Hi Kurt,
I can empathize only TOO well with higher math making one's eyes roll. I
hated calculus and promptly forgot most of it. I kept most of Trig and some of
the other high school maths, and from that foundation, I'm trying to create
something that I can use where I can determine where a space craft is at any
given moment within the star system of choice. Being able to enter parameters
for the star's mass, temperature, etc, and then being able to enter the masses
of the various planets would eventually permit me to use the law of gravitation
to determine what forces are acting on a space craft at any given point
relative to the various bodies. For now, I'm working on a "reactionless" mode
of travel for the starships for use with Traveller, and once I get that
functional (if ever), perhaps work on those space craft that use reaction mass
for propulsion. It helps to know where to point your craft if you know your
velocity and the duration of your travel to reach that point. It might also
help to get it FUNCTIONAL at the baseline (theoretical level) first.
By discussing it here, I'm hoping that those with better math backgrounds can
correct my errors and tell me "nope, you got it wrong, back to the drawing
board" or "Yup, that's the basics of it, keep on from there."
Usually, I get the "back to the drawing board" response ;)
As for that simulator? That sure looks awfully nice. I note too that it comes
with the free ware version and the enticement to buy the actual version with
all the bells and whistles. If it had a section in there for simulated space
craft - I'd be in heaven!
Hmmm. I wonder if I can contact the writers of the program and ask them to
consider modifying the program...
;)
Hal
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On
Behalf Of Kurt Feltenberger
Sent: Sunday, October 09, 2011 11:40 PM
To: The GURPSnet mailing list
Subject: Re: [gurps] Planetary movement and checking the Math
On 10/9/2011 11:34 PM, Alaconius wrote:
> Hello Folks,
> It has always been a sort of holy grail for me to try and find ways to
> represent ship movement within a star system, along with planetary movements
> concurrent with ship movement. One of those pesky things I've not been able
> to pin down was planetary movement along an ellipse. I'm hoping that perhaps
> even THAT issue will be overcome as of tonight.
<snip>
> Does this make sense? Have I missed anything? If this works, then I may
> finally have a means for plotting the location of any given space craft for
> use in a GURPS campaign (be it GURPS TRAVELLER, GURPS TRANSHUMAN SPACE or
> even GURPS SPACESHIPS.
>
> Thoughts? Comments?
>
> Hal
The math caused my eyes to roll up in my head so I won't be any good to
you there. However, I can offer something that if nothing else, can
graphically display the system and how the planets relate to each
other. You can create your own systems, use the pre-designed ones, or
even take a look at Cyrannus (the 12 Colonies of Kobol)...
http://universesandbox.com/blog/
Pretty cool software and it's free.
--
Kurt Feltenberger
[email protected]/[email protected]
http://www.casademon.org
“Before today, I was scared to live, after today, I'm scared I'm not living
enough." - Me
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