Fly me to the Moon

Demo day(s)!

2008-04-01T09:48:00.001-07:00

In case you have missed (too bad 'cause there was some magnificient shots in there!) the second day of demo of the ATV's rendezvousing with the ISS, you can head for Space-Multimedia (once again a space geek life-saver!) where the complete coverage, recorded of NASA TV, is available. If everything goes as planned, the ATV should dock to the station this coming Thursday ... another exciting space event to watch :-) Also, the ATV blog folks have made available a video showing some of yesterday events, built from the telemetry received during the mission. It's worth a look, albeit a bit boring I must said ...

On the Orbiter's addon front, I'm sort of back on the drawing block at this time. About a week ago, we decided to once again downgrade our first addon, in order to reduce the scope of it and make our lives a bit easier and release something sooner. This doesn't mean that we are moving aways from our high realism/details goals. Quit the contrary actually, since we are only reducing the addon scope. I know this must sounds a bit cryptic, but things should start to get clearer as we get moving along.

Sea Launching

2008-03-24T10:45:00.001-07:00

Just in time for last week launch of the DirectTV-11 satellite, MajorTom and his team have released their first version of a long overdue Sea Launch addon for Orbiter. I have been playing a bit with it and enjoying it. The launch platform could use more detailing (it's planned for next release), but the automatic guidance works well in both delivering the payload to a parking orbit then boosting it (thanks to its 3rd stage Block DM-SL) into a Geosynchronous orbit. Haven't been follow much before the Zenit-3SL launches, I had in mind that the 3rd stage was used to insert the payload into its definitive orbit, but in fact it is not the case since the payload is inserted into a elliptical orbit with an apogee at Geosynchronous altitude and a low perigee (<200km) . It is then up to the satellite to raise its perigee over the course of several burns.

From STS to Jupiter 120

2008-03-17T08:53:00.001-07:00

Once again, the DIRECT 2.0 folks have come-up with some great visual to help folks (like myself) better understand what this project means in term of evolution from the Space Shuttle to Constellation. This time, it's not some neafty wallpapers, but a great video taking the current STS stack and modifying it into a Jupiter 120's stack. Check this out:

Big kudos to extracripsy75 for putting the video on YouTube!

The lure of 3D cockpit #2

2008-03-12T09:25:00.001-07:00

Few weeks ago, I was talking in a blog entry on the latest AMSO release, of a hybrid concept for the 3D cockpit (I prefer to call them console than cockpit, 'cause they are not necessary cockpit). Since I have finally managed to get the concept advanced enough to have anything to show, here's a screenshot of an hybrid console in action:

What you are seeing, here is a test panel located in a part of a 3D console. The idea, if you recall, is to render 2D panels on 3D surfaces, and allow the player to interact with them (e.g clicking on a button) directly from the 3D view, while supporting the possibility to open a panel simulatenously in a 2D view (as shown above), where the rendering and interaction capabilities will be better. Needless to said, both the 3D and 2D version of the same panel are linked so that any actions in one is reflected in the other. Since the Windowed version of the panel can be resized, it is then possible to have it only showing a small part of it (e.g the clock), allowing the player to keep an eye on important controls/displays while changing the view mode to external, to another vessel, or more simply looking somewhere else.

I have put a lot of hope and efforts into this, I sure hope it's going to turn out as good as it sounded (to me at least) ...

Was it worth it?

2008-03-10T09:23:00.001-07:00

Right after I closed Windows Media Player Saturday night, following over two hours of streaming, my wife asked me if it watching that launch had been worth missing a party ... I hesitated a moment, then replied that yes it have been worth it. Sure, those darn clounds had not allowed us to follow Ariane 5 in it's climb to orbit for more than a couple of second following launch (27s to be precise), but even with that, the coverage was interesting and overall it was exciting to watch it the launch of the first ATV. Also an Ariane 5 launch is a rather impressive event ... the SRB ignition is, I found, alway mighy impressive ... the shock wave from it is enough to knock the camera. Here's a YouTube video of the (most exciting part) of the launch, in case you missed it:

One thing I do miss, it's on-board cameras. I think I ahve talked about this in a previous blog, but I can help to wish they had some. A view of the ATV floating away from Ariane upper stage will have been pretty darn sweet ...

ATV fever

2008-03-06T13:44:00.002-08:00

With only a couple of days to go before the launch of the first European Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) on top of an Ariane 5 rocket, the excitement in the Space geek community is starting to build-up, with the help of various interesting documents which were recently released, such as a Launch Kit (PDF, 6Mb) from EADS. As usual for an Ariane launch, Arianespace will be broadcasting the launch, but this time NASA TV will also cover the launch, live! We were suppose to visit some friends Saturday evening, but since the launch was postponned by 24h and is now happening that particular night, I had no choice by to cancel (the invitation, not the launch). Since they know that I'm a big Space geek, I think they understand ... However, my wife isn't too happy about staying home to watch another boring (night) launch on a tiny Window on my computer screen ...

To mark the event, ESA have started a few days ago a blog, to follow live the first mission of the ATV.

Conversations With Apollo

2008-03-04T13:38:00.001-08:00

I'd like to promote a bit something I stumbled (can't recall how now) on last week, a weekley podcast dedicated to the Apollo program, called Conversations with Apollo. Most of the episodes (8 in total to this date) features an interview with a person having participated to the project, such as Flight Director Gerry Griffin. None of the missions crew have participated yet, I sure hope they will do, eventually ...

DIRECT to a desktop background near you ...

2008-02-27T12:43:00.001-08:00

The good folks over at DIRECT 2.0, have made available for us space geeks (and DIRECT concept supporters) some of their artwork for our enjoyment as wallpapers. Be sure to check these out and spread the word about this alternative to Ares if you're asked about that fancy new background now replacing that picture of a top model you were using ;-)

Regarding the 3D cockpit thingy I was talking about 10 days or so ago, things are looking good and I should be able to post a screenie of this in a few days hopefully. Since right now I'm experimenting with that in the context of some ground based console, the veil of secrecy shrouding our Orbiter's project won't be lifted ... yet :-P

Armadillo Aeroscare

2008-02-26T11:45:00.001-08:00

Not to remove anything from the accomplishment of the legendary John Carmack's team over at Armadillo Aerospace, but their planned suborbital vehicle (called "six pack") looks like it will be the experience of a lifetime for the extrem thrill-seeker daredevils out there ... Sure, the view will be terrific from the apogee, but only if you are brave enough to open your eyes! Check this out:

Ain't that something (more pictures on the latest update from Mr Carkmack)? 8-)

In the Shadow of the Moon

2008-02-25T08:50:00.001-08:00

I finaly managed to watch last night, the recently released DVD of In the Shadow of the Moon, a documentary on the Apollo program which was released in (too few) theatre back in 2007. The film is based on remasterised footages of the missions (some I don't think I have ever seen) with comments from 10 of the 24 Apollo's astronauts, and I founded it quite enjoyable both for the spirit and for the eyes. I was somewhat a bit desapointed that Neil Armstrong declined to be part of it, since he's the iconic figure of the program, but overall I don't think the documentary suffered from not having him on the project.

Thanks to YouTube, here's the trailer:

That Space Show

2008-02-19T15:37:00.001-08:00

I have done a quick search on this blog, and I couldn't beleive that I haven't managed yet to point at the Ares alternative called Direct 2.0, which I approve off. The Direct 2.0's team have done a excellent job over the years to come-up with documents and even a web presentation (and an Orbiter's addon!) to demonstrate and explain why Direct 2.0 is safer, simpler and sooner than what NASA has been working on. For a quick introduction (and some great contents) check out The Space Show of February 17th since it dedicated to it.

Since I'm no rocket engineer, I can't comment much on their proposal aside from saying that it does appears more sounds and in fact much more logical than Ares I&V. Make you wonder why NASA picked-up what it did ...

The lure of 3D cockpit ...

2008-02-18T13:23:00.000-08:00

Saturday morning, I had the great pleasure to notice on the Orbiter's forum that AMSO 1.16 had been released by it's author. In case you don't know AMSO, it's the other Apollo simulator for Orbiter, which unlike NASSP doesn't focus (yet?) on the ultra-realistic simulation of the systems, but provides magnificient graphisms and a great gameplay. One of the pretty neat (and new?) feature of AMSO (among plenty), is a nice looking (but static) Virtual Cockpit. While looking at the Erath from the various vintage points offered by the 5 portholes, it suddently stroke me that maybe we should be using a Virtual Cockpit as well for our projects.

Since the inception of our project, back in January 2006, I have always been rather reticent to doing such a virtual cockpit. The main raison for my opposition was the limited resolution of 3D panels and controls, in comparaison to a 2D equivalent. I haven't changed my mind on this, but seen what could be attained with a virtual cockpit, the idea came to me that maybe we could combine both 2D and 3D panels, in a sort of hybrid cockpit, where mouse input on area located in the virtual cockpit, opens floating panels (aka Window) representing the corresponding instruments/panel in a nice flat 2D rendering ... I'll post more on that once we have implemented that concept a bit further.

Busy day in space ...

2008-02-11T15:37:00.000-08:00

Yep, with Columbus been attached to the ISS and a Proton successful launch, today was a busy day for the space geeks! I had the chance to watch a good part of the EVA and to see, live, the latest module added to the station been moved from the Shuttle cargo bay and positioned on its place on the ISS, it was a nice experience.

I was checking-up KSC imagery gallery today, and noticed a couple of picture of the Japanese module Kibo, to be installed in March. The Japanese contribution to the ISS is going to be installed in three separate flights. I was a bit surprise earlier when seeing these pictures, by the small size of it, but it was only one of the segment of it (the ELM). That's gonna make for some more interesting missions to watch. Things won't be the same anymore once the station is fully assembled and that all there is to see, is crew rotation ... :-\

Lots of fun

2008-02-06T12:41:00.000-08:00

Last Saturday night, after an afternoon of hard work on our project, I decided to give a try to the CVEL-Titans Orbiter's addon, which offers a very decent sample of the Titan rocket family. Since I have lately grow a certain attraction for the late Titan III and IV, it sounded like a good way of spending some well deserved relaxation time, sending Luna looking probe into LEO :-) There's something about Titan that is appealing, I'm not to sure if it is its modularity, or its cute looks (especially on the late variant of it), but it's a neat vehicle. Since it was used mainly for military payload (except for the Gemini program and some NASA probes), there isn't much available documentation on it. At least not as much as for the Saturn launch vehicle.

Anyhow, I found the following video on YouTube, which have some pretty neat sequences from various Titan launches:

NASSP style?

2008-01-23T10:00:00.000-08:00

While pondering on what to write in this post, I came to realize that even though I use the expression "NASSP style" quite often in this blog, I may have never really taken the time to explain in a bit more details what exactly I meant by this. I'm not to sure where that expression came from, I believe I may have coined it during a conversation I have with my old partner-in-crime Castorp, back in early 2006.

NASSP is an on-going project to bring a realistic Apollo add-on to Orbiter. By realistic, I mean an high-fidelity add-on which not only simulate the various aspect of a mission but also simulate the many systems and sub-systems which compose a launch vehicle and a spacecraft (like the NASSP folks said : "accurate simulation of the internal systems"). Procedures straight from the official Apollo documents can be used in NASSP, with gazillion of switches, knobs and buttons to switch, turn, press. Needless to said, this is a daunting (yet exciting) task, both for the add-on developers and for the users.

