orbitingpluto
Orbiteer
- Joined
- May 1, 2010
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I have managed to rendezvous and dock with the ISS today. Not that big of a deal to most on this forum, except this was the first time for me. Yes, this is a sentimental little writing about my feelings at this point, and what I'm thinking about now that I have taken the first real leap outward; beware ramblings ahead
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For the two years that I have had Orbiter, I did more reading than playing. It took only seconds to think of all the stuff I could do with it, but getting to the point where I felt like I could manage it(which is only recently) has taken a lot of 'homework'. Most of the work was learning vocabulary and getting orbital mechanics far enough into my head that I could be able to have an idea of what was going on, and what numbers had to be changed to do what I wanted to do. I tried to fly a rendezvous with the ISS several times between the start of this obsession and my first successful run, but at some point in those missions I would get a terrible feeling of being out of my league and not having the ability to pull though. So I would abort those missions, and build up my store of knowledge and courage for the next time.
Most of the reasons I went forth on the eariler missions was because of addons I had gotten that I wanted to use; buoyed by by optimism that this would be the time a docking happens, I would boldly go up: to look down at the Earth below, gaze at at my pretty new spaceship, and with an entire solar system around me to explore if I only had the urge and the know-how. Since at that moment the cold reality of my lack of knowledge would set in, I would ungracefully exit the sim, because I could do much with what I had gotten.
Not being able to play with my new toys goaded me to read more tutorials. The release of 2010 with it's new graphics did something
The mission itself wasn't much to speak of: saying a "Hail Probe" before flying a daylight ascent from the Cape in a stock DG, heading south-east with the ISS's orbit over head. I got a relatively low Rinc value despite a hand flown ascent, which was good news. Bad news was that I put myself into a ~600km x ~20km orbit. After changing Pe to a more acceptable 341km I started
.For the two years that I have had Orbiter, I did more reading than playing. It took only seconds to think of all the stuff I could do with it, but getting to the point where I felt like I could manage it(which is only recently) has taken a lot of 'homework'. Most of the work was learning vocabulary and getting orbital mechanics far enough into my head that I could be able to have an idea of what was going on, and what numbers had to be changed to do what I wanted to do. I tried to fly a rendezvous with the ISS several times between the start of this obsession and my first successful run, but at some point in those missions I would get a terrible feeling of being out of my league and not having the ability to pull though. So I would abort those missions, and build up my store of knowledge and courage for the next time.
Most of the reasons I went forth on the eariler missions was because of addons I had gotten that I wanted to use; buoyed by by optimism that this would be the time a docking happens, I would boldly go up: to look down at the Earth below, gaze at at my pretty new spaceship, and with an entire solar system around me to explore if I only had the urge and the know-how. Since at that moment the cold reality of my lack of knowledge would set in, I would ungracefully exit the sim, because I could do much with what I had gotten.
Not being able to play with my new toys goaded me to read more tutorials. The release of 2010 with it's new graphics did something
The mission itself wasn't much to speak of: saying a "Hail Probe" before flying a daylight ascent from the Cape in a stock DG, heading south-east with the ISS's orbit over head. I got a relatively low Rinc value despite a hand flown ascent, which was good news. Bad news was that I put myself into a ~600km x ~20km orbit. After changing Pe to a more acceptable 341km I started
