Release Notes for "Go Play In Space" (Second Edition) by Bruce Irving with Andy McSorley

May 4, 2006

This new version of "Go Play in Space" has been revised and expanded for the 2006 version of the Orbiter free space flight simulator (www.orbitersim.com).  The Introduction and Chapter 1 (Getting Started) have some information on the book and its purpose, and a little on what has changed since the 2005 version of the book and Orbiter.  Read chapter 1 to be sure your PC (Windows only) can support Orbiter.  

With one exception, the scenarios (starting "mission" files) used in the book are installed with Orbiter itself, several of them (chapters 2, 4, and 5) in the form of tutorial "flight recorder" files that play back in Orbiter and include on-screen notes (a new 2006 feature - you can take over any time to fly the rest of the mission yourself).  None of the supplied scenarios requires any add-ons to run, only a standard Orbiter installation.

The exception to Orbiter-standard-scenarios is Chapter 6, "Mars Awaits."  The starting scenarios for this Earth-Mars tutorial are supplied in a folder in the zip file where you should have found this PDF file.  The folder is called "From Earth to Mars" and it should be extracted and copied (folder included) into the Scenarios folder of your Orbiter installation so you can use the scenarios (there are 10, allowing you to start the mission from various points).


ADD-ONS NEEDED
Chapter 6 is also the exception for add-ons.  Two free add-ons are needed, Interplanetary MFD and LandMFD.  The chapter itself (page 6-1) has information on where to download these add-ons.  Chapter 8 talks about many more free add-ons but none are required to use the book.


PDF VERSION
This manual was created with Adobe Acrobat 7.0 and should be readable with Acrobat Reader 5.0 and later (free reader is available from www.adobe.com).


Please email us with any questions, comments, or corrections.


Happy orbiting,
Bruce Irving (bruce.irving@marsdrive.com)
Andy McSorley (amcsorley@dsl.pipex.com)