James.Denholm wrote:
Uh oh... It's in spanish. I can't speak spanish. Pablo? Any help?
What's CGA?
The author's web site, you mean? If you click on the "Software Orbitan" in the menu, you get the documentation for the
software. It's in Spanish, but there's a link near the top that says "English" that leads you to a page where the author or
somebody has attempted to translate the docs into English.
When you start the program, it prompts you for a date, the "elongation" of the transfer arch, in degrees (180 would be the
most fuel efficient, but lower numbers are faster), the planet of origin and the destination planet.
For source and destination planets, you want to enter the first letter of the planet name:
m = Mercury (lower case, so it's not confused with Mars)
V = Venus
E = Earth (T for Terra would probably work, too... nope, I guess not.)
M = Mars
... etc.
The program presents its ultra-high resolution plot of your trajectory (which wouldn't really have been impressive even for
the earliest PC graphic cards -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_Graphics_Adapter - but would've been impressive to someone
who used an --- um --- to someone who'd never seen computer graphics).
From there...
The 1 key Shows the requested trajectory (and returns your cursor to the origin, if you've moved it).
2 Shows the whole ellipse of the arc (and returns your cursor to the origin)
Left and right arrows move your cursor forward and back through the transfer arc.
The first letter of the name of your origin or destination moves your cursor to that planet.
Apparently "Intro" key = "Enter", which allows you to go back to the start screen.
Plus a couple other commands... (like Esc to quit)
I dunno... Might be better just to advance one's TEj in IMFD until the most acceptable balance of delta-V and travel time is reached. (So, why'd I mention the program in the first place?
)
Post Edited ( 12-18-07 11:25 )
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