Sep 30, 2017 Cheat Sheets for Kerbal Space Program. This is a collection of cheat sheets for the game Kerbal Space Program developed by SQUAD. The Delta-v maps are based on work by WAC and Kowgan on the Kerbal Space Program Forums as well as the Kerbal Space Program community on Reddit. The font used is called Aller and can be downloaded on FontSquirrel. The documents are Inkscape SVG files.
Stay up to date on releases
Create your free account today to subscribe to this repository for notifications about new releases, and build software alongside 36 million developers on GitHub.
Sign up for free See pricing for teams and enterprises
Kowgan released this Sep 29, 2017
Kowgan released this Dec 6, 2016 · 3 commits to master since this release
KSPedia version not included (not yet done by the time of this release).
OPM version not included (not yet done). ![]()
Kowgan released this Jul 9, 2016 · 4 commits to master since this release
In the cold vacuum of space, miles above the planet surface, I am guiding my tiny space ship toward the airlock of another vessel. To dock, our orbits have to align precisely, but the variables are terrifying. I have built the craft myself, out of myriad components, and I donât know if itâll hold up out here in the vast indifferent nothingness.
I progress forward anyway, nudging the thrusters with just enough vigour to connect with the airlock, but not enough to cause a mid-flight collision that will end the lives of my crew. In space, there is always risk and reward. The reward for me is to stay alive â and to get home.
The fortunate part is that, actually, I am at home. I am on a computer playing a game called Kerbal Space Program. And thereâs always another spacecraft to build and crash.
Fantasy v simulation
Video games are obsessed with space travel. From the seminal 1961 title SpaceWar â one of the first games ever made â to modern science fiction odysseys like Mass Effect and Halo, the idea of exploring distant galaxies has proved incredibly seductive.
But authentic space simulators, offering a purer, more complex and authentic interactive experience, are much rarer. Since Apollo 18 hit the Commodore 64 in 1987, there have been a couple of dozen maybe, often produced by small teams writing for dedicated fans. Microsoftâs 1994 title Space Simulator was one of the most notable examples, incorporating an array of astrodynamic space mechanics, but the company never produced a sequel. The industry moved on.
But then in 2011 a development studio based in Mexico released an early version of Kerbal Space Program, an intricately detailed space flight sim for Windows and Mac. Here, the playerâs aim is simple; design and construct spacecraft in your own personal space center.
As you succeed with flight missions, youâll accrue more funding and expand your expertise, but the game also acts as completely free sandbox experience with myriad options for inventive design. The possibilities for construction are almost endless, and the most experienced players are able to dock craft in orbit to create space stations, land on the nearby moon, and venture into deep space. It's no wonder people are calling this Minecraft in space â it has that same sense of creativity and possibility.
The community rises, Nasa notices
And as with Minecraft, a community quickly grew around Kerbal, despite its unfinished state. Users began modifying the code and adding new features, and when it was released onto leading PC games platform Steam in spring 2013, it became one of the top five best-selling titles on the siteâs âearly accessâ section â a huge new audience joined the experiment. Felipe Falanghe, Kerbalâs creator and lead developer at Squad, has perhaps been surprised by the success of the title, but understands its appeal. âItâs about seeing your creations explode and trying to figure out why,â he says. âItâs about how you can improve the design so it doesnât happen againâ he says. âItâs about exploring and reaching out to something that was a complete unknown not too long ago.â
The success of the game hadnât gone unnoticed. In March 2013, Squad received an intriguing tweet: âInterested in exploring an asteroid with us?â It was from Nasa, and after a year of cooperation, the Kerbal team was able to implement the real-life Asteroid Redirect Mission into its game. Players can now experiment with a genuine space programme, using Nasa rocket parts. âItâs been a truly amazing experience,â says Falanghe. âWhen we first started, we had very little help from experts, save what we could research on our own. For us, it was a great learning experience â none of us in the team have any formal background in aerospace or any related field.â
Public relations for space travel
For Nasa, there was another motive. The public relations boom of the moon landings and the 1980s shuttle programme has long faded, and amid a biting recession, there is apathy and misunderstanding about the organisation. The American public doesnât just lack understanding about what Nasa undertakes, it also grossly overestimates the budget it receives from the US government. As recently as 1997, the public estimated that up to 20% of government budget was allocated to Nasa â a $328bn injection that would almost certainly have meant a successful manned Mars mission by now. In truth, Nasa has requested a budget of $17.5bn for fiscal 2015. Of that, just $89m is allocated to educating the next generation of astronauts, scientists and engineers.
âI think itâs a shame,â says Falanghe, ânot just for Nasa but for mankind in general, that there isnât as much interest in space exploration these days as there should be. Reaching for the stars should be the next step for us as a species, especially as weâre so obviously exceeding the current resources the Earth has to offer.â
But Nasa is fighting back. Using sites like Facebook, Twitter and its own Nasa TV digital channel, it is building connections with the younger generation, explaining its projects, posting videos and live streams and designing interactive applications around its satellite and Mars Rover initiatives. âAs we continue to become more connected through social media, public ignorance of public and private space exploration missions has shrunkâ says David Lantz, a flight controller directly inside Nasaâs mission control. âWith over 4 million people watching the last launch of Space Shuttle Atlantis and 3.2 million watching the landing of Mars Curiosity rover through various digital outlets, Iâd say interest and desire has never been higher.'
