Open Spaceplane Project — Virtual Windtunnel

A browser-based virtual wind tunnel for anything from paper planes and Cessnas to fighters, rockets and spaceplanes going to and from orbit. It runs entirely on your GPU through WebGPU — no install, no server.

Brought to you with 💖 & determination by Supernova Labs.

Run it

Open https://windtunnel.supernovalabs.co.uk in a WebGPU-capable browser (recent Chrome or Edge; Safari 26+; Firefox with WebGPU enabled). To run locally, serve the folder over HTTP (for example python3 -m http.server) and open http://localhost:8000 — opening index.html straight from disk blocks the model file from loading.

Intro. On first load the app opens with an explainer: the Space Shuttle preset as a tunnel model whose skin lifts off to show the structure the builder lays out (frames, bulkheads, longerons, tanks, payload, spars and ribs). It is drawn with Anatomy from the preset's own numbers; see intro/. "Don't show this again" hides it, "What is this?" under the title brings it back, and ?intro=1 or ?intro=0 forces it.

Line art. Setup › Display › Render style draws the body the way the intro figure does: four flat light bands, bone ink on silhouettes, creases, part seams and (for builder designs) the main frame stations. "Line art" keeps the surface colours (pressure, heating, stress, livery); "Line art, plain" drops them. It only changes the final shading, so the simulation and its fields are untouched. On Lite it draws silhouettes only.

Shells. Setup › Display › Show › Shells draws nested level surfaces of the flow, CT-scan style. In the compressible solver they are density over freestream at 1.3, 2.5 and 4.5 (shock layer and expansion); in the low-speed solver, speed over freestream at 0.35, 0.8 and 1.2 (wake and the fast flow over the body). Each is drawn where the render march crosses its level and is shaded by the field's gradient, denser where it turns away so its edges read as outlines. In line art they become bone ink. Display only.

Layout. Build is the design, and that includes the engine: type, propellant, O/F and chamber are set once, in Build › Engines. Test has four tabs, left to right in the order the work usually goes, though you can open any of them at any time:

• Conditions: the body, attitude, flying it, engines firing and throttle, and energy deposition.
• Mission: ascent, entry with its bank events, heat shield and heating model.
• Results: structure, time-averaged pressure and exports.
• Setup: solver, grid, validation and display.

Engine is a bench for a closer look at one component, at higher fidelity than the vehicle pass.

Find and setups. Press /, or the magnifier on the headline card, to search every setting by name. Picking one opens the right mode, tab and section and highlights it. In the same box, Copy setup puts the whole setup on the clipboard as JSON (mode, builder design, every control's value), and Load setup applies one pasted in. Scripts and agents get the same through window.vwt: list(), find(text), get(id), set(id, value), state(), load(setup), show(id). Setting a value goes through the control itself, so it behaves exactly like a user's edit.

Agents and MCP. Agents get the app's solvers as tools. vwt.tools lists them and vwt.call(name, args) runs one:

• read and set controls, switch screens, and load or save whole setups;
• read the results a person would see;
• wait for the wind tunnel to converge;
• get or replace the builder's design;
• export the design, the CAD package, trajectory, surface heating, heat-shield temperatures or an α table;
• run the engine stand for a set simulated time or sweep its lock range;
• run the shape optimiser.

Browsers that offer a model context (WebMCP) get the same tools from the page. For any other MCP client, mcp/vwt-mcp.mjs drives the app in a Chromium it starts and serves those tools plus three of its own: screenshot, run_test (the verification suites in tests/) and cad_build (the current design through cad/build_spaceplane.py to STEP, STL and a report checked against the tunnel). Set it up with cd mcp && npm install, after which .mcp.json at the repo root registers it for Claude Code. VWT_HEADED=1 shows the browser; VWT_SOFTWARE=1 uses software WebGPU on machines without a GPU, which is slow; VWT_URL points it at the live site instead of this checkout.

Design track for the Open Spaceplane Agent. .claude/skills/osa-design runs OSA's Brief, Concept and Design stages on these tools. Its output is an analysed design, CAD and a design BOM in OSA's programme folder layout, with no contract, authority or regulatory gates: those become flags for OSA's programme track to take up. The Build screen's Export BOM (and the bom export) gives the BOM straight from the design record: parts, counts, sizes and the mass model, with no prices.

This is the beginning of the README. Read the rest at the original. Read the full README ↗