BOTEC 0.3.4
BOTEC project is a simple astrophysical and orbital mechanics calculator, including a database of all named Solar System objects.
BOTEC project is a simple astrophysical and orbital mechanics calculator, including a database of all named Solar System objects.
BOTEC is intended as a simple but useful calculator to assist with making astrophysical, orbital mechanics, and space navigation calculations. As the origin of the acronym applies, BOTEC is more of a "back-of-the-envelope calculator" rather than an industrial-strength calculator, although this may change in the future.
BOTEC is primarily intended for people familiar with physics and Python, and as such is unlikely to be useful to the average enduser.
BOTEC really consists of two parts: The BOTEC software, which knows what to do with the data, and the Solar System data itself, which is represented in a large data file (a Python pickle, actually).
This is deliberately modularized so that the Solar System data BOTEC uses can be updated independently of thet software, and also that alternative data files (e.g., hypothetical stellar systems for fictional purposes) can be supported.
All values are strictly in SI units.
Requirements:
Python 2.3 or greater
Limitations:
It is very important to emphasize that BOTEC is intended as a simple calculator, and as such is not up to the task of industrial-strength calculations of the calibre that would be required for actually planning true space missions, although this may well change in the future.
BOTEC was originally intended as a data-generating tool for a computer roleplaying game system (which may or may not come to fruition), but was always intended to be able to exist as a standalone entity. However, this means that as a result of its primary goal, it incurs the same limitations that are present in that particular game design. In particular, these are:
All bodies are spherical, and rotate with constant angular velocity.
All orbits are circular, with another body or a gravitating point at the center (except for toplevel objects like the Sun); thus all bodies orbit with constant angular velocity.
All orbits are coplanar.
All orbits are prograde. This affects only a few major worlds (e.g., Triton) and numerous, tiny, outer Solar System distant satellites. The rotation of objects could possibly be retrograde, since that is only indicated by means of a negative period.
All bodies have negligible size compared to their orbits, and all suborbits have negligible size compared to their parent orbits.
Only objects with actual proper names are included in BOTEC's database. Even objects such as asteroids and satellites with provisional names are not included here. No comets, whether given proper names, or not, however, are included. This would not be hard to change.
For all orbital transfers, it is assumed that the durations of application of deltavee are much shorter than the duration of the flight time. That is, burns are treated as instantaneous (that is, orbital transfers are "impulsive"). This is a good approximation in most cases (even with chemical rockets), but not with more exotic drive systems like ion drives or solar/magnetic sails.
Although many of these limitations involving treating certain orbital parameters as trivial (i.e., coplanar, circular orbits implies setting the inclination and eccentricity both to zero), for the most part that actual physical data is contained within the file. So although BOTEC itself will not treat Mars' orbit as eccentric, mars.eccentricity() will in fact return Mars' actual orbital eccentricity.
What's New in This Release:
Named comets were added to the database.
Fixes were applied to Oberth maneuvers starting from planetary surfaces.
tags
solar system orbits are all bodies all orbits have negligible velocity all negligible size size compared orbital transfers are included names are proper names angular velocity
Download BOTEC 0.3.4
http://www.alcyone.com/software/botec/botec-latest.tar.gz
Authors software
|
 PyZOE 1.0a (by  Erik Max Francis)
ZOE (formerly OGLE) is a simple OpenGL graphics engine written entirely in Python.It's primary focus is rapid prototyping and experim
|
|
BOTEC 0.3.4 (by Erik Max Francis)
BOTEC project is a simple astrophysical and orbital mechanics calculator, including a database of all named Solar System objects.
|
|
PyCAGE 1.1.4 (by Erik Max Francis)
PyCAGE fairly generic and complete cellular automata simulation engine.
It's written in Python and it supports both 1D and 2D auto
|
Similar software
|
BOTEC 0.3.4 (by Erik Max Francis)
BOTEC project is a simple astrophysical and orbital mechanics calculator, including a database of all named Solar System objects.
|
|
Mars24 5.5.0 (by Dr. Robert B. Schmunk)
Mars24 is a Java program and browser applet which displays a Mars "sunclock", a graphical representation of the planet Mars showing i
|
Other software in this category
|
Xplanet 1.2.0 (by Hari Nair)
Xplanet was inspired by Xearth, which renders an image of the earth into the X root window
|
Featured Software
jEdit 4.3 pre8
jEdit is an Open Source text editor written in Java
Opera 9.02
Surf the Internet in a safer, faster, and easier way with Opera browser
GNU Aspell 0.60.4
GNU Aspell is a Free and Open Source spell checker designed to eventually replace Ispell
0.00 
GPL (GNU General Public License)
2081K
RSS
