Project Fleet Of Worlds

[Artlav]

The Fleet Of Worlds

For people not into sci-fi, imagine five terrestrial planets orbiting a common centre of gravity at the vertices of a regular pentagon.
The formation flying towards the core of the galaxy at good fraction of light speed, far from any star.
The worlds are lit by artificial suns in orbit around them (cannot be modelled).

Would make a fun place to fly around in Orbiter.
So far it's a scratch, so contributions are welcome.

You can get the current state here:
http://orbides.1gb.ru/orbf/fw-110909.zip (2.7 Mb)

First thing is the math.
The worlds are equipped with engines, so stability is not an issue.
Per story, they are 900000 miles from the center, but that makes the whole thing looks kind of empty.

How close can the planets be put together without significant tidal damage?
8 tides a day can be rather shaky.

I'm not sure if Orbiter simulates the gravity properly in such a configuration - the star mass is about zero, and the planets take months to make a loop.
Anyone can verify?


Then, the worlds themselves.
3 farm planets, rather terrestrial, one half-terraformed ice ball, and an ancient ecumenopolis.

Obviously, they need textures.
Any takers?
Unless someone does, it will be stuck with none for the city-and-oceans planet, and crappy procedural ones for the rest:

Then, it apparently exposes an Orbiter bug.
When planets are this close to the star (i had to put a fake one to make this work), their lighting appear all wrong.
Nearest one is properly lit, but the rest all have the same angle, despite being at different locations wrt the star.

Any other suggestions about what to make of this?
Bases?
Stations?
Environment?
Doppler-shifted background?
A manual for flying between the planets?

 

[Pipcard]

Ringworld! I read that book!

 

[Ark]

Ringworld! I read that book!

Damn, beat me to it. :lol:

 

[Blacklight]

Oh man. I would LOVE to have a Ringworld in Orbiter. Landing on it would be challenging.

 

[Grover]

id happily make a couple of bases for the place if it gets on in the future, a bush cosmodrome or a huge interplanetary launch point, take your pick

it sounds incredible, but we'd need quite a lot of content, obviously the 5 planets and associated bases, then some stations (possibly one behemoth station in a regular solar orbit as an interstellar launch point (based in solar orbit above the planets)

PM me if you want me to mock up a base in sketchup, and ill do some designs, just send me some basic outlines (number of runways, rough runway headings, length/width of runways/taxiways etc) and ill make a "little" mock up (actually it would be what i'd use to make the base if i want ahead with it )

 

[dougkeenan]

Nice, very nice!

 

[jedidia]

The pupeteers are trying to get OUT of the galaxy, not to the core

a pretty interesting idea, I wonder how well it will work in Orbiter.

Are you doing a dll for the trajectories, or just giving them initial positions and momentum to see if they're sticking together, chances are they'll go flying off at high time acceleration without a guidance dll.

Anyways, is it actually possible to navigate such a constellation in orbiter without writing a specialised tool for it?

 

[Wishbone]

Re: trajectories - these are planets with two-body keplerian orbits. This part of Orbiter is stable (in my experience, although I have very few bodies un-SPICEd).

Re: navigation - impossible to use IMFD - Just found a bug - IMFD CTDs in map mode, although this is a known fault of IMFD which doesn't tolerate extrasolar activity...

EDIT: a workaround for ArtLav would be to rename the "star", but I'm hoping Jarmo returns to IMFD eventually, after building up some fatigue with D3D9 development.

 

[Artlav]

Oh man. I would LOVE to have a Ringworld in Orbiter. Landing on it would be challenging.

Not going to happen, too out of whack with the core engine.
In Spaceway, on the other hand...

The pupeteers are trying to get OUT of the galaxy, not to the core

Oh?
Into the unknowable dangers of intergalactic space?
No, the radiation of the core is not a hazard - worlds travelling at good portion of C would need much more protection anyway.
But aliens are a permanent threat, and there would be none in the exploded core of the galaxy.
Besides, the pupeteers did enough meddling to want to get away from the races of known space in any case.

I recommend reading Larry Niven's recent ones - Fleet Of Worlds and Juggler Of Worlds, to get up-to-date on this setting.

Are you doing a dll for the trajectories, or just giving them initial positions and momentum to see if they're sticking together, chances are they'll go flying off at high time acceleration without a guidance dll.

No, just barycentric keplerian elements, apparently Orbiter is up to task.

Re: navigation - impossible to use IMFD - Just found a bug - IMFD CTDs in map mode, although this is a known fault of IMFD which doesn't tolerate extrasolar activity...

So, IMFD just needs the star to be called Sun? No problems.

 

[Keatah]

Oh man. I would LOVE to have a Ringworld in Orbiter. Landing on it would be challenging.

Well, the next best thing to a RingWorld in Orbiter would be the Big Wheel addon. --

Or perhaps even a RAMA cylinder --

 

[jedidia]

I recommend reading Larry Niven's recent ones - Fleet Of Worlds and Juggler Of Worlds, to get up-to-date on this setting.

Fair enough, I only read the Ringworld, where they said that they were escaping from the core explosions and aiming for the magelanic cloud. Must have been lying again, those sceeming bastards. Still, one would expect Louis to notice that the trajectory is slightly off...

Into the unknowable dangers of intergalactic space?

Indeed they said that the whole investigation of the Ringworld was primarily that there's a good possibility to find similiar structures in the new galaxy, and they want to be prepared. Well, that's what Nessus told Louis, anyways.

No, just barycentric keplerian elements, apparently Orbiter is up to task.

Right... now that I think of it, I can see that their orbit isn't any different from any other, when you put a virtual mass in the center...

 

[T.Neo]

Or perhaps even a RAMA cylinder --

Not a Rama cylinder, but we do have an [ame="http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=4581"]O'Neill Cylinder addon[/ame] for Orbiter.

I always liked the O'Neill Cylinder concept. Not too sure about the windows in the floor though.