Computer Simulated Lunar Landing

We will be using Orbiter 2010, created by Dr. Martin Schweiger, a Ph.D. in Computer Science at the University College London to assess the effectiveness of different pilot orientations on landing ability.  '''It is important to remember that we are focusing on pilot orientations and landing ability here, not technical things such as performance of the vehicle. That can be done with analysis, human landing performance cannot. '''

Quick Info on Orbiter 2010

 * Physically accurate - accurately models planetary motion using the VSOP87 solution and the Earth-Moon system with the ELP2000 model
 * Also has non-spherical gravity effects, free space physics, atmospheric effects, and orbital decay
 * We could technically use this to accurately simulate the entire mission, but we will be focusing on the lunar landing aspect because of the human factors involved in pilot orientation
 * More info is available on the wikipedia page  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbiter_(sim)
 * or on the Orbiter website  http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/index.html

Jobs that need to be done

 * Start designing models of the vehicle as it will be during the lunar descent phase of the mission (Solidworks will MOST LIKELY work for this, but that needs to be confirmed). You might also want to divide up parts of this, so a large group could tackle this task.


 * ​ ​ Crew capsule
 * Propulsion modules
 * Landing gear
 * Siddharth


 * Importing external models into Orbiter 2010. This is the most complex part of the project and might involve writing some code ourselves. A vibrant modding community already exists for the program, however, so chances are we will be able to find something that someone else wrote and edit it for our own purposes. Also, this group will most likely be responsible for writing scenario files that will allow us to place the vehicle above the lunar surface with some set of initial conditions. These tasks could be split up among a few people as well.
 * Hardware interfaces with Orbiter 2010


 * Configuring TrackIR - making sure it works properly

​ Again, if people who are directly involved in the structure of the craft want to be responsible for the Solidworks models that would be great (especially considering we'll need those eventually). They don't need to be EXTREMELY detailed, but need to be the correct size and shape and have properties such as mass, center of mass, moments of inertia, etc.
 * We want the TrackIR 5 Pro bundle (the $170 one with the 3-LED headset clip)
 * Configuring joystick and other control methods with Orbiter
 * Setting up a computer with whatever visual displays we'll need

Starting Out
For all groups, in order to get started there are plenty of tutorials available in the Orbiter forums! Here's some links: If anyone needs any help at all getting started with this stuff, or if you finish a task and want to move forward, feel free to contact me as soon as you can so we can keep the momentum going. Chris O'Hare  is  spearheading the ingress/egress ascent/descent project so I might not have answers for everything regarding that, but I'll be consulting him as much as I can. Hope to see some people signing up for things soon!
 * General top-level forum link -  http://orbiter-forum.com/
 * Tutorials forum -  http://orbiter-forum.com/forumdisplay.php?f=3
 * Most of these are piloting tutorials, but there are a bunch that are centered around creating add-ons which is what we want
 * Orbiter SDK forum -  http://orbiter-forum.com/forumdisplay.php?f=47
 * This will be VERY useful since we will be working directly with the SDK to create our own stuff

Best,

Jesse Cummings

I will try to take a preliminaty look at early importing early CAD models and configuring in Orbiter. -Matt