For those who read Arrow 18 · 5:51pm May 4th, 2012
Some of you know there's a fair bit of ORBITER spaceflight Simulator going on in the story. For those of you who aren't familiar with the simulator or the craft, I have two videos on youtube for you to get an idea of what things look like.
One is a Ravenstar Single Stage to Orbit, played to the beautiful track of APOLLO, which you may recognize from the in-fic link to the Apollo tribute that Twilight watched.
The other is a reentry and landing interface that would look similar to how the Raven would enter the atmosphere and land in equestria. Except without hovering over a forest, and landing on a runway.
I'd suggest both of these videos in highest quality, fullscreen to get the most out of them. It's not too visually spectacular for a video, and most of what's going on is really in the instrumentation. (Yes, I can read every instrument displayed and understand exactly what its all telling me.) If you read the instrumentation, its fairly intuitive. Just use your head a little and you'll start to understand what is going on.
Watch the volume on the second video, as you'll be tempted to turn the music up. It is however, turned down, so when the voice pops up, it can give you quite a scare. (It has done so to others.)
XR2 Ravenstar Reentry and Landing
For some useful refferences. Orbiter is strictly in Metric, which while might not be intuitive to those of us in the States, is easy to get used to since everything interrelates and converts intuitively. (The entire point of Metric, is it not?)
For some useful info...
10,000 meters is 10 kilometers, which is ~30,000 ft. About the altitude of a jet airliner. On the HUD, altitude is displayed on the right side in meters or kilometers.
Mach 1, depending on atmospheric conditions, is somewhere between 300 and 350 meters per second. (Rougly 700 mph) Each subsiquent order of mach occurs at intervals of ~300 meters per second. Speed is indicated on the left side of the HUD.
If you'd like to see stuff in action more directly, make flight requests, and get me to answer questions on the fly. Feel free to catch me in the Fimfiction IRC channel under the name ATC. (I'm always logged in, so I might not actually BE there.) If you happen to know a good streaming service or program, that will help too. (Dyyno is buggy.)
Is that a CHALLENGE? encrypted-tbn3.google.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSgODUmD1jgHcnRb3SEwz178WUkNjaSrtxUE_DCo4hTltIsu6S4rg *Turns up the volume all the way*
Metric is master race. SUBMIT
All Hail the Metric System!
(I'm an engineer, and I've come to hate the English unit system with a passion!)
Metric is God. Although as a Canadian I use a bartardised system that saddly is forced to include feet... Pity me
98973
Since when do Canadians use feet? I mean for other than walking.
I never see anyone using that. Okay, on those weird bars at some businesses so they now how tall a thief is. But other than that though...
98984 Officially we don't... unofficially it's common practice, or rather it is around here. I almost got my shop teacher fired over it too. He started giving me 0's on my projects and such when I refused to use feet and inches and I refused to use them because we're a METRIC country... yeah, he didn't like me after that or before that.
"Contractors and mechanics use imperial measurements, I'm teaching you what you need to know."
"I'm taking this course for the credit and we're a METRIC country, I won't use a measurement system that our country gave up before I was even born."
98996 Amen to that.
For those who WRITE Arrow 18:
MOAR!!
Erm... if that's okay...
Dang, that's some serious acceleration.
Having flown the Ravenstar in orbiter, I can attest that its pretty easy to get the hang of the instrumentation, although I can't say I remember it having all those switches in the middle panel. Orbiter is a badass sim/game/thing and I had a alot of fun trying and failing to to make and break an orbit.