New to Orbiter? Having trouble understanding the Orbiter manual?


Go Play in Space is the 'Orbiter Manual for the rest of us' - meaning that it's an easy to read introduction to Orbiter, primarily aimed at readers who come from a non technical background be they adults or children.

Orbiter Video Tutorials

• DG4 to ISS - Video tutorial by Tex focused for beginners, enjoyable for advanced Orbinauts as well. You need Orbiter 2006-P1 Edition along with Dan Steph's Orbiter Sound 3.5 and Delta Glider IV HERE.
• DG4 Reentry Tutorial - Video tutorial especially for beginners, how to bring the DG-IV back home. You need Orbiter 2006-P1 Edition along with Dan Steph's Orbiter Sound 3.5 and Delta Glider IV HERE.

 

TransX Video Tutorials by flytandem:

BEGINNERS

• TX-ISS - You start in a low Earth orbit perfectly aligned with the ISS. You are below and behind the ISS and will use TransX to set up a single prograde burn to intercept the ISS.
• TX-Earth to Moon - From a low Earth orbit already aligned with the orbit of the moon, TransX is used to set up a single prograde burn that takes us to the moon. It finishes with an orbit insertion burn at the moon using Orbit MFD.

INTERMEDIATE

• TX-Moon to Earth - Starting at Brighton beach on the moon, with TransX, plan a trip and fly back to Earth. This includes the entire launch, parking orbit, ejection burn and suggested location of a mid course correction.
• TX-Earth to Mars - This is a series of 6 separate videos that take you from sitting on the Earth at Habana to planning, launching, ejecting, 2 mid course corrections, and finally the orbit insert at Mars. To run them in the proper order play them as follows... Setup, Launch, Eject, MCC1, MCC2, Insert.  Lengthy 70 meg download.
• TX-Voyager 2 Setup - You are sitting on Earth on the date that the historic Voyager 2 mission launched. TransX is used to set up the eject variable to arrive at Jupiter and the subsequent slings to Saturn Uranus and Neptune are then set up. In order to simplify the setup, the historic encounter dates at the planets are NOT followed.
• TX-Free Return - Starting in low Earth orbit, this video shows the creation and complete flight of a transfer to the moon and free return back to Earth. It moves along fairly fast so it's not really intended for those just starting out with TransX.
• TX-Hybrid1 - This is an option associated with the free return (above). It starts after the trans-lunar injection burn and you are about half way to the moon. From here the video shows how to change from a free return to an arrival at the moon where you are passing over Brighton Beach on your first orbit around the moon.

ADVANCED

• TX-2009-EVVEJSN - Sitting on the Earth on March 26th 2009. We set up a departure for Venus that allows subsequent slings of Venus then Earth, Jupiter, Saturn and finally arrival at Neptune. Only the slings are roughed out, the launch heading is not created. A description of how this sling arrangement was found is available here.
• TX-Moon to Mars - Starting from Brighton Beach on the moon, the flight ejects to drop to a low Pe at the Earth where a small 550 m/s burn sends the ship to Mars. A surrogate ship orbiting Earth is created and used for planning "when" to depart the moon and also to use as a "plane" target for rounding the Earth. The zip file contains 5 avi files and 5 associated scenario files. Run then in order 1 thru 5 which is in their respective file names. There is a 6th scenario file that has the .scn at the end of the 5th avi file.
• TX-Trojan Sling Setup - Using a surrogate ship sitting on Jupiter to find the date of a sling, the sling velocity and sling angles to be able to do one full orbit after the sling to intercept a trojan asteroid. Enphasis is to minimize the final encounter velocity with the asteroid. 2002 DD1 is chosen as the target.

Basic Flight Maneuvers

• Tutorial: DG to ISS Principles to achieve orbit and reach ISS. Recommended for newbies.
• Tutorial: Concepts for atmospheric reentry How to perform a reentry without burning or missing the target
• Rocket Science for Dummies

Too much rocket science? Then try Harmsway Tutorials - super easy lessons to get you started in Orbiter.

More Basic Tutorials

• IMFD Full Manual/Playbacks This is a 105 page manual of IMFD, describing everything about it. Included are descriptions of all programs, helpful IMFD hints to make your life easier, major do's and dont's of IMFD, and much, much more.
• Tutorial: Concepts for Interplanetary MFD 4.2.1 How to go to other planets
• Trevor Johns Tutorial
• Virtual Spaceflight
• Orbital Operations Manual - Jared 'Smitty' Smith
• Orbiter Tutorials - Robert Denny
• Direct Ascent and Docking to Space Station Project - by DocHoliday
• Tutorial: Orbiter para principiantes (spanish) Tutorial en español acerca de cómo despegar y entrar en órbita. Recomendado para novatos que no sepan nada sobre cómo pilotear.
• Tutorial: Volando el shuttle fleet v1.2f English version: How to perform the ascent using Shuttle Fleet addon. Versión en español: Cómo volar el Shuttle Fleet desde el despegue hasta el aterrizaje.

• Deep Space Flight Manual and Earth to Mars
• Earth to Mars Checklist - Cpt CryBaby's

• Landing the Shutlle ( Kevin Stoffel )
• Fly to ISS Realtime ( Harmsway )

• Apollo History
• Apollo 11 Tutorial - by SaturnV
• How To Get To Lunar Orbit The Easy Way (pdf). NASSP 5 Tutorial by Bob7
• "From the Earth to The Moon" an AMSO 1.17 Apollo 11 Full Mission Tutorial Using IMFD

Tutorials for Teachers

• Tutorial: Orbiter for kids. Lesson 1 First lesson of my workshop for kids. It was implemented during 2005-2006 at Colegio Internacional SEK in Costa Rica.

• Tutorial: How to create surface bases The entry point to the world of developing addons for newbies.
• MFD Wizard for Visual Studio This is a tool to allow the simple creation of MFDs in Visual Studio.
• Surface base wizard 1.3b Manual contains concepts on how to create surface tiles. You may also use it with this tool Surface Tile calculator v5.0a
• Tutorial: How to make scenarios for Orbiter v1.5 Concepts that will help you so you can edit or create scenarios. You may want to use it these tools that provide code examples for different vessels
• Vessel code generator 1.0
• Shuttle fleet scenario generator v1.5c
• Big space plane 4.0 scenario generator 1.1
• Merlin 1.2 code scenario generator
• Anim8or tutorial: How to model a plane Tutorial for newbies on 3D modelling
• Anim8or tutorial: How to model a rocket (Lesson 2) Tutorial for newbies on 3D modelling
• Anim8or tutorial: How to make a building (Lesson 3)) Tutorial for newbies on 3D modelling
• Mesh Wizard 1.9d Manual contains concepts on .MSH (Orbiter), .AN8 (Anim8tor) and .OBJ (Wavefront) format for 3D objects.
• Tutorial: Vectors for dummies Concepts that helps you to understand vectors.
• Tutorial: How to use Spacecraft.dll (Lesson 1) This will teach you how to create a space station module (this is an exercise)
• Tutorial: How to use Spacecraft.dll parameters This is an explanation of commands used to create vessels using Vinka's Spacecraft.dll
• Tutorial: How to make music for Orbiter This will familiarize you with tools to make music