[HN Gopher] ISS Docking Simulator
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ISS Docking Simulator
Author : abhiminator
Score : 199 points
Date : 2022-01-05 11:40 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (iss-sim.spacex.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (iss-sim.spacex.com)
| Claude_Shannon wrote:
| That is interesting, thanks for the submission!
| cornel_io wrote:
| If you're on Android and missing buttons, try tapping where they
| should be and they'll show up.
|
| No idea how to get around the double tap -> zoom issue which
| makes this pretty hard.
| zeristor wrote:
| Has anyone set up a Deep-learning system to train against this?
|
| Andrew Ng was proud of training a system to fly a helicopter
| upside down, just curious.
| leetrout wrote:
| A lot of the various UI elements used at SpaceX are created by /
| under Shane Mielke (the pixel ranger, 2Advanced). Specifically he
| made this simulator.
|
| https://www.shanemielke.com/work/spacex/iss-docking-simulato...
| Toutouxc wrote:
| Unfortunately the model is really simplified and it makes the
| whole thing infinitely easier than in reality.
|
| You can clearly see the weirdness if you start pitching up, say
| at -0.3 deg/s and then add a lot of roll to either side (-2.0
| deg/s). The roll should not affect the pitch in any way (the
| reticle should continue to move along a straight line on the
| screen), but in this simulator the reticle actually starts
| drawing a circle, as if a yaw thruster was firing continuously.
| jcims wrote:
| I can't reproduce it but that sounds like gyroscopic
| precession. I wonder if they modeled that.
| lambda_dn wrote:
| Saw the Tesla floating in space.
| tomxor wrote:
| I wana see the speed run on this.
|
| I've got it down to 3mins if I rush orientation followed by
| position. I'm convinced this can be pushed further if you have
| the coordination to combine it.
|
| [edit] 2:30 combined with some exciting drama at the end
|
| [edit] 1:40 combining pitch & yaw & forward-thrust, followed by
| roll while accel/decel (because doesn't affect approach), finally
| eyeballing Y and Z and monitoring X reading for reverse thrust
| (because eyes suck at distance estimation)
|
| [edit] 1:30 with a ~50% chance of becoming a space station
| projectile, am I hired?
|
| [edit] 1:24 with a 90% chance of becoming tomato puree
|
| [edit]
|
| Found this 00:23 seconds, but they seem to be able to accelerate
| and decelerate much faster than I can, maybe I need to tweak key
| repeat and delay times to achieve this.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQ0J784PO6I
| rekoil wrote:
| I'm not sure that they're going for speed here...
| tomxor wrote:
| I thought the main advantage of re-usable rocket use on the
| ISS was the potential for providing an economical takeout
| service for astronauts... it needs to be hot on arrival, but
| not too hot.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Throw the hot stuff on the rocket exhaust manifold and hang
| the iced latte out the side, everything will be just right
| when you deliver it.
| iso1210 wrote:
| 30 minutes or your money back?
| rekoil wrote:
| I have changed my mind in the last 19 minutes, you are
| exactly what space needs!
| bagels wrote:
| Definitely, there are iss docking speed limits to avoid
| collision. It's happened before.
| lwoo wrote:
| Speedrun.com [1] suggests it can be done within less than 1
| minute.
|
| [1] https://www.speedrun.com/spacex_iss_docking_simulator_
| codeulike wrote:
| this bot does it in 16 seconds
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwWccjAD2i8
| novalis78 wrote:
| Another name for space pilot is actually "software
| engineer".
|
| Get ready for a career upgrade...
| moffkalast wrote:
| SpaceX: You're hired.
| qnkhuat wrote:
| ha! this is a very cool simulator, I wrote a simple auto-pilot in
| Lisp [1] a while ago. Its best result is 2m [1]
| https://github.com/qnkhuat/spacex
| emsign wrote:
| Musk needs the working class in space or else his utopia on Mars
| won't even begin. This is yet another push to bring a work force
| of non-astronauts to space, showing off that anyone from the
| internet is going to be able to control a SpaceX vehicle at one
| point with minimal training.
