Probe

Probe (a Luna E3) in an unglamorous LEO

Project home: Luna E3 'Probe' (CVEL) at CCCP Fleet Author: Dave Rowbotham and Jógvan 'C3PO' Trondesen Current version: Unknown Compatibility: Unknown

History

Dealer McDope created a series of Soviet-era meshes between 2002 and 2004 included in these was a basic, green, Luna E3 mesh. The Luna E3 was the first probe to photograph the 'dark side' of The Moon, launched atop an R7 booster.

When the CCCP Team, co-ordinating on OrbiterIRC, set about writing C++ code for McDope's meshes the generic test object of choice became the Luna E3. Sticking to the naming convention McDope adopted of simply calling it Probe, an in-joke cropped up by which whenever a developer conducted a flight test, cries of Hail Probe! would abound.

This in-joke gained popularity when a post to the old M6 off-topic forums introduced the concept of Hailing Probe to a wider audience with a thread titled The Cult of the Probe. So ensued the second longest-running thread in the old Forum's history. Without a single flame.

Such was the following of the thread that it spanned two years and even spawned Probe Day (4th October -- the date of both Luna E3's launch, and two years earlier, that of Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite).

Unfortunately, with the migration of the Orbiter forums to a new system in Februrary 2006, the thread was not ported.

Links

Probe (a Luna E3) on a fanciful Saturn flyby

• Luna E3 at CCCP Fleet
• Archived M6 Cult of The Probe thread