To the Moon & Back—a Space Rocket Simulator

Our Rocket thrusting in Space
Our Code after the First Day
A successful landing
Zoomed out view of the System

Inspiration

Historically, flights to the Moon have amazed and sparked, in millions of people, the interest in spacial discoveries and technological advancements related to them. In our simulation, the user picks up and brings back the stranded, adorable creatures called the Schmoomans from the Moon safely to Earth. This playful scenario was imagined as the incentive of the simulation's space mission.

What it does

In the simulation, the user has total control over the trajectory, speed and thrust of the Rocket and must land on the Moon from Earth, and the Earth from the Moon within limitations, i.e., the velocity of the Rocket has to be under 300 m/s², and the angle at which the Rocket must make contact with the planet cannot be over 45°.

How we built it

We coded using p5.js and used the software creation platform Replit.

Challenges we ran into

When scaling down the sizes of the bodies and their distance, we ran into difficulties regarding the size of the gravitational fields, especially when it came to the Moon, whose pull was negligible. Consequently, we had to increase its mass regardless of its appropriateness, thus making our ratios slightly different from reality.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The accomplishment that makes us the proudest is our success in displaying the predicted trajectory of the Rocket in the future reliably.

What we learned

During our programming, we learned that games were very challenging to code because of the large amount of playtesting we had to accomplish in response to potential bugs or defective user inputs.

What's next for To the Moon & Back—a Space Rocket Simulator

While developing this simulation, we took breaks by competing with each other regarding who could make it the fastest between the two celestial bodies. Since we had much fun trying this out, it would be a good addition to make available a multiplayer mode. Moreover, having more planets, e.g. Mars, could add another interesting challenge to the user.