Kerbal Space Program

These days I started up Kerbal Space Program. It is a space game where you construct your own vehicles and explore the solar system. As physics games go it is amazing.

Unless you carefully plan out maneuvers they will lead to disaster - which is often also hilarious to watch play out. Even getting into orbit is a challenge in the beginning.

The only critic point would be that one needs to learn about most concepts outside the game. These may be small things like how the solid fuel boosters are different from rocket engines - the boosters can not be throttled, while the rocket engines can be. To the more advanced topics of how to do orbit transfers and gravity assists. Though once the concepts are understood it is immensely gratifying to be able to these maneuvers.

And there are fun concepts that came up from this game like lithobraking - which in analogy to aero and hydrobraking is reducing speed by hitting rocks. And URD the abbreviation for unscheduled rapid disassembly - basically the craft explodes.