FlyingSinger

I just discovered KSP a few days ago and joined this forum an hour ago. Looking around, saw this post. Several others have already talked about what Orbiter can do (all for free). Although you CAN learn and do a lot with the stock spacecraft, it's true that add-ons expand your horizons tremendously, and many are incredibly well done. I've spent a lot of time in Orbiter and even wrote the tutorial book "Go Play In Space" (for Orbiter 2005 and 2006 but I never finished the 2010 version - sorry fellow Orbinauts!). The fact that this tutorial is 181 pages tells you that the learning curve is steep, but in fairness, there's just so much cool stuff you can do, and I cover most of the basics in the first few chapters. Orbiter is deep, very powerful and accurate, bordering on a professional tool for some things. Some groups at ESA have even used it to visualize proposed missions, even though they have AGI Satellite Toolkit and other professional tools. Martin first developed the flight recorder system around 2006 to allow them to play back missions in Orbiter with trajectories calculated in other tools (even though Orbiter can accurately simulate flights on its own). There are some great tutorial flight recordings included with Orbiter, and since they play back in Orbiter itself (not video), you can take control at any time. Of course you can also record and play back your own flights. Does KSP have a flight recorder feature (KSP newbie!). On last thing. In 2006, I worked with three other guys to virtually prototype a proposed human mission called Mars for Less - in Orbiter. We developed add-ons to simulate the whole mission, and I presented a paper on it at the 2006 Mars Society Conference in Washington, DC (see PDF paper and PowerPoint slides). Mark Paton's Mars EDL autopilot is brilliant. So it is a very powerful sim, and if you forgive the more complex and cockpit-based UI, your orbital mechanics background from KSP will really help you understand Orbiter (so maybe you can skip reading my book and just watch a few videos and replays to learn it). It's all sandbox - you define what you want to do. There is no spacecraft builder in Orbiter (add-on ships require using a 3rd party 3D modeling package and DLL's and config files to make the models work as spacecraft). But no programming or 3D modeling is needed to fly add-ons built by others - just download, unzip, and launch - once you read the readme file, and maybe the manual for complex add-ons! I have hundreds of Orbiter screen shots on my Flickr site. Also many Orbiter posts on my blog. -Bruce

Hello all, I only discovered KSP a few days ago, but as a card-carrying space geek (the card actually says "JPL Solar System Ambassador," but close enough), I figured I might as well admit that I will be spending some time with KSP and join the forum. So far I've only spent a few hours and have done a few simple flights. But I love the building approach and the user interface for space maneuvers. I'm impressed with KSP so far, and it looks like there is much more to come. I live in Massachusetts and in real life I'm an optical engineer working for an engineering software company. I'm also a singer-songwriter and a sadly inactive private pilot. Space-wise, I'm a JPL Solar System Ambassador (volunteer educational outreach program, not a NASA or JPL employee), but also sadly, I have not done any school programs in a couple of years. I love space and astronomy, and in 2005 I discovered a certain other space flight simulator whose name begins with O... I liked it so much I wrote a book about it called "Go Play In Space" (and for any that care, sorry that I never finished the third edition for the 2010 version). The original idea for that free e-book was to teach myself the whole simulated space flight thing. It was fun and useful for that, and I hope it has helped some others too. For all that, I know I still have a lot to learn about space flight, and I'm looking forward to being a KSP beginner. I like learning (and re-learning) stuff. I have a blog where I write about space, music, books, and what-not, Music of the Spheres. I already wrote a post about KSP. Perhaps there will be others. Cheers! Bruce Irving