Kerbal Space Program

I’ve been playing Kerbal Space Program (KSP) for the last few months. On twitter, I made my case why everyone should play it.

Kerbal Space Program is my new Minecraft.

— Bill Ruhsam (@bruhsam) May 22, 2014

This is truer than you might think, despite the obvious differences between the two ((In case you don’t know what these differences are, consult the Googles, or simply know that in Minecraft, you are digging around in a virtual terrain looking for gold and other valuables while dodging monsters and in KSP you are trying to manage the entire space program of the planet Kerbal. One you go down, the other you go up. For further information on Minecraft you can consult this very blog. )). KSP and Minecraft are both sandbox games. KSP and Minecraft both have modes where you are challenged to achieve accomplishments in order to do more; adventure mode in Minecraft and Career mode in KSP.

And they’re both addicting.

However, this discussion is an enormous tangent to my main point which is that I love playing KSP. It’s a huge waste of time when you consider all the other things I should be doing, but if you don’t believe it is fun, you should check out what google has to say about it.

My next goal is to get some of the mods loaded up so I can do more detailed rocket loading calculations and start lifting to orbit the pieces of an interplanetary craft that has even a hope of coming home with its Kerbal pilot. To date, I’ve sent several Kerbals on interplanetary missions (both on purpose and not) but none of them have or will come home. Ever. The wall of sacrifice outside the Kerbal NASA HR offices is getting long.

Thanks to Randall Munroe who introduced me to the game.

And of course there’s xkcd 1106 which mentions KSP in the mouse-over text.