I knew in that moment that Kerbal Space Program was something special. My heart was beating fast and I had a huge smile on my face. I felt like one of those people jumping up and down in Mission Control after every successful return in a space movie. But those white plumes eventually billowed out and carried Jeb to a safe (if not comfortable) splashdown in the crystal blue ocean. My heart skipped a beat in the moment it took the capsule's parachutes to deploy, as they can become damaged in flight and lead to a catastrophic failure at the 11th hour. My wrist was sore and my teeth were clenched by the time it was all over, but eventually the flames subsided. My only option was to take the joystick and make a series of tiny adjustments to ensure the heat shield was taking the brunt of the friction. This usually doesn't happen and may have been a glitch, but I didn't have time to worry about that. I realized that the auto-adjusting gyroscopes supposed to keep the heat shield fully facing into the atmosphere were letting just a bit of air past to hit the capsule itself. At one point, the temperature readings got so high that I thought the whole mission was about to go up in flames after everything else had gone so well. The heat shield caught fire as the air pressure increased and Kerbin got closer and closer below us. The moment of truth came as I blasted him into a re-entry orbit, jettisoned everything except the heat-shielded capsule, and held my breath hoping that my trajectory would use Kerbin's atmosphere to slow us down enough not to crash (a technique called air-braking) without causing enough heat from friction to cook poor Jeb alive. My intrepid kerbal captain disembarked, took some readings for science, and hopped back in to head home. I lifted off, put myself into a beautiful circular orbit around Kerbin, executed a near-perfect burn that used as little fuel as possible, and set down gently in the smooth bowl of an enormous crater. My hands were steady on the flight stick. My rocket was honed by many hours of learning and evolutionary pressure. There were some heartbreaking close calls, like making it to the Mun but having the lander tip over, stranding the crew there indefinitely, or having something go wrong on the final re-entry to Kerbin-KSP’s equivalent to Earth-which always serves as a stressful and dramatic finale to any mission.īut then came that one fateful mission came when everything lined up perfectly. Analyzing each hilarious disaster slowly taught me what worked and what didn't. There are more distant, more difficult heavenly bodies to pursue, but reaching them never quite tops that very first time you manage to launch a crew of Kerbals in a tin can through space to tag an icy rock. The Mun is the closest and arguably easiest target you can send your Kerbals to, and it ends up being the trial by fire (sometimes literally) for any new mission controller's understanding of the rocket construction and flight mechanics. But I never truly got it until I had to interact with gravity directly in this quirky game about little green astronauts. It's one thing to read about gravity in a textbook or nod your head in agreement when someone on TV explains that orbits are basically objects falling toward each other with high enough horizontal speed to prevent a collision. KSP is far from a completely realistic simulation of Newton's laws and the challenges of operating in deep space, but it's close enough that it truly expanded my understanding of how our universe works. But when it comes to pure euphoria at having accomplished something astounding through a combination of thought, persistence, and fine motor skill, it's hard to beat landing Jebediah Kerman and his friends on the Mun-and returning safely-in Kerbal Space Program. Over the course of my PC gaming career, I've conquered the world, slain the most terrifying foes, and uncovered the deepest secrets of many a dungeon. Great moments in PC gaming are bite-sized celebrations of some of our favorite gaming memories.
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