2(533+) and DDR3(800+) RAM, is cheaper than the original DDR(<400) my machine uses.

I think the tri-annual upgrade cycle is at hand again.
Time for a BIOS upgrade and that dual core processor.
And some more memory, a new graphics card, ,,,,

Oh hell. Look into the piggy bank time again.

Think I'm a bit behind the times?

My brother still drives a Ford Model T.
My younger brother.

[Greg]

It was Bill Gates: "640 KB? That ought to be enough for anybody!"

Beyond that, I figure that if the times want to be in synch with me, then they can catch up as best they can.

[shorty943]

Originally Posted by Greg

It was Bill Gates: "640 KB? That ought to be enough for anybody!"

Beyond that, I figure that if the times want to be in synch with me, then they can catch up as best they can.

I left the experts shaking their heads when they saw my old IBM chipped Compaq 286 running Windows Ver3.

Some fool told me it would never run a multi-tasking OS.
I found a 287 math co-processor for floating point math, a 4 meg memory add on card, and a friend gave me a huge 30 meg drive and Win3.
All good.

I've got my new motherboard, and it looks like I may have an "engineering sample" of the fastest overclocked "socket 754 AMD 64 bit Athlon" ever made.
A 3700+, that is the Pentium equivalent speed for this chip. It will fly.
And with 2 Gb of DDR RAM coming from the "States", cheaper than 1 Gb here.

Orbiter, and ShipSim, and Sims 2 with water lots. A real frame rate count.

All shall be good for another year or so.

In the mean time I am enjoying fooling around with the 05 Orbiter release.

[Greg]

*envious look*

I'm too cowardly to risk messing around with my machine.