Test Out Next-Gen Space Tech in Kerbal Space Program

Most games lose relevance after a few years, but the indie rocket-building game Kerbal Space Program is a bit different. It's a glitchy, 10-year-old underdog of a game with a cult following of programmers, engineers, astronaut candidates, and your typical lay explosion enthusiasts, and it has a unique and active community of modders who've been fixing bugs, adding new features, and generally keeping the game fresh for nearly a decade. In the game, you are the omniscient director of a space program composed of literal little green men (and beloved little green woman Valentina Kerman--we see you trailblazer) that you send skyward in spacecraft of your own design. It often feels like watching those blurry old videos of rockets launching only to come straight back down in an explosion of fiery schadenfreude: You feel a little bit frightened, a little bit sadistic, and you really want to try it again. One of the most prolific Kerbal modders is Chris Adderley, Nertea in the game, who is an engineer at the Canadian space company MDA by day, designing ground-based systems that retrieve data from spacecraft.