Later this week, a host of SpaceX & # 39; s Crew Dragon will make its first delivery of astronomers to the International Space Station (ISS). To celebrate the event, the private company that lit up the spaceflight has released a few fun simulation-based browser so people here on Earth can try their hand at manejver. I offered it for lunch, and discovered for myself how difficult it was to fly through space.
To open the web app, users are greeted by the same interface used in the Crew Dragon capsule. Road controls are labeled with WASD, Q, and E keys on the left and numpad on the right when you have a full-size keyboard. If you're on a cell phone or tablet you can just touch the screen.
HUD is best. There are a few practical indicators – three of them – that show you your current roll, voice, and yaw tendencies related to the docking swamp in the ISS. Below those indicators you can also see your rate of change for each axis. The challenge is to keep all those references within twenty degrees from zero, while also hitting the new bull with the nose of your ship.
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In the process, it feels like trying to put a brick on top of a flag.
There is a very small amount of error and, or you can focus on the target, the faster you break. And by crashes it means I've hit the side of a billion-dollar research station that's been gone for 20 years.
I got it in the second attempt.
The hardest part of this whole situation is the fact that real astronomers don't change the axis of an object, something I've been doing in every spaceflight sim I've ever done. I think I spent a lot more fuel than an autopilot would manage to take out the real atmosphere later this week.
Most of all, I already have a new respect for the founders of Apollo 13. Jim Lovell and the company had been doing this kind of thing for years, but with so many analog solutions.
According to my sister's site The Verge, the flight computer won't have all the entertainment. Astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley will also take Crew Dragon off the spin. They have a hand-held system control test scheduled just before doing the work.
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