XZ80P, interplanetary probes

Bill J Gray Oct 3 8:06 AM

Paul, I think your only remaining sticking point is that the data file
is XZ80P, no extension, not XZ80P.DAT. (This corresponds to the
name of the file when you've downloaded and decompressed it. In
cases of doubt, you can look at the .tdf file, which always gives the
file name as the first thing. In some cases, including this one, the
text on the 'extras' page will give some information about this, too.)

Arild, about the interplanetary probes: these will probably have to
move to a category of their own (I suppose they could be considered
"artificial satellites", but the distinction between Earth-orbiters and
non-Earth orbiters seems significant to me.) At present, they are
lumped in with asteroids, definitely not a logical choice.

The only way to suppress these, in the case you mention, would
be to replace 'probes.dat' with a file containing a single line of text
(doesn't matter what the text says). You have to have _something_
there to keep Guide from thinking: "Hey! There's no 'probes' file!
Guess I'll reload it from the CD."

I do want to get these to work in a more user-friendly manner, if
for no other reason than that they are wonderful for "home planets"
(i.e., observing viewpoints). You can set a "home planet" of Galileo,
for example, on 7 Dec 1995, and watch as Jupiter and Io come close
to you and zip by, and then watch subsequent close passes by other
moons on other orbits. Similarly for Cassini, as it passes by Phoebe
on its way to Saturn, then does a long series of close encounters
to Saturnian moons over the next few years.

On a totally different subject: I've figured out that certain crash
reports
I've gotten concerning the 22 September update involve Guide running
without a CD, and without asteroid data loaded. As soon as I puzzle
out one other bug, I'll be posting a "bug fix" update.

-- Bill