Life & fun · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to I built a space travel calculator using Vanilla JavaScript
I built this because measuring my age in years felt boring—I wanted to see the kilometers. The first version only used Earth's orbital speed (~30km/s), but the number moved too slowly. To get the "existential dread" feeling, I switched to using the Milky Way's velocity relative to the CMB (~600km/s). The math takes some liberties (using scalar sum instead of vector) to make the speed feel "fast," but it gets the point across. Under the hood, it's a single HTML file with zero dependencies. No React, no build step. The main challenge was the canvas starfield—I had to pre-allocate the…
This space travel calculator measures age in kilometers rather than years by calculating distance traveled through the Milky Way. It uses the galaxy's velocity relative to the cosmic microwave background (~600km/s) to… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Prices are shown for the 2 we have checked on their own sites, 2 of them free or with a free tier.
- 1WI
Special relativity simulator in which light crawls along at a human speed, so Lorentz contraction, aberration and Doppler shift happen at walking pace.
Sep 2026 · rivendell.dmitrybrant.com · its alternatives →
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A little while ago I built a tool to calculate how far you've traveled through space since the exact second you were born. The math was relatively simple (Earth's spin + Solar orbit + Galactic drift), but the feedback I got here inspired me to rewrite the visual engine and turn it into a proper deep-space dashboard. Here is what’s new under the hood: 1. Vanilla JS 3D Engine: I built a custom Three.js simulation that renders your exact orbital alignment on your birth date and tracks it to the present. 2. Live Telemetry: It now actively tracks the real-time Keplerian orbital positions of…
Feb 2026 · cosmicodometer.space · its alternatives →
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Atlas of Spacefree▲770Hello HN! Sharing a recent side project of mine, the Atlas of Space, that I built out to explore the Solar System. As a long-time space nerd, I realized recently that I didn't have a good intuition on the scale, speed, and relative orientation of the celestial bodies around us. So over the break I built out a kind of spatial Wikipedia to click around and learn about planets, moons, asteroids, and other bodies orbiting the Sun. The physics is all simulated in the browser using simple Newtonian mechanics. There's a lot left to do from here, including modeling objects in non-Keplerian orbits…
2025 · atlasof.space · its alternatives →
- 4IM
I made this site using R3F (https://github.com/pmndrs/react-three-fiber), a React renderer for 3JS (https://threejs.org/). The celestial bodies are Three.JS meshes. I used loaders (namely 'useLoader' from R3F and 'GLTFLoader' from 3JS) to import 3D models, such as International Space Station. More on loading models in R3F: https://docs.pmnd.rs/react-three-fiber/tutorials/loading-mod... I've future plans for this side project. It would be great to hear from the HN community before diving into them. Enjoy! P.S: Getting an empty…
2022 · spaceinbrowser.com · its alternatives →
- 5GI
Just for fun and self education, I've built this over a weekend to teach myself why orbits exist, not just show planets going around. Something that was never clearly explain to me in school. It opens with a guided tour that builds the idea up step by step: two bodies and the equal/opposite force, inertia (the Sun is removed and Earth just drifts straight), then "an orbit is falling and continuously missing," cosmic velocities with a little rocket, Voyager 1 & 2's real gravity assists (the clock runs the actual 1977–1989 dates so the planets orbit into their grand-tour alignment and the…
Jun 2026 · qunabu.github.io · its alternatives →
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Features include: - Several preset periodic orbits: the classic Figure-8, plus newly discovered 3D solutions from Li and Liao's recent database of 10,000+ orbits (https://arxiv.org/html/2508.08568v1) - Full 3D camera controls (rotate/pan/zoom) with body-following mode - Force and velocity vector visualization - Timeline scrubbing to explore the full orbital period The 3D presets are particularly interesting. Try "O₂(1.2)" or "Piano O₆(0.6)" from the Load Presets menu to see configurations where bodies weave in and out of the orbital plane. Most browser…
Nov 2025 · trisolarchaos.com · its alternatives →
- 7OI
Things orbital and not.
2016 · orbides.org · its alternatives →
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2020 · pakastin.github.io · its alternatives →
- 10VJ
Velocity.js: An incredibly fast animation engine for motion designers.
2014 · velocityjs.org · its alternatives →
- 11
Google Translate for engineers working with motion
2017 · google.github.io · its alternatives →
- 12
I made a single-serving iPhone app with a floating green arrow that always points to the center of the Milky Way, 26,000 lights years away. It’s weirdly grounding. I’ve never made an app before, so here’s how it worked with ChatGPT.
2024 · interconnected.org · its alternatives →
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AstroGrid▲113Explore the entire universe in your browser, in real 3D
Apr 2026 · velonspace.com · its alternatives →
- 14
Gravity WebGL experiment in the Solar System
2016 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 15
Hello, I am the creator and maintainer of Stellarium Mobile. I have been working in my free time for about a year on this new project Galaxium, that is more about traveling in the universe rather than looking at the sky from Earth. It is still experimental, and at the moment I am not sure what it will become. Feedback is welcome.
Aug 2026 · galaxium.app · its alternatives →
- 16
Today my collaborator and I are releasing issinrealtime.org, a multimedia project that plays back every day onboard the ISS. Feedback welcomed. Here's an article that was just released about it: https://www.collectspace.com/news/news-102725a-iss-in-real-t... I also wrote a "making of" post about it here: https://benfeist.com/posts/iss-in-real-time/
Oct 2025 · issinrealtime.org · its alternatives →
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I (17y/o) have been developing a rocket launch simulation that allows the user to explore what it's like launching a rocket from earth and putting it into orbit. This idea originally started as an educational simulation but as i've gone more down the rabbit hole the more i've wanted to make it realistic. The problem is that I've never had a formal orbital mechanics class or anything like that so I don't know what I'm missing, what I currently have implemented is: Variable gravity Variable Atmospheric drag (US Standard Atmosphere 1976) Multi-stage rockets Closed-loop guidance /…
Jan 2026 · donutthejedi.com · its alternatives →
- 19
An interactive visualization of the universe
2019 · neal.fun · its alternatives →
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I didn't realize Universe Sandbox ran on MacOS, and I was in the mood to play around a bit. Some functions it's got: - Random system generation - Sonification is super fun too - Habitability Simulation (Just for fun, don't cite this please) - Replacing, spawning, deleting objects I've had tons of fun building this, so I hope someone else can share the joy. It's free and runs in the browser. I'd love to hear any feedback. I think this is at a state where I might leave it as it is, but if people are interested in other features, maybe I'll keep working on it. I've kept saying I'll stop working…
Dec 2025 · luna.watermelonson.com · its alternatives →
- 22AS
I really like the look of the famous album art for Unknown Pleasures [1]. It was originally created by Harold Craft at the Arecibo Observatory from the signals of the first discovered radio pulsar [2]. I made a spectrogram that produces a similar look. It runs FFT in Rust and visualizes it with WebGL. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:UnknownPleasuresVinyl.jpg [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PSR_B1919%2B21
2024 · aestuans.github.io · its alternatives →
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- 24IB
2022 · multiplanetary.website · its alternatives →
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Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →