[Paper+1] Plyades: A Python Library for Space Mission Design. Helge Eichhorn.

[grenoya]

Hi! I've been asked to review this article and here comes my comment.

First of all, I have not been able to attend the conference and I appreciate the self-consistency of this article. I'm happy to see such a shift to Python in Space operations.

I have some global comments:

• I could do with references to some less-known python projects (bokeh, jplephem, Jupyter, astropy). I consider that Numpy, Scipy, Matplotlib cython, and numba are well known.
• On Fig.1 it's not easy to see what part of the orbit is behind the Earth. Would it be possible to render a more opaque sphere?

My other comments on the text will be done just after.

I have also some comments on rendering, but I guess they are more for organisers.

A last comment for my own culture: why a pure python library? just a first step?

[helgee]

Many thanks for taking the time to review my paper, @grenoya.

I could do with references to some less-known python projects (bokeh, jplephem, Jupyter, astropy). I consider that Numpy, Scipy, Matplotlib cython, and numba are well known.

I have added citations for all mentioned open-source projects.

On Fig.1 it's not easy to see what part of the orbit is behind the Earth. Would it be possible to render a more opaque sphere?

Unfortunately there is no easy way to prevent this since Matplotlib's 3D toolkit does not support depth buffering. I have added a footnote to explain this.

A last comment for my own culture: why a pure python library? just a first step?

Exactly, I wanted to keep the proof-of-concept as simple as possible.

[grenoya]

There is still 1 typo to fix (as 1 just pointed in the text).

For the rest, I'm OK with you comments. I'm waiting for PDF regeneration to see if equations are rendered correctly, but that will be more between you and editors.

Thank you for your work on the library and on the article!

[helgee]

@NelleV Is any further input from me required?