Couple of questions on various topics/feature requests

[don]

I was just going based on what you wrote (hundreds of millions), as I had no idea what they really cost these days. It's a GOOD THING that they are international <smile>.

[Bob Hegwood]

So, what's wrong with educating a kid in grade school, high school, or an idiot adult like me, as to what it LOOKS LIKE to see a spacecraft perform one of it's attitude adjustment maneuvers? Or to see a volcano erupting on Io.

On second thought, nahhh, that would be too realistic.

I bow low before you Sir... You are the man.

By the way, I'm one of the idiot adults who needs educated too.

Take care, Bob

[t00fri]

I was just going based on what you wrote (hundreds of millions), as I had no idea what they really cost these days. It's a GOOD THING that they are international <smile>.

Don,

it's all compatible, since one has to specify the time period over which the money is spent. We don't build multi-BILLION accelerators every year! "Smaller" investments like the exciting X-Laser facility (XFEL) being built as of this year in my Lab site for exploring the "nano-world" (see my other post), is about 600 million $. Another HOT international Linear Collider proposal (not yet endorsed by the German government) will be built either in my Lab site DESY (Hamburg), at SLAC (Stanford, US), Fermilab (Chicago, US), Japan (KEK) or CERN (Geneva, Switzerland) and is rated at 3.5 BILLION $...

Each of these "monsters" is being "created" on time scales of order 10 years!

Bye Fridger

[t00fri]

So, what's wrong with educating a kid in grade school, high school, or an idiot adult like me, as to what it LOOKS LIKE to see a spacecraft perform one of it's attitude adjustment maneuvers? Or to see a volcano erupting on Io.

On second thought, nahhh, that would be too realistic.

I bow low before you Sir... You are the man.

By the way, I'm one of the idiot adults who needs educated too.

Take care, Bob

I would be the last one to argue against more education!

Yet I think that animations concerned e.g. with opening and closing playload compartments of satelites within Celestia or similar, are not what I consider educational;-)

I would have lots of alternatives to offer instead...

Bye Fridger

[don]

Each of these "monsters" is being "created" on time scales of order 10 years!

WOW! ... I knew they took a long time to build, but not that long.

I would have lots of alternatives to offer instead...

Alternative animations? You wouldn't consider spacecraft maneuvers, the Spirit descent to Mars, or active volcanos on IO as educational? Those were the three example I gave above.

-Don G.

[Bob Hegwood]

I would be the last one to argue against more education!

Yet I think that animations concerned e.g. with opening and closing playload compartments of satelites within Celestia or similar, are not what I consider educational;-)

Pardon me, Dr. Schrempp, but what's wrong with making education entertaining? Those Billions (with a "B") of marks/dollars you're talking about come from hard-working citizens like myself. You'd better give them something for their money.

[don]

You'd better give them something for their money.

Ahhh, but they do! Or at least in their terms ... great big long scientific papers that you need to have a PhD in order to understand.

[t00fri]

I would be the last one to argue against more education!

Yet I think that animations concerned e.g. with opening and closing playload compartments of satelites within Celestia or similar, are not what I consider educational;-)

Pardon me, Dr. Schrempp, but what's wrong with making education entertaining? Those Billions (with a "B") of marks/dollars you're talking about come from hard-working citizens like myself. You'd better give them something for their money.

Bob,

I thought you get some return from time to time (not necessarily on the level of flat TV shows though!).

-- The Internet and the WEB for example! It was invented and developed at CERN (Geneva/Switzerland) the largest particle physics site in Europe.

-- The Transistor ...and semi-conductors in general

just to name 2 spin-offs that everyone profits from...

It is entirely inappropriate though to translate the money spent for basic research into such useful returns on a short time scale. However, history has shown that over longer time scales the return is immense.

Not to mention the huge amount of high-tech training that goes into the young generation at such facilities. Since a large proportion of the young PhD's etc then go to take leading positions in industry, this should definitely also be counted as a most valuable spin-off...

Bye Fridger

[Bob Hegwood]

Bob,
It is entirely inappropriate though to translate the money spent for basic research into such useful returns on a short time scale. However, history has shown that over longer time scales the return is immense.

