An Integration Of Burchismo Add-Ons Into A Coherent Space Infrastructure
Posted 08-15-2009 at 02:00 AM by pattersoncr
I discovered Orbiter two years ago. Since that time my favorite group of add-ons has become, by far, Greg Burch’s “future history” series. The release dates of Greg’s add-ons span more than one version of Orbiter and (as he points out in his add-on documentation) a steadily advancing “state of the art” of his own abilities. As a result, things don't "fit together" quite as well as I'd like.
Greg has a very clear vision of the future he wants to portray. I respect that and have no intention of intruding on or trying to rewrite his vision. My goal with this series of blog posts is to help flesh out the world that Greg is trying to create as well share the tools and techniques I have used while enjoying his handiwork. I’m also trying to document all the little tweaks I’ve made to make everything work together as well as codify the techniques I use to fly these vessels. I figure if I’m going to write all this stuff down, I might as well share it with the Orbiter community. I welcome any thoughts and comments.
Space infrastructure in the late 21st Century.
Primary Earth launch facilities
These include Greg’s “Equatorial Bases” as well as WeHaveAProblem’s “Wideawake International” base on Ascension Island in the South Atlantic. (WAI doesn’t have anything to do with Greg’s add-ons but is just so darn cool that I feel unable to not use it.) The Equatorial Bases were written for an earlier version of Orbiter and some slight tweaks are required to use them. I’ll discuss this later. The Space Plane 2.0 (SP2), Big Space Plane 4.0 (BSP4) and Swift Space Plane (SSS) are my primary launch systems.
Low Earth Orbit facilities
The primary LEO facility I make use of is Celestium Station. I have placed Celestium in a circular 500km orbit with a 9° Equatorial inclination. This orbit minimizes the off-plane component required for most destinations and allows launch from WAI as well as from the equator. By the late 2000’s there are certainly numerous other stations in LEO but I have chosen to focus on Celestium. In my scenarios, I have placed a Universal Remote Manipulator System (URMS) on Celestium. I also generally use a couple of Station Building Blocks (SBB) components to facilitate docking the BSP.
Lunar Orbit Stations
I have placed the Wheel1 station in a retrograde, 120km, circular, lunar orbit. I add some SBB components and another URMS to flesh things out a bit. I put a lot of thought into how the main low lunar orbit (LLO) station ought to be set-up. In my view, as a widespread cislunar infrastructure develops, we will need to, pretty quickly settle on some conventions. One of these is prograde vs retrograde orbits. In LEO, prograde orbits are used exclusively. Launching East gives a significant ΔV advantage due to the Earth’s rotation. On the moon, this advantage is only a couple of m/s. I settled on retrograde orbits since they offer the advantage of allowing free-return trajectories. I don’t know if a free-return would be considered to be of much advantage in 2100, but I think they’re really cool and enjoy setting them up and using them.
Lunar Surface Bases
Heinlein Base forms the main hub for lunar surface operations. I also use Brighton Beach and Niven Base. To avoid enormous plane change requirements, access to the other bases is via sub-orbital hops from Heinlein.
In my next post, I’ll try to list-out all the add-ons I’m using as well as any updates I’ve made to them along the way.
Greg has a very clear vision of the future he wants to portray. I respect that and have no intention of intruding on or trying to rewrite his vision. My goal with this series of blog posts is to help flesh out the world that Greg is trying to create as well share the tools and techniques I have used while enjoying his handiwork. I’m also trying to document all the little tweaks I’ve made to make everything work together as well as codify the techniques I use to fly these vessels. I figure if I’m going to write all this stuff down, I might as well share it with the Orbiter community. I welcome any thoughts and comments.
Space infrastructure in the late 21st Century.
Primary Earth launch facilities
These include Greg’s “Equatorial Bases” as well as WeHaveAProblem’s “Wideawake International” base on Ascension Island in the South Atlantic. (WAI doesn’t have anything to do with Greg’s add-ons but is just so darn cool that I feel unable to not use it.) The Equatorial Bases were written for an earlier version of Orbiter and some slight tweaks are required to use them. I’ll discuss this later. The Space Plane 2.0 (SP2), Big Space Plane 4.0 (BSP4) and Swift Space Plane (SSS) are my primary launch systems.
Low Earth Orbit facilities
The primary LEO facility I make use of is Celestium Station. I have placed Celestium in a circular 500km orbit with a 9° Equatorial inclination. This orbit minimizes the off-plane component required for most destinations and allows launch from WAI as well as from the equator. By the late 2000’s there are certainly numerous other stations in LEO but I have chosen to focus on Celestium. In my scenarios, I have placed a Universal Remote Manipulator System (URMS) on Celestium. I also generally use a couple of Station Building Blocks (SBB) components to facilitate docking the BSP.
Lunar Orbit Stations
I have placed the Wheel1 station in a retrograde, 120km, circular, lunar orbit. I add some SBB components and another URMS to flesh things out a bit. I put a lot of thought into how the main low lunar orbit (LLO) station ought to be set-up. In my view, as a widespread cislunar infrastructure develops, we will need to, pretty quickly settle on some conventions. One of these is prograde vs retrograde orbits. In LEO, prograde orbits are used exclusively. Launching East gives a significant ΔV advantage due to the Earth’s rotation. On the moon, this advantage is only a couple of m/s. I settled on retrograde orbits since they offer the advantage of allowing free-return trajectories. I don’t know if a free-return would be considered to be of much advantage in 2100, but I think they’re really cool and enjoy setting them up and using them.
Lunar Surface Bases
Heinlein Base forms the main hub for lunar surface operations. I also use Brighton Beach and Niven Base. To avoid enormous plane change requirements, access to the other bases is via sub-orbital hops from Heinlein.
In my next post, I’ll try to list-out all the add-ons I’m using as well as any updates I’ve made to them along the way.
Total Comments 0
