SpelSim is a Space Elevator simulator applet written in Java and distributed under the GPL. It can calculate the required parameters for a cable given the parameters of the cable material and the planet, with a selection of presets for common materials and local planets, and it can present a visual simulation.
Go to the SpelSim home page to view or download the latest version of the SpelSim applet.
To install Java on your system, download JRE 5.0 from Sun's Java web site and follow those installation directions.
SpelSim is delivered in a ZIP file.
To install SpelSim from the installation ZIP file (.zip extension), run the command
unzip spelsim-N_N_N.zip
This will create a directory called spelsim-N_N_N
in the current directory,
where N_N_N is replaced by the SpelSim version number.
If you are running on Windows, you may be able to click on the downloaded zip file in order to open an unzip program.
If you want to build SpelSim yourself, or just look at the source code,
you will have to unpack the source files from the src.zip
archive file with the commands
cd spelsim-N_N_N
unzip src.zip
This will create a src directory with all of the Java files,
as well as adding a few other files (such as a Makefile) to your spelsim
directory.
If you want to look at the Javadoc-generated API documentation
for the Java classes, you must first unpack those html files from
the apidoc.zip archive file with the commands
cd spelsim-N_N_N
unzip apidoc.zip
This will create the directory doc/api with all of the API documentation in it.
Alternatively, you can unpack src.zip and then run the command
make doc
to run javadoc and create the API documents from the source files.
If you have not already done so, you must install Java.
On Windows, CD to the main SpelSim directory and run
java -jar spelsim.jar
or set up a shortcut to spelsim.jar
in the main SpelSim directory, with the Start-In directory of
the shortcut set to the SpelSim directory.
java -jar spelsim.jar
If the java binary is not in your PATH, you can explicitly specify the
path to it. For example, if you have installed JDK1.5 into
/usr/local/jdk1.5.0,
you can run spelsim with the command
/usr/local/jdk1.5.0/bin/java -jar spelsim.jar
On Solaris 2.6 or later, you can directly run spelsim.jar.
If you have a comment about SpelSim, or would like to report a bug, please send email to jimmc -at- nwlink.com.
SpelSim was written by Jim McBeath.
http://alumni.caltech.edu/~jimmc