I agree entirely.

However, I was trying to make the point that there is nothing wrong with making education some fun! I don't know many people who will stay focused on a boring topic. Make it fun, and they'll knock you out of the way in their haste to learn something.

Take care, Bob

[t00fri]

You'd better give them something for their money.

Ahhh, but they do! Or at least in their terms ... great big long scientific papers that you need to have a PhD in order to understand.

Not quite so, Don:

the PhD is not the point, it's just a little addition to your name.

It's 6-8 years of additional hard and continuous learning under poor financial conditions, where others can make quite a bit of money...!

Then you will understand those "great big long scientific papers"...you were referring to

Changing subject: What does NASA's space exploration give back to the "hard working people"? What is it good for?

Of course you and I know and enjoy their results. But many many in this world consider space exploration as entirely superfluous! So you see, it's all a matter of understanding

Bye Fridger

[don]

It's 6-8 years of additional hard and continuous learning under poor financial conditions, where others can make quite a bit of money...!

Then you will understand those "great big long scientific papers"...you were referring to

Ahhh, but you see not everyone has the chance or ability to attend university for four to eight years. This is why we are discussing this topic -- the educated, versus those who do not have a doctorate but still want to learn.

It's *easy* for you, and other doctors of science and engineering, to imagine in your mind, the human-created engineering marvels actually doing their work. Such as a satellite performing attitude adjustments, or what a volcano might look like on Io. Or the maneuvers of a rover EDL on Mars.

However, people not educated in the higher levels of science cannot "imagine" these things. Rather, they need to SEE them, either via animation or in real life, to understand what they are doing.

You look at Celestia and it's capabilities from a scientific and astronomical point of view, which certainly is one valid point of view, but not the only point of view.

If you and Chris are dead set against adding what many people here feel are education-worthy enhancements (better text presentation, audio narration, animation, spectral overlays (x-ray, etc.), and other things) ... then maybe it's time for an experienced programmer to fork off an Educational version of Celestia, where these things will actually get added?

Obviously, this is just a thought for anyone out there who is capable of managing the project. I know others (such as Adam) are using Celestia "internally" for their own projects, to accomplish these kinds of things. Maybe one of them would open their project(s) to outside assistance so that others can help create and benefit from the resulting product? Like I said, just a thought.

Changing subject: What does NASA's space exploration give back to the "hard working people"? What is it good for?

Well, one thing I believe that came out of the initial space program, was the microprocessor -- that little chip that is at the heart of all of our digital computers. The world has also been introduced to several new plastics, ceramics, and other materials -- all as a direct result of money spent at NASA. The list of usable items goes on and on.

Note that I left out "knowledge", on purpose, because it is useful only to those who are educated in it's purpose and application. Raw data is useless to the average person, who is the one actually paying for all of this "science". When it comes down to it, if the average person actually had the choice (which they do not have) to spend money on food, shelter and clothing --or-- science, I can bet you that 80%-90% would say, "Who cares if Mars ever had water on it? I need food for my family!" But I digress.

Cheers,

-Don G.

[t00fri]

Don,

It's 6-8 years of additional hard and continuous learning under poor financial conditions, where others can make quite a bit of money...!

Then you will understand those "great big long scientific papers"...you were referring to

Ahhh, but you see not everyone has the chance or ability to attend university for four to eight years. This is why we are discussing this topic -- the educated, versus those who do not have a doctorate but still want to learn.

I absolutely agree that all people who have the desire to learn more should be supported in a maximal and most effective way!

Yet, as an aside, I have met /many/ --notably younger people-- you would simply not be ready to renounce to many "pleasures of life" (as they say), just to go on studying for many years! After all, intensive learning (>8h/day!) is often like jogging in Sports: extreme pleasure for some, the worst horror for many others...

Living in a one-room apartment, lacking money even for an old car, renouncing on holiday trips etc, until one approaches 30, is not to everyone's liking. Much later people often regret, I know...

Taking a good education is nowadays only to a secondary degree a matter of money! If the students are reasonably hard working and notably motivated, there are all sorts of fellowships at many levels available for financial support. I personally got to know many such students from very poor backgrounds...

