As I returned to my console after our interview, I realized I would be intimidated just to build a Kerbal version of the Gateway, let alone confronting the challenges of a real orbital outpost. Radiation exposure is just one of countless contingencies that Pastor and her colleagues will have to evaluate as they develop the Gateway, and prepare to return humans to the Moon. “On Artemis 1, there was a mannequin with a sensor, so we are waiting for the answers and the final report on that so we can see what the bodies of the astronauts experience in that orbital environment,” Pastor said. For instance, the team is currently combing through data collected by Artemis 1, an uncrewed test mission that flew around the Moon last year, in order to figure out how to reduce the crews’ exposure to cosmic and solar radiation. Unlike the International Space Station, which is continuously inhabited by astronauts, the Gateway will be occupied by crews for short stays, ranging from a few days to a few weeks, and will serve as a staging ground for human expeditions to the Moon’s surface.Īs the project manager for the Gateway’s International Habitation Module (I-HAB), a cozy living space on the station, Pastor must anticipate the many challenges of life in a remote lunar outpost. The station is currently on track to launch in about five years, and will follow a highly elliptical orbit that will come within 1,000 miles of the lunar surface at its closest approach, before hurtling out to an unprecedented distance of 43,000 miles at the far end. (Building a Kerbal version of the Gateway is something players can do in the game, by the way.)Īs a collaboration between NASA, ESA, and many other partners, the Gateway is considered a key stepping stone in human space exploration and a major part of the NASA-led Artemis program, which aims to return humans to the lunar surface this decade. We met in an auditorium next to the Erasmus center to talk about her work on the Lunar Gateway, which is a planned space station destined for lunar orbit that will serve as a stepping stone for human exploration of the Moon and, perhaps eventually, Mars. Ness, the art director for KSP2, in the same interview.Īfter about an hour of building, flying, and crashing, I took a break from the game to speak with Sara Pastor, an aerospace engineer at the European Space Agency (ESA). “Not only have we rebuilt all of our celestial bodies from the Kerbol system, we also have introduced, on day one of early access, four new tutorials-including tutorial videos and adorable animations-that will help onboard new players and also refresh old familiar players with orbital mechanics and the concepts of space travel and rocketry” such as “building, flying, and crashing,” added K. “Every celestial body that I've gone to and visited has been just a completely wild treat.” “Players who've been playing KSP1 have a whole beautiful new star system to look into,” said Shana Markham, lead designer at Intercept Games, the studio that made KSP2, in an interview with Motherboard at the event. Kerbals may be forgiving, but the same cannot be said for real spaceflight.Īs with the original game, you start at the Vehicle Assembly Building of the Kerbal Space Center where you can build spacecraft out of a dizzying variety of parts and send them to the launchpad where they might dramatically explode, sputter out, or maybe-with lots of luck or practice-actually reach an orbit around Kerbin, the Kerbals’ home world, or beyond into the wider Kerbol solar system. It felt especially surreal to engage in such haphazard experimentation given the environment, which was decorated from floor to ceiling with memorabilia of space missions that had actual, tangible stakes. Surrounded by the backdrop of ESTEC’s Erasmus Innovation Centre, a cavernous room filled with space artifacts and replicas, I launched many rockets off to nowhere and with no regrets. (Private Division, the publisher of KSP2, organized the event and covered our travel expenses.) It's a good thing that failure is fun in KSP2, because that’s all I did during my two hours of tinkering with the much-anticipated sequel at the preview event, which was held at the European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC), Europe’s biggest space technology site, located in the seaside town of Noordwijk, Netherlands.
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