How to celebrate Cosmonautics Day?

Usually, cosmonautics shows films about Gagarin, “The Taming of the Fire”, or something else on a space theme. Thanks to information technologies, we can arrange an unusual holiday for ourselves - see from several sides the reconstruction of that flight. With the help of Orbiter, we will look at the ship "Vostok-1" in flight from outside and inside, and the film "First Orbit" will show us a view of the Earth, as close as possible to what Gagarin saw in real flight.

Idea

Orbiter

Orbiter is a free space simulator with honest Newtonian physics. The openness of the architecture makes it quite easy to create add-ons and, during the existence of the game, the community has made many wonderful additions with new ships, rockets, satellites, indicators, spaceports, and so on.
By the fiftieth anniversary of the first manned flight into space a group of enthusiasts - Andrey igel Tilman, Nikita Thorton Vtyurin, Roman Bloodest Vasilyev and Yuri Kulch Kulchitsky made the addition "Vostok ship", which very qualitatively simulates the flights of the Vostok ships - test launches with dogs, flights six cosmonauts and even crash models and rescue systems. At the same time, they very reliably and beautifully depicted both the launch vehicle and the ship.
Thanks to the Orbiter with the addon “Vostok ship”, we can:

• Look at the work of technology and flight sequence.
• Look at the flight in the "East" from the inside, if desired, even manually controlled.

First orbit

“First Orbit” is an experimental film about the flight of Gagarin. The video series is a shooting from the ISS, made in conditions as close as possible to those that Gagarin had - a flight over approximately the same places (the orbital inclinations of the ISS and Gagarin are slightly different) and about the same light conditions (the start was in the morning) . The sound track uses instrumental music and the recording of Gagarin's talks in real flight. The film was created by director Christopher Riley , specializing in popular science films and the history of science, astronaut Paolo Nespoli (STS-120, Soyuz TMA-20) and composer Philip Shepard .
First Orbit will give us:

• A view as close as possible to what Gagarin saw.
• Record real negotiations.

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Thus, by combining the film and the simulator, we get a multi-faceted art object that will bring us as close as possible to that historical day. Moreover, we will even be able to see what is happening from several sides and more broadly than Gagarin himself had access to. The portholes in the Vostok were small, the Dome module on the ISS gives a much better view, and it was possible to look outside at the flight of the rocket before installing video fixing equipment this spring only in computer graphics.

Training

Required

• Orbiter itself - source one or two or torrent .
• Addon QC "Vostok" .

Desirable

• High quality Earth textures - source or torrent .
• Improved texture Baikonur .
• The film is available on YouTube , but you can also download , good, Creative Commons license allows.

Preparation and installation

1. Unzip add-ons to the folder where you installed the Orbiter.
2. Activate the improved Baikonur textures according to the instructions in the archive (you must manually edit the baikonur.cfg file in the ORBITER \ CONFIG \ EARTH \ BASE folder, adding lines from the instruction file).
3. Activate the module "Vzor", which emulates the main window with a system for manual orientation - Modules -> tick the VZOR .
4. Orbiter switch to windowed mode with parameters equal to half or one third of the screen width by unchecking the Fixed Aspect Ratio checkbox.
5. In the second half of the window open the player with the movie or browser from YouTube.

Launch

It's simple - run orbiter.exe and select the flight script "Vostok-1":

Reproduction

Synchronization

Unfortunately, the film is not perfectly synchronized with the simulation. If you measure the time of the iconic events in the film and the game, you will get the table:

Event	Orbiter	First orbit
Rocket launch	360 s	140 s
Sunset	1880 s	1800 s
Dawn	3960 s	3870 s
Bailout	6130 s	5670 s
Landing / end of film	6805 seconds	5954 s

Those. the director noticeably reduced the descent area after braking and landing with a parachute.
I think the most correct idea is to synchronize the start and ejection. In this case, the movie starts at -2: 20 from the launch of the rocket (a timer will be displayed in the lower left in Orbiter). Then, at night, or to reach the coast of Africa (the first land after dawn), or after the most beautiful music (to listen to it again) move the film exactly 4 minutes ago . However, you can, based on these numbers, choose any algorithm of actions up to the simultaneous launch of the game and the movie, in order to watch the start and landing from different sources at different times.

Control

The script in Orbiter does not require participation in the management of the ship. But there are some actions that should be done:

• Switching between the inside view of the “East” and the outside is done by pressing the F1 button. Until the end of the breeding view from the inside is not available.
• Before entering the shadow, it is advisable to turn on the cabin lighting (right mouse button - turn to the right, left - to the left):
  
• After braking the ship will begin to turn - it was in reality. If you feel uncomfortable with the rotation, switch to appearance and, pressing F2 , switch to global frame mode, in which the camera will not rotate with the ship. Or switch to the inside view and close the cockpit curtains (three toggle switches above the light switch).

Pictures that implement the idea

How it happened with me, I hope you will be interested in:

Start.

Sunset.

Dawn.

Coast of africa

Deceleration in dense layers of the atmosphere

Bailout.

Epilogue

What I like about Cosmonautics Day is that it is a very bright holiday. This is the day of man and mankind, the holiday of science, who invented the technique, the labor that created the technique, and the courage and curiosity that mounted the technique. Holiday, giving hope of victory over space, speed and gravity, and the dream that we will leave our cradle of the Earth and go to such a beautiful and interesting space. Have a nice holiday!

1. If there are questions about the ship, there is a Russian-language manual in the Orbiter Doc folder.
2. Russian-language manual on Orbiter .
3. If you are interested in the game and the flights in it - I am writing a cycle of posts in which various operations and techniques are performed.
4. For KDPV thanks to the film "Gagarin: First in Space", I recommend and I see it, I personally liked it. There is also a post about movies , there is something to pay attention to.