[helgee]

Oh, hi! Project creator here.

I am very happy that you folks are showing interest but I am also terrified because this thing is definitely not ready for primetime, yet. The discerning astrodynamicist and/or rustacean will surely find things which are less than optimal or plain wrong.

I am also preparing for a trip so I won't be able to monitor this thread closely but I'll try to answer question wherever I can.

[bbor]

Hey, this is really impressive stuff, talk about a dream job! Two quick questions if you find the time+interest:

1. What does "safe" imply? Type safety, maybe? Or just a general synonym for "few bugs/well tested"?

2. What kind of industry is this primarily envisioned for use in...? I have experience in the satellite industry (GRE and TT&C) but I was surprised to not see the usual buzzwords on this page, namely "TLEs". I get that it clearly does way more than terrestrial orbital work, but AFAIK that's, say, 99.9% of the current space industry.

In other words: is this library for ESA missions??? That would be rad as hell, if so.

also P.S. I love AI art compared to most, but I would def recommend carving out that cool crab and putting on a background of real stars. As you may or not be aware, many scientists have been a tad radicalized about AI, and AI art in particular -- would be a shame if that slowed adoption of a cool project!

[helgee]

1. Safe as in type-safe, memory-safe, and null-safe in contrast to the state of the art which is mostly C++, Java, and tons of ancient Fortran.

2. At the moment, we are using it for speeding up Python code for telecommunications constellation design.

I want to commission a real human artist to design a logo and header image in the future. The AI art is a nice placeholder.

P.S.: I wish this was my day job. I actually had to quit my job at a major aerospace contractor to be able to work on this project.

[genewitch]

Ground Receiving Equipment, Telemetry, Tracking, & Control, and two line rlement sets. Apparently everything you need to predict orbits of a satellite are contained inside TLEs metadata and is considered a good way to share orbital information between disparate parties.

[bbor]

Heh, you actually highlight a funny frustration from my time there: TLES technically has a capital "S" too, but it's basically always discussed in the plural -- so I would very frequently forget to capitalize the "S" to the veterans' chagrin. Clearly, I haven't shaken the habit!

In hindsight, I guess it's the industry's fault for not pronouncing it "Tee Ell Eee Esses"...

EDIT: And I appreciate the explanation, personally! That's the best part of HN. To be clear to passers-by, a TLES is a string of characters that describes the orbit of a single satellite (artificial or otherwise) based on its position & momentum at some given start second. They have to be updated pretty frequently to account for gradual stochastic drift, which is both an interesting technical problem and a compelling philosophical metaphor.

[genewitch]

Sorry for explaining what the jargon in that comment was, i guess. i did typo "element" as "rlement", i guess i suck.

[miramba]

Can I build a solar system simulator with this? Looking for calculating the absolute positions of planets and moons with the sun at 0,0,0 given a datetime. Kepler calculations for planets, moons etc would be fine, as long as I can insert arbitrary objects and calculate their trajectory using gravity. Can this project do that?

[helgee]

We already have the possibility to get positions of celestial bodies with very high precision via JPL ephemerides but you would have to write and integrate your force model yourself.

[miramba]

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