But we are really digressing:

My point from the beginning is that it is much more instructive and thus truly "educative" for "curious" people to get hold of serious information about Io e.g. from

http://www.nineplanets.org/io.html
(which seems to be down for the moment)

via Mouse R-> info in Celestia,
or from books, rather than watching a necessarily primitive animation of a vulcano eruption!

My suspicion is that --despite claims of the opposite-- "some grown-up representants of the male species" might actually not at all be so deeply interested in learning all facts about Io, but just find it fun watching this little vulcano blowing out in Celestia... Nothing bad about this, but we are back at toy robots, trucks and cranes, were I started.

I am just a little "allergic" towards calling things "educative" that essentially add to people's desire to play and have fun

Note, however: This does NOT imply that truly educative projects do not add to people's fun!

If you and Chris are dead set against adding what many people here feel are education-worthy enhancements (better text presentation, audio narration, animation, spectral overlays (x-ray, etc.), and other things) ... then maybe it's time for an experienced programmer to fork off an Educational version of Celestia, where these things will actually get added?

First of all, the 'spectral overlays (x-ray, etc.)' was my own proposal, right?;-)

Next, I remember that quite some time ago we also discussed other possible applications of Celestia that would deserve more dedicated support: e.g. creation of fantasy worlds or artistic applications (see Don.Edwards' thread).

Certainly my preferences and I think also those of Chris go towards embedding such dedicated activities via a modular structure. This could well avoid a formal "forking off" process, which I think is not beneficial for the project as a whole.

Cheers &

Bye Fridger

[Toti]

Well, it would tend to be more realistic to be able to keep spacecrafts' high gain antennas pointed toward the Earth or whatever relay satellite is being used while maintaining the appropriate cameras' viewpoints.

First I need to see the rotation data available, but -at least for fixed antenna crafts- keeping the HGA properly pointed will most probably be accomplished with the orientation info. But you are right: aligning commands will improve articulated antenna spacecraft rendering.

I agree there might be a few cute i.e. semi-serious applications that I overlooked. But I think, really not too many

If you read my second post, you will see that I propose to follow the actual mission schedules (if available) to script these animations.

A condensed list of applications of the extended scripting commands:

1- Model separations where both objects are interesting, like the Cassini-Huygens separation (and others), without ugly hacks (multiple .ssc, begining-ending statements, multiple .3ds files, etc.)
2- Simulate separations where one object keeps our interest (spacecraft) and the others are discarded and can be destined to simple keplerian orbits and/or deleted after some time (the multi-stage Saturn 5 series, the Zond 5, Venera 5, or the shuttle-fuel tanks comes to mind, and many probes leave some protective armour/shield/backshell before an atmospheric entry)
3- Accomplish craft touchdowns (Vikings, PathFinder, NEAR, MERs, etc.) on a body's surface in a simple and elegant way, without need of hacks to .ssc, creation of invisible objects, etc.
4- Simulation of mechanical deploying

* Complex petal unfolding of the MERs
* Deployment of landing legs
* Show the Galileo failed HGA opening
* Solar panels spreading
* Model the Stardust aerogel device opening/closing
* MERs, Galileo probe, Venera 5 and Stardust capsule parachute opening
* Moving arms with science equipment (Viking, MERs)

5- Show trajectory maneuverings and attitude updates, such as the Viking orbiters and Galileo ones.
6- Model mission partial failures and problems such as the mentioned Galileo HGA and the MGS solar panel-aerobraking drawbacks.

Whom do you want to "educate" with this? For me, education is something entirely different, at least

Without entering a "different levels of education and associated methods" discussion, I must say that this is of importance for learning purposes.
Today, Celestia spacecraft are rigid objects that appear and dissapear instantaneously, keep an erroneous orientation and do not show interest in their science targets. (Nevertheless, they are quite interesting to follow specially when they are in a planet's proximity)
Now imagine a script very much like the "Saturn Tour" one but following a probe's most important milestones from its launch up to its destruction/deactivation, with both visual and written description of:

* launch stages
* deployment/unfolding
* science instrumental and other hardware (with zooms to the proper meshes)
* main trajectory-adjusting maneuvers
* scientific data adquisition
* hardware failure and the correcting measures

Sort of a mini documentary, with a lot of teaching capabilities. I think most users will find this most fascinating.

is it worth the effort?

Well, the scripting extension can be developed slowly, starting with the rotation/tracking/splitting support and adding commands when possible. Keyframing support can be the last addition.

Yet I think that animations concerned e.g. with opening and closing playload compartments of satelites within Celestia or similar, are not what I consider educational;-)

As I explained, opening payload compartments is not the background goal that I want to reach.

I don't know many people who will stay focused on a boring topic. Make it fun, and they'll knock you out of the way in their haste to learn something.

And the agreeable, entertaining and visually appealing "Cosmos" TV series was very effective in getting people interested in science. High level Calculus comes later...

[Harry]

Coming late to this thread, but I would like to comment on using scripts to set the orientation (ok, Jack wrote "script-like file", but close enough . IMHO this sounds reasonable, but would of course require some modifications. An idea of how this could be implemented:
- add "background" scripts, i.e. scripts which run the whole time and independent of any normal scripts, performing some simple task (like e.g. pointing some antenna to earth) periodically. I already used this while testing some keyboard related stuff, this is fairly easy to implement.
- allow ssc-files to reference such a background script, which would be started when the ssc-file is loaded.
- allow a background script to modify objects, for example the orientation.

Possible problems:
- Performance: depending on the number of background scripts and the amount of work they've got to do this could be a problem. But with thousands of stars, planets, high-detail models etc the additional overhead may as well not even be noticable. If the switch from Celestia to Lua turns out to be costly, the number of scripts would have to be reduced.
- limited modifications: I am not sure which properties of an object can be easily modified. This is not an easier way to get animations or similar
- using huge xyz-style lists of orientations probably consume much more memory than a native implementation.

On the other hand such a solution would provide much more flexibility. Some tasks would be easier to handle, like the already mentioned case of pointing an antenna to a planet.

Harald

[t00fri]

The kind of animation features Toti was listing, admittedly has some potential. But to me it seems we are quite far away from

a practicable implementation of a consistent set of animations that

-- performs sufficiently well
-- tracks the actual maneuvering data as function of time accurately
-- for all satelites/space vehicles

To me it makes not much sense if this whole effort can only be realized for a few "showpieces".

I doubt that the required extensive information is available for all missions that are implemented in Celestia

The required extended xyz files must be huge! Because when you want to incorporate such things like movements according to the actual mission logs, the resolution in time must be extremely high!

While I have briefly also considered such "scientifically accurate and instructive" animations, I had implicitly discarded them soon after because of the above reasons.

Bye Fridger

[don]

Howdy Fridger,

I completely understand your viewpoint, but simply do not agree with it.

My point from the beginning is that it is much more instructive and thus truly "educative" for "curious" people to get hold of serious information about Io e.g. from <web site>

Interesting you bring up this point. I think links to external sources of information were a good thing to start Celestia with, but it's time for an internal database to take over, such as maxim has been working on. When a curious person is sent away from a program, to another program, they will stay at the second program (if it captures their curiosity) instead of returning to the first program. At least this is what happens with me.

... but we are back at toy robots, trucks and cranes, were I started.

How can you dismiss toys, so simply and completely, as being useless, non-educational things? You never learned anything from playing with toys? No mere toy ever encouraged you to learn more about something, such as why it did a certain thing, or how it worked, or anything else? Not even questions to your parents?

If it weren't for toy trucks and cranes, we probably wouldn't have any heavy equipment, or their operators, to build your big toys (giant Hot Wheels tracks)! ... Or roads, or bridges, or dams, or mines ... we'd still be doing it all with pick axes and shovels. Nor would there be toy robots on the surface of Mars right now, or anywhere else for that matter.

The point, which you might be missing, is that a mere toy, all by itself does educate and enlighten, and can also lead a person to greater exploration and education.

I am just a little "allergic" towards calling things "educative" that essentially add to people's desire to play and have fun

Now you sound like a GRUP, from the old Star Trek series ... BONK BONK! Or maybe you are the Grinch, in disguise?

