Try out a planned space mission

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I like to present NASA’s good strategy of increasing the popularity of a planned space mission: they were collaborating with the developers of Kerbal Space Program to develop a custom addon to the game.

NASA is currently planning a new challenge in space flight: the Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) [1][2]. The main goal of ARM is the investigation of an asteroid by astronauts. In order to allow astronauts to fly up to an asteroid and to take some samples of it, it’s necessary to bring or redirect an asteroid into the reach of human space flight.
The idea is pretty simple: an asteroid will be captured by a robotic mission and afterwards propelled into a stable orbit around our Moon. After the asteroid is captured by the Moon’s gravity, a manned mission will be launched up to the asteroid to allow a thorough investigation and to enable the option to return back some samples.

Unfortunately, NASA’s space flight activities are pretty expensive and thus needing the support of the people. Support often can be only given, if an understanding of the work is established. Additionally, NASA and space agencies in general are all the time searching for future workers, who are deeply interested in the exploration of space and who like to work in the field of space science.
In order to gain a higher popularity, NASA is very active on social media services and also tries to involve people in the work by creating special social events to allow in-person experiences at NASA[3].
Now, NASA found a new partner to collaborate with. The partner already provides a good service to develop a better understanding of space flight, is entertaining and already used by many users.

The partner I’m writing about is Squad, the developer of Kerbal Space Program (KSP). KSP is a computer game that allows its players to develop an own space program [4]. The player can assemble rockets and space crafts from a broad variety of different components and launch them into virtual space. Moreover, the space simulation game helps its players to understand the basics of space flight because everything in the game is based on real world physics. Players can start to learn orbital mechanics by playing the game [5][6].
Altough the game is still in development, it has already achieved a huge popularity among space interested players and computer game players in general.

Since 1st of April, the popularity of KSP is now also used by NASA to increase the popularity of their ARM project. The developers of KSP have implemented in collaboration with NASA the ARM mission into KSP. KSP now allows players to rendezvous with asteroids and to investigate these space rocks. Additionally, KSP now offers new components in the Vehicle Assembly Building which are mostly inspired by NASA rocket components. This even includes a component that can attach an asteroid to a rocket and finally allow the player to redirect the asteroid to a different orbit.

In the end, it’s a win-win situation for everyone involved. KSP receives more attention, because it’s now possible to simulate an upcoming real world space mission. NASA’s popularity will also increase, because their project is now also offered to the broad variety of already existing KSP players, who might start spreading the word about the next huge challenge in human space flight. Moreover, by playing the ARM, players will learn more about the upcoming challenges for NASA in order to redirect an asteroid. This knowledge could on the one hand lead to more applicants at NASA and on the other hand to more people who appreciate the science and engineering of NASA. Finally, the KSP player itself now has more components and options to play around during his gameplay. Furthermore, KSP has received an additional amount of realism due to the new and authentic components.

As a conclusion, computer games like KSP help players to understand the way orbital mechanics work. Additionally, it will increase the interest of the players in the work of space agencies and maybe inspire them to start a career in one of the fields of today’s space companies.
In the end, I hope that other space agencies will understand the great potential of computer games, too. It would be very interesting, if not only NASA but also ESA and Roscosmos would join the club of virtual space flyers in order to spread the word about their work.

And maybe, after gamers were inspired by computer games like KSP, it could be also a gamer who finds the solution to a real world problem because of the creative way gamers are approaching difficult things–like redirecting an asteroid.