Article dedicated to space travel enthusiasts with very serious reports because they are real space flight simulations that can be done virtually from your PC . In another post we had already seen how to explore the space and constellations of the stars through Google Earth, Windows live earth or other online telescopes.
In this case, however, we are much closer to Star Trek and see how to simulate a real journey in space inside a real shuttle or in a space station from which you can look at the Earth.
First of all, Orbiter, a completely free and free space flight simulator to download and install on your PC, where you can really touch the emotion or visual sensation of a journey in a spaceship. The spectacularity is given by the physics that controls true and very accurate Orbiter.
The game, however, which has the most traits of an aerospace engineering experiment, faithfully replicates the dynamics of space flight and, for example, even fuel consumption according to the directions and changes in orbit taken, correspond faithfully to reality.
Pros and cons of so much realism is the duration of the game in which, if a space mission had the real duration of three days, even in Orbiter, the same, it will force to keep the PC on for three days until the end of the trip.
Well luckily, being a virtual simulation, there is the possibility of speeding up the time up to 100, 000 times so the mission can be completed in a couple of hours.
On ORBITER there is also a little imagination, otherwise it would be very boring and you can use futuristic spaceships, not really existing, much more powerful than the current ones that manage to face travel to distant planets that for now are impossible even for NASA .
However, the Space Shuttle is real and faithfully reproduced, moreover there is the availability to look and fly with other historical spaceships, including those of the Gemini project and the Apollo project.
The simulator is quite complicated, as are those of air flight but there is a community of passionate users and players who should help understand all the operations in the Orbiter Italia forum.
If you are looking for a funnier, less realistic but lighter game you can download for free there are Oolite, a mission simulation, in 3D to explore space and the star wars games of action and strategy
For those who want something less demanding, without driving a spaceship but observing only how one would see the Earth from space, he could try to climb virtually on the International Space Station which has been rebuilt with a 3D tour to explore and study it in the interior and structure . This station has been in orbit around the Earth since November 2, 2000, and since then there has always been some astronaut inside.
The reconstruction is by NASA as part of the project called ISS which studies the life and working conditions of man in space for a long period of time in order to have the scientific basis for building spaceships that can travel farther in the space to explore the galaxy.
To get on board of this station you can take the 360 ° virtual tour and look at all the details of the things they have done, interactively staying inside the building where there are astronauts and extraterrestrials.
To see how the station moves and see the Earth from the astronaut's point of view, you can enter the Windows On Earth site which allows you to look at the path of the International Space Station.
Practically you can see the Earth during the passage and you can see seas and cities according to the time.
It is not a live shot but the result of a very detailed and precise photography work.
On the "configure" menu you can add music and set small changes to the graphics and to the visualization which in any case proceeds relentlessly.
To conclude the spatial reports, we continue in another article with the best astronomy sites where you can find animations and interactive images on planets, stars and space.
On another post, however, it is described how to see Mars and the Moon on Google Earth 5.
