Think you can fly this course?
Chief_Sonya's picture
Posted on:
Wednesday, January 9, 2019 - 22:43

Our first navigation evolution (training and evaluation exercise) was recently posted. It's still pretty bare-bones at the moment - I want to add a couple of diagrams to it, for example - but it gives a great idea of what's required to pilot a ship like Endeavour around.

The evolution looks deceptively simple - just fly a figure 8 around a proving course consisting of two two planets, starting and stopping at the midway point between them. And if you were flying a shuttle it probably would be simple, but a with a starship you're not judging your maneuvers by eye out of the cockpit windshield. Distances and velocities are much greater and so you need to rely on instruments.

This evolution was originally developed as a test plan for helm systems, to ensure a quartermaster had everything they needed to successfully maneuver the ship through all conceivable scenarios. That testing is still going on.

I'll post some video of an example evolution soon. In the meantime, you can check out the evolution here.

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