Trajectory Plan

Trajectory Plan

The purpose of this page is to characterize the trajectory and how it is integrated into the game. The trajectory will leave from NASA KSC, Earth and arrive at a base on Pluto. Eventually, the game will comprise of 3 trajectories. Which trajectory is used is determined by which engine the player purchases at the start of the game. The options will be chemical, electrical, or solar sail. Only the main-belt chemical trajectory will be used for v1.0.

The trajectories, for simplicity, will be treated as 2D and will be mapped from a bird's eye perspective of the solar system (see here).

There will also be maneuver nodes (similar to rivers in the original Oregon Trail). These will occur on approach to planets. See the maneuver node section for more detail.

Main-belt Chemical trajectory

AKA, the SLS-Oregon Trajectory

#POST V1 content below!!!

Oort Chemical Trajectory

The baseline trajectory will fly by every planet between Earth and Pluto. The trajectory will attempt to be as realistic as possible (even though we are already starting with the 2D assumption). The sequence of events shall be:

1. Earth (launchpad, KSC)
2. Earth ISS
3. Moon (orbital view)
4. 1st Maneuver node, half way to Mars (determines quality of Mars approach)
5. Mars (hand wave to arrive at Phobos station)
6. Ceres (either orbital view or redneck asteroid miners?)
7. 2nd Maneuver node, half way to Jupiter (determines quality of Jupiter approach)
8. Jupiter (hand wave to arrive at Europa Station)
9. Halley's Comet (Gather samples from the tail?)
10. 3rd Maneuver node, half way to Saturn (determines quality of Saturn approach)
11. Saturn (hand wave to arrive at Titan Station)
12. 4th Maneuver node, half way to Neptune (determines quality of Neptune approach)
13. Neptune (hand wave to arrive at L1 space station)
14. 5th Maneuver node, half way to Uranus (determines quality of Uranus approach)
15. Uranus (hand wave to arrive at L1 space station)
16. 6th Maneuver node, half way to Pluto (determines quality of Pluto approach)
17. Pluto (Land on base and win!)

Electrical Trajectory

(To be continued...)

Solar Sail Trajectory

(To be continued...)

Maneuver Node

Maneuver nodes will have 3 options to determine the quality of an approach to a planet. They are to simulate Trajectory Correction Maneuvers (TCMs) that are actually used in missions. Before a launch, engineers can only simulate what will actually happen on mission. The truth is they are usually wrong, close but wrong. So TCMs are used to make sure the spacecraft gets to where it needs to and accounting for the modeling errors. The options available will be:

1. Radio to Earth and determine the best maneuver to use (cost $$)
2. Calculate it on-board (random chance of being fine, but most likely using less than optimal fuel)
3. Don't worry about it! What's the worst that could happen? (Small chance of being fine, large chance of doing a large burn close to planet AKA lots of fuel, or miss fly-by and wait for the next oppurtunity AKA lose food/time/sanity)