> Spike Jones wrote:
> >
> > 'Gene is absolutely right. I was going off in the wrong direction by
> > pi radians. If we want to put up software that anyone can use for
> > calculating orbit mechanics, it should be in open source. ...
Michael Lorrey wrote:
> How is one to obtain Matlab for free if one is not a student or
> professor? Last I knew it was a pretty hefty license fee, which I have
> no intention of paying for...
Matlab is expensive and waaay overkill for what I have in mind.
It does have some cool features, but really all I wanted to do was
make up a spreadsheet to help people do some first order calcs
on something like a pre-singularity pre-nano Mars/asteroid
colonization scenario. I can tell from some of the comments
that are posted to me off list every time I start mentioning my
single tiny female Martian meme, that many do not really understand
what is involved. I get these very incensed notes: spike, you
cruel wicked bastard yakkity yak, and spike, you heartless mad-
scientist misogynist bla bla.
Well, I can assure you Im none of the above, but this is all a
very straightforward calculation, and we could put together
a very convincing no-magic-physics linked spreadsheet to
prove it. It would be a good tool for those wanting to put
together a pre-nano hard-science-fiction story. Thats all I
have in mind. If we do it right, it could grow from a Mars
colony sheet to one that includes interstellar flight with
solar sail/nuclear rocket tech, etc.
Altho I still agree with Gene that open source is best, I
would be willing to use microsloth excel as an intermediate
step, from which we could later extract the equations for
a more sophisticated later effort. spike
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon May 28 2001 - 09:59:41 MDT