Why astronauts play space games
Joining up with Kerbal Space Program has been part of this. As Nasa develops plans to land men on an asteroid by 2025, and with a manned mission to Mars tentatively slated for launch in the early 2020s, itâs even possible we might see games giving real-time access to content, providing a sense of what itâs like to venture onto other worlds. Itâs not just about providing PR to a space industry, itâs about interesting gamers in aeronautics as a viable career. âI remember playing an old simulator called Shuttle in the early 90s and then flying a shuttle in the flight simulator, X-Plane,â says Lantz. âI recall being amazed at the quality of the games and surprised at the updated graphics. I canât help but see newer generations being inspired to go and explore as these simulators continue to follow Mooreâs lawâ.
Can space flight sims really inspire a new generation of jet propulsion physicists and systems engineers? Thomas Pedersen, PhD is lead space strategist at Copenhagen Suborbitals, a non-profit aerospace organisation founded almost as a hobbyist venutre by Kristian von Bengtson and Peter Madsen. Since 2008, the organisation has launched several rockets, funded partly by corporate sponsorship and partly by a group of around 1,000 supporters. There was definitely something game-like about the way the outfit started. âWhat is more challenging that starting out completely from scratch, two men with a simple sheet metal workshop at hand and the ambition to send a man on a suborbital trajectory into space?â asks Pedersen.
For him, games have been a key inspiration in his career, not just the worthy simulations, but the more fantastical adventures of galactic exploration. âGames have gone far beyond [real life] for decades â ever since David Brabenâs classic, Elite,â he says. âAh, those memories. Perhaps Elite is why I am where I am todayâ
Sean Lillibridge is at Nasaâs engineering design and analysis branch for advanced thermal systems. He remembers playing simulator games while growing up and insists they inspired him to consider space as a career. âMS Flight Simulator 4.0 had a mode where you could customize the flight model of a few different aircraft,â he says. âThis gave me a playground to experiment with the game, specifically the way it perceived how different changes to the aircraft would manifest themselves. Eventually, I came to understand that the computer understood its âairplaneâ in a very different way than how an airplane actually works, while still maintaining a basic, believable flight model. This got me interested in
how computers can simulate aerodynamics.Games influenced my career by showing the beginnings of what computers were capable of simulating.â Dawn of the serious space games
While Kerbal is one of the most successful space simulators ever created, itâs just one of many being now being developed as educational, potentially inspirational tools. David Braben, co-creator of the space trading sim Elite, is now overseeing the development of a new titles in the series, Elite: Dangerous. He believes that this is the beginning of an important few years for games and space exploration. âFrankly the next generation of space simulation is within games.â he continues. âIn Elite: Dangerous we are pulling together all the known information about our galaxy within the simulation. We donât think that is being done anywhere else.â
Other Kickstarter games, like space simulator Space Pioneer, are using the expert knowledge cosmonauts and spaceflight experts like Aleksandr Lazutkin to piece together a wonderful picture of space exploration. Lazutkin, a veteran cosmonaut with the Russian Federal Space Agency, has spent more than 180 days in space across his extensive career, survived a fire onboard Russian space station MIR in 1997 and a mid-space collision with the craft Progress a few years later. An impressive set of experiences.
âGames have the incredible and unmatched potential to inspire and give life to future ambitionsâ says Lazutkin. âIf a video game is made the right way it can give the player new knowledge in a way thatâs unobtrusive, and thatâs what weâre striving for - we think that accomplishing this and inspiring people to become space explorers is something that represents the highest echelon of game making.â
Kids in space
The team at Kerbal certainly sees the opportunity to lead in the field of space education; to revitalise the public interest in Nasa and even to create a new generation of astronauts, cosmonauts, mission control agents and thermodynamic analysts. Games are, after all, becoming the primary medium for a new generation of digital natives, used to interacting with iPads and consoles. Television coverage of the Apollo missions may have inspired kids in the 70s, but todayâs children are too busy playing Minecraft. Not that itâs a bad thing â Minecraft is teaching millions of children about architecture, urban planning, even soil mechanics. Kerbal could do the same thing for space.
âWe did a survey [of over] 12,000 players and more than 92 percent are not nor ever have been part of the aerospace industry,â says Falanghe. âBut more than 97% of those players said Kerbal Space Program has increased their interest in science and space and over 95% of them said they learned something about astrophysics or rocket science from playing the game.â
As a community, Kerbal Space Programâs fans are as dedicated to the mission as Squad, providing feedback and actively participating in the gameâs evolution, shaping it into something that even Falanghe couldnât have anticipated. âWhen we did our first public release we werenât even sure if we would keep the orbital mechanics in the game or not, as we couldnât be sure before if players would receive it well, or think it was too complex to be fun. It was only after we released we saw players not only liked the orbits, they wanted more of it.â
It was a turning point for Kerbal, which Falanghe says was not originally intended as an authoritative simulation of space flight, complete with orbiting space stations. After feedback, the design emphasis changed entirely, and a new ethos emerged around progressive learning. With Nasaâs involvement, Squad has now teamed up with educational specialist TeacherGaming to produce KerbalEdu, a version of the game intended for classrooms, allowing teachers to create set tasks for pupils. The project is in its early stages right now, but TeacherGaming has had huge success with MinecraftEdu, bringing the game to schools around the world.
From space sim to space career
A career trajectory from interested gamer to space industry expert is one that Falanghe and his team consider plausible. As Squad perfects the balance of education and game, and nurtures its relationship with space organisations around the globe, the team edges closer to that goal.
It's clearly what Falanghe dreams of: âIf we hear of a new generation of astronauts and engineers, and a renewed interest in space exploration, and if even one of them was inspired to pursue that career as a result of our little game. Well⦠thatâs about as much as a game designer can hope to achieve, I think.â
⢠How do you build a city in space?
Comments are closed.
|
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |