What is Orbiter?

In the wake of the space shuttle Challenger tragedy, a new awareness of the space program has arisen, one that deals with the purpose of space exploration, and with understanding the technology that is being used for the task. Orbiter is a personal window into the world of space that takes you on a voyage in one of the most capable space vehicles, the space shuttle.

Orbiter succeeds as a game, but it excels as a simulation. This is one heck of a program. A total of 16 differemt missions ran be attempted, including deploying a space telescope, retrieving a satellite, docking with a space station and even building a space station. The astronaut can either fly the ship manually (a skill that requires much practice), or have the on-board computer make most of the crucial decisions. Start out using the on-board computer, or you'll surely meet with frustration before long. When first playing Orbiter, only specific parts of a mission can be played: for the novice, getting familiar with the take-off routine (when not in auto-computer mode) can constitute a successful mission. Games can be saved to disk, so missions can be resumed at any time.

The main program screen is divided into four quadrants, Since there are more control panels than there is screen space, specific modules are summoned and made active as they're needed.

A full front window view is available, but the animation in this screen is less than silky smooth. It does serve its purpose, though, by adding to the realism of the simulation. There's also an aft view (from the payload area) that's active when the bay doors are open, The status CRTs are more useful for determining how to fly the ship, as they show orientation with respect to Earth, and vital statistics, such as velocity, altitude, ship orientation and other vital data. Thare's a remote manipulator arm, a manned maneuvering unit (for venturng outside the craft), and weapons systems (for knocking out Soviet satellites?). 

Orbiter is not copy protected, and with good reason; the documentation is crucial in order to fly this bird. Included with the manual is a paper-cutout space shuttle, provided to clarify the differences between different types of manuvering orientation. The documentation is very good, explaining all of the on-board screens and controls (and there are a lot of them!), as well as explaining shuttle jargon. A special note: the first 10,000 program boxes have a real hologram pasted on them! 

Mastering Orbiter will prove to be a challenge for even the most capable gamers. Successfully completing a mission in Orbiter doesn't mean that you're ready to fly the real thing; but it is the closest that most of us will come to sitting in that cabin.

DB. (July 1986). Orbiter. MacUser. (pg. 34).

Download Orbiter for Mac

Architecture

Motorola 68K

Compatibility notes

Emulating this? It could probably run under: Mini vMac