Flight Question EVA Help

[statickid]

there is some kind of tether available on OH, but i never looked at it very much.

[ame="http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=439"]TetherMFD 0.96 release[/ame]

 

[Izack]

I remember a Gemini add-on where your EVA was limited to a given radius around the ship. When you reached the limit, you were "bounced" towards the vessel. This was a way to simulate a tether.

That's a good way to do it.
It's sort of like manually inverting your kinematics. :lol:
(Sorry if that felt like a bucket of icewater to the head for all you physicists.)

At a given radius, rebound a high percentage of your velocity backwards, and give a small rotation based on how far off the tether's make-believe anchor is from your centre of mass...:hmm:

 

[Shinrar]

At a given radius, rebound a high percentage of your velocity backwards, and give a small rotation based on how far off the tether's make-believe anchor is from your centre of mass...:hmm:

Works fine when moving in a straight line AWAY from the tether... But lets say I move 20 meters out , and nullify my relative velocity... Then move at full thrust in a perpendicular direction?

Obviously, the tether would reach maximum length, and I'd start to circle around my ship, but the MATH to calculate that out..? Sounds like something I would hate to do... (And by do, I mean, be the one that writes the universally applicable formula to account for all properties of physics involved)

If such a thing does end up existing... I want to make a super long one and see if I can drag a UMMU through the upper atmosphere from orbit :lol:

 

[Blacklight]

You know, for the sake of realism, it would be nice to be able to use a tether to scramble alongside your vehicle/space station, whatever. It would make sense that if you're leaving the ship, you should be tethered to something for safety, whether it be to an airlock, or another astronaut so they don't get separated.

 

[jedidia]

Simulating a thether holding you back isn't so hard. However, it's a bit more complicated. For examle, you can use a thether to nullify your speed. On the other hand, you can't use it to accelerate (actually you can, but only in the direction of the thether itself). for anything else you have to rely on things like climbing around on the surface of the craft, jumping off with your legs or arms, etc. basically the whole stuff monkeys do in trees. If anyone can simulate that convincingly in Orbiter I might take a plane to his home country, knock at his door and personally take off my hat to him...

Until then, I think MMUs are a more immersive system, because they act at least realisticly in the way they move, allthough we don't have spacesuits with built in gas jets yet.