Kerbal Space Program is a simulation game, released on Steam in early access in 2013, where players take on an embryonic space program manned by Kerbals. These little green humanoid things are pretty lovely, and one of the joys of the game is seeing these muppet characters face the game’s extremely deep physics system: if your skill level is like mine, often not. it is. they are doing well.
But I guess Boeing engineers are pretty good at the game, and in fact, they seem to love it. The company’s Starliner capsule was recently docked on the International Space Station and had a surprise passenger on the trip: Jebediah Kerman, one of the game’s four original Kerbals, was tied up next to a humanoid test dummy (thanks , Engadget (opens in a new tab)).
I guess this fits in a bit with Starliner’s narrative: the project has had a few high-profile failures and, according to popular perception, lags far behind other private space exploration efforts like SpaceX. Several setbacks followed by a successful launch no doubt sound like the Kerbal space program.
This is also a tradition in spaceflight. The first successful cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin, took a small doll (opens in a new tab) with him to see it float when it entered orbit in 1961. This handy app, which used a toy as a ” zero g indicator “, persisted: His flight Gagarin later received a Geisha doll in Japan, which three decades later the Japanese journalist Toyohiro Akiyama would take to space. The first teddy bear in space, Magellan T. Bear, came up in 1995 and is now in the Smithsonian.
Boeing told CollectSpace (opens in a new tab) that “Jeb’s presence aboard the Starliner was kept secret until the unmanned capsule successfully docked at the space station. “Expedition 67 crew from the station discovered it floating at the end of a rope when they opened the hatch in the commercial spacecraft.”
Boeing engineers in the past have spoken of the Kerbal space program as a bit of inspiration, a game that encourages children to take an interest in the field. Jeb will spend the next few days aboard the ISS until he returns to Earth in Starliner.
I’m not sure what else to say about this other than: boffins gonna boffin.
#Starliner co-driver Jebediah Kerman ready for his close-up. pic.twitter.com/vgr1cIk0cd21 May 2022
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