Note, however: This does NOT imply that truly educative projects do not add to people's fun!

You meant to say, "for an educated person", right?

First of all, the 'spectral overlays (x-ray, etc.)' was my own proposal, right?

Actually, it was brought up by someone else a couple of months ago, and dismissed as something outside the realm of Celestia. I think this might have been what encouraged Selden to create the spectral add-ons that he did. Just recently, the idea was re-introduced into the "instrumentation" thread.

Certainly my preferences and I think also those of Chris go towards embedding such dedicated activities via a modular structure. This could well avoid a formal "forking off" process, which I think is not beneficial for the project as a whole.

However, it is quite difficult to create add-ons for the kinds of things I mentioned (better text presentation, audio narration, animation, others), which need to be a part of the internal code. For example, if there is some way to override Celestia's built-in OpenGL routines and take control of text presentation (what is displayed where, in what font, color, size, type, etc.), I'd sure love to hear about it.

This would be a great place to start with making Celestia more "modular". Replace the three pre-defined, v-key text display options, by allowing the user to define all the items mentioned above, via the config file or a script.

Or, some way to synchronize the playback of an external audio file with a Celestia script, for narration purposes, which would allow the screen to remain clear of text. Not to mention animated sequences.

The reality is that these things cannot be done via external add-ins or modules. Sadly, they require internal integration. If Celestia could become more modular in these respects, this would indeed be a wonderful thing.

Cheers,

-Don G.

[don]

Fridger, Harald and Toti,

Regarding your above posts (performance, complete data sets, etc.) ... remember, these things need only be done when the user is actually viewing a specific object. And, maybe also only when the user specifically requests to see the operation taking place. In other words, Celestia does not need to calculate and display the xyz, or any kind of animation, for any object not currently on the display.

-Don G.

[maxim]

I started contributing with Celestia, when I made my continental drift addon, which is in fact a texture animation. I had to script it because Celestia doesn't support these things.

The reason why I made it was because I never really unterstood how things developed from times when Pangea exists. I knew about the first opening of the north atlantic, followed by south atlantic. I knew about the India drift into Asia forming Himalaya. I knew about the double touch of Europe and Africa. But I never could make myself a real picture of how that looked like on the sphere out of some text and diagrams. Now I know - and I even found some new details I didn't know before.

There are other things that I would like to examine visually to unterstand them:

- How did the red eye of jupiter form itself, and how it keeps stable? At what time rate?
- What speed is its rotation, and the movement along the surface?
- How does galaxies change while rotating?
- How does the sun grow into a red giant? Is it a constant grow? Or in jumps? How does it fall back?
- How should the landing on Geru.., Gerasm.. - the comet - occure? At what speed? How is the touchdown realized?
- How do sun flares evolve?

This all needs animation to be displayed. I don't care for some erupting volcano.

Regarding spectral visions (UV and XR) of sun and sun flares, you might take a look into my sun info addon. It includes some visions as pic-panes and videos of sun flares taken from astronomic picturing sources. This can't be realised in Celestia yet, so it's only shown on panes - but I would like to see this integrated in Celestia in some future times. And that also needs animation capabilities.

- add "background" scripts, i.e. scripts which run the whole time and independent of any normal scripts, performing some simple task (like e.g. pointing some antenna to earth) periodically.

They're usually called event handlers. You might take a look for example into javascript to see how they act (sure you know that already). They shouldn't be too hard to implement as they are part of common APIs nowadays.

maxim

[selden]

Actually, it was brought up by someone else a couple of months ago, and dismissed as something outside the realm of Celestia. I think this might have been what encouraged Selden to create the spectral add-ons that he did.

What spectral addons do you mean? I don't recall creating anything that I would call by that name.

(Actually I've whined about not being able to select deep space textures in ways that could be used to reveal details in different spectral regions. AltSurfaces for Nebulas is one feature that'd help a lot. I have several Nebulas that I haven't published because their images are just a lot of meaningless clutter without that feature.)

[don]

What spectral addons do you mean?

Sorry, I can't remember the name of it. It was an x-ray or gamma-ray scan of the universe -- firey red-orange.