Re:Why do ships use “port” and “starboard” instead of “left”...
by johnwalkr on Wednesday April 19, 2023 @11:45AM
(#35629631)
There are different conventions, yes. Even for the shuttle I've seen +z point in the opposite direction in some documents. I work in systems engineering so I'm less exposed to terms used in operations and more in discussions about which part of the spacecraft things are located.
Actually I work on rovers and it's a perennial debate whether to follow spacecraft convention (+z is down) or automotive convention (+z is up). Then mechanical engineers will usually follow what is intuitive on the screen (+z is forward). This is because computer graphics convention is +z facing out of the screen.
Re:Why do ships use “port” and “starboard” instead of “left”...
by dabluecaboose on Wednesday April 19, 2023 @11:51AM
(#35629703)
Yeah, operations is kind of where engineering's best practices go out the window for practicality haha.
We used to tilt the spacecraft when doing inclination burns so that we could get a little bit of intrack delta-v to even out our orbit. I always thought that was delightfully janky.
I used to work satellite navigation for NOAA. For the GOES sats we often used Intrack (Prograde/Retrograde), Crosstrack (Normal/Anti-normal), and Radial (Towards planet/away from). I don't think anyone really referred to any directions as "plus x" or "minus y"