Did you just see the Space Shuttle launch? How'd you like to fly it on your computer?

[originalpckelly]

http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/orbit.html

Go there, get Orbiter, and be happy.

I've been doing that since I was still in high school which was a few years ago. :P Orbiter is completely free software by the way.

***NOT MAC COMPATIBLE, EXCEPT THROUGH BOOTCAMP!***

I know that sucks, sorry I forgot to say something about it. :-(

Celestia works on Mac, Windows and Linux but doesn't feature all the ooey-goooey-goodness of Orbiter:
http://www.shatters.net/celestia/index.html

[gateley]

1. Hey thanks -- I'll check it out. (I love stuff like this!) nt

[originalpckelly]

3. They have a nice community of very helpful people...

http://orbiter-forum.com/

[originalpckelly]

6. Try Celestia for you Mac users:

http://www.shatters.net/celestia/index.html

It's not as good as Orbiter, but it's still pretty cool. :P

[shireen]

2. it's not Mac-compatible.

:grr:

[gateley]

4. I just found that out, too. Damn. nt

[originalpckelly]

5. No it isn't, unfortunately...

Only through bootcamp I suppose, it'd be too slow on any emulator on a G5 or lower.

The guy who created it, did so relying on DirectX and Microsoft's Visual C#.

[Native]

7. Saw it from my office window. Totally awesome!

[originalpckelly]

8. LUCKY!

:P

[Speck Tater]

9. Highly recommended

A friend introduced me to Orbiter about 5 years ago. I've had a lot of fun with it.

One warning: This is NOT an outer space shoot-em-up. The game has some spacecraft that can travel to the moon, but the trip takes a loooong time. Weeks maybe. There is a time-warp speedup option, but I find that the orbital calculations are not a accurate in speed up mode, so you might find yourself crashing into the moon instead of orbiting around it while in speedup mode.

Since it's in real time, a 90-minute orbit around the earth takes 90 minutes in real time to complete.

[Ian David]

10. Can we land the shuttle on our neighbor's lawn? n/t