How to celebrate Cosmonautics Day?

  • Tutorial


Usually on Cosmonautics Day they show films about Gagarin, "Taming the Fire", or something else on a cosmic theme. And we, thanks to information technology, can arrange an unusual holiday for ourselves - to look at the reconstruction of that flight from several sides. With the help of Orbiter, we will look at the Vostok-1 ship in flight from the inside and outside, and the film “First Orbit” will show us a view of the Earth, as close as possible to what Gagarin saw in real flight.

Idea


Orbiter

Orbiter is a free space simulator with honest Newtonian physics. The openness of architecture makes it easy enough to create add-ons and, during the existence of the game, the community has made many wonderful additions with new ships, rockets, satellites, indicators, spaceports and more.
By the fiftieth anniversary of the first manned space flight, a group of enthusiasts - Andrei igel Tilman, Nikita Thorton Vyurin, Roman Bloodest Vasilyev and Yuri Kulch Kulchitsky made the addition of the Vostok ship, which models the flights of Vostok spaceships very well - test launches with dogs, flights six astronauts and even accident models and the operation of rescue systems. At the same time, they very reliably and beautifully depicted both the launch vehicle and the ship.
Thanks to Orbiter with the Vostok ship addon we can:
  • Look at the operation of the equipment and the flight sequence diagram.
  • Look at the flight in the "East" from the inside, if you wish, even fly manually.


First orbit

First Orbit is an experimental film about Gagarin’s flight. The footage is a shot from the ISS, made under conditions as close as possible to those that Gagarin had - flying over about the same places (the inclination of the orbit between the ISS and Gagarin is slightly different) and about the same lighting conditions (the start was in the morning) . The soundtrack uses instrumental music and a recording of Gagarin's conversations in real flight. The film was attended by: director Christopher Riley , specializing in popular science films and the history of science, astronaut Paolo Nespoli (STS-120, Soyuz TMA-20) and composer Philip Shepard .
First Orbit will give us:
  • The view is as close as possible to what Gagarin saw.
  • Record of real negotiations.


Thus, combining the film and the simulator, we get a multifaceted art object that will bring us as close to that historic day as possible. Moreover, we can even see what is happening on several sides and more broadly than was available to Gagarin himself. The portholes in the Vostok were small, the Kupol module on the ISS gives a much better view, and watching outside the rocket flight before installing video fixation tools this spring was possible only in computer graphics.

Training


Necessary


Desirable


Preparation and installation

  1. Unpack addons in the folder where you installed Orbiter.
  2. Activate the improved Baikonur textures according to the instructions in the archive (you need to manually edit the baikonur.cfg file in the ORBITER \ CONFIG \ EARTH \ BASE folder by adding lines from the instruction file).
  3. Activate the module “Vzor”, emulating the main window with a system for manual orientation - Modules -> check the box opposite VZOR .
  4. Orbiter switch to windowed mode with parameters equal to half or one third of the screen width by unchecking the Fixed Aspect Ratio checkbox .
  5. In the second half of the window open a player with a movie or a browser from YouTube.


Launch

It's simple - run orbiter.exe and select the scenario of the flight "East-1":


Play


Synchronization

Unfortunately, the movie is not perfectly synchronized with the simulation. If you measure the time of significant events in the film and the game, you get a table:
EventOrbiterFirst orbit
Rocket launch360 s140 s
Sunset1880 s1800 s
Dawn3960 s3870 s
Bailout6130 s5670 s
Landing / end of the film6805 s5954 s

Those. the director noticeably reduced the area of ​​decline after braking and landing by parachute.
It seems to me the most correct idea to synchronize launch and bailout. In this case, the film starts at -2: 20 from the launch of the rocket (a timer will be displayed in the bottom left in Orbiter). Then, at night, or upon reaching the coast of Africa (the first land after dawn), or after the most beautiful music (to listen to it again), move the film exactly 4 minutes ago . However, you can, based on these numbers, choose any algorithm of actions up to the simultaneous launch of the game and the film in order to see the start and landing from different sources at different times.

Control

The script in Orbiter does not require participation in the management of the ship. But there are some actions worth doing:
  • Switching between the view from the inside of the “East” and from the outside is done using the F1 button . Until the end of the output, the view from the inside is not available.
  • Before entering the shade, it is advisable to turn on the cabin lighting (right mouse button - turn right, left - left):
  • After braking, the ship will begin to rotate - it was in reality. If the rotation is uncomfortable for you, switch to the appearance and, by pressing F2 , switch to global frame mode , in which the camera will not rotate with the ship. Or switch to the inside view and close the cabin blinds (three toggle switches above the light switch).


Pictures realizing the idea


How it turned out for me, I hope you are interested in it:

Start.

Sunset.

Dawn.

African coast

Braking in dense atmospheres

Bailout.

Epilogue

What I like about Cosmonautics Day is that it is a very bright holiday. This is the day of man and mankind, a celebration of science that invented technology, labor that created technology, and the courage and curiosity that ride technology. A holiday that gives hope of victory over space, speed and gravity, and the dream that we will leave our cradle of the Earth and go into such a beautiful and interesting space. Have a nice holiday!

  1. If questions arise on the ship, there is a Russian-language manual in the Orbiter's Doc folder.
  2. Russian-language manual by Orbiter .
  3. If you are interested in the game and the flights in it, I write a series of posts in which various operations are performed and the technique is described.
  4. Thanks to the film “Gagarin: First in Space,” I recommend watching it, I personally liked it. There is also a post about films , there is something to pay attention to.

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