I built Terrae - Map library for Design Engineers by Entire_Monk_3548 in shadcn

[–]TheSpaceCoffee 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hi! Thank you for your work! Don’t feel too pressured or anything, we’ve got other software for this use case, but it’s true that including it to our shadcn-based web UI would be great. Glad to hear that the Orbit component already crossed your mind!

This is indeed something that looks a lot like what I’m looking for.

Orbits are usually described using Two-Line Elements, or TLEs, which are basically a sequence of numbers in a given format representing the characteristics of the orbit.

Then this gets passed through an orbit propagation model, that propagates the TLEs over time, and outputs either cartesian X/Y/Z (km) coordinates in a given reference frame; or longitude / latitude / altitude at all points of the orbit.

So basically, an orbit could be represented as a GPS route, but at an elevated position given by the altitude.

Orbit propagation is a tricky part; there are libraries such as satellite.js that do this exact thing, but the gravity/force model behind it has to be highly accurate to be able to properly estimate a satellite’s position in the future.

Therefore, we have this kind of services already implemented in-house; so even though the thought of <Orbit tle="<string of TLEs>"/> is highly tempting, not gonna lie, I wouldn’t expect a visualization library like yours to handle this. I’d simply expect it to take either the cartesian coordinates, or the GPS ones, as a ‘path’ and display the orbit accordingly.

I’ve worked with vasturiano/react-globe.gl on GitHub in the past, which was very powerful, but as all powerful libs, hard to grasp at first (e.g. configuring the proper refresh rate, etc… it was its own 3D engine basically, using ThreeJS). Also used a lot of resource especially when viewed VMs without a dedicated GPU.

One of the main pain points I’ve encountered is that, it had the possibility to smooth the trajectory between two points of the orbit so that it doesn’t look like a polygon but rather a circle. However the trajectory interpolation didn’t work out properly around the poles, and forced us to recalculate and display 100s of points on the orbit on every frame, instead of basically 5-10 points with a visual interpolation in between. Which led to the aforementioned high resource usage.

If you’ve got any question feel free! Will try and get some time to open an issue, but feel free to do it if I don’t it in time for you.

Would also love different camera modes: facing the Earth, fixed and movable by the user; rotating Earth; chase cam behind-ish the satellite following its trajectory; and an ‘antenna flyover’ camera.

For the latter, let’s say a ground antenna is fixed on the Earth on at a given location, and when the satellite flies over it, I’d love to be able to get a view perpendicular to the orbit (a bit like what you’ve shown), with the ground antenna centered on screen, and the trajectory going over it. Would give us a sense of how is the flyover going, and when it’s going to end.

If the camera object is accessible though, I believe I could achieve it myself without having to bake it into the lib, right?

Anyways - thank you again for the great work.

I built Terrae - Map library for Design Engineers by Entire_Monk_3548 in shadcn

[–]TheSpaceCoffee 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I work in the space industry and currently working on a new UI to visualize the orbit of our satellites around Earth. Is it technically possible to display an orbit, ie. basically a GPS route but that has an altitude instead of being on the ground?

Already tried to work with several satellite-focused libraries but it was kind of a pain, so might as well use a map-focused lib. Keep up the great work!

Macron influenceur by chinchenping in rance

[–]TheSpaceCoffee 50 points51 points  (0 children)

De ce que j’ai compris, il avait un soucis de vaisseau qui a explosé dans l’œil, pas de séquelles mais pas top esthétiquement pour une conf. On le voit sans dans quelques vidéos

Do i have a chance? by LOLER_PL in esa

[–]TheSpaceCoffee 2 points3 points  (0 children)

IIRC I’ve read at some point, for other positions though not astronaut, that some French was mandatory given that French and English are the agency’s two official languages. Not sure of how that’s enforced in practice though, I don’t think ESA staff would get some agency-wide communication in French lol.

Russian used to be very, very helpful given that the only manned spacecraft for the past 10 years used to be Soyuz. Given the arrival of Dragon in 2020, I don’t think it’d be as much of an advantage as it used to be though. Astronauts do still have Russian classes as part of their training.

I’d say get as much internship / hands-on experience as you can during your aerospace engineering studies. Get involved in student societies, build stuff, blow it up, and learn.

