Bob,
that Despicable
Me Minion
mixed with a Martian in the
photo, floats at the boundary of space, high above
planet Kerbin. The space
ship he was in, falls back to
the planet below him. Bob
ponders how he got in such
a predicament, floating in
space with no way home.
The answer: he trusted me.
Turns out, I’m a bad rocket
scientist.
But don’t worry about Bob,
he’ll be fine. These guys are indestructible and I’ve got a mission
on the way to retrieve the little
guy already, assuming that one
doesn’t fail too.
Welcome to the game Kerbal
Space Program where you get to run
your own space agency and decide
everything from mission parameters
to the design of the ships. It’s as
much fun to fail as it is to succeed.
Kerbal Space Program gives you
an inside view on what it is like to
build and fly your own rockets. It is
similar to Sim City, but with rockets,
space, and everything included. It is
a virtual space race at your fingertips.
“Mission Control, we have a problem.”
For Kerbal’s creator, Felipe Falanghe - the game’s idea was born
out of a simple pitch to create a
simple 2D game that would launch
a spacecraft as high as possible to
rack up points and beat high scores.
The project started out small, but as
any great project starts, the idea was
so solid that its future was limitless.
The game evolved to something
bigger, with players creating mods
of their own. As it became more fun
and accessible for all, in 2011 Squad,
the company behind it, released the
game to the public.
Loosely, the goal of the game is for
players to build rockets and space
planes with the supplies provided so
In Kerbal Space Program, your home planet is called Kerbin, and there are two moons in orbit.
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that they can explore space after
successfully getting their rocket to
launch off the home planet. The
level of difficulty involved in these
missions is determined by the player
and can range from very simple to
extremely difficult.
The game puts your brain to the
test with a steep learning curve and
a variety of things you will need to
keep an eye on as the administrator
of your own space squad. First you
need the basics: launch a rocket.
Then try getting one to space without blowing up. Then try to get to the
Kerbal moon and so on. Each stage
adds difficulty, but also begs for
creativity and innovation. A person
with zero engineering experience
might have an out-of-the-box design
that might actually work and could
change the future of rocket engineering.
The idea is that any person can
play the game and find their place
within all the features it has to offer.
Failures and successes are even
equally rewarding, sometimes.
The idea for this game has gestated since Falanghe was an imaginative teen, launching toy soldiers
with spare parts and fireworks.
“The most successful design we
had was a two-stage rocket that
actually ignited the second stage. It
was glorious”, Falanghe told Andrew
Groen during an interview.
Who hasn’t tried to launch an
Army Man with a bottle rocket,
hoping to see the parachute deploy
as it floats back to earth, assuming
it didn’t blow up and that it even
made it off the ground? Flange had
a dream to launch his little tin men to
space. Well, that didn’t work out too
well at the time. But the idea stayed
with him.
That dream, the fun of tr