Been the first add-on (AFAIK) of such level of detailing, NASSP not only defines the genre but also set the bare very high for all of us (wannabe) add-on makers. Thus, when I said that our (still under wrap) add-on will be "NASSP style", I mean that we are aiming for a similar (likely higher in fact) level of details and realism (oh yeah, we know, it's a bold statement!).

Just to give you an idea, here is a list of what we will be simulating on the launch vehicle:

Propulsion
Auxiliary fluids system
Propellant system
Hydraulic system
Pneumatic system
Electrical power system
Environment Control system
Flight control system
Instrumentation
Interfaces

To be honest I should said that for a couple of the above categories, we won't go deeper than having a bunch of black boxes inter-acting between each others, since their level of complexity is above what we can (or care to) achieve. However in most case, we are hoping to simulate the functioning with a fair (and painful) amount of details (e.g Propulsion system). Since we also have to keep things frame-rate friendly, we'll likely have to cut corners in some cases.

In the eye of the "storm" ...

2008-01-17T15:36:00.000-08:00

Ok, storm is definitly a bit too strong of a term in the context at hand, but since we have moved on into the development phase this past week-end (at last!), it does feel a bit like it. So far things are going well, Advisers are advising, Researcher is researching, 3D artist is meshing and the coder (yours truly) is coding :-) Needless to said, we're a long looooong loooooooooooog way from the end of this journey, but these are very exciting times!

Since we are still observing a self-imposed information black-out, I can't share much yet, but I think it is safe to said that we are working on a project involving a launch vehicle and a manned spacecraft ... :-P

The calm before the "storm"

2008-01-11T10:35:00.000-08:00

Well, actually it's not that clam really. As we are winding down (a part of) our design effort, there have been a constant feverish activity over the past week, intended on closing the remaining open issues and verifying (as much as we can) the correctness of our intended simulation. I think that I have, in many occasions, vented some (a lot?) about how difficult it is to find engineering details on the Soviet space program. This have resulted in a lot of research work on our part and on a certain amount of frustration. Was the experience worth the trouble? Yes, most definitly. Sure we still have to see if the end result (that Orbiter's addon) will be up-to our expectations, but I really believe that our (the team) understanding and knowledge on rocketry and space vehicle engineering have greatly improved. And, this is an accomplishment I must said (especially for me, a big one!).

As dictated by my obsessive mind (OCD?), I have been, as before, fully consumed by this project over the past couple of months. So much so, that in numerous occasions, rocketry had find its way in my dreams ... Last night for example, although it's kind of fuzzy now, I was inspecting a rocket engine (a Russian one I believe), moving around feverishly, following the path of some pneumatic hose or something ... Yep, I'm that crazy.

As we are gearing-up to the start of the implementation phase, my anxiety has been building-up, slowly but surely. Dozen of questions have been circulating in my mind: Have we properly understand the schematics? Did we miss anything? Can we do this? Can I deliver what I said we could do? How bad will the frame rate be? Will our design hold? I do know that this is after all a for fun venture and that if we fail to deliver, only our collective egos will be crushed, but still I can't help the apprehension taking me over ...

The more the Merrier

2008-01-07T11:01:00.000-08:00

This past friday, our team grew to the unprecedented heads count of 5, when Nels (a.k.a DrLaufbahn) joined us in the quality of Science Adviser (our second). Since we are very close (days!) to actually starting the development of the addon, as I was mentioning in my previous post, this is pretty good timing and Nels was put to work right away ;-)

С новым годом!

2008-01-03T14:33:00.000-08:00

While lurking around the old topics and posts of a Russian web site, I came across a link to an interesting web site recently started (summer 2007) by Nick Stevens on the N-1 booster. Nick have obviously spent a lot of time making 3D models of the rocket, and it looks amazingly good! Since the whole N-1/L-3 concept is what got me started into creating addons for Orbiter, this is a subject that is close to my heart, so I was pretty happy to see that I'm not the only geek with a major crush on the N-1 :-)

Well, 2008 is here now and thus I wishes you all the best. This year is going to be a very challenging one for our project since we will be starting the actual implementation of the addon in a couple of weeks from now (after a year of R&D and facts finding). An exciting and scary time I must said. Hopefully, once things are rolling, I will be able to share a bit more details on what we have been working on :-)

Merry Newtonmas!

2007-12-24T17:09:00.000-08:00

Well, it is that time of the year again? Oh yeah it is, so Merry Newtonmas folks! May your Apple tree be loaded with some good loots (e.g Space books, Rocket model kits, Space movies ...) :-)

While looking for some data on the Oxidizer and Fuel tank of S-IC (Saturn V 1st stage) I stumbled onto a rather interesting web site (mind you, it's a Work-In-Progress) by Eric Hartwell, the NOT the official Apollo 17 Flight Journal (yet) which follow the same concept than the well know Apollo Flight Journal. The last update to that site seems to have been made last April, let's hope Eric will continue his terrific work.

While I'm on the Apollo subject, I also found during my search two interesting videos (YouTubed) on the assembly of the Saturn V rocket. You will find both linked bellow (Part 1 then Part 2):

Pneumaticaly yours ...

2007-12-21T15:45:00.000-08:00

A bit more than two years ago, I started this wild pursuit of space knowledge using this very blog as the living journal of my studies. Well ... that's what was suppose to happen. Obviously it didn't work out that way since I was abducted by the Dark Side of the Force, and instead spend my time mainly writing code. Now, the true is that even though I haven't really shared all that I learned here, I have assimilated a certain amount of knowledge related to spacecraft and launch vehicle. Sure, I'm still mostly clueless about spaceflight, but it is still on my radar scope ... once I master the system engineering component of our Orbiter's addon work.

Fact is that I'm still rather clueless about a lot of the sub-systems we are hoping to simulate. The pneumatic system is a good example of the struggle that our effort is, for science challenged people like myself. So after a bit of headache and lots of discussion on the best way to approach it, we have decided to black box it and in a way that make the usage of pneumatic similar to an electrical power source. Sure it's an over-simplification, but the basic function of the pneumatic system will still simulated and that's what really matter after all.

"Man in Space"

2007-12-18T13:00:00.000-08:00

It have been demonstrated before that not all of YouTube is filled with mindless (and often stupid) videos. Thanks to the dedication of many, a great deal of interesting (and often never seen before) videos are now available for anyone to see. Take for example the famed Disney's Man in Space series from the mid 1950 which can now be watched (and not only by kids) online (in 8 parts) by many of us, space enthusiast which were born (way) too late to watch it LIVE on TV (and in the wrong country for me). It's one heck of a good show, a definitive must see. In the same category, there is the Man and the Moon serie, also YouTubed by the very same person.

Now, one show I'd like to see is that Woody Woodpecker's NASA cartoon from the early 1960. I'll have to search for it.

Sexy launch!

2007-12-11T10:49:00.000-08:00

I have to said that until yesterday, I never paid much attention to the United Launch Alliance Atlas V launches. Which is a bit of a shame since that launch vehicle first stage is powered by a Russian RD-180 engine and also since the launches are really beautiful, especially yesterday launch (NRO L-24). They had some very clear close-up views of the rocket during ascent which were brilliant. No on board camera (so it seems) this time sadly. The video is available for download on the NasaSpaceflight.com's forum (free, but you will have to register to get access to it). I haven't found it anywhere else, but just as a preview, here's a video of the highlights of a previous launch (Hotbird-6) from YouTube:

Quite neat isn't it? Make sure you do watch yesterday launch! :-)

Evil is in the details ...

2007-12-04T15:46:00.000-08:00

Couple of weeks ago, we decided to shift our focus from the spacecraft we were working on, to the launch vehicle. The main drive for that change was to allow for the development of the ascent guidance and control algorithm to go in parallel of the development of the spacecraft. While a launch vehicle is a very complex object, it is only overall a bit simpler than a manned spacecraft. Thus, we hoping to save time by avoiding the development of the most complex part of the launch vehicle from blocking the rest of the development. Sounds like a good plan ... I wishes I had though about it 9_9

Back in January of this year I had started a design document for our launch vehicle addon but didn't go much further than just setting up the very basic contents and layout of it. Since we have shifted to making the launcher before the payload, I resumed this week-end working on it and thus I have dived deep in finding out how a launch vehicle is designed and built. Marvelous yet highly complex contraptions. As common for this type (read country of origin) of addon, we are having an hard time coming up with solid and real data/info, thus I have been spending a lot of time looking at other rocket of the same time period (e.g Saturn, Atlas ...). I'll really like to get my hand on some detailed description of the Gemini-Titan vehicle, but for some unknown reason (maybe this have to do with the fact that Titan was originally an ICBM?) I'm having an hard time finding anything ... In any case, I have been learning a lot about rocket engine, hydraulic systems and other piece of exotic machineries.

Archives gones wild! #6

2007-11-27T13:34:00.000-08:00

The good folks over at the Project Apollo Archive, have once again updated their images gallery by adding some new scans of the Apollo 7 film magazines. There's some pretty neat shots of the Saturn's upper stage in orbit, worth checking them out :-) Another gallery to check-out once in a while is the one for the ISS, where they have uploaded a rather nice picture taken during the lastest EVA and which shows the Harmony module in it's definitive location:

On the Orbiter's addon front, I finaly completed Sunday my rework of our attachment handling and resumed working on the flow framework, which I'm hoping to wrap-up soon ...

If it ain't broke, don't fix it ...

2007-11-22T11:03:00.000-08:00

Last week, I decided that it was time for me to revisit our vessel attachment handling. The main reason for such a risky endeavor was to accommodate for new capabilities which I had been including in our Addon Development Kit (ADK). Needless to said, what we had before was sort of working (as demonstrated in our October Sky work) and right now it's not working anymore (well sort of) ... Why fix something that ain't broke, right? Anyhow, I'm hoping to solve the last mysterious issue(s) soon ...

You may have noticed that I'm now using a different acronym, ADK, for what I used to call our in-house Orbiter's SDK. Since it sole purpose is to help creating addons, it didn't make much sense to call it a Software Development Kit ... 9_9

M.I.T material?

2007-11-19T16:17:00.000-08:00

If I were to announce my parents that I'm now attending a course at M.I.T, they will no doubt be very surprised, knowing quite well how bad my grads were in Mathematics and Physics. In fact, they will not even believe me! And they will be right (of course) since I'm no M.I.T material. However, thanks to their OpenCourseWare initiative, it is now possible for folks like myself to attend lectures and pretends to be among the smart people in the audience .. albeit remotely thanks to a Internet video feed. Lately, I have been following a series of lectures on the Space Shuttle's Systems from 2005, which I found rather interesting even if some of the contents is (a lot) over my head.

Check out this link for a list of all the good stuff offered on Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Project management for (a) Dummy

2007-11-14T15:13:00.000-08:00

Oh yeah I'm such a dummy when it come to project management! And I'm not talking here of the full scope of project management with cost and people management! So really, managing our project should really be easier than the real thing ... or so you will think. Alas I'm a bit challenged in that department so things have been a bit chaotic ... which party explain the numerous delays in our project. Since we know have increased the team size to 4 (Said hello to our newest recruit GncDude!), it is more than ever important that we get a bit more organized ...

Partner-in crime Castorp posted yesterday a little teaser on the Orbiter's forum, in response to someone asking for some hint on what we are working on these days. Let see if anybody reading this blog can correctly guess what this is:

Feel free to use the Comments system to post your guess :-)

STS-ified (once again)

2007-11-08T16:00:00.000-08:00

Since I switched back to the space obsession a bit more than a week ago, I had been followed the STS-120 mission with increasing interest since he launched on October 23rd. My wife could easily attest that I'm once again a space addict, since I had NASA TV streaming on my computer non-stop in the evenings even thought there wasn't much happening, but I can't seems to get enough of this marvelous view of the Earth from LEO which are broadcasted LIVE during the missions! Anyhow, since the mission ended yesterday (yep, I watched the de-orbit and landing LIVE), I'll have to wait a few weeks before I can have some more of these views. BTW, I found these views (and associated audio background) very motivating when working on our addons!

Partner in crime, Kerameya, sent me the other day a link to another member of the Blogosphere I had not heard of yet, Captain David. That fellow is entertaining an effort quite similar to ours (but without the Orbiter's addons) but focusing mainly on Vladimir Chelomei work (OKB-52). Since our team is mostly focusing on Sergey Korolyov's creations (OKB-1), I guess that make him and us .. well, rivals ;-)

Help wanted, apply within.

2007-11-05T14:53:00.001-08:00

We're looking to expand our "OctoberSky" team with the addition of a "Scientific Adviser". What this means is that we'd like to bring on-board someone with a strong scientific and technical background who has a general proficiency/competency in math, physics, and engineering, and who would be interested in putting his or her knowledge to good and fun use in our historically-oriented projects. Participation will include:

- Technical subjects support
- Algorithm R&D
- Alpha/Beta testing

OctoberSky is an ongoing and quite active project working on a series of addons (NASSP style) for Orbiter to represent early Soviet space technology with the greatest historical and technical accuracy we can attain to.

If interested, then please apply detailing your background and qualifications. While we certainly have lots of fun in this project, we are putting a lot of time and effort into it and so are really looking for a serious-minded individual willing to make what essentially will be a long-term commitment.

"Duke Nukem Forever" style?

2007-10-29T16:10:00.000-07:00

Hello! Yep I'm still there ... but now, it's likely the readers (if there was any) that are gone ... :-) Anyhow, I'm back now. Well, in true it's not as if I had gone anywhere really, but I was sort of away from Orbiter and our dear project(s) for quite a bit of time, consumed by various mind eating hobbies, such as flying virtual planes and such ... Sadly catching-up with the (wasted?) lost months is going to be a bit difficult, but not impossible ... Well I guess we'll see.

Castorp was hinting the other day at the fact that what we have been working on was starting to look (smell/taste) like vapourware ... An harsh reality check which was very helpful in helping me to get back on track since I had no desire to go down in history as yet another "Duke Nukem Forever" ...

Here we go again!

2007-08-28T16:00:00.000-07:00

Once again, the work on that still top secret project have resumed at full throttle. I'm happy to report than yesterday was the first day of its implementation (coding) and that the whole team (Kerameya, Castorp and myself) is all accounted for, and very eager to get going. Now that the summer is kind of over, and that the various distractions (and obsessions) are under control (sort of), it's release or bust!

Once the addon start to take shape (within Orbiter), we will officially announce it. Our original release date was somewhere in Spring of 2008, but as it stand right now, I don't think we gonna make it. Oh well ...

Summertime ... over yet?

2007-08-20T12:50:00.000-07:00

It may seems as we have been taking it easy .. enjoying a lazy summer ... and it's partly true, but in reality we have also been working on our Orbiter's project. I completed last night the updating of the 7K-OK addon to the new intra-messaging API, after several weeks of hard work. I write hard, when I really mean boring ... This wasn't the most fun of the tasks ... but a necessary step in our long road. Once I get around to sending Castorp a new DR, we will be almost ready to start implementing our secret project :-) Oh! If you could only see the marvelous meshes Castorp have painstakingly created! More on that soon ...

Summertime ...

2007-06-27T11:05:00.000-07:00

Ha ... don't you love summertime? Full of outdoor activities, BBQ and beach events ... Meshing and coding .... Isn't it a fun season? Yep, I too think it is a good one :-) ... Especially since we finally have been resuming working on our addon(s) at a pace that we haven't reached for months now ... Only this doesn't mean we're moving forward ... well, Castorp is moving forward with his meshes ... whiles I'm going back over stuff I implemented months ago and redoing it ... As I have the tendency to often complicate the heck out of things, I have to go back and modify my design so that it is easier to use. For example, the intra-vessel messaging (e.g: sending messages from a switch on the control panel to a device located in the service module) that I build originally was inspired by computers networks. At first it sounded like a good idea, but after months of usage (OctoberSky use that contraption), it turn out that when adding a new device or UI control, well .... it's a too complex and take too much boiler-plate work to get going.

Reloaded?

2007-06-05T09:14:00.000-07:00

One thing I read last week, while browsing on some depression sites, was that you shouldn't expect to "snap out if it". In fact most sites seems to agree that the road to recovery is a long (5 months?) and painful one ... This lead me to think that maybe, after all, I wasn't victim of a depression but just sad and under the weather ... Hmm maybe, maybe not ... who knows really? I guess a shrink could tell me ... but I don't think I'd like to waste the outrageous amount of money their services cost ... 9_9

Anyhow, I'm back in the saddle, coding away once again on our [Censured] project. BTW, partner in crime Castorp, have posted 2 videos on YouTube showing a part of our OctoberSky addon (that Soyuz addon of ours to be released in 2012):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzMvHwCyS0c
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kh7d4yz3634

Please keep in mind that this is still "work in progress" ... so yeah, It's far from perfect :P

Exhausted?

2007-05-31T09:12:00.000-07:00

Well I've got to said that the whole month of May have been rather peculiar ... Since I returned for my trip, I have been suffered from chronic exhaustion both physical and mental and got sick at least 3 times and things I use to enjoy like working on my Orbiter's addon, space related subjects and blogging have totally failed to interest me :-( It seems as I have been plagued with some kind of depression, the symptoms seems to all be there ... Not sure what triggered it :-\

Anyhow ... the image above was taken recently by the ISS crew this month.

Archives gones wild! #5

2007-05-08T14:35:00.000-07:00

The problem with going away on vacation is that it does somehow disconnect you from your usual geek routine ... like for example checking for update on the Project Apollo Archive ... which got updated only 5 days after I left ... (20-something new or improved scans of Apollo 11). Truth be told, the past two weeks disconnected me a good deal ... I, as usual, carried around 2 space related books with me, but only got the chance to read 1.5 pages from one ... definitely not a very productive vacation I'll admit :P

Anyhow ... now that I'm back and mostly recovered from the jet lag, work on the Orbiter's addon should resume soon.

No one will hear you blog in space ...

2007-04-18T14:00:00.000-07:00

... that is if you are indeed blogging ... Which doesn't seems to be the case of Charles Simonyi as his first and only blog entry (at the time of this blog) from the ISS was made on April 14th (a rather interesting post btw, worth reading). So I have been wondering a bit what's Charles up to ... He seems to have been maintaining a much lower profile than Anousheh Ansari while in orbit. Anyhow, likely with the return of Expedition 14 in 2 days he will update his blog once he's back? I sure hope so, I'd love to read his comments on the flight and reentry.

Speaking of blog update, I'll be away (visiting my folks) for the next two weeks, so it is highly probable that I won't be posting until I return ... Not a big loss some will said ;-)

Poyekhali!

2007-04-12T06:54:00.000-07:00

Happy cosmonautics day everyone! For once, I actually remembered ... I wonder how that could be? ;-) (insider joke, forgive me). Like every years, there's (wild) parties been thrown to mark the event all around the world. Check the official web site of Yuri's Night to find one near you (there's one in downtown Vancouver, but I'll stay home ... I'm not much of a party goer).

To mark the event, Ivan Safronov have posted two excellent videos (Russian audio track only) on his web site on Gagarin's flight (#1 & #2). A must see for every space enthusiat :-)

Archives gones wild! #4

2007-04-10T14:15:00.000-07:00

Instead of impatiently hitting the reload button of your favorite web browser on the Expedition 14 and 15 galleries, deseperatly waiting for NASA to update them with some images from last week liftoff or yesterday docking ... here's a link that should relieve your thirst of Space imagery, courtesy of the Project Apollo Archive which just got updated (first time since last summer) with 28 newly scanned images of Apollo 9. I haven't browsed trough my Apollo collection for a while, since I have been focusing on Soviet space hardware, but I could swear that I never seen some of these images before! ... then again, I'm not known for my perfect memory .. 9_9

TMA-10 #4

2007-04-09T14:50:00.001-07:00

I'm not too sure what I could possibly said about this afternoon docking .... now I'm just waiting for the hi-res pictures taken from the ISS to come down and be posted on the Gallery. If you missed the live coverage, Space-multimedia (again) have a video recording of it, and off the hatch opening (with cheesy exchanges between the crew members and their family!).

If I may, I'll hijack this post for a little update on the [Censured] project for Orbiter. As I reached the Communication section of the document I have been preparing, I'll be focusing on that for a while as our SDK doesn't support that yet .... Perfect excuse for some R&D time :-) Now, the key is that we're about some realism .. for example, we shouldn't expect a radio message sent by a spacecraft to be received by a ground station which is on the opposite side of the Earth. At least for the time period that interest us ...

TMA-10 #3

2007-04-09T10:03:00.000-07:00

Somehow when I woke-up Saturday morning, I was planning on making a day of that Soyuz launch ... but in reality the coverage on NASA TV is pretty slim .... it start one hour or so before the launch and stop few minute after the orbit insertion .... nothing anywhere close to what's provided for a Shuttle launch ... Which isn't really a surprise for a veteran of armchair rocket launches like myself ;-)

The liftoff and ride went smoothly as usual, except for a longer than usual first motion. I'm no specialist, but it appeared to me (and also to other folks from the IRC channel #space) that the rocket took longer than usual to lift from the pad ... As there's no mention of any possible issue on the official sites, maybe it was normal? Who knows .... In any case, if you have missed the launch, a video of it is available from Space-multimedia.

Docking is happening in a couple of hours, I'll be following it (of course).

TMA-10 #2

2007-04-04T15:50:00.000-07:00

So you may want to make note of it, the launch (of TMA-10) is scheduled for 10:31am PST this coming Saturday (April 7th). As this is getting closer by the minutes, it is a good idea to keep an eye on the Expedition 15 gallery. Usually they post some high-res images of the mating of the rocket as well as its transportation to the launch pad (here's an example from Expedition 14). Of course the launch will be LIVE on NASA TV :-)

TMA-10

2007-04-03T16:06:00.001-07:00

I forgot to mention in my post yesterday that with the launch of the Soyuz TMA-10 (Expedition 15 + Charles Simonyi) nearing, there's on Energia web site some pictures (as usual) of the Soyuz preparation (link, link, link and link). It's great that they post some pictures, but I wishs they offered something a bit better than the low res (by modern standard) 640x426 ... I may have complained about that before, no? :-) Yeah I thought so .... Well, with a flight every 6 months it's likely that, with my weak memory, I won't remember what I wrote during the previous TMA launch ;-)

Back to the grinder ...

