What inspires you to play KSP?

[septemberWaves]

I draw inspiration for this game from a variety of sources. Sometimes that's existing space technology, sometimes it's science fiction, sometimes it's things I see on this forum, and other times it's my own imagination. I particularly like the aesthetics of the cancelled Constellation program and the current Space Launch System; I find that they're usually a good source of ideas. I also like to see how other players build spacecraft, and to draw inspiration from some of the nice designs I have seen on the forums.

And I'm curious: what inspires other people to play the game, or to build a particular spacecraft a certain way?

[pandaman]

I've loved 'space stuff' since I was a kid watching the Apollo missions and Carl Sagan and others on telly.  I'm in my 50's now and KSP let's me play astronauts without jumping about in slow motion in the garden like on the moon landings and looking a bit soft in the head.

I get inspiration from real life missions (past, present and proposed) and just wanting to use the new toys in a new release.  Sometimes a movie will give me a bit of an urge to do something a bit more Sci -Fi  for a change.

[MaxxQ]

I posted this awhile back in a similar thread:

So what inspires me is that I like to build KSP spacecraft and launch vehicles that are similar in mission to what the real versions of much of my scale model work did.  

Edited October 24, 2016 by MaxxQ

[Overland]

Galaxy railways

And my train to work..5am darkness..bright stars and moon in the sky..the trains headlight shining on the track ahead Into the ink blackness ahead

Driving trains in KSP at night feels like that..and trains in the realworld remind me of KSP the same

 

Edited October 25, 2016 by Overland

[Curveball Anders]

RL space exploration.

[flatbear]

pcgamer made a pretty apt comparison between ksp and no man's sky and on why ksp is such a good game. 

Quote

 

Kerbal Space Program and No Man's Sky don't aspire to the same goals, but there's a lot that can be learned from the dopey little kerbals and their obsession with dying on other planets. Compared to No Man's Sky and Elite: Dangerous, Kerbal Space Program's planets are barren, waxy balls of nothing. Yet the moment I landed my first kerbal on the 'Mun' (moon), I really felt like a little green Neil Armstrong making one giant leap for kerbalkind. 

While Kerbal Space Program is more obsessed with the technical mastery of engineering rather than exploring the far reaches of a galaxy, it's also been the one game that has given me that sense of adventure I so desperately want from No Man's Sky and Elite: Dangerous. Kerbal Space program cares little about what awaits me on its boring planets but invests everything in making sure that getting there is a struggle for the ages. Whether I'm correcting orbital trajectories, plotting slingshot maneuvers between planets, or panicking as I design a rescue mission to save a stranded kerbal, each one has me painfully aware of the stakes. When I completed my first successful Mun landing, I felt like I had conquered more than the millions of miles in between but my own expectations of what I thought I could achieve. I felt like an explorer.

With 1.8 quintillion planets to Kerbal's seven, No Man's Sky is desperately lacking that same tension. Unlike Kerbal, there's no anchor to ground the whole experience, no moment where I look back and see my homeworld behind me and feel awe for how hard won each and every mile I've come has been. Without that sense of scale, that understanding of the enormity of things and the challenge it'll take to overcome them, I don't feel like I'm stepping out into a vast universe. I feel like I'm flipping through an endless coffee table book—it's aesthetically pleasing but ultimately unaffecting. With 1.8 quintillion planets, the question I'm beginning to ask isn't which one I should explore next, but why should I even care? 

http://www.pcgamer.com/what-no-mans-sky-could-learn-about-exploration-from-kerbal-space-program/

 

Edited October 25, 2016 by flatbear

[Majorjim!]

I just love to build. The better I get at it the more I love it. Where will it end!?

[NSEP]

Every video that has to do with space travel.

[eddiew]

Spaceflight has always been an interest of mine. Born at the end of the 70s, with the echoes of Apollo still ringing in public consciousness and the pictures from Voyager I and II starting to show up in the science magazines of the day, it was a fairly natural thing that small boys got into. Age 8+ I could usually be found drawing spaceships and astronauts... not very well, admittedly, but I drew them anyway   Through my teens, I was an avid reader of classic science fiction, and always had my head in a special nerdish place, many miles above the ground.

And that interest followed me into adulthood, really. I still keep tabs on the various missions, watched the launch of New Horizons as one of the earliest livestream events, paid attention to the Rosetta mission, look forward to Osiris Rex.

Then KSP came along and rewound my brain to a time before reality had crushed my hopes of being an astronaut and gave me a more visual approach to the things that were in my childhood mind ^^;

As for why I build spacecraft the wayI do... I have no idea, really. Sometimes I hit up google for concepts, or pick up an idea from the forum that I think I can work with; other times I just go with what feels right at the time. My rules of thumb are trying not to be boring, and trying to produce things that look like they might actually work, even if I have to bend some rules about clipping or 'enhance' a part with cheeky mods  

[Jonfliesgoats]

Frustration at work.  In real life I fly large airplanes and was previously involved in testing aircraft modifications.  In the real world, you test a new modification to an airplane through lots of slow, meticulous and many times tedious protocols.  Despite my best efforts, I am probably going to spend my life without leaving Eath's atmosphere.

