If this is your first time travelling offworld, you may be a bit disorientated when watching our current course. Watching a point representing your spacecraft swing around a planet or weave between massive bodies can cause someone to get lost or turned around in the weightlessness. This is natural and to be expected!
Basic Directions
To begin, we should start by defining our terms. In English and most other languages, these terms trace their history over a thousand years to the Terran age of sail, but their usage is based more on function than intuition. While the winds that drove those ships are no longer of use here in the dark, the terms remain relavent and useful for distinguishing between personal, craft, planetary, and solar directions.
Around the Ship
Let us start with the ship itself. Directional terms aboard a spacecraft are rather consistent from culture to culture. If one's crew speaks a language other than English, you can rest assured that automated translation, even without Emergent support, will convert their terminology to match what will be explained here with confidence. While underway, those who have been on a Naval vessal on Earth may find this somewhat familiar, but relying on such similarities may prove to be more a hinderance than a help.
"Up" and "Down"
While under thrust, that is, while the craft is accellerating due to its onboard engines, the feeling of "down" will be towards those engines. This direction called "Stern" or "Aft" regardless of the sensation of gravity or lack thereof. The opposite direction, what feels like "up," is called "Bow, or "Forward" instinctively enough. "Up" and "down," however, only refer to the direction of one's head and feet respectively. Besides this, when approaching a gravity well, the term "down" resumes its normal meaning of "towards the pull of gravity" and "up" returns to the direction opposite that. These meaning differences are incredibly important for communicating clearly to other passengers and to the crew.
"Left," "Right," "Front," and "Back"
As with "up" and "down," these terms only convey the directions relative to a person, so long as someone doesn't confuse "front" to mean "forward," though such a mistake is rare. The first direction we will define here is similar to the idea of a person's front side, or an animal's belly and is called the ship's Ventral. This is the side that usually features heat shields on shuttles and towards which TransOrbital craft dip their Bow when performing a standard mid point braking turn. If one were to stand up while a vessel is under thrust and face towards the craft's Ventral side, then on their left side would be "port," so called because it is this side on which most passneger airlocks and gangways. On their their right side would be "Starboard," or less commonly, "Starward." Behind them would be the Dorsal side, which is usually the attachment point for the largest cargo to be stored outside of the hull of the vessel, sometimes called the "payload."
Other Terms
Floors are called "decks." Structural Walls are called "bulkheads," with doors called "hatches." Windows, or "Portholes" to the outside of the craft are rare, even on luxury vessels. The "Bridge," or "Control Decks" are generally offlimits to passengers. The "galley," if your ship has one, is where you'll get food and drink while underway, the "Head" refers to toilet facilities, while showers are usually kept seperate. If you have a bed on your trip, it will be found in your "quarters" while your luggage may be required to be stored as cargo on the external "payload."
Around the World
Orbital Zones
Orbital Alitude is given with reference to the planet's surface, or in the case of the Outer Planets, it's center. Altitude is generalized into zones, which are defined by their characteristics more than specific distances. "Low" orbits are orbits that can be accessed temporarily by suborbital shuttles, such as for cargo pick up and drop off, or some special forces military troop transfers. "Medium" orbits are between these and "synchronus" orbits, which are defined as the height at which the orbital period (the time for one revolution around the planet) is equivelent to it's roatational speed, keeping it directly above the same area until it changes height. High orbits are those so high up that the planet below spins faster than the vessel. Terms such as "Apogee" and "Perogee" describe an orbits shape or "eccintricity", and define the nearest and furthest point in the orbit (if left unaltered).
East and West
East is the direction towards which the planet rotates, or "Spinward," and accelleration in that direction is said to be "prograde". The opposite direction, West, is considered to be "retrograde." While older crews may use the terms "Leeward" or "Antispinward," to refer to the Westward direction such is uncommon, as are retrograde orbits in general. Please note that high orbits appear to be moving retrograde from the ships perspective, but this is an illusion caused by the rotational speed of the planet being greater than the crafts revolution speed. This speed is usually referenced as a time, that is the amount of time it will take to complete a complete revolution. This time is called the "period."
