One Giant Step for Dru

One Giant Step for Drukind

Anyone that has spent time with me knows that I have loved games since I was a kid. Playing games, reading about games, talking about games, I’ve loved it all! That passion has seeped into my adulthood and I couldn’t be happier. It has been strange watching so much of the world discover over the past decade what I have already known: Games have an unlimited potential.

When I was young, caring about games was a fairly niche thing. Something you talked about at school to the right people. By right people, I mean other boys who were subscribed to Nintendo Power. Note: Nintendo Power was a magazine/propaganda tool made by the game company Nintendo that featured information and screenshots of their upcoming games. Note to younger folks: A magazine was a small paperish book that got delivered to your house on a monthly or weekly basis that served information on a specific topic. Now everyone has discovered the power of games and it is incredible. There were no girls playing games when I was younger. No one’s parents played games. Games were this small niche thing that belonged to me and a few people I knew. A little club for kids who were in the know.

I know this sounds like an old man shouting off his porch about how good things used to be. I assure you that is not the case. I am beyond thrilled that the stigma of gaming is all but dissolved in our culture. I could go on about how the internet and the advent of social media and gaming has been a net negative for the world but I’m in no mood for that. My goal is to help you understand, if you don’t already, how important games can be and how important they are to me.

I also don’t want to expound on why games are beautiful. I may do so at another time but this isn’t about that. This is about me and one of my favorite memories I have that is only possible because of video games.

To help you understand the following story, I will have to explain what the game I was playing is. The game in question is called Kerbal Space Program.

From what slight research I have done, the game was created by a young man in Mexico named Filipe Falanghe while he was working at a company that actually did not create software. He met with the company he worked for, Squad in Mexico City, and convinced the owners to let him work on it after completing marketing projects for the company. I bring this up because I love the romantic nature of origins. I always enjoy the first movie, book, novel or game in a series and this translates to real life. I like knowing where things come from.

Anyway, Filipe had this idea that he came up with as a teen. He like to strap figurines to fireworks and launch them into the sky. For whatever reason, he named these brave plastic men Kerbals.

I should tell you what this game is. This is actually no small task as this is not a game about running from left to right or shooting ‘bad’ guys. This is a game about space. But really, it’s a game about failure.

When you boot the game up you find yourself in charge of a space agency, a al NASA, except, instead of humans, you are in charge of little green guys with heads that are too big. They are quite adorable and they are willing to do whatever you tell them to chase their destiny in the stars.

You have a budget, a group of astronauts, a building facility and a launchpad. You have a budget, an accountant, a laboratory and a training academy as well. Sorry to get caught up in the weeds. Describing this game to someone is like trying to tell someone why you love balance spreadsheets at work.

The idea of the game is simple, you are in a solar system full of planets begging to be reached. All the planets have orbits and are modeled with their own gravity and atmospheres. Seems simple enough. It isn’t.

You build your potential spacecraft from scratch. Engines, fuel, weight, trajectory, pilots, everything must be accounted for. If you miss managed the fuel connection to the engine, you aren’t going anywhere. If you put too many rockets on their, you blow up on the launch pad.

Many nights were spent with Austin and Greg, my then roommates, trying out their silly ideas for rockets and blowing up on the launch pad or realizing the rocket did not have a parachute as it freefell to the ground and erupted into a cloud of fire.

You slowly begin teaching yourself the subtle balance between weight versus thrust and eventually, you blast off! You get video feed of your Kerbal astronaut flailing in his seat as you rocket into the sky. They are typically wide-eyed and screaming. For joy or in terror? It’s not quite clear.

This goes on for a while as you press higher and higher into the stratosphere. You begin to get an idea for what makes a rocket successful. Through trial and error in my case. A lot of trial and error. You begin to understand that Kerbal is a game of inches as much as it is a game of miles. You begin learning to maneuver with your pilot. Instead of crashing back on Kerbin with a parachute, you learn to land the rocket.

Eventually I started dreaming bigger. The game does track time and when night comes you can see a beautiful white ball in the sky. Mun. That was my goal. To wrestle this game to the ground and land a Kerbin on Mun.

Just like in actual space flight, you don’t point at the place you want to go and hit the button, you have to learn the delicate dance of using gravity to get where you want to go. You start by launching into orbit. I spent hours building ships, launching them. Finding out a half hour into a flight that I didn’t have enough fuel or that I had gone too fast and burned up in the atmosphere.