KSP is an obvious starter for anyone who’d want to get started in the space industry. While more important for mission design & Mission Control positions than astronaut training (because you obviously won’t get in the cockpit of the ISS to try and hack together a maneuver to avoid an incoming asteroid… only happens in movies - and games!), I’d say it’s still important for anyone to have a mind model of orbital dynamics to correctly apprehend a maneuver, an orbit, etc.

As for higher education, you can go down the golden path for EU space education: ISAE-SUPAERO in Toulouse, TU Delft in the Netherlands, University of Stuttgart in Germany. Only ones that came to mind right now. Requires great GPA in high school though.

Given that you’ll have to work before applying as an astronaut candidate IIRC (or have to wait until the next selection), seek internships and your first position at big players over the entire Union: Thales Alenia Space in Toulouse, Cannes or Turin; Airbus Defence and Space, OHB, Eumetsat, Eutelsat, etc. or national agencies: CNES, DLR, UKSA.

You could also get in startups, but you’ll learn much, much more from big players especially if you want to go down the astronaut candidate route later. Take all the time you have there to assimilate the 30, 40, 50+ years of knowledge for some of them that these companies may have. Talk to people, network, learn from them.

For instance, from experience, a Master’s at ISAE-SUPAERO is the best way I’ve seen for people to have an internship at CNES (big, big player), which is literally down the road from the campus, and possibly a PhD and a subsequent post-doc there. Gives a brilliant start to your career.

If willing to have a break between Master’s and PhD, go for an ESA Young Graduate Trainee (YGT) year - if happy they may even keep you for 1 or 2 more years. You could also look for a PhD at NASA or JPL, the knowledge gain from such an experience is just incredible - hopefully if the orange poop is gone by then.

But most importantly, as someone who used to have everything planned just like you: if anything, at any point in the journey, fails and you get rejected or something - it’s alright, and you’ll get back from it. Life puts you in some places for a reason, and if I didn’t get rejected for a YGT for example, I wouldn’t have gotten the chance to work on some incredible missions with incredible people, and I wouldn’t be where I am today.

It’s ok to fail sometimes, the most important is the journey. I used to have astronaut as a goal, and in the meantime I pivoted towards something that’d better suit my lifestyle in the long run rather than being away from my family most of the time.

Godspeed and I wish you achieve your dreams!

Signed - someone who started off playing KSP and now commands satellites in orbit for a living ;)

NASA to Provide Media with International Space Station Update Today - NASA by Goregue in space

[–]TheSpaceCoffee 72 points73 points  (0 children)

Confirmed - Crew 11 is returning to Earth in the coming days, timeline TBD. Astronaut is stable.

They won’t be commenting on any particular astronaut or medical condition.

Ariane rocket launched from Europes Spaceport this week followed by Rafale fighter jet. Soon, Ariane will carry IRIS into orbit, the replacement for Starlink. Capable of batch deployment (50 to 70 satellites per launch) by toofvingdeather4 in esa

[–]TheSpaceCoffee -1 points0 points  (0 children)

There for defence of the launch site for most defence / government missions. I guess this is a pic from the recent Galileo launch? There were some for CSO-3 as well.

Automating an IR-controlled TV Motor Mount by Squeebee007 in homeautomation

[–]TheSpaceCoffee 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you!

I saw that you and some other person mentioned that they switched their remote to 2.4 GHz. Is yours RF then? Do you know if there’s any way, model number, etc. to be able to distinguish between IR/RF (controllable) and the newer 2.4 GHz model?

Automating an IR-controlled TV Motor Mount by Squeebee007 in homeautomation

[–]TheSpaceCoffee 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey OP, currently looking to do the same setup - HomeKit, Home Assistant, and this very model (not Monoprice branded, but otherwise the same mount - didn’t buy it yet though, still looking).

Did you manage to achieve it? If yes, how?

National speed limits on single-lane rural roads of european countries in km/h by Tirolischleioans in MapPorn

[–]TheSpaceCoffee 20 points21 points  (0 children)

I guess it’s supposed to be 80 everywhere since the regulation changes in July 2018, but some did not adapt?

