Flat Earth Space Program
Won the NUMTOT award at Terriblehack XIII
My project for my final Terriblehack at the University of Waterloo was a simulator where you try to get a satellite into orbit, given a flat Earth. It is perhaps summed up best by an article about it in MathNEWS:
Space sims like Kerbal Space Program, while fun games to play, have one major problem: they aren't based on actual science, presenting our Earth as being round. Flat Earth Space Program is the first space simulator video game that properly portrays the Earth as flat, as it has to be, considering that none of us have fallen off. Players attempt to launch "satellites" into space with the physics of a flat Earth, trying to use the moon to get them into a stable orbit. This reporter commends FESP's designer for not bowing down to the demands of the Moon Truthers to remove the moon, to them an obvious government fiction, from the game. Tech involves believing in real science, so Moon Truthers have no place here. However, this incredibly detailed simulation inexplicably revealed the government conspiracy behind satellites. I managed to get one to make a couple orbits around Earth, but none of them were stable, which means that NASA is constantly sending new satellites into space to replace the old ones when they crash to Earth. MathNEWS, March 2019
Gravity on the Earth disc is calculated using Monte Carlo integration over points on the surface of the disc.