| SonicScrub wrote:
| ...or that having a well-designed UI with intuitive controls is
| a hallmark of good design that has been proven time and time
| again to reduce errors, whether or not something is designed
| for the layman or a highly paid professional.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| This is always such a weird take. Mars isn't going to be a
| 'utopia' in any of our lifetimes, Musk is also aware of that.
|
| On the other hand, the point of modernizing the UX is indeed to
| make things more accessible, but that is absolutely necessary
| if we are going to expand beyond Earth.
|
| Ignoring the idea of a Mars colonization effort, even just a
| roundtrip to Mars is a several years long mission. You're going
| to want to simplify the 'routine' parts to allow the astronauts
| to focus on training for the unknowns.
| natch wrote:
| That seems like an odd take.
|
| Do you believe that robots and autonomous systems, keeping in
| mind that they will develop by leaps and bounds between now and
| whenever regular Mars trips are in full swing (say 15 years
| from now), will somehow not take a lot of the load?
| nexuist wrote:
| The real life docking is already autonomous. This game just
| simulates what would happen if the crew decided to turn the
| autonomous system off and dock it manually. No human
| intervention is needed on the Crew Dragon during normal
| operation.
| jonathankoren wrote:
| All those years years of playing Kerbal Space Program played off.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Really miss the SAS modes. Especially target tracking which
| makes it so easy to translate while maintaining alignment with
| the docking port.
| joshdance wrote:
| It is really fun to try to dock in 4:06 while the Interstellar
| docking soundtrack plays.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/interstellar/comments/gmiwgh/no_tim...
| Sebb767 wrote:
| Letting lay people dock space ships with your actual UI is just
| bragging ;-)
|
| But Kudos, maybe it's my KSP experience, but that interface is
| really great and understandable.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Personally I'd prefer Russian Kurs[1] vertical arrangement with
| crosshair, screen looks more obscured but that's just
| resolution.
|
| 1: https://youtu.be/LL_usHvz3G0?t=135
| rbanffy wrote:
| The typography is terrible - the numbers are too widely
| separated and taking too much space on the screen. You also
| need to know where to look and interpreting is not as easy as
| the SpaceX approach.
|
| OTOH, a Soyuz does this with brains similar to an MSX
| computer while the SpaceX's screen overlay icons takes up
| more memory than all computers aboard a Soyuz put together.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Kurs interface is a list of values that you want all to
| move towards zero, it gives me an `int axes[] //
| x,y,z,Rx,Ry,Rz`. In SpaceX interface I'd have to `for axis
| in axes: axis_value = getObjectLocation(axis,
| screen).getValue()` and that's a ton of overhead.
| NobodyNada wrote:
| Also, white text overlaid on top of a white space station
| does not strike me as a good idea.
| all2 wrote:
| Needs a drop shadow, like we use in text over images in
| HTML/CSS.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Are they using this as an additional bug test?
| codeduck wrote:
| Compared to vanilla KSP, this interface is excellent. Intuitive
| placement of translate Vs rotate. Heh. Far less change of RUD
| due to using the wrong one at the wrong time. And no clampotron
| bounce XD
| dwringer wrote:
| I like the separation of controls but I really miss the
| navball.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| I agree. It's so good to always have access to all controls
| at all times. KSP has a modal interface. Translation is only
| enabled while in docking mode and it randomly switches back
| to normal out of nowhere.
|
| Lost count of how many maneuvers I screwed up due to mode
| errors. Not being in docking mode or being in the wrong
| docking mode. For some reason switching from the galaxy map
| back to the ship would turn off docking mode every time. I'd
| try to decelerate my ship only to end up rolling out of
| control and by the time I manage to stabilize it's too late.
| Best case scenario I'd simply overshoot my space station and
| have to waste propellant maneuvering back to it. Worst case
| scenario I smash right into it at ludicrous speeds.