2007-04-02T13:08:00.000-07:00

When Castorp and I started working on our [Censured] project, we decided very early on to be more methodological about it than what we did for the OctoberSky project. This mean that since January all we have done is making meshes, reading a lot of books and documents while writing our own documents. Thanks to Kyra's inputs, we have now a solid collections of facts, data and info on the spacecraft to be available within that Orbiter addon. My main contribution to the project so far (aside from the various R&D works and a bit of research) has been to work on the design of the addon. I know, it doesn't sounds too fun, but in fact it is most of the time (and the perfect occasion to get familiar with terms and concepts used in spacecraft design). Mostly I have been following the layout (and level of details) of the Mercury and Gemini manuals (and familiarization documents) and filling the gaps with what we know and what we think we know. Obviously accurate facts are hard to come by for anything related to the Soviet space program, so we have been taking some liberties. The Electrical Power System (EPS) design is a good example of the artistic freedom we took. With very little data on it, I designed the one we will implement in the addon to be very similar to the one used on the Gemini (and Mercury) spacecraft. It's likely to be historically incorrect, but at least it's technically sound. Now, as you will guess been a computer geek and all, I can't really stand working weeks after weeks on a document, so I came up with the idea of the R&D periods, where I can close OpenOffice and start the Visual Studio for some (most needed) (limited) coding time :-)

Speaking of R&D, I finished last night working on the framework to support the external panels I was talking about few posts ago. The following screenie shows a wrist watch displayed in a window (giving the current time in Moscow):

Anyhow, the coding fun's over for now ... time to start OpenOffice ;-) In case you are wondering, we don't exactly know when we will be starting to actually implement that addon. If I had to guess I'll said not before a couple of months ... maybe by summer?

Replayed relocation

2007-03-30T15:53:00.000-07:00

The Soyuz that the current ISS crew used to get to the ISS close to 6 months ago was relocated (by the same crew + Suni) yesterday. I, for once, missed the event live but hopefully the whole thing (I beleive) is available (47mb) from Space-Multimedia. These guys are really life-savers ;-) The video have some really nice shots, that's one 20 minutes investment you won't regret.

Now, I'm wondering if the crew took any pictures during the "flight" and if so, will they be posted on the usual expedition gallery? Hmm ... well in fact, to be honest I don't care too much for picture of the ISS ... I'll be more interested by pictures of the Soyuz ... but as the whole ISS' crew was on that Soyuz no one was taking pictures from the ISS ... oh well.

In case you missed it, Suzy has resumed her Russian space program blog. Be sure to check it out weekly (at least) for some good commentaries and links.

RocketCam envy

2007-03-26T11:30:00.000-07:00

Needless to said, I did watch the second launch of Falcon I last week ... Sadly not in real time as after the abort following ignition (hats off for the quick recycle btw) I was thinking that it will take weeks before they try again 9_9 so I closed my feed and biked home. Obviously, I was quite disappointed when I got home and found out that it did after all launch ... Luckily, recordings of the live event were made available soon after (HQ video from SpaceX), and it was pretty darn cool, love these shots during staging (NasaSpacefight.com have a recent article on what happen during the flight)! This video prompted be to send an quick email to my fellow team-mates stating that when we get to making the launch vehicle for [CENSURED] we will provides similar views, so that the launch and staging can be observed. Sure, it's totally not realistic, but hey after all, this is a video game, so we can deviate a bit from our usual hardcore line :-)

Speaking of deviating, I have spend the past week working on some more R&D which we will be using on that secret project of ours, as well as for OctoberSky. Castorp cames up with the crazy idea (not so in fact) of getting ride of the panels dedicated to items casually used during a mission (such as a watch, a notebook etc ...) by having such items in external Windows that the player could call up at anytime, anywhere ... so, for example, if you wanted to see what time it is in Baikonur while you are in orbit, you will call up the appropriate floating panel which you could then leave on screen (or more to a second screen if you have such setup):

Now, the tricky part is that I'd like these floating panels to be fully compatible with the basic Orbiter panels, so that objects (such as a switch or button ...) could be placed on either without requiring to be re-coded ...

Like a sunflower ...

2007-03-08T14:03:00.000-08:00

While I can't openly talk about [CENSURED] yet, I can at least post about some of the things we have been outfitting our Soyuz addon with. However, you should know that we are mainly using it as technological guinea pig, while the new project is still on the drawing boards. Anywho, last week I was bitten by the "how can I orient a vessel according to the sun" bug. Right before falling to a real bug (some sort of cold/flu) I managed last week to write a program (to run inside our virtual GPC) that when running will aim to orient the solar panels towards the sun, using the attitude control thrusters. Gotta said it's pretty cool to see that 7K-OK tracking automatically the sun during the sunlight part of its orbit :-)

Being just for testing purpose, that program isn't historically accurate obviously. For example, once the proper solar attitude is reached, it's likely that CMG type devices should be used to maintain the orientation within certain limits while the vessel moves along its orbital path, in order to conserve propellant.

Da thing ...

2007-02-26T10:52:00.000-08:00

The thing about realism in an addon is that it's guaranteed to give you some major headaches, unless you have a degree in all the single fields that are involved in Space Vehicle Design. Obviously this isn't my case so I drafted the help of a couple of book on the subject, such as Michael Griffin's one (the second been Elements of Spacecraft Design). Now, these books are not a miraculous solution to building a realistic simulation as they both assume the readers are actually studying the subjects in University, thus have the required background in mathematic and physic ... Needless to said both subject weren't my cup of tea back in the days, so overcoming my limitations is part of the fun of the whole Orbiter experience. For example, lately I have been refreshing my long forgotten (and not fully acquired 9_9) knowledge on heat and heat transfer mechanisms, so that I could design (from an addon point of view) the thermal control system of [CENSURED]. I have to admit that I felt rather dumb, having gone so many year without fully understanding how basic things like heater and fridge really work. I like to think that, caught in everyday life, I never had the time to indulge the curiosity to dig further ... Whatever the (real) reason, it's never to late, isn't it?

Порицание!

2007-02-22T14:10:00.000-08:00

Hi there! Yep, I'm still around ... been quite busy since my last post working on our [CENSURED] project. So far this project have been very much in the original spirit of this blog, which was "... learning Astronomy, spaceflight mechanics and spacecraft systems ..." as I have been burying myself deep in spacecraft systems (such as Electrical power system, Life support system and Thermal control system so far). At the same time, thanks to terrific contributions from Kyra, we have been discovering a lot of facts and data on [CENSURED]. It really was an "interesting" spacecraft. Anyhow, things are moving forward on a daily basis ... some will said at our usual (OctoberSky style) slow pace ;-) I'd like to said that we're "on schedule", but as I have no idea whatsoever of how much behind (0r ahead) we are ...

In other news .. well, not much happening really ... there's another Shuttle mission coming up in March .. which I will follow as usual, look for some more boring posts here :P

Clue®

2007-01-29T16:05:00.000-08:00

You probably didn't notice, but I have been a bit (too) silent over the past +12 days ... the reason been that we recently switched into Skunk works mode. Mind you, this isn't a particularly well kept top secret project, as Castorp have left a clue on the M6's forum ... Speaking of my partner in crime, his meshing talent was recently recognized by a book writer (Philip Baker) and some images from our Salyut-1/Soyuz 11 addon for Orbiter will be included in The Story of Manned Space Stations (coming out this April) as illustrations! Woot! Way to go buddy! :-)

Now, if you are wondering what the skunk works mode is going to change here ... well it's simple, I won't be talking much about our Orbiter's addon project for the next little while (+6 months) ... which mean that this blog is going to get even more boring that it already is ;-) ... One thing I can share however, is that our team recently increased in size (first time ever!), with Kyra joining us as a technical adviser. She (yep it's a she!) have an encyclopedic knowledge of the Soviet space program and we are very excited and happy to have her on board :-)

С днем рождения!

2007-01-16T12:39:00.000-08:00

Yes, I do feel somewhat ashame that with all my focus on the Soviet/Russian space program ... I still totally forgot about the 100th anniversary of Sergey Korolyov birth this past Friday (01/12) :-( Lorne Ipsum have written in The Space Review a rather nice article on The Chief Designer impact on the human space adventure, which by all accounts was definitely a talented and far seeing manager, but not the kind of person with whom it was easy to work with. In fact, he appears to have been in some occasion a very stubborn bully. Oh well ... no one is perfect, even (especially) people leaving major legacy in history. To mark the event, the next Progress spacecraft (M-59 to be launched on the 18th) to head for the ISS will have on the shroud an image of Korolyov. There's some nice pictures (links) to the assembly sequence of it in a thread of the NASASpaceflight.com forum.

Once again, Suzy have added a nice post to her blog. This one is on some comments made by Pavel Vinogradov (Exp 13's commander) regarding the state of the Russian space program. It's kind of sad indeed :-\

Player friendly?

2007-01-12T13:50:00.000-08:00

One of the benefit of not working (yet) on a high-fidelity set of panels for the Soyuz is that I can try to make things (somewhat) a bit more user friendly. Take, for instance, that GPC panel (If you scroll down to my previous post you can see it in all its user unfriendliness glory) I have hacked. Its purpose is to start and stop some programs (e.g automatic orientation, re-entry sequencing ...) in a interactively fashion, and to allow the monitoring of any program running on the simulated onboard computer. As you can see from the screen-shot even though a maximum of 9 programs can be run in parallel, we only allow the user to monitor the working of a single program (bottom part of the panel) and that's the part that was most bugging me the most, as I didn't find these 2 switches practical for that particular situation. As the programs are arranged in a matrix, the program to be monitored is selected by placing the switch on the position that indicate the row and column of the program (e.g A 2). It sure does the trick, but as it didn't feel right, I coerced Castorp into making a couple of bitmaps to represent a thumb wheel switch, similar to the ones visible on the Gemini control panel (above image). And the result is, I believe, a bit better:

Now the tricky part was to decide which interaction will be suited for that kind of controls. Should the user click on the right part if it want to rotate the wheel towards the left, and click on the left part to rotate towards the right? Or should the rotation direction (inverse) be bound to which button of the mouse is used? I decided to go with the later for now. Usage will tell if that was the good choice. As we will be using thumb wheel controls in the real panels, looking now into that matter isn't as futile as it may seems ;-)

That forgotten space program ...

2007-01-10T11:11:00.000-08:00

Having browsed trough many Gemini documents lately (in search of some background information on the computer used during the early days of the manned space program), I came to pick a certain interest for that not very well know program ... totally out shinned by it's offspring, the Apollo program. Anyway, that is quite an interesting space program (first US EVA, first docking in space) with a rather cutesy spacecraft (sort of look like a dog head I think, not that I'm a big fan of dog ...) ... Check out the thread I started on Nasaspaceflight.com's forum if you are looking for High-res pictures of Gemini, there's a couple of web site that have some. BTW, if you happen to visit the Neil Armstrong Museum anytime soon, be sure to check out their Gemini Docking Simulator ... it looks rather good!

Work on our implementation of the Analog/Digital computer/logic system is progressing nicely (but slowly), the following image shows a test program running:

Now, I have to admit that I was a bit inspired by Apollo's DSKY ... but, as this is still our engineering panel(s), I hope the Soyuz lovers will forgive us this sacrilege :-)

Back to/from the (in)sane side (maybe) ...

2007-01-04T13:08:00.000-08:00

Thanks to a suggestion from Castorp, which have been looking after my mental health over the past little while, I'm taking a well deserved (ahem) break from the collision madness, so that we can focus for a while on the reentry sequence ... which is long overdue. To that effect I have started to work on a GPC type component so that we could run on it the reentry program (among others). Now, the trick is that as none of the early Soviet spacecraft (until 1974) was equipped with a digital computer (on the US side, Gemini was the first manned vehicle to use one), we need this component to allow the simulation of less evolved logic system. I'm not too sure what they were using to be honest. According to the ASTP document describing the Soyuz on-board systems, they had some kind of "switching logic" .. not sure what that could be exactly ... maybe some kind of Analog computer? Anyhow, whichever piece of machinery was used to perform automatic task (in the Soviet space program, the crew had very little input on the working of the spacecraft, a striking comparison to the US projects), we should be able to simulate it. To support the development and test of that component, I have been working on adding a set of controls on the engineering panels of the 7K-OK so that we could start/stop some programs interactively and somewhat monitor their working (the right/top most group):

To get a better understanding of what this component should be offering, I have been looking into various Gemini documents and Apollo ... It is no surprise to me anymore, but still quite amazing the shear amount of information related to these project available on the web!

Red Moon #3

2006-12-28T15:36:00.000-08:00

Well ... yeah, it was indeed bold and cocky, when exactly a year ago I started on the Orbiter's add-on making road (to perdition). A very long road, full of detours and diversions which should have brought me to Lunar Orbit but instead have me stuck on LEO for the past 12 months ... I definitely hope that one of these days, my add-on(s) will finally Fly me to the Moon ... :-\ In any case, this year have been overall fun. I have learn a lot on a wide variety of subjects ranging from spacecraft design to computer simulation (and of course the history of the Soviet Space program). I also enjoyed tremendously my on-going collaboration with Castorp, I most definitly couldn't have gone much further if it wasn't for his meshing talent and resistance to my (constant?) nitpicking. I'm still surprised I haven't worn him out yet (knocking on wood) ;-)

If you still think that I'm super geeky, wait till you see Eric Hartwell's page on The Blue Marble (that famous pictures of the Earth taken from Apollo XVII during Lunar transit)! That's some serious geeking there! 8-O

Old school Orbitering

2006-12-22T11:50:00.000-08:00

Back in the old days, we didn't have any fancy space simulator such as Orbiter ... All we had, us kids, to play with, were old fashion tangible toys such as LEGO (one of my favorites) and scale models. I use to love assembling 1/72th models of planes and fly them around my bedroom. Of course, as I was NOT very good at finishing them (paint and decal jobs), so they sure didn't look too good ... but boys what is fun! :-) In many way, my recent adulthood hobby (obsession if you listen to my wife) of creating an addon for Orbiter, is somewhat similar to modelism ... well, maybe more like a cross between amateur rocketry and modelism ... as there's the added realism dimension to it (simulating complex systems and real world physic). Anyhow ... I'm bringing up that subject so that I can post a couple of links to some really cool LOW-FI modeling, involving some paper, scissor and glue ... such as the Energya + Buran stack. Check out the following page for all the models that can be downloaded. I'd love to build the Soyuz 11A511 launch vehicle, if I could find it somewhere ...

Well, as this is likely my last post before Newtonmas, I'll take this opportunity to send you my Season Greetings, Cheers!

Deja vu

2006-12-19T10:09:00.000-08:00

Well, with the undocking of STS-116 from the ISS scheduled for today and a return on the ground planned to Thursday (or Friday) ... the fun is about to end not only for the crew, but also for us the space geeks. I'll be missing my daily fixes of live view from orbit :-( Sure, there'll still be the ISS ... but its coverage is most of the time rather boring (IMHO) :-\ Hey, didn't I said the same thing during the previous Shuttle missions? Possible ... I've got a certain feeling of deja vu while writing this.

By the time I got home yesterday night, I had decided not to follow-up on my EVA envy. Knowing myself this small diversion will have ended-up been another multi-months efforts, so it was much smarter to avoid going down that road ... for now. Instead the main focus should be finishing up what I've got on my plate currently ... so that we can finally move out of the swamp.

The image I used to illustrate this page was stitched together by Avron (one of the many space geeks lurking on NasaSpaceflight.com forums) from NASA TV. It sure is a cool picture :-)

Spacewalk envy

2006-12-18T12:34:00.000-08:00

With all the EVA action on-going right now, it's no doubt that I suddenly feel the urge to do some in Orbiter. In fact that's could be a good supplement to my testing of the contact detection and handling I have been working on lately :-) Back in July of this year (following another ISS EVA) I was already mumbling some about the kind of EVA we wanted to be able to perform in our Soyuz addon. However, as we don't have yet the required meshes to simulate the Yastreb suit used for the EVA between Soyuz 4 and Soyuz 5, we will have to temporary borrow an EVA mesh from another addon. Now, I'm weighting the pro and cons of doing it. It looks like my partner in crime (castorp) isn't sure that we need yet another distraction at this point. He might be right ... even if this is yet another engineering test, it still involve a fair amount of work to get going ...

STS-116 imagery gallery just got updated with 3 magnificents pictures of the Soyuz TMA and Progress spacecraft docked to the station, check them out!

Союз sighting!

2006-12-13T10:33:00.000-08:00

Here ya go! A Soyuz (and a Progress) finally visible on NASA TV :-) So you see, these pages haven't really turned into yet another Shuttle's lover blog ;-) Oh, speaking of TV, NASA have made available an High Definition (HD) version of the launch video. It well worth the bandwidth (222mb for the biggest one). I hope they'll offer more of these during the mission (docking in HD will be sweet!) :-)

Labeling stuff ...

2006-12-12T13:54:00.000-08:00

Okay ... yeah I know, yet another post dedicated (mostly) to the current STS-116 mission 9_9 ... what can I said? There's much (real world) Soyuz activity lately ... Anyway, there was some pretty darn good imagery yesterday during the rendez-vous and docking. Hmmm ... docking at dawn! Woohooo! :-).

As you may have noticed, I very recently started using labels to tag each post. This should in the long run allow for some filtering, so that anyone will be able to improve the signal-to-noise ratio of this blog ;-) So far I have been using STS for the Space Shuttle related contents (well duh!) .. and OKB for everything related to my work on the (Orbiter) addon(s). OKB stand for Опытное конструкторское бюро, it seems appropriate ;-)

Anyhow, I'm still swamped in the contact detection and response monkey business. I have been working on that part of the SDK for a bit above two months now 9_9. As usual, I may have over-complicated things, that's kind of a usual thing for me ... Anyway I'm currently considering a slightly different approach to the problem, so that it will be easier to implements and also save a bit the frame rate. The idea been that we want some level of realism (with somewhat correct contact response), but not at any cost (performance and simplicity for the developer). Anyway, the bottom line is some more delay ahead ... but hey as Greg Anderson put it: "Focus on the journey, not the destination. Joy is found not in finishing an activity but in doing it".

Roll program!

2006-12-11T08:27:00.000-08:00

Oh boy! That night launch! I can still recall my heart pounding from the very last seconds of the countdown to the ET separation. That was something! :-) I have been enjoying all the high quality videos posted on the L2 forum and oh my ... ! My wife wasn't that impress by me looking at all that geek p0rn Sunday morning ... oh well :-)

I forgot to mention the other days, that there's a very handy site hosted by KSC which offers screencaps of various video cameras located on the site (including NASA TV). Good place to grab pictures from, such as:

Docking to the ISS is scheduled for 2:06pm (Pacific time).

Launch coverage

2006-12-09T11:30:00.000-08:00

Well, launch coverage have started on NASA TV ... Got some errances to run today so I won't be following the coverage much :-( The weather forecast at that moment doesn't looks too good (wind, clouds and possible showers) .. 70% chance of NO GO at the time of launch commit .... I, for one, would love a launch tomorrow night as I will be home .. hehehe :-)

On other news, Kodiak have released his Venera-D addon this morning. I haven't downloaded it yet, but it sure looks good :-)

Bummer!

2006-12-08T12:34:00.000-08:00

I was totally bummed yesterday evening when the launch was scrubbed ... I know it's not a bit issue and that it will eventually launch when all the criteria are satisfied ... but I'm suppose to attend a Christmas party this Saturday evening! So if the launch go as it's currently planned I won't be able to see it live! Bummer! :-\ I can only hope for another scrub ... I know that's a pretty selfish statement to make, but I really like to see the event live! ... I guess I could skip the party? Hmmm ...

If you like this very blog (no?! really?), you will surely enjoy Suzy's blog. Suzy is the person behind the well known (at least among the folks that like Russian space hardware) site Kosmonavtka. She got lots of good stuff on that site and on her blog, so be sure to check it out!

GO or NO GO?

2006-12-07T10:06:00.000-08:00

The third Shuttle launch of the year is scheduled to be today ... that is if weather permit ... so far it looks like it may happens as the weather forecast is improving (or so I have read) ... Liftoff is currently scheduled for 6:30pm (PDT). Like for the previous launches, I'll be keeping a close watch on the mission. As I have my L2 account (didn't have it for the whole duration of the previous flight) I should be swimming in nerdy details for the whole mission :-) ... Speaking of nerds, there's a thread on NasaSpaceflight.com where anyone can follow the progress of the launch preparation.

On the October Sky front, I'm still struggling with the contact response :-\ I got the basic impulse based response going (and it seems to be working) and now I'm trying to find some solution(s) to prevent (or at least limit) meshes penetration. My lack of math abilities have really hampered my progress :-( I wish I had been a more dedicated student when I was growing up ... If only the homework had been more exciting like applying what we learned to space flight simulation!

Space geek haven!

2006-12-05T13:35:00.000-08:00

During the last EVA performed by the ISS crew, Mikhail Tyurin snapped a picture of the Progress' antenna that failed to retract prior to the docking of that automatic cargo vessel. It took over two weeks before that picture was finally available for the space geeks (first on L2 and now on the Expedition 14 images gallery) ... Check this out:

Sexy isn't it? :-) On the left side (dark grey) is the Orbital module of the Progress. The gold colored part is the aft port of the Zvezda Service Module. It's clearly visible that the antenna which extend from the Progress is resting under some kind of hand rail (visible on the far right of the image), thus could cause some issues during undocking.

The same spacecraft was used yesterday to give the ISS a reboost. A video shot from inside the station during the firing of the Progress' engine is available on Space Multimedia. It's neat to see a free floating baseball ball moving along the station during the burn :-) With the launch of STS-116 coming up (about 2 days away), there's going to be even more goodies out for us, space geeks, to get our hands on :-)

STS p0rn!

2006-11-27T14:27:00.000-08:00

No sorry ... if you ended-up here while looking for some real p0rn ... well no, there's nothing like that here, just some plain geeky stuff in the form of some great videos of the Space Shuttle :-) I found the link to it on NSpaceflight.com's forum, the site hosting them is a bit slow (around +3kb/s) but its definitely worth the wait ... That of course is if you are into the whole STS thing ;-)

I recently received Space Vehicle Design which was authored a while back by Michael Griffin (with ). Yep ... the current NASA admin. Anyhow, I haven't put the book to use yet, but there's lot of good stuff in it .. most of it in form that a E type student like me could understand (or hope to) ;-)

Семёрка!

2006-11-24T09:59:00.000-08:00

As you will see (or likely seen already), this new batch of screenshots are introducing a new comer in our vessel fleet: the Smeyorka derived Soyuz Launch Vehicle. There is at this time, 3 different versions of that particular launch vehicle. You've got Urwumpe's version, Mustard's version and now Castorp's version:

Now, some people may be critic of yet another version of the same launch vehicle ... But at the time we started working on it, the only one available was Urwumpe's low-res version (and at the time of this post, Mustard's version hasn't been released). This is going to sound quiet totalitarian, but we wanted to be in full control of the 3D models that compose it, so that the level of details could be in-sync with the rest of the addon, and that the meshs could be close knit with the coding. This doesn't mean that we believe that our version is going to be better than the 2 others. Mustard's work is very good, but our approach to mesh making is quiet different (evil is in the details as they said). Besides, we all have a life outside of the Orbiter's world which constraint the amount of time we can invest in it, thus relying on a 3rd party to deliver (and maintain) a critical component, is a risk we didn't want to take.

The Salyut 1 station have also received some of our attention lately (3D and code):

Anyhow, please keep in mind that all these are still a work-in-progress (I'll add that it is also a labor-of-love), thus likely to change (and likely to be filled with errors). You can see more screenies, if you wish, on a Flickr set I have setup.

Acetaminophen is my friend (lately)

2006-11-23T13:59:00.000-08:00

Things have been going rather slow lately ... mostly because I have been sort of sick since Monday ... I guess that'll teach me a lesson for commuting to work on my bike under Vancouver's heavy November rain .. :-< .. Or maybe not ... when times come around next year, I'll probably have forgotten all about this (bad) experience 9_9. As we haven't posted any update since over a month on Orbiter's forum, people (well, at least one fellow) have started bumping (well, only one bump post so far) that October Sky thread of ours. I have been delaying my reply so that I could post some fresh screenshots, showing all the latest meshes we've got :-) Castorp've been busy lately ;-)

(still) Bumping into things ...

2006-11-17T13:36:00.000-08:00

Lately I have been working on the collision response ... With my limited math skill, it really is a challenge. Castorp have witnessed several version of the collision handling (In fact, I rather call it contacts response as not all the collisions are ... well, u know, collisions) ... some were somewhat correct and some were utterly wrong. Anyhow, the whole idea of this Orbiter's business as a virtual playground where learning could be fun, has proven itself ... no matter how painful it can be at time :-| Many other things have been on-going in parallel, I hope to have some some screenies to show.

If you are looking for some figures (like accurate numbers) to setup your Orbiter's scenario, I'll suggest you have a look to Michael Schumacher's web site: http://www.rka-statistics.com . He got some neatly organized data on each of the Soyuz flights since 1967 (including the serial number of each spacecraft!). He also have a similar site for the US space program on http://www.nasa-statistics.com.

Bumping into things ...

2006-11-07T13:33:00.000-08:00

It still is a long way to go, but we finally starting to be getting somewhere on the Orbiter's addon front. I spent most of the week-end synchronizing all our Soyuz fleet (7K-OK, 7K-OKS and 7K-T) as well as building from scratch (well, not totaly as I did reuse some parts from the Soyuz addons) a new DLL for the Salyut 1 space station, for which I had been sitting on the latest meshes from Castorp for ... ahem ... a few weeks (let's said 9_9). The following screenshot shows Soyuz 10 docked to the station in one of our test scenario:

Now, aside from having some empty panels and all it's windows, the Salyut add-on is pretty much useless ... Well, it does have a docking port so it can at least be used for docking practice as well as for rendezvous ;-) I'll be starting to add things to it (like thrusters and some controls) over the next few weeks (months).

The collision detection (and handling) that I was talking about few posts ago is also coming along (nicely?), altought there's still a long way to go before that is completed. In the following screenshot you can see the axis-aligned bounding box of a possible contact between the two vessels:
The purple balls marks the position of the 8 corners of the contact bounding box for the Soyuz on the left (7K-OK female), while the 8 yellow balls indicates the position of the contact bounding box for the Soyuz on the right (7K-OK male). The red and blue balls mark the position of the vessels AAB (axis aligned bounding box) for the left vessel and right vessel, respectively.

(not so) Secret love ...

2006-11-03T14:41:00.000-08:00

Ok ... yeah, this isn't really secret ... at least not if you have been following this blog ... I'm not only in love with Soyuz spacecraft ... I also like a lot the Space Shuttle (... and Buran too). Thus, lately I have been enjoying a lot the many posts done by nasaspaceflight.com's forum participant Jacques. This very nice fellow (like most people on this forum) have posted many pictures of STS from his collection, and I have been saving them to my hard drive feverishly (here's some links to the threads: OV-102, STS-2, OV-99). It is great that he is sharing them with us, especially as most (if not all) of them are very rare pictures.

Another good source of Shuttle pictures is the web site of the Kennedy Space Center, which sports some quiet nice (and hi-res) pictures of the Shuttle processing (STS-116 these days) .

When I'm not obsessing about collecting pictures of spacecrafts, I'm usually geeking away on our Soyuz addon for Orbiter. I took a break from working on the collision detection in order to implement some simple (and crude) Control Moment Gyroscope so that when activated, the torque generated by the translation thrusters could be neutralized ... making docking and flying around something (like a Salyut space station) much more easier (the real hardware had such a gyro package used among other things for stabilization).

I'd like to make a correction to my previous post, where I was saying that the current ISS crew was not taking much pictures. While this statement still hold true, they did post rather quickly (in fact a few minutes after I wrote the post) pictures of the Progress vehicle closing in for docking:

Any ... Progress?

2006-10-26T15:37:00.000-07:00

There was a bit of tension in the air earlier today when one of the Kurs' antenna located on the aft of the Progress failed to report been retracted. The automatic Soyuz derived spacecraft docked to the ISS earlier without any other incident. This antenna has to be fully retracted before hard docking can be achieve ... More on this morning (live) frenzyness on Spaceflightow.com. I'm hoping the pictures taken by the crew earlier today will appears soon on the Expedition 14 photo gallery ... which so far have been anything but interesting .. 9_9 A video of the event is available (as always) on Space-Multimedia.com.

über coolness!

2006-10-17T00:41:00.000-07:00

Orbinaut Reverend have setup a live page of his Orbiter Shuttle mission. The page sporting a screenshot of the simulation is updated frequently (every minute or less) ... and was showing earlier Atlantis closing in on the ISS then docking with it ... this is so cool! Once this is adopted by many other Orbiter users this is gonna make things quiet interesting ... maybe I'll setup such a feed when testing our addon :-)

Speaking of which, work is continuing at the usual (read slow) pace, the collision detection have turned out to be quiet more involving that it looked at first (surprise 9_9) ... there's a fair amount of work which needed to be completed in order to support the collision detection, mainly the sub-division of each meshes into parts (and each parts into pieces), so that we can easily find out which pieces is in contact with what (e.g: docking probe and docking female cone). At the same time, I'm adding to our engineering addons (Soyuz 7K-OK, 7K-OKS and 7K-T) support for dynamic bounding boxes as visible in the following screenies (the 4 red balls marks the position of the corners of the vessel bounding box):

If you enjoy this blog (No way! Seriously?) you ought to check out Kodiaks Space Contraptions which lately have been working on some cool looking Soviet area space probes. Looking pretty good aren't they?

6 + 1 = lucky (seven)

2006-10-13T11:56:00.000-07:00

Few days ago, the Russia's Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) announced its latest selection of cosmonauts candidates. The six men and one woman (most younger than me! :-\ ) will start their 2 years training early next year at the Yuri Gagarin center. As always, the Russian space program is kept in a shroud of secrecy so biographical data on each of the candidate is pretty much non existent (well aside of their names and affiliation, five Air Force officers and two Energiya engineers). BTW, if you are looking for more info on the current (or past) cosmonauts, make sure to visit Suzy's web site, she got a nice (and up-to-date) section just for that.

Late last week, I was working on having the Vzor (periscope) break free (if it wasn't jettisoned earlier) in the early stage of the SA (reentry module) reentry. It was working fine, but seeing it flying trought the body of the SA was bugging me a bit (Orbiter doesn't come with collision handling, but there is a 3rd party solution).So I decided to get sidetracked a bit and work on the collision detection and handling for our addon(s) ... Like we didn't have enough to do already! 9_9 ... It's definitely quiet interesting and challenging to do ... I just hope it won't be too much over my head ... especially the Rigid Bodies part of it (right now I'm still working on the collision detection). This should make docking quiet interesting and a bit more realistic ... docking probes will glide down the docking female cone ... too much delta-V will put strain on the docking apparatus ... possibly damaging it (e.g Soyuz 10) ... Obviously, this is a important thing to have in an add-on, definitely worth the headaches I have been suffering for the past few days ...

Minority report?

2006-10-11T08:06:00.000-07:00

I forgot to mention yesterday that a certain consensus was reached on the NasaSpaceflight.com's forum regarding the imagery from Soyuz TMA-8 reentry showing the 3 modules that compose a Soyuz spacecraft reentering in the atmosphere .... and it appears that the less bright dot on the left side is, as I was guessing, the reentry module (SA), while the brighter dot is the service module (PAO) burning is way down the surface.

"we have lift-off, lift-off at 7:51 a.m. Eastern Standard Time." #2

2006-10-10T13:00:00.000-07:00

As the only regular reader of this blog, you probably already know that 4 days ago was the 1st anniversary of this very (boring) blog! ... Me, myself and I, had a terrific party over the week-end to celebrate the event ... it was a lot of fun, wishing you were there :P I think this is a good time to have a look at the original goal of this blog:

So, what can you expect to see here? Well ... my goal is to use this blog to chronicle my progress in learning basic Astronomy and spaceflight mechanics (as my maths and physics skills need to be seriously brushed-up, it's going to take some time ...) and in learning and mastering the Apollo spacecraft (Crew and lunar module) as it is simulated within Orbiter. So don't expect to see a report on my own Apollo XI mission anytime soon ;-)

Not quiet what it turned out to be eh? :D Yeah ... What happened is that I got interested in the Russian space/lunar program, and that eventually lead me into joining forces with Castorp on an addon for Orbiter ...

In other (and more interesting) news, today was the relocation of Soyuz TMA-9 on the ISS. I watched part of it live on NASA TV and there was some really pretty neat views of the spacecraft performing the maneuver. If you missed it, I'm sure a recording will be available soon on the usual places (e.g: Space Multimedia). Another interesting bit is the latest update of the JSC Oral History Project which have added a couple more interviews, including one (95 pages long) of Bob Crippen, pilot of STS-1. I have to admit that I haven't read it yet, but I'm sure that it won't be 265kb of bandwidth wasted ;-)

Moving on (sort of)

2006-10-04T09:34:00.000-07:00

Been a bit too busy to blog lately, but yes, I did follow the return to earth of Soyuz TMA-8 last week. I was somewhat impress to see that the NASA TV coverage had improved since the last time. The views of the plasma trail both from the ISS and from the ground were amazing .... first time I have seen that for a Soyuz spacecraft. I'm not too sure which one of the 3 fireballs was the descent module (SA), but I'm guessing it's the less bright one ... well at least it make sens as it's the only module that isn't been destroyed during the reentry. That leave the brighter one to be the service module (PAO) which at that point should still have some propellant, thus burn brighter? ... Hmm ... well I'm not so sure anymore now ... better ask more knowledgeable folks ...

Work on the OctoberSky addon for Orbiter have been progressing nicely lately. Over the week-end we added a new Soyuz variant to our (small) fleet, the 7K-OKS (used only for Soyuz 10 and the ill fated Soyuz 11):

The latest patch (released last week) for the 2006 edition have not only fixed the animation bug which was crippling us, but also introduced a couple of new API calls which are making our life much easier (adding and removing meshes on the fly and changing the Center of Gravity) :-) Nice going Dr Martin!

While castorp, my partner in crime, is busy meshing away, I'm going to be reworking on the reentry sequence ... obviously the whereabout of the thermal blankets (EVTI) will be once again a subject of this blog ... X-

Tulipa kolpakowskiana? #8

2006-09-28T11:05:00.000-07:00

I know ... you don't need to tell me ... this thread is getting pretty ridiculous now ... This time, it's really SiberianTiger's fault. He have very kindly proposed to post a question on the Soyuz separation sequence on Novosti-Kosmonavtiki 's forum few days ago, and ... well some of the answers to his post triggered me into using Google with the term EVTI, which is the real acronym for what we have been calling Thermal Blankets ... and here's what I found:

During its orbital flight, the SA is covered with six overlapping panels of MLI insulation (EVTI, ekranno-vakuumnaya termoizplyatsyia, = vacuum-shield thermal insulation). These panels are fastened to the hull with transverse belts that come apart when the SA separates from the PAO. During reentry, the panels are blown away by air stream and thruster plumes.]

How reliable is that piece of information? Well, it's taken from NASA Space Station On-Orbit Status for June 8th 2005 ... which some folks will consider somewhat reliable ;-) Now, the tricky part is going to simulate the blowing away of the blankets during the early stages of the reentry and when the RCS of the Descent module is been used ...

BTW, today is the return of TMA-8 crewed by ISS's Expedition 13th and Anousheh Ansari. I sure wish some external cameras localed on the Orbital or Service Modules could capture some of the events that will occurs ... that'll be very helpful ...

Tulipa kolpakowskiana? #7

2006-09-27T09:18:00.000-07:00

OK, bare with me for what I'd like to think as the last post on the thermal blankets - modules separation subject (yeah right) ... I spent the last few days rewiring our 7K-OK to support the simultaneous separation of the Orbital and Service modules and, aside from a couple of minor tweaking to come, I believe we finally got something that is relatively accurate .. well kinda ... I'm still not too sure about the timing of the separation, nor the way the blankets peel off ... But here it is:

First, the cable running from the PAO to the BO is yanked away ...

Then the spacecraft separates into 3 modules and the blankets are peeled away ...

Et voila ... now we can all (hopefully) move on ;-)

Tulipa kolpakowskiana? #6

2006-09-25T11:25:00.000-07:00

Over the course of the week-end, and thanks to the contribution of Anik, Danderman and Jim (from the NasaSpaceflight L2 forum), we have gained a better knowledge of the Soyuz modules separation. Here are the facts:

On the original Soyuz (OK, OKS), the BO and PAO were jettisoned at the same time.
On Soyuz T and TM, the BO was jettisoned before the deorbit burn (in order to save propellant) until TM-5. Since then the jettison is done simultaneously (like it was before).
The thermal blankets are peeled away at the time of the separation (likely torn away by the PAO and BO pulling them in opposite directions, like the image from my previous post shows).

The question now is to decide how best to render the peeling of the blankets. We could have them break in several pieces, which is likely more realistic, but that will put a bit more strain on the player computer .. without been all that important after all ... I guess some experimentation are necessary ...

Tulipa kolpakowskiana? #5

2006-09-22T15:40:00.000-07:00

I finally brought a few of my Soyuz questions over to L2 in hope that any of the space aficionados lurking on these forums will have any insight(s) into the matter ... and to my surprise (I've got to admit), I got two different persons telling me that the thermal blankets (which if you recall were the subject of some posts few months ago) actually stay attached to the SA after the separation of the Orbital and Service modules .... darn ... so much for spending days obsessing about the timing and parameters of their separations' animation ... 9_9 Now, if this piece of information can be confirmed it will definitely simplify the PAO jettison sequence. I won't have to trash all the code I wrote for the animations as we'll be reusing it to simulate blanket failures such as the one that occurred on Soyuz TM-9.

The Wikipedia entry concerning this particular Soyuz flight have a rather interesting sentence:

"During reentry, the cosmonauts ejected both the orbital module and the service module simultaneously in an effort to minimize the chances that a blanket could snag. Normally the orbital module went first."

Hmm ... now, if I could figure out why they did that, it will be very helpful in verifying the information given to me by the two L2's subscribers ...

Стыковка! #2

2006-09-20T12:52:00.000-07:00

Once again, I was glued to NASA TV last night, watching the docking of Soyuz TMA-9 to the ISS :-) As usual if you missed it, you can get a video of the event from Space-Multimedia. The amount of chatter on the audio loop during the docking is making me wonder how much data are the guys on the ground getting from telemetry ... I mean, the Shuttle's docking in comparison is done in an (almost religious) quasi complete silence. It could also be that (AFAIK) the Shuttle dock manually, while Soyuz docking is automatic. So the commander of the Shuttle need to concentrate on its flying instead of just monitoring the status of the various system and progress of the automated docking system ...

Altought Anousheh Ansari haven't started blogging from the ISS yet, she sent an email (from Space) today. I hope she'll post all the pictures she took during her flight to the station (and also any pictures from the station) :-)

Выведение! #2

2006-09-18T00:06:00.000-07:00

What could I said about today launch that I didn't already said 6 months ago when TMA-8 was launched? ... Not much ... Soyuz launch are still somewhat rather dull ... In any case it's still worth watching it, and in case you missed it, there's an high quality video on space-multimedia.nl.eu.org. In contrary to the Space Shuttle which is launched over the Atlantic ocean, the Soyuz are launched over land and all components of the rocket but the 3rd stage (Block I) which enter orbit with the spacecraft, drop back somewhere over the steppes of Kazakhstan. After 45 years of space launch, that's quiet a lot of junk laying around, and more junk falling down every so often.

The spaceflight participant slot was occupied for this launch by Anousheh Ansari, I'll be monitoring her blog and web page over the coming week for any thing of interest ... so far she haven't blogged from orbit yet.

Meanwhile, the NASA SpaceFlight gallery is been slow to be updated with High-res pictures from the launch ... darn.

Live from Baikonur LC1

2006-09-17T20:52:00.000-07:00

Less than 20mn left before TMA-9 liftoff from its pad in Baikonur. Nasa TV is broadcasting the launch live! Oh boy another exciting week for the space enthusiast :-)

Moving too fast ...

2006-09-14T13:46:00.000-07:00

I came to realize while watching the video of the deployment of the solar array installed yesterday on the ISS, that I got the deployment timing of Soyuz own solar panels quiet wrong. I like to think that when I wrote that part, I simply didn't have the patience the wait several minutes for the whole panel to unfold ... and that didn't just disregard some basic law of spacecraft engineering ... Now the problem is to find the correct amount of time it is supposed to last.

Few weeks ago, I will have no doubt said that once I will have received Soyuz : A Universal Spacecraft, finding any obscure details on this spacecraft will be as simple as flipping through the pages of that book ... Obviously I was dreaming ... That book surely have some good stuff in it, but in no way can it be considered to be the definitive, know-it-all, Soyuz bible (c'mon the term Vzor isn't even in the Index!).

Anyway ... the pace of the addon's development have picked up steam again, we are churning out Developer Release (DR) like sausages ... still, don't expect a release in your lifetime .. err .. I meant anytime soon .. ;-)

Ping!

2006-09-09T11:14:00.000-07:00

Well no, I just didn't get back today ... I've been lurking around for a week already, but without much new stuff to show .. well I didn't feel like posting was necessary. This month is looking rather exciting for the space enthusiast, with a Shuttle launch (up in orbiter now) and a Soyuz launch (to the ISS) soon after. Speaking of launch, while I was away, some of the Orbiter's folks have got together on a project to build a better version of the Baikonur launch site. The following screenshots (posted by Mustard) looks pretty promising:

Can't wait to launch our Soyuz from it :-)

Pong!

2006-08-18T12:24:00.000-07:00

Hehe ... nope we're still here ... been rather busy with work and summer (yeah darn summer! When is that over!??) ... Progress on the Orbiter's addon haven't (really) stopped, just been rather slow lately ... and it's about to get even slower as I'm about to go away on a summer break ... Oh and btw, I finally received Soyuz : An universal Spacecraft (+5 $%^# months after ordering it) ... I quickly flipped trough the pages, and it looks pretty good ... However, I must said that most of the schematics I have seen in it, have already been published in other books (or on the Internet), nevertheless, this going to be a big help in our quest for realism :-)

Next post should be in early September ... wishing you all a good end of summer! :-)

More nitpicking ...

2006-07-28T00:48:00.000-07:00

Following some tweaking of the solar panel meshes by Castorp, we finally got around of animating the unfolding of one of them last night ... with some success. I write some as there's something that still doesn't sounds quiet right when I look at the folded panels and compare it to what I was expecting them to look like, based on the few low-res pictures I have. The whole solar panel is composed of 4 segments, two of which are composed of sub-segments allowing the whole panel to bend as seen on the picture bellow:

The segments arrangement on the panel is such that the inner and outer segments have the same length, while the two middle ones having the same length but slightly longer than the two others. Note, that the panels used on the early Soyuz were different from the one still in use today. The ASTP's Soyuz was the first one to use the redesigned ones. The following pictures shows that quiet well:

Now, let see how it look in our add-on when the panel is folded:

What I was expecting was to have the the location where the segment 1&2 bend to be at the same height than for the segment 1&4 ... which obviously isn't the case ...

Also, the folding of the outer segment (the 4th one) seems to be somewhat non logical ... as there is enough room to fit in on the other side, against the radiator (that grey thing behind) ... But then it is the way it looks on all pictures I could find:

Now, I'm wondering ... maybe I got the unfolding sequence wrong? Time to study some more the animation made by the guy from russianspaceweb.com ... even if it's for a Soyuz TM ... On the other hand these solar panels are much simpler than the older ones ... and there's no longer the radiator under ...

Items (still) not yet shipped ...

2006-07-24T08:31:00.000-07:00

Over the week-end I have been working on translating (well ... I mean babelfishing, as I don't know a single word of russian) a very interesting document authored by Yurii Tiapchenko one of the designer of the Soyuz's console "Sirius". This kind of document is pretty critical for our project as this is pretty much the only source of information we have on it (and as I'm still waiting for that Soyuz book!) ... There is also an article from the same author available on the web (and in English!), but it doesn't have the same level of details and mostly deal with the more recent Soyuz variant. While I was swimming in russian, I also started looking at how we were going to display Russian within the panels (as well as how to support multi-language). This is in fact a rather simple issue thanks to Unicode. By using only Unicode string in the add-on (and of course in the SDK), we can pretty much support any language. Now, the problem is that a word or a sentence in English may take more space than in Russian, and space on a controls (or around the controls) is limited. Here's the russified version of one of our test panel (related to my previous post):

Friday night I found the meaning of the two knobs located bellow the screen (see previous post) ... Brightness and Contrast (well duh!). Now, we have to decide how we're going to deal with the language issue. For realism sake, using Russian is the way to go, but it'll make things way more complex for non Russian users ...

Friday babelfishing

2006-07-21T15:20:00.000-07:00

I have started to study the sparse documents we have related to the Soyuz consoles over the past few days, in order to build all that we need to implement the realistic panels (for now we only have some test ones). One of the interesting instruments is the Combined Electronic Indicator, which was used for video and data (dunno yet if it could be use to display video and data at the same time ...). I found a schematics in one if the ASTP document which indicate the controls (knobs) associated with the CRT screen, but the document isn't of great quality and ... I can't read Russian!

Any tips will be very welcome ... in the meantime I'll head for Babelfish ...

Monday landing ...

2006-07-17T15:31:00.000-07:00

I've got to said that the pilot point of view offered on Nasa TV during the last seconds of STS-121 return to KSC was pretty a pretty cool ... but what will be even cooler is to have the same viewpoint during re-entry ... That'll be wonderful! I have seen before similar video (shot from another viewpoint in the cabin) ... so I'm pretty convince that the particular camera recording this viewpoint was ON during the re-entry ... now, the question is will this be released to the public? ... A somewhat similar video (was facing the crew) for the ascent was released, so let's hope the same happen.

Anyway, now that the mission is over, this blog should resume its normal useless contents ... more rambling and mumbling about Soyuz and Orbiter ... at least until STS-115 get underway :D

Sunday blogging ...

2006-07-16T01:46:00.000-07:00

Well, STS-121 is coming tomorrow to an (successful) end with landing planned for the Kennedy Space Center in the early morning (6:07 PDT) ... The past 2 weeks have been pretty exciting and interesting ... I may have been a bit too obsessed (or so I have been told ...) ... but heck ... it was fun, and Shuttle flight don't happen that often anymore eh? Speaking of the Shuttle, one of the Orbiter's user have put some very nice photoshopped screenshots of STS-1 on the Orbiter's forum. Deadstick have been using David413's Shuttle Fleet and Gazza's STS Payload addon to simulate the first flight of Columbia. I took yesterday the same mission for a spin and it's really nice. The shuttle 3D model and skin (using the visual update by Preacher_mg) are amazing ... With level 10 Earth surface it is simply amazing!

I'm a bit mad at myself for not testing the Shuttle Fleet before ... I mean, I'm a huge fan of the Space Shuttle (Buran included) ... but I never took the time to use this wonderful add-on! Shame on me I guess.

Whiles I'm on the US space program, there have been yet another update on the Project Apollo Archive recently (Apollo 17 unabridged film magazines 133-135 and 137-147). I believe that most of these frequent updates only improve the quality of the images, but don't add never-seen before images (at least not always), nevertheless there's some amazing shots in it such as this one:

I wonders if we'll see a similar site once the Shuttle is retired : www.stsarchive.com domain name is available ...

We gonna get busy ...

2006-07-13T09:56:00.000-07:00

Flying in space with Orbiter is pretty cool ... but once you have reached orbit and that there is no burn to be performed ... what do you do? Sure it is nice to look at the earth zooming by down bellow your spacecraft ... or to perform an EVA, but .,. after a while it get a bit boring. This is not something that is only experienced by Orbinauts, even real astronauts experience boredom in space at time. Here's what Norman Thagard said about part of his trip to the Mir station back in 1995:

"... and I wound up not having enough to do, and that's not good, because what happens if you don't have enough to do, even though it's space flight and all of that, you still get bored. I mean, there's little by way of entertainment there, and you need to really be busy."

Now, there's a couple of way that one can deal with boredom in Orbiter, you can either use the time acceleration to skip to when something related to orbital mechanics, docking or reentry need to be performed ... or you can grab a good book and/or use an alarm clock to keep track of time while performing other tasks :-) A couple of 3rd party Orbiter's addon, like NASSP, have taken the route of trying to simulate the whole spaceflight experience with its hundred of complex tasks to be performed, enough to make you feel overworked :-) This is something that we're trying to implement in our addon, with the small variation that we would like to offer various level of player involvement in what can be seen by many as tedious and boring tasks (e.g: your virtual crew mates will cycle the cryo tanks when required).

Another thing we hoping to experience with, is adding some realism to the whole EVA business. Floating in space is cool, but there also boredom will creep in. Now, this will be tricky to do in Orbiter, but the idea is to simulate hand rails, safety tethers and interactions between the vessel body and the cosmonaut. Castorp and I have started talking about it, as we'll have an EVA to support for Soyuz 4&5, even so this is, by modern standard, a rather easy EVA. In any case, the whole point is to try to make it more fun (and more realistic we hope) ... we'll see if we succeed 9_9 ... (at least we'll have fun trying to implement it!)

W00t!

2006-07-10T14:44:00.000-07:00

Oh yeah ... like all the geeks that spent their Saturday with an eye on NASA TV, my jaw dropped when I saw the 8s preview that was show during a press conference Saturday afternoon ... That screen capture here doesn't totaly do justice to the grandness of the video taken by a camera located at the bottom of the booster. Now, if they had some high-res digital camera located on the same spot, that'll be some terrific images (perfect for desktop background) :-) Speaking of imagery, be sure to check out the mission imagery pages (as well as the ISS exp. 13 collection) ... there's some good stuff on both .. however, NASA isn't particualy fast at updating them ... :-|

Adrenaline rush

2006-07-05T14:05:00.000-07:00

Just like last summer, for STS-114, I was glued to my screen yesterday to watch the liftoff of STS-121 ... feeling a rush of adrenaline building-up as the countdown was running to its end and as Discovery was performing (flawlessly) its ascent to orbit. What a ride that must be, eh? In 10 minutes from ground level to +27,000 km/h ... As I was watching also Saturday and Sunday, I heard the NASA's commentator talking about an attraction to open soon at the Kennedy Space Center, which will allow common folks (hey that's me!) to experience the thrill of a Shuttle ride ... I couldn't see any link to that on the Visitor Center web site ... but anyway that kind of thing isn't for me ... with my chronic motion sickness, I'll likely barf all over the seats ... :-(

One way of following what's happening in the mission (while at work), is to poll the following image, which is from the NASA TV feed:

It is refreshed about once every minute (or so). Then if something really exciting is happening, you can (re)start a feed ;-)

на последнем лете!

2006-06-29T12:37:00.000-07:00

At last it's summer! Time to kick back and relax a bit ... enjoy time at the beach, longer and warm evening stroll ... yeah right, no time to slack! We got some Soyuz' business to finish! :-) ... Maybe if I change my desktop's background from a Soyuz launch to a picture of British Columbia's summer sky, I'll get some tanning done? No? ... oh well :-)

While I have been coding away on the 2D panels lately, Castorp have been reworking some of the orbital module's (BO) details for the early Soyuz variants: OK, OKS and T. Here's a screenshot of the new 7K-T:

Now, the Igla antenna visible on the left of the image, isn't correct for that particular variant. Castorp, inspired by a picture of a more recent Soyuz variant, did a very good job on that particular antenna ... too bad it's the wrong one for that variant! }:->

In case you have been hiking in the back-country for the past few weeks, you are probably aware that the launch of STS-121 is for this coming Saturday. While most Canadian will be out celebrating Canada day, I'll be keeping cool inside ... watching the launch coverage on Nasa TV :P ... Ok maybe I'll do a BBQ to celebrate the 2nd Return to Flight mission ... :-)

Yet another boring launch?

2006-06-26T16:03:00.000-07:00

Apparently, the Energia company must be thinking that Progress' launch are too boring to deserve a live (or not) Internet video broadcast (even their video archive is mostly free of Progress launch), so they only provide a couple of pictures of the launch ... which is better than nothing I guess. Altought, one could dream of having a coverage close to what is available during a Shuttle launch ... even a lowly RocketCam, mounted on the 3rd stage will no doubt make us, Soyuz lovers, very happy ... oh well ... At least we can simulate that in Orbiter (using the CVEL's Soyuz addon for now) ...

The docking of the unmanned spacecraft was this morning, hopefuly this time it was live on NASA TV ... and it was worth watching as there was some very nice pictures. If you've missed it, make sure you watch it, Space-Multimedia is providing a link to it.

Having finished RocketMan Saturday, I started reading the first volume of Challenge to Apollo last night. So far so good, but I'm only 10 or so into it ...

Rocketdude

2006-06-20T14:45:00.000-07:00

Lately I have been reading Nancy Conrad's book Rocketman, which I found quiet entertaining and hard to put down. It, in a vivid and easy to read style, tell the story of late Astronaut Pete Conrad, known for his prankster humour and his politicaly uncorrect way of speaking. Speaking of Apollo related thing, I noticed today two posts on A Tribute 2 Apollo that could be of some interest, and not only for all the Apollo buffs out there. Larry McGlynn have over the years amassed quiet the space artifacts collection, with many items purchased directly from some of the astronauts. The two posts in question (Part 1 & Part 2) are related to the star charts used during the Apollo missions, and features some scans of the flown charts. For having searched for such documents, few months ago, I can tell ya that these are hard to come by, as most of the start charts available online are for earthbound use (I finaly settled down for the free Mag-7 Star Atlas, which I still haven't used with Orbiter...).

Meanwhile, progress on that Orbiter's add-on of ours (Castorp and I) is rather slow ... well on the coding side at least 9_9 ... Recently we switched our focus to the 7K-OK, which was the first Soyuz variant to have flew in 1967. Here's a little screenshot of it in LEO:

The docking apparatus visible here is currently been redone by Castorp to be more accurate in term of size and overall shape, as well the design of the docking probe is to be changed. Once this get the same treatment that we gave the 7K-T, it should be fun to fly ... however these solar panels are going to be quiet the challenge to animate ...

Archives gones wild! #4

2006-06-09T10:36:00.000-07:00

If you head to The Project Apollo Archive web site, you will find yet another update. This time it's some new unabridged B&W pictures from Apollo 12 (2nd EVA). I finished two nights ago reading (at last!) Russia's Cosmonauts: Inside the Yuri Gagarin Training Center. I though the book was rather good in detailing the creation and function of Star City from the early space program to the ISS. Details on the training that cosmonauts since Gagarine's time are provided. The book also feature some pictures of the Soviet space program that I didn't see before and some details on the simulators used since Vostok. Bottom line, it's a good read for any space junky, altought it wasn't really totaly relevant to my current research focus (Soyuz!). Speaking of which, I'm still awaiting Soyuz: A Universal Spacecraft (same author) ... estimated to be delivered at the end of this month ... Castorp and I are hoping it will help answer many of the questions that have been haunting us since we started this project.

Another online resource that I have been using lately, is the JSC Oral History Project, which I think I already talked about in previous posts (too lazy to check right now). The interviews related to the Shuttle-Mir program features some interesting insights to Soyuz and to the Soviet Space Program (e.g Norman Thagard's interview).

Here's a screenshot of the Orbiter's add-on which feature the new 7K-T service module, recently improved by Castorp (follow-up on the previous post). It is shown here with all the antennas unfolding:

More can be found on the project forum.