Creating Missions in Orbiter!

[Apollofan]

Hi guys, in my efforts to bring up some own mission scenarios i've experimented with some .scn-files. In most ways it actually worked well. But i've recognized something, i didn't know to handle: For example - I would like to create the launch of STS-71 to Space Station MIR. Historic launch time was June 27, 1995 at 19:32:19 UTC. I've used Orbiter Date Converter to bring up the right Time and date. No problem! But how do i place the Space Station MIR in a nice launch window for STS-71? I was able to place MIR into the scenario but at launch time of the STS-Mission, the space stations flight path was very far away from KSC. What i need is the correct flight path as it should be- At launch time of the STS-Mission, the space station flight path should be very close at KSC, nearly above KSC! I was just reaching this goal with adjusting the time and date but in that case its non-historic...so what to do here? Thanks for helping out!!

 

[Bj]

Hi guys, in my efforts to bring up some own mission scenarios i've experimented with some .scn-files. In most ways it actually worked well. But i've recognized something, i didn't know to handle: For example - I would like to create the launch of STS-71 to Space Station MIR. Historic launch time was June 27, 1995 at 19:32:19 UTC. I've used Orbiter Date Converter to bring up the right Time and date. No problem! But how do i place the Space Station MIR in a nice launch window for STS-71? I was able to place MIR into the scenario but at launch time of the STS-Mission, the space stations flight path was very far away from KSC. What i need is the correct flight path as it should be- At launch time of the STS-Mission, the space station flight path should be very close at KSC, nearly above KSC! I was just reaching this goal with adjusting the time and date but in that case its non-historic...so what to do here? Thanks for helping out!!

You could try this;

Turn frame -> ref equator
and press the + sign on the [LAN] to 'rotate' the orbit. Rotate it until the orbit line almost crosses Cape.

 

[Jarvitä]

Also, if you want a realistic mission, you might want to adjust the Mir's orbit to 51.6 degrees equatorial. In Orbiter, Mir is placed in an ecliptic orbit, which was not the case in reality. If it's inclination were that low, you couldn't even launch into it's orbit from Russia.

 

[Peskie]

Try:

Mir
  STATUS Orbiting Earth
  ELEMENTS 6774587.66177978 0.00049530 60.85091629 119.97231302 215.06420198 94.04000198 49895.66157061
  AROT 0 -45 90
END

This should be accurate as of 1995-06-27 15:52:39 UTC.

FYI to get these values this is what I did:

1. From http://celestrak.com/NORAD/elements/ I went to the archives page linked from the bottom.
2. Found Mir in the list and downloaded http://celestrak.com/NORAD/archives/mir.zip, a 756kB file containing TLE (two line elements) for Mir from 1986 to 2001.
3. Googling "TLE format" gives a page that says that the 4th item on the first line is: "[BBBBB.BBBBBBBB] - Epoch Time -- 2-digit year, followed by 3-digit sequential day of the year, followed by the time represented as the fractional portion of one day". You wanted 1995-06-27 19:32:19 UTC so that's 95178.x; the closest value in the file is for 95178.66157061 (15:52:39 UTC).
4. Copied the two lines for the above date into a text file and used eq_to_ecl.exe to convert this to an Orbiter ELEMENTS line (I don't recall where I got the eq_to_ecl utility; you'll need to find/google this yourself).
5. The readme for eq_to_ecl.exe says that the last item of the elements line (the MJD) is only accurate for years>=2000 so I replaced the bogus value in the output it gave with 49895.661562.

As long as your scenario starts sometime near 49895.6 this should be historically accurate as Orbiter will move Mir ahead/back in the orbit as required from the position/time in the ELEMENTS line to the scenario start time.

I haven't tried these values in an actually scenario file so ymmv.

 

[MajorTom]

Thanks for the very good post guys. I tried something similar for setting up a scenario...in my case it was for the ISS, and I used "Heavens Above" website for the ephemeris. It didn't work out precisely as I would have liked. But some of the techniques discussed here might well solve the problems I encountered.

I wish there were an easy way to find this thread again in the future...perhaps a sticky would be possible??

Cheers-

 

[Bj]

At the top of this page, go to thread tools, then go to subscribe to this thread.

So whenever you want to review it, you can go to your subscribed folder, and review it.

 

[Apollofan]

Ok guys, thanks for your posts! I'll try things out like you guys mentioned. Besides, my english isn't the best, so best way seems to be learning by doing. I although hope, that there will be easier ways in future to perform such actions in scenario building. Thanks all!

 

[ar81]

[ame="http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=2735"]Tutorial: How to make scenarios for Orbiter v1.5[/ame]

 

[unknown_orbiter]

I started making a whole bunch of "Story Scenarios" that would take the player through the Solar System, a third World War, the destruction of Earth, and the eventual re-establishment of human colonies on mars and the moon. I did it all with notepad . If you have questions of custom scenarios please PM me and I'd be glad to help.