Celestia Forums

Everyone,

I have completed my script (84K) and 13 page manual and I'm in the process of uploading it. This has been a daunting task that I had to achieve in a very small time window. It would not have been possible except for the kind and tolerant assistance by the members of this forum. I want to think you all and wish you a happy Easter!

Henry

P.S.

There's a book about me available on Amazon.com by Joel Achenbach of the Washington Post if you're interested. It's called "Captured by Aliens: the Searth for Truth and life in a Very Large Universe" about me and my big NASA project to develop the means to get to the nearby stars.

P.P.S

In the aforementioned manual, I make a suggestion to the people that make add-ons for Celestia. One of the things that "Celestia Explorer" implements is the concept of a dockable object. For example it is possible to dock and undock to one of ISS's docking ports using this script. I was wondering what the forum thought of this idea? It would mean that anyone who wanted their add-on to be dockable, like a space station or a spacecraft, would (somehow) register their add-on as a dockable and supply long, lat, radius coordinates of their docking port. They could also supply a message that would be displayed when docked and or when undocked. Just a thought ....

The script is great, but I am having one problem with it. It does not seem to find add-on objects when I scan. What file does it use to "find" objects when you scan? Could that file be modified so that the add-on objects would be "found". It is hard when you are right next to a object but it will not appear on the scan so you can not select it as a target to "fly" to.

Just a thought for future editions of this script. Is there a way to integrate this script with the Select Object function of Celestia?

Please ignore my previous post, I figured the problem out (you must be closer to scan small objects)

I think that this adds to the realism, now that I understand it.

By the way, how is scanner range determind?

ps. I also resolved the select object issue

hharris wrote:For example it is possible to dock and undock to one of ISS's docking ports using this script. I was wondering what the forum thought of this idea? ...

Hello, not a real dockable function as the spaceflight sim "Orbiter" does, but a quite nice approximation is tested with the work-in-progress addon 'Apollo-Soyuz Test Project' for Celestia by Linuxman: seehttp://celestiasws.free.fr/ into the Back in USSR page. Dwl and install the folder, so run the cel/URL and see, about few minutes, the 'docking' between Apollo XVIII and Soyouz 19. Jeam

Henry,

I have had a couple of problems with your Celestia Explorer script.

1. Crashes when I try to un-dock from ISS
--- this causes a crash every time, so I can't get any further.
( Using Celestia 1.4.1 )

2. Sensors don't detect Invisible objects. (Class "Invisible")
A lot of people including myself use these to define points in the Solar System (for example Lagrange Points) at which to place (or orbit) models (or further invisible objects).
Unfortunately, it looks as though there is no way for Celestia Explorer to detect my spacecraft, unless it can first locate the Invisible "points" about which they orbit.

EG: Lagrange points:



One more placeholder:


and finally, a spacecraft:


Sensors do not detect: LC, L4, L5, 001, or 001B
I experimented, by changing the Class of LC, L4, L5 to "Spacecraft" and these were then detected OK. Unfortunately, they must remain as Class "Invisible" so that they don't render as spheres.

Can you comment? Can your script be extended to recognise all Classes of objects?

Cheers,
CC

To avoid the problems with undocking I deleted the default start script. This puts your starting position outside of the Sol system so Celestia Explorer does not start you docked.

I am also having a problem with scanning. It seems that I can only scan 2 orbits out from a star. Example:

Star - Detected / Planet - Detected / Moon - Detected / Spacecraft - Not detected!

Have you had the same problem?

You also might want to check this thread on keyboard conflicts out.

http://www.shatters.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=9894

Starshipwright wrote:I am also having a problem with scanning. It seems that I can only scan 2 orbits out from a star. Example:

Star - Detected / Planet - Detected / Moon - Detected / Spacecraft - Not detected!

Have you had the same problem?

Yes, it appears so. eg. Sol>Saturn>Titan>Huygens Landing Site (from Cassini-Huygens 1.1 by Jestr)