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  1. MikeB

    Terminology assist

    Maybe syzygy? Even if not, what a cool word, with three y's and no other vowels! From Wikipedia: In astronomy, a syzygy is the alignment of three or more celestial bodies in the same gravitational system along a straight line. The word is usually used in context with...
  2. MikeB

    Request Skylon

    Maybe the captain is just for conducting weddings? :hmm:
  3. MikeB

    Question Your Favorite Movies

    Serenity (after the Firefly series) Mary Poppins Hook
  4. MikeB

    Project Orbiter Navigator

    It seems that this could be used to plan trajectories among the byways of the interplanetary superhighway. Is this part of the capabilities?
  5. MikeB

    Programming Question Porting to Mac/ Running using Wine or Cider

    If you have an Intel-based Mac (any model from the past few years), you can run Windows in a Boot Camp partition, and run Orbiter on that. It requires a dual-boot approach, so you can't run Mac apps at the same time you're running Orbiter, but it works great for me. Let me know if you want more...
  6. MikeB

    News Reaction Engines News

    The Troy mission seems like a nice concept. The animation seemed only so-so. I've seen better quality from Orbinauts. Is anyone working on the Troy mission add-ons?
  7. MikeB

    An SSTO as "God and Robert Heinlein intended".

    Disclaimer: I haven't studied the details. Does anyone here think that a Skylon-like SSTO spacecraft is realistically feasible? The use of air-breathing engines in the air seems like a good idea, even if the specific design of the Sabre engine doesn't work out.
  8. MikeB

    the different mean about spaceship and spacecraft

    And to keep it straight, a naval architect once told me, "You can put a boat on a ship, but you can't put a ship on a boat." :huh:
  9. MikeB

    Request Interplanetary Superhighway Navigator

    The winner of the Intel Science Talent Search is Erika DeBenedictis. She won for a program that calculates low-energy trajectories through the solar system, much faster than previous approaches have found. I can't evaluate her claims or her code, but I bet some of our MFD wizards could adapt...
  10. MikeB

    Software Orbiter and Macintosh

    I just checked mine and found that it's 6.3 GB, not 5 GB as I said before; memory is a funny thing. With Windows XP SP3 and a 2 GB PAGEFILE.SYS file, I have about 500 MB free space. The only apps are VLC and a Zip-file utility. My external Orbiter folders take up nearly 7 GB (includes...
  11. MikeB

    Software Orbiter and Macintosh

    Apple's Boot Camp Assistant guides you through the creation or removal of Boot Camp partitions. It's very easy. Of course, for peace of mind, you should backup the hard drive first. However, the creation of the new partition doesn't require you to log off or reboot. Maybe it's too easy, because...
  12. MikeB

    Software Orbiter and Macintosh

    Mac + Orbiter: BootCamp On my MacBook Pro, I have set up a 5GB BootCamp partition and installed Windows XP SP3, with hardly any applications. On an external drive (USB connection, though that doesn't matter) I have a number of Orbiter installation folders (different combinations of add-ons...
  13. MikeB

    Question NASA's MEDS compared with our MFDs?

    I've read a little about the Space Shuttle's Multi-functional Electronic Display System (MEDS), which seems to be the real-world equivalent of our MFDs. They appear to provide very different functions than our standard and add-on MFDs, largely derived from the original electro-mechanical gauges...
  14. MikeB

    Naming Convention for Planets. What do you think?

    Welcome. I run Orbiter on Windows XP SP3 in a 5GB BootCamp partition on my MacBook Pro. I keep all of the Orbiter folders with various configurations on an external drive connected by USB. Works great. Have fun.
  15. MikeB

    Poll When were you born?

    I have a fairly new MacBook Pro (Intel processor) with the Snow Leopard (10.6) version of Mac OS X. One facility it provides is called Boot Camp. Using that, I set aside a 5GB partition and installed Windows XP SP3. I have an external drive with a bunch of Orbiter configurations in different...
  16. MikeB

    Poll When were you born?

    1948. In the '60s I saw Ray Charles in concert, and Peter Nero (google is your friend), and Bill Cosby. I watched the Apollo 11 landing and EVA, and all of the others. In 1971 I helped analyze data from the Surveyor sample that was returned by Apollo 12. I held my breath for practically the...
  17. MikeB

    Software Mac OS X & Virtual Machine Windows

    Thanks, TSPenguin. I turned on Always enumerate devices, and indeed Direct3D T&L HAL appears in the list. However, selecting it seemed to give the same FPS as Direct3D HAL. Perhaps Parallels Desktop 4 doesn't actually do anything differently with that option selected. ---------- Post added...
  18. MikeB

    New Feature Selecting Date & Time Format

    You might consider adding an option for the ISO 8601 date/time format: yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm
  19. MikeB

    Software Mac OS X & Virtual Machine Windows

    I run Orbiter on my Mac with virtualization. I'd like to know if others have found an optimal configuration. I'd also like to know how best to assess performance. I give FPS below. Here's my setup: MacBook Pro CPU: 2.53 GHz Core Duo RAM: 4 GB 1067 MHz DDR3 GPU: NVIDIA GeForce 9400M and NVIDIA...
  20. MikeB

    Tell us about yourself!

    Mike from Maryland. Main interest is constructing scenarios involving sight-seeing near planets and their satellites. Isn't rocket science fun?
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