OK, here is my latest Educational Activity. Titled the "Spacecraft of Celestia near Earth", Activity 7.2 is a tour of 16 separate craft that populate the Celestia universe (mostly thanks to Jack Higgins and BH). The craft (and add-ons) are as follows:
Sputnik 1
Explorer 1
Mercury Friendship 7
Apollo 11 in orbit
Apollo 11 on Moon
Skylab
Apollo-Soyuz
Mir
Space Shuttle Columbia
Space Shuttle Atlantis, launching Magellan
Space Shuttle Endeavor, docked with the ISS
ISS
Hubble Space Telescope
Chandra Space Telescope
Shenzhou V
Cosmos 1 Solar Sail
Celestia 1 hyperdrive spaceship
Each craft is accompanied by a comprehensive writeup of how and why it came to be launched and what accomplishments it achieved. The document also includes sound for the first time in the Educational Activities. It contains wav files and movies of Sputnik's beep, rocket engines, the launch of Apollo 11 and Neil Armstrong's famous quote on the Moon.
The Activity is designed as a teaching tool to give readers a reasonable outline of the Space Race between America and the Soviet Union and the craft that resulted. It of course, showcases the exceptional talents of our many resident artists in spacecraft modeling, with a particular concentration of models from Jack Higgins and Bob Hudley.
I am also pleased to introduce you all to the Cosmos 1, the world's first solar sailing spacecraft. Designed under contract to the Planetary Society and Cosmos Studios founded by the late Astronomer Carl Sagan, and his wife, Ann Druyan, Cosmos 1 will be launched in a few months and will be propelled solely by sunlight captured on massive sails. Jack did a great model of it and it is highlighted in the Activity.
There are three zip files to download from my website to enjoy the Activity. In particular, please NOTE
All of the above spacecraft are included as add-ons in my zip files. If your unzip the files directly into the main Celestia folder, they will install into your extras folder in their own sub-folder titled "Spacecraft". In all likelihood, you already have some or even most of these spacecraft already in your Celestia folders. In particular, you have Mir, ISS and Hubble, which are part of the Celestia default download. The add-ons will place duplicate copies of any spacecraft you already have into the Celestia folder and the program will try to draw both of them at once. This is not good! If it does, you will see two superimposed models on top of each other when you visit them. To avoid that, you will need to remove the above spacecraft from where-ever you have them in your extras folder, before you download the zip files. You'll also need to delete or comment out the ISS, Hubble and Mir entries in your solarsys.ssc file (see my read-me file for directions). Don't worry though. I have strived to include the very latest versions of the spacecraft so once you have removed your older copies, you can delete them and use the add-on versions permanently. It's a nice way to update your spacecraft.
I will also be releasing Activity 8.2 - the Spacecraft of Celestia beyond Earth, in a few weeks. It will cover the major space probes such as Mariner, Pioneer, Voyager, Venera, Galileo, etc.
Enjoy and good cruising
Get the Activity at my website at http://www.fsgregs.org/celestia
Here is one screenshot from the Activity, showing Cosmos 1
Regards,
Frank