SpaceERP episode 1: Entities

I have announced lately the work on SpaceERP. The first galactic ERP system.

I don’t want to go full waterfall on that project. Agile is the way. However, some preparations have to be made. What becomes obvious to me that it is very important to recognize entities, or at least entity types.

We have probes like Voyager, or Dart, we have rockets, space stations, mining sites, equipment, space “cars”, satellites, of course people.

There is a lot of know how needed just to recognize all types of entities. Especially I have only a very surface knowledge about the subject.

Different kinds of questions arise. Just from the top of my mind:

How to store location of a space item? How scientist mark location of Voyager 1 and 2? Are they even are able to draw the Solar System and a probe in a precise, relative position?

How to store location of a lunar base? We can indicate it as “the Moon”, but how to mark the place on the surface? What relative position system scientists use today? Will it be the same for the Mars and other planets?

I didn’t even start to work on the subject, and I am stuck on something that seemed very easy at first.

On Earth fortunately we have longitude and latitude that is pretty much uniform. We have an address system that is maybe not so uniform but more convinient.

One thing is for sure, there will be different ways to store location of…