Kerbal Space Program is not designed to help you achieve your space exploring dreams. It doesn’t throw up artificial roadblocks either. It creates a set of rules and gives you the tools and sends you on your way.

Sure, I could have watched some youtube videos and figured out the ‘right’ way to get to the Mun but that isn’t what I wanted. I began naming my ships. I believe the Artemis III is the first shuttle I successfully orbited Kerbin with. I would take advice my couch rocketeers: Austin & Greg. I would ask, “What do you think of this ship?” The answer would usually be, “It needs more rocket boosters!” And so it did.

When I would watch shuttle launches in real life, I always thought the camera was at an odd angle because it always looks like the shuttle is not going up but diagonal. There is actually a reason for that. This is called ‘gravity turn’ and it is also necessary in Kerbal. You want to enter orbit at an angle that will use up less of your fuel and get you into orbit faster. Typically the heaviest part of your ship would be facing the ground to make the turn as natural as possible. When you are going fast enough, high enough and traveling perpendicular to the ground, you will start orbiting. I spent trillions of Kerbal dollars to master this.

The slow mastery is a special kind of success. A slow burn of endorphins as you achieve what seemed to be impossible hours before. There is a moment when you achieve a stable orbit where the camera shifts and the music swells. Goosebumps for me.

Next step, Mun. The game features some light tutorials and a dense encyclopedia. I began learning basic orbital mechanics like periapsis (portion of orbit closest to planet) & apoapsis (portion of orbit furthest from planet). I’ll spare you the specific details but I did want to insert a microbrag that I accidentally learned a little physics playing this game. This jist of this means, every move you make once in orbit must be precise and intentional.

The key to getting to Mun is timing. You have to determine the moment that Mun will pass within the same space as your ship when you launch yourself out of Kerbin gravity. There is time when you are flying away from Kerbin and toward where Mun is supposed to be that is exhilarating! If you miss, your Kerbin and the ship you lovingly crafted will be lost to the abyss. This also took many tries to find success. There are still Kerbins drifting through space, smiling ear to ear because of my failure to load the right type of fuel onto their ship.

Finally, Eureka! My ship, the Nautilus VII, successfully achieved orbit around Mun! The 7500 mile trip was, unfortunately, destined to be a one way journey for the pilot, brave Valentina Kerbin. I had not used my fuel efficiently enough and she approaches the surface far too quickly. Lost on impact. The Nautilus was due for another redesign. Luckily, this would lead to the project that would see success, the Omicron project.

After a few mishaps, I was back in orbit around Mun. The Omicron IV and its pilot, Bob Kerbin, had a date with destiny. Austin, Greg & I all worked for the same company but at slightly different shifts. By happenstance, we were all in the apartment on this fateful day. The Omicron descended slowly on while feathering the thruster as we were well passed bingo fuel. Note: Bingo fuel is the amount of fuel needed to make the return journey to base safely.

I wasn’t taking any chances. In my experience landing on Kerbin, coming in under 10 m/s would limit shuttle damage. I came in even slower on my Mun landing. Under 5 m/s. A snails pace really. It was a tense few minutes watching Mun get bigger and bigger as a glided down to the surface. We held our breathe as the moment of truth approached. Contact. Then something strange happened, the hydralic landing gear was strong enough, and the gravity on Mun was weak enough, to where the ship bounced back up into the air. Not far my you but enough to illicit exclamations of terror from all of us.

A few more baby bounces and the Omicron settled. I’m not a loud person but I erupted. Not unlike the scenes in space movies where everyone in the command center cheers and high fives. I was on cloud 9. 100 hours playing the game and I had finally done it. Bob stepped bout of the ship and planted the Kerbin flag right there in the ground. He would have to get comfortable because there was barely enough fuel left in the ship to take off, let alone get back to Kerbin. My mission was over.

I still played a little here and there as there were other planets to reach but I had lost my drive. In my mind, I wanted to mount a rescue mission for Bob but it never came to fruition.

This experience was only possible because of Felipe’s dream and his will to turn his dream into something real. I’m so thankful for that and I will never forget the brave sacrifice of Bob Kerbin on the altar of discovery.