Okay, here's a demo of a moon-shot with orbiter :
It shows my simple mesh of the lander on a intersect orbit with the Moon's surface. I started with 1850kg in LEO and used the spec for an off-the shelf booster to reach transfer velocity. It required a small course correction mid-flight to make the intercept.
The top information screen shows the oribtal information.
In order from top to bottom are:
semi-major axis
semi-minor axis
periapis distance
apoapis dist.
radial distance (at this instant)
eccentricity
period
time to periapis
time to apoapis
velocity
inclination
longitude of accending node
longitude of descending node
argument of periapis
true anamoly
true longitude
mean anamoly
mean longitude.
at the bottom next to the G is the G-field contribution.
The graphic shows the orbit in green. (the moon is the white circle)
The green line traces out the present radius vector.
The dotted line joins the nodes of inclination. Solid sqaure is the ascending node and the hollow square the descending.
Solid circle marks the periapis and hollow circle the apoapis.
You can add a second "target" orbit which will be shown in yellow, with its parameters down the right side.
The bottom display give readings relative to the Moon surface and contains the info you would use to make a soft landing.
It contains: an
artificial horizon
heading indicator.
ground speed (GS)
altitude (ALT)
vertical speed(VS)
pitch (PTCH)
bank (BNK)
Acceleration indicator (ACC)
Atmoshperic date (not applicable here)
Equalaterial postion and rate (EQU POS)
angle of attack(A0A)
vertical Acceleration (VACC)
These are just a couple of the information displays that can be brought up.
I had a little trouble creating the custom spaceship at first. Even following the docs anf tutorials step by step, the program crashed every time I launched it.
I finally resorted to hijacking an existing ship (satellite actually), and plugged my mesh and parameters in. The program accepted that. Hopefully, making use of the multistage settings won't cause the same problems.