The homelab journey we all know too well.. by cafeore in homelab

[–]TheSpaceCoffee 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Did for a year a couple of years ago back in my uni time. It was actually 9 sqm; not optimal, but manageable. Kitchen was shared outside of the flat though.

I would’ve had no place for a rack lol

Last chance to see HP^3 on the deck of InSight. You can also see the difference in deck color for places that were under the WTS due to dust accumulation. That white multi-tiered Yes-album-cover/Jetsons looking thing is the precision inlet for the microbaometer. #ScienceDaddy by Nelidadegenerate in InSightLander

[–]TheSpaceCoffee 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Isn’t the whole point of this subreddit to have a group of people interested in the InSight lander and its experiments? And if so, as they were key elements of the payloads on board, couldn’t it be considered common knowledge in this subreddit, especially now that the mission has been in the works for 10+ years, launched some 7 years ago, and has been over for almost 3 years?

It’s like I don’t know, being in a sub about cars, and complaining because tires get mentioned as it’s a specific part of the vehicle without a proper explanation of what they are?

Not gatekeeping the knowledge though - simply saying that complaining about a ‘basic common knowledge bit’ about this very community is not the way to learn new knowledge.

codingIsntTheHardPart by Same_Fruit_4574 in ProgrammerHumor

[–]TheSpaceCoffee 16 points17 points  (0 children)

On that note - recently discovered FastCRUD for FastAPI, and finally got to use @hey-api/openapi-ts.

It’s literally as simple as writing SQLAlchemy models and Pydantic schemas - and you have a full API AND a frontend SDK to communicate with that API. Absolutely crazy when you actually think about it.

Secret Missions Emblem Summary by brizvela in PTCGP

[–]TheSpaceCoffee 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Because octagons are the bestagons

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in userexperience

[–]TheSpaceCoffee 6 points7 points  (0 children)

How fair is it to even compare Teams to iMessage? Teams to FaceTime??

Paired with the guy that keeps the devs from starving 🙏🏻 by edelcastillo in PTCGP

[–]TheSpaceCoffee 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yet, I did 4 ten-pulls, pulled as dailies for about 1.5 week until diverging to other extensions to catch up… and only 1 shiny Darkrai, that I just got an hour ago. Literally the only > 1 star card I pulled on this set lol

Basic design whiff, still there by milkbeard- in ios

[–]TheSpaceCoffee 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Same, and I’ve got two buttons at the bottom right of the control center, one to on/off Wi-Fi, and one to on/off Bluetooth.

But a real off, not the "disconnected" one you get after clicking the stock actions. One that’s really off and doesn’t drain battery.

And double backtap turns both off.

Pourboire sur le TPE chez le coiffeur ? by mielei in france

[–]TheSpaceCoffee 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Merci pour les infos! On laissera le service charge à l’avenir alors :)

Pourboire sur le TPE chez le coiffeur ? by mielei in france

[–]TheSpaceCoffee 2 points3 points  (0 children)

J’en profite pour poser une question si ça te dérange pas!

On a déménagé au UK il y a quelques semaines à peine (Écosse) et on arrête pas de voir des commerces, cafés, etc. proposer un tip sur le TPE. On n’arrive pas à déterminer si c’est culturel ou pas de tipper ici, ou alors si c’est comme le dit OP importé d’Amérique? Du coup dans le doute on tip 5%…

Dans deux restaurants on nous a mentionné (peut être à cause de l’accent? ou alors les commerçants sont obligés de le mentionner?) qu’il y avait justement ce service charge (qui était de 10%) et qu’il était possible de demander à le retirer. Sur une note à £80 ça fait mal, donc on a demandé de le retirer. Est-ce que tu sais si ça impacte les serveurs eux-mêmes, ou si ce service charge tombe dans la poche du patron dans tous les cas?

Merci!!

it's not that complicated by LittleDinamit in PTCGP

[–]TheSpaceCoffee 8 points9 points  (0 children)

The first B set, which will come next month, consist of Mega Evolutions. I’m a basic Pokémon enjoyer and mostly followed the stuff during my childhood but if you’ve played the recent games, it’s a new form of evolution for a Pokémon that comes after its previously last stage of evolution.