| sundvor wrote:
| Docking a ship in Elite Dangerous in VR in uncoupled mode using
| a 6DOF HOTAS is the natural next step if you enjoyed this.
| reasonabl_human wrote:
| I really want to get into Elite Dangerous but that rabbit
| hole seems time consuming.... Is it possible to play and
| enjoy without dumping tons of hours in?
| zlsa wrote:
| Absolutely - there's grind, but if you just want to fly
| spaceships in space, it doesn't really affect you.
| cbhl wrote:
| In my opinion, if I was a Chrome engineer, I'd be pretty
| surprised that someone would decide to include Chromium in a
| spaceship. Disclaimer of warranty indeed.
| moffkalast wrote:
| To be fair Blink is probably one of if not the most stable
| and tested gui renderer in existence at this point.
| aasasd wrote:
| I mean, browsers are full-blown GUI environments, for a long
| time now. Most usable cross-platform ones, at that.
| zhan_eg wrote:
| Just FYI, this looks the same simulator from 2020 they released
| before the Demo-2 mission. The old discussion for reference [1]
|
| Still, it is super cool
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23162820
| ggerganov wrote:
| Last time I saw this posted here, people implemented various
| auto-pilots for this [0]. Here is a short video of my attempt:
| https://youtu.be/jWQQH2_UGLw
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27252639
| mbertschler wrote:
| This sim was released for the first human mission Demo-2. Back
| then I also created an autopilot, written in Go and running in
| the browser via WebAssembly:
| https://github.com/mbertschler/dragon-iss-docking-autopilot
|
| This autopilot doesn't use the rotation and translation rates
| as input, just the momentary values. It also uses the same
| control function for all axes.
|
| Video: https://youtu.be/jLTr6UwuSd4
| [deleted]
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Impressive, along with your Github page. Great work!
| stupidcar wrote:
| The best I saw was one that completes docking in 16 seconds:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwWccjAD2i8
|
| Given that this simulator supposedly maps closely to the actual
| interface on the spacecraft, it's funny to imagine SpaceX
| hooking it up to the real thing and seeing how it fares.
| Succeed or fail, it would be a pretty wild ride.
| aasasd wrote:
| Fuel economy would be awful, though. Dragster style.
| fyrabanks wrote:
| Not too dissimilar to what they're doing at Tesla with the
| self-driving beta, really.
| LightG wrote:
| If you've ever watched the movie Armageddon, you'll know this
| is par for the course.
| annowiki wrote:
| Is it basically a PID controller?
| aerospace_guy wrote:
| the code is in the youtube video description [1];
|
| definitely not PID control
|
| [1] https://gist.github.com/ggerganov/092b86a59fa349269989537
| 01a...
| jcims wrote:
| It's AI! :P
|
| I saw at least two autopilots that used PID control in a
| couple of different ways. They all needed tuning though
| because any moderate control input would send them
| spiraling off into the void.
| kunai wrote:
| One of the weirdest aspects of Crew Dragon is the total lack of
| precision controls for manual docking. There's a reason that most
| aircraft, even the most computerized and automated ones like the
| F-35 and Airbus A350 still rely on a joystick for fine control. A
| touchscreen interface like this seems like a really clunky way to
| implement manual control, and offers less flexibility for
| alternate and abort flight modes where automated control may not
| be possible.
|
| The Soyuz is fully automated from liftoff to touchdown and still
| has a cockpit with a plethora of manual controls and two
| joysticks for RCS control.
|
| I guess the idea was to make it look all sleek and sci-fi on the
| interior... but at the expense of precision and versatility. It
| just seems to demonstrate a lack of consideration for tactility
| and the importance of it in a mission-critical environment like
| space.
