Asteroids scripted extraction from MPCORB.DAT

[t00fri]

I commented on this previously, but in case it was overlooked...

I commented this > 10 years ago in XEphem , where we already had implemented an automatic TLE element converter (via ftp).

Fridger

[emgi]

Hi Guillermo,

A fairly late reaction but I only joined this forum today.
Seems that you have made a similar effort as I have done without knowing that yours existed.
It did by then because I wrote a script for this in oct 2008. I even posted it to the Motherlode but I haven't heard anything of them yet. Presumably this means that the file was not accepted. Don't worry, I can live with that.

Your script looks much better than mine too, I can manage in Perl but only just.
So I will start trying to adapt your script for my purpose and perhaps ask you some questions.
I have one already: How did you handle the unclassified asteroids?

What my purpose is? Ok well, I am developing a game that plays in the solar system and I intend to use a modified version of Celestia as it's graphical interface. Will need a few asteroids there too.

regards,
Leo

[abramson]

Hi, Leo. I'm still here.

My script is thoroughly commented, so you will have no problem following it if you know a little Perl. The script allows to deal with the list of asteroids in many ways. One of them is to extract asteroids of a certain class (say, Trojans) and prepare a celestia catalogue for them. But the functionality goes beyond classes: you can extract a range of asteroids (by their number), or filter by name, or provide physical parameters (orbits, radius...) to generate your favorite catalogue. So, unclassified aasteroids are not a problem, they can be chosen by any other property present in the list.

You are free to use my script for your own purposes, of course. The license is included in the script.

I always thought that the best would be to implement all this in Lua and run it directly from Celestia, but never learned enough Lua...

Regards,

Guillermo

[t00fri]

Here is a little historical reminder from what I did in early 2002: That's how my 7309 Perl-extracted asteroids looked like then:



Fridger

[emgi]

Looks quite familiar to what I got with the first 4000 asteroids from astorb.dat.

[emgi]

Hi, Leo. I'm still here.

My script is thoroughly commented, so you will have no problem following it if you know a little Perl. The script allows to deal with the list of asteroids in many ways. One of them is to extract asteroids of a certain class (say, Trojans) and prepare a celestia catalogue for them. But the functionality goes beyond classes: you can extract a range of asteroids (by their number), or filter by name, or provide physical parameters (orbits, radius...) to generate your favorite catalogue. So, unclassified aasteroids are not a problem, they can be chosen by any other property present in the list.

You are free to use my script for your own purposes, of course. The license is included in the script.

I always thought that the best would be to implement all this in Lua and run it directly from Celestia, but never learned enough Lua...

Regards,

Guillermo

My intention is to store all asteroids (or as many as feasible) in a database, together with most other objects in the solar system. The game software should download a selection of asteroids to a player so that he can fly missions to them without having the screen and cpu clogged with over 400.000 asteroids.
When checking astorb.dat I found that many asteroids are not yet classified into a particular category and that other data like the radius or diameter is missing for many of them as well. If I remember well, my script contains a random generator to assign a feasible radius and class where this data was not available. This is not useful in scientific applications but sufficient for gaming purposes. I intend to keep the game data as realistic as possible so every now and then I will run a diff on astorb.dat to check wheter new data has become available. Currently, I haven't even built the database yet.

One other thing about my game-design-idea is that it must contains no guns or other forms of violence.
It should rather be a fairly realistic representation of how spacetravel could be.
When I ever get this project into a working state, it will probably be one of the most boring games around but this should be compensated for by the realistic imaging that Celestia provides.

[Hungry4info]

If you want to make a non-violent game, you might as well make a scientific/educational game. Space Station builder, or something along those lines. Orbiter is a pretty cool programme.

[emgi]

If you want to make a non-violent game, you might as well make a scientific/educational game. Space Station builder, or something along those lines. Orbiter is a pretty cool programme.

I was indeed thinking of something like that and it certainly should have some educational value.
Building new Space Stations was indeed one of the "activities" that are to be carried out in the game.
Never heard of a game called "Orbiter". I will google on it but perhaps you can provide some additional info as well

regards,
Leo

[selden]

Orbiter is a realistic space flight simulator.
http://www.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/~martins/orbit/orbit.html

[emgi]

Orbiter is a realistic space flight simulator.
http://www.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/~martins/orbit/orbit.html

OK, thanks. I already managed to find it via Google. What I am thinking of is a bit more extensive though:
On-line & multiplayer capabilites with a central database server to manage content. If you have ever heard about a game called Vega Strike, you may have an idea about the kind of trade features that I want to implement altough I prefer a bit more realistic approach.
Another 'special' property of my idea is that it will have to be played in real-time. Using an upper speed-limit of 0,33C will enable us to traverse the entire Solar System but it will be terribly boring for real "gamers" as a single trip to anywhere beyond the moon will take hours or even days. That comes in handy as I do not want lots of those around. What it will do is give an impression of the vastness of only just our own solar system.
A player will live in a virtual world where he needs to make a living by hauling things around in his vessel and do some other things as well. I have no idea about who would be interested in playing a game like this (probably not many ) but I it was not meant to make me rich and famous. Certainly, it will be something "completely different".

Currently I am almost finished with the outlines (rules etc) of the game and next I have to asess the requirements for the various databases (which will be considerable). I am familiar with (MySQL) databases so I am pretty confident about that part as well.
The programming stuff comes after that but I did give this matter some thought. What I have come up with so far should be feasible with todays solutions. ETC is 2011.

[Teto]

The links don't work anymore...

Someone has this archive somewhere

It would be great!
Except if they are in Celestia 1.6, but I don't think so.

Teto.

[abramson]

The links don't work anymore...

Thanks for telling, Teto. Some genius in my Institute changed the web servers and all the page addresses. I have updated my links in this thread, I believe. I'll do the same for the SVN builds.

My backup webpage at 110mb (as linked in my signature and elsewhere) also works and has the files.

And no, the scripted extraction of asteroids from the huge databases is not implemented in 1.6.

Cheers,

Guillermo

[EarthMoon]

Can someone pls re-upload MPCORB2SSC or fix the links?

[Gurren Lagann]

Its on the Motherlode.

[EarthMoon]

Oh, thx!

[TheLostProbe]

you know, normally I'd complain about necroposting but... this is actually being helpful

[abramson]

Good to know it's being kept somewhere.
BTW, I don't know what's "necroposting". I'm not dead. Just less active. That script is still useful as it is, I hope somebody will improve it in the future.
Regards, you all,

Guillermo

[Anthony_B_Russo10]

BTW, I don't know what's "necroposting"

Necroposting is when a tread that hasn't gotten a response in years gets a new message.

[Gurren Lagann]

...plus bring up things unrelated or helpful to the thread. But i think your post is fine!