Planetary North and South
When facing a planet's Eastern direction, the planet's Axial North is to the left, and its Axial South is to the right. This commonly aligns with it's magnetic poles, but this is not always the case; not all bodies with a North and a South have an active magnetosphere, which is of course a prerequisite for magnetic poles. Orbits are usually measured at angles from the equater, the center between these two axis. Two exceptions are "equatorial" orbits which align with the rotation of the planet, and "ecliptical" orbits which align with the eliptical plane which will be explained later in the next section. This angle is called "inclination."
--Communications::When you look on a screen or hear a callout, you will usually find that the information is given in a standard order. The standard order is
Zone, Apogee, Perogee, Eccentricity, Angulary Velocity, Period, Inclination where any or all but one of the elements may be omited. Usually only the elements that have changed or need to be changed will be said. Most of these communications will be done via the Neural network on the ship, but on some Martian Vessels Neural Networks on spacecraft are considered to be bad luck or outright dangerous, so you'll likely hear crew members relaying messages across the decks.
Satellites
Natural and sufficiently large Artificial Sattelites use the same terminology, though the name of the object replaces the name of the planet. For natural satellites, some more experianced or old fashioned crews may refer to orbits as "lunar", but this is incorrect unless orbiting Luna, in which case the "L" should be capitalized.
Around Sol
Ecliptics and Sectors
Ecliptics describe distance from Sol and in which orbital shell something is located. Sectors describe which part of that orbit something is in. Ecliptics are named for the planets which dominate them, while sectors are named for the constellation Sol is in front of or closest to from the vantage point of the object being located, though Martian crews and maps use a secondary name for each sector which matches their month names in order to differentiate between the sun being to the left or to the right of the constellation, but we will get back to describing direction in a moment. The important thing to remember here is that Sectors are stationary, wheras most objects in the Solar System are not. Sectors can tell you the relative locations of planets and other objects along their orbits (ie within their ecliptic) at any given moment, but these relationships are always changing, some quite quickly.
Planar Altitude
All true planets orbit along the Solar Plane, which is an imaginary flat surface that extends out infinitely from Sol in all directions. Solar north also aligns with most planets' Planetary North (more on that in a moment) and movement in that direction is called Planar or Solar Altitude. Going the opposite direction is still called Altitude, but is expressed with negative distances. Some older crews will used the term Planar Depth and use positive measurments, but this is even more rare than the use of "lunar" to describe orbits around moons other than Luna.
Windward and Leeward
Windward refers to the direction in which the Solar winds spin, which coincides with the direction that most planets orbit Sol. Leeward refers to the opposite direction. The words Prograde and Retrograde can be used respectively to mean the same things, and this is relatively common, especially among Martian and Nihonjin crews. Leeward courses are extremely rare, but nearly every interplanetary trip will involve a Leeward facing "braking burn" to slow down before reaching the destination. These can be simultaneously exhilerating and nervewracking, but regardless of your courage or lack thereof, be sure to take the medication perscribed to remain safe on your journey!
Bullseye Reference Points
When there are diversions or detours, or if a course passes through densly packed space, there may be a change in reference points. These are marked by satellites called BRPs, pronounced "Burp" or "Burps". These allow a pilot to use a non-circular reference frame in order to navigate more precisely over shorter distances.
The Sol System Explained
The Inner Worlds
Cities in the Clouds
The Cradle of Humanity
The Red Frontier
Lagrange Stations
The Belt
The Temple of Platinum
Stuff about Psyche, a Japanese trade hub, called White Star in English.
Of Steel and Ice
Stuff about Ceres, a Coalition colony
The Pride of Ares
Stuff about Eros, an Aretian colony
The Giants
The Jovian Moons
Stuff about Jupiter
Rings and Shephards
Stuff about Saturn
Uranian Mystery
Stuff about Uranus
Distant Blue
Stuff about Neptune
Cyclers and Centaurs
Comments
Author's Notes
Stuff here