Team Explorer| Breakthrough
Breakthrough
Galactic Journey
Summary
Our project intends to inspire people along with younger users to pursue very difficult career fields and more quickly advance the development of new space propulsion systems. Our project will help to communicate the vastness of space to people and provide education on how different propulsion systems work. Designing a interactive,fun and educative game, we will use rocket engines to be used as a baseline of understanding and as a comparison how each propulsion type works and also showing comparison of travel times to well-known destinations in the universe designing a game using NASA space data.
How We Addressed This Challenge
The problem we have found out that most people are unaware of the technologies behind interstellar and interplanetary travelling while everyone learns about the missions we send to space, see spacecrafts in science fiction movies going to galactic missions, but don't get to know about the important technologies which make these travels possible. We will focus on the propulsion technologies behind the dream of human's interstellar traveling , to explore the universe and bring them to everyone, so that everyone can know what we have, and what we are dreaming to have to break the limit. Our project will create enthusiasm ,passion about the propulsion systems ,some of them are already implemented and some of them are in only science fiction movies and books.People will achieve important theoretical and practical knowledge , which will make them explore more and to work on these technologies in future.. Our project will simply make it possible for everyone to know, experience and dream interstellar.
How We Developed This Project
Features:
1. The users would have to select a solar system that they want to visit. Currently we have Sun, Proxima Centauri b, Kepler-186, Luyten’s Star,Gliese 667 c
2.Each System has one or multiple exo planets where they can visit.
3.They can choose the System according to their propulsion system and fuel. For example: If they have an Ion Engine then they can only travel within the Solar System. If they have Warp Drive then they can travel anywhere.This one is using a Nuclear Propulsion System.
4.Users' Propulsion System and fuel will depend on their Knowledge Points which they can earn from answering questions. Each answer will either upgrade their propulsion system or add fuel to their existing propulsion system.
5. After selecting the planet they would play a game where their task would be to safely reach their destination amid asteroids, planets, stars and other celestial bodies.
Goal: The main idea behind the game is to share knowledge about the propulsion systems in a
fun way. That’s why to unlock more destinations they are required to answer questions on
Propulsion which would increase their knowledge on this subject and spark further curiosity and
query.
Tools:
Unity,Visual Studio Code, Blender, Github desktop, Adobe Illustrator.
We used both unity and blender to create the 3d models for our game. For complex structures we used blender and for more simple objects we used the built in 3d model builder in Unity. We then imported all 3d models in the game. The materials for the 3d model were created in Unity as they were fairly simple. Then we used Visual Studio 2019 for Scripting. We used C# as our Scripting language. Then we added those scripts to 3d models. Then we made some playable Script which would allow the users to interact with the game. We then Made the UI. Finally we used Windows sdk (built in Unity) to build the EXE file.
download link of the game :
How We Used Space Agency Data in This Project
Firstly we have made up our plan and then found out what kind of data would be needed by us. So, based on data category we categorized websites and databases.Basically we needed Exoplanet data, data of different solar systems , and recent and upcoming technologies of propulsion system. We have found these on Nasa's main website( exoplanets catalogue,Solar systems) and website of NASA's jet propulsion Laboratory.We also took help from Wikipedia.To study more about scientific theories related to our project we took help from other space agencies' website like JAXA,ESA
Project Demo
Project Code
Data & Resources
We used the following references as the base of our game. We tried our best to keep the game minimal so the user can have the best experience. We tried to use Nasa’s 3d model but we couldn’t convert them to smaller sizes without ruining their integrity so we made our own 3d models and used the information below to stay true to the actual models.
NASA Exoplanet exploration data: https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/
NASA Solar system exploration data https:https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/
3D resources of NASA https://nasa3d.arc.nasa.gov/
Kepler-186f:
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/infographics/infographic.view.php?id=11295
Kepler-186:
https://www.nasa.gov/ames/kepler/kepler-186-and-the-solar-system/
Proxima Centauri b:
Wolf 1061c:
Luyten’s Star: http://www.solstation.com/stars/luytens.htm
Jupiter:https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/jupiter/overview/
Mars:https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/mars/overview/
Sun:https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/solar-system/sun/overview/
Reference for Propulsion Technologies
https://www.nasa.gov/centers/jpl/home/index.html
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/visions-of-the-future/
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory YouTube channel: