Basics Tutorial Part 1

Introduction

It is funny how most people who want to become a trader pilot are born and raised planetside, while most people born and raised in space expect that the ideal living environment is within the atmosphere and gravity field of a planet. Rather than living there where their bodies are at their best, people always assume the other people have it better.

Which gives everybody a disadvantage. If you are like me, you were born on a planet and tend to think of motion as something relative to the surface and the atmosphere of a planet. To keep going you need to keep adding forward velocity, otherwise atmospheric drag will slow you down and make you halt. You can say things like 'That car is doing ninety.' Ninety? Relative to what? Well, the road, obviously. You don't even think about that.

In these lessons you will manually control your ship to fly around in the vicinity of Lave Station. Rather than explain to you that things like speed and motion have no meaning in space, unless you relate them to something else, I'll let you experience it for yourself.

Just a few conventions:

1. When I tell you to assume relative position to something, I need you to have zero speed in relation to that object, i.e. you're not getting closer or farther away.
2. When I say things like left, right, forward, backward, up or down, I mean that in relation to your ship.
3. When I tell you to fly 'over' an object, I define 'over' as near the side of said object that points in the same direction as the top of your ship (or 'up').
4. To accelerate forward means to add velocity to your ship in the direction the front of your ship is pointing.

Lessons

1. Lesson 1: Communications - Taking off - Lateral roll (pitch) - Acceleration- Landing
2. Lesson 2: Landing gear - Longitudinal roll - Radar
3. Lesson 3: Vertical roll