3 ms·
Basically, everything in space is a moving target. If you'd really like to nail home an almost intuitive understanding of orbital mechanics, I recommend Kerbal
by drspacemonkey 7y ago
Basically, everything in space is a moving target.
If you'd really like to nail home an almost intuitive understanding of orbital mechanics, I recommend Kerbal Space Program. Imagine Minecraft NASA. You plan, build, launch, and fly space missions using a simplified physics model. It's insanely fun and addictive, as long as you can get past the frustrations of early failures.
I cannot recommend this game enough. I've got hundreds of hours in, and I'm at the point where I've got huge spreadsheets carefully planning out mission parameters to spec the requirements for my new heavy launch platform to colonize the solar system. I'm even assembling a long-term research station in orbit that will eventually be parked around a gas giant.
- ahakki 7y agoWhat you actually want is KSP modded with Principia to give you an n-body simulation of the solar system. https://github.com/mockingbirdnest/Principia https://github.com/mockingbirdnest/Principia
- rtkwe 7y agoThe existing SOI model is still good enough to give a more intuitive understanding of orbital mechanics. Also did they ever fix the Jool system in Principia? Never played with it but iirc there was an issue with Jool where one of the inner moons would very quickly be ejected from the system.
- pavel_lishin 7y agoGiven that it's a toy solar system, it's entirely possible that there's no stable configuration for Jool's system with its full set of moons :/