| _moof wrote:
| It's definitely unusual but the idea was actually not to waste
| time building things that aren't needed. Dragon is fully
| automated, has fault-tolerance in pretty much every subsystem,
| and there's a stack of procedures five feet high that operators
| would try before telling the crew to go manual. (Well, not
| literally. All the procedures are electronic.) This "simulator"
| is a marketing gimmick and bears almost no resemblance to real-
| world docking ops.
| kunai wrote:
| That's fair, but traditionally the rule of thumb in aerospace
| and avionics is to compensate for every single possible edge
| case into consideration. (Obviously there are diminishing
| returns past a certain point, but assuming modified and
| emergent flight modes is important for a reason.) In an edge
| case where avionics failure is inevitable, fully automated
| aircraft with flight envelope protection like Airbus,
| Dassault, and Lockheed still retain "direct law" and
| "alternate law" modes that allow direct control of aircraft
| control surfaces. It just seems like an oversight.
|
| In 99.99% of normal flight law situations there will be no
| issue with touch controls. That 00.01% however is even more
| important in space than it is in the air, which is why Crew
| Dragon's avionics design philosophy strikes me as
| particularly odd. If there was ever an Apollo 13 style
| disaster on board, it would be an uphill battle to retain
| control compared to a traditional spacecraft like Orion or
| Soyuz.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| In space mass and volume are at a premium. The Dragon
| approach produces a spacecraft that isn't stuffed with
| instrumentation like Soyuz. The extra capacity is available
| for more productive use.
| somedude895 wrote:
| Feels like playing Outer Wilds, and just like in that game I get
| impatient and crash into things at 200m/s
| GistNoesis wrote:
| The real fun would be to try do dock to a space station rotating
| along its intermediate axis (following the lost of orientation
| control caused by an impact with space debris) .
| MertsA wrote:
| If you're not going for a speedrun and just proceeding at a
| casual rate it works pretty well to start
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3zvVGJrTP8 in the background.
| Back when this came out I used to challenge my son to get it
| docked safely before the music stopped. He was almost 4 at the
| time so it was a pretty good challenge to finish it in under 4
| minutes.
| icoder wrote:
| Can anyone comment on the fact that you seem to directly
| influence your speed, and not your acceleration? Is this also the
| case in reality?
|
| Compared to my first flightsim experience this was much easier,
| the speed with which you can 'stop' any motion seems only limited
| by how fast you click. In flightsim I found myself easily
| overcompensating, if impatient or stressed even oscillating to
| increasingly bigger extremes.
| nexuist wrote:
| This would work in real life, the only hitch is that you'd run
| out of fuel much quicker. There's no fuel constraints in the
| simulator so you can use the RCS thrusters to kill your
| acceleration as much as you want.
| numpad0 wrote:
| RCS thrusters often has fixed thrust and used in pulses, like a
| PDM or PWM analog output from a digital pin in a
| microcontroller. So it's normal to mash buttons or bump
| joysticks in space to achieve desired rates, rather than
| gradually adding and maintaining force on the joystick to keep
| attitudes as done in airplanes.
|
| In real life, there is also 'coupling' between axes, e.g.
| trying to move towards top of your head might cause spacecraft
| to somehow point slightly sideways while at it. That used to be
| taken care of by pilot's skill in Apollo era and before, but
| today it should be mitigated by software.
|
| Ref: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLeLSo0lK8w
| icoder wrote:
| Ah right, especially in space, 5 'pulses' one way and 5 the
| other will cancel eachother out even if there's some time in
| between.
| Tempest1981 wrote:
| Almost made it to the moon, but ran out of fuel and crash landed.
| j/k (are there Easter eggs?)
| MertsA wrote:
| Turn around at the start.
| verisimi wrote:
| You can tell it real because its a simulation of a simulation?
| gentle wrote:
| Ok, that's pretty neat.
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| I thought they had automated docking ???. I tried and clearly
| space does not work like Wing Commander.
| gclawes wrote:
| Hahaha, you can set it to "flat" earth.
| ece wrote:
| and turn gravity off.
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(page generated 2022-01-05 23:01 UTC)