KSP sort of takes me back to when I was a kid making model rockets, strapping different engines to models and figuring out how to fly my pets.  It sort of keeps me involved with the little spark that sent me down this path some decades ago.

Also, I get to be obnoxious.  I love the sound of my own voice (sight of my own text?).  So there's that too.

[TheKingsHill]

I love the future. Space flight, automation, new technologies, etc. 
If I were still reading books frequently, you can bet that a majority of what I read would by sci-fi. 

The idea of exploration, creating solutions for problems that occur, the learning curve of KSP, the manuevers and physics effects/phenomena(?) that occur. There's so much to learn while playing KSP, and it drives me to learn even more outside of just the game. 
Recently I have found myself looking into aircraft designs, previous rocket launches from current or historic space agencies. It's just enthralling to think about all the things that I can learn to help improve my KSP game.

[regex]

Exploring spaceflight concepts. It's one of the reasons I typically go for RO over stock KSP, you can try a lot more things in more practical ways, but stock is always fun for just messing around. Seeing what it takes to make a successful Callisto landing or send a probe to Saturn really helps you appreciate what goes into actual spaceflight. Humans launch more than once per week, on average, which makes these things kind of mundane until you start planning a mission yourself.

[Tyko]

I've always been an avid space fan and love 3D modeling. I've tried many games that enabled me to model and use ships and have wanted one the relied on "newtonian physics" rather than sci-fi space travel. KSP by far offers the best balance of real-world physics and engineering concerns with a very high level of playability.

I get most inspired by building something that looks/feels right and flying tight/efficient missions.

Edited October 25, 2016 by tjt

[Aragosnat]

Space... Rockets... Space... What is there not to love? Also being able to go visit other planets...

[kBob]

Just came back after a month or so off...I just missed it plus well I want to play with the new things.  I'd still have to say it's the combo of designing, building, testing and flying that make this so inspiringly different...I enjoy flight sims, but making planes for them was just too hard, KSP makes making rockets fun and (relatively) easy...with lots of big bangs to help show where you went wrong for a bonus.  Oh and for general inspiration any number of sci-fi books...most recently it was the other way round KSP inspired me to reread Rendezvous With Rama.

On ‎10‎/‎24‎/‎2016 at 2:24 PM, pandaman said:

I've loved 'space stuff' since I was a kid watching the Apollo missions and Carl Sagan and others on telly.  I'm in my 50's now and KSP let's me play astronauts without jumping about in slow motion in the garden like on the moon landings and looking a bit soft in the head.

I get inspiration from real life missions (past, present and proposed) and just wanting to use the new toys in a new release.  Sometimes a movie will give me a bit of an urge to do something a bit more Sci -Fi  for a change.

I'm in my 50's too (how did that happen?), doesn't stop me...I'm sure my neighbors already think I'm nuts so no loss there (of course I'm just playing with the dogs if I need an excuse) .

Edited October 25, 2016 by kBob

[Thrawn889]

I guess the same as most you guys. I love Space and the idea of Space Exploration and Exploitation. Since i watched Star Wars in the 90's as a kid then learnt of the space programs and the ISS its always been interesting to me. I play a lot of 4X space titles that i could as a kid and loved the Old Star Wars X-Wing alliance flight sim game (with my very retro now joystick XD) I still read a lot of Sci fi books and really anything that gets me away from my crappy work every now and then. 

Kerbal for me and my inspiration to keep playing is the challenge and the play with real world physics angle. To me it makes me think if we can do this in a game could we actually get here one day. I dream of seeing an Orbital Habitat and shipyard above Earth before i die. 

 

 

[HoloYolo]

Boredom and love of space.

[ouion]

Love astronomy and science and rockets and aircrafts as kid, literally I was obsesses with space. I really like video games too, so I look for a game or simulator that replicates spaceflight. I am very creative so I imagine things like a story in space( I can draw very good too).  I play orbiter first then transfer to KSP. 

[Aegolius13]

I had vaguely known about KSP for while, but watching/reading The Martian was a big part of convincing me to actually play it.  There are lots of space books/movies obviously, but I really liked the problem-solving aspect in that one, and wanted to try my hand at similar challenges.

[Program Kerbal Space]

My other brother (I will not give any information of course) inspired me to play ksp because he showed possibilities then that's when i bought it

[Francois424]

I was playing Legos eversince I was 5yo... I was a die-fan astronomy fan as soon as 7yo,  I wanted to be an astronomer... but didn't have the mind for getting thru advanced algebgra and stuff so went into IT instead.

Then KSP comes around... A lego game fancying exploring the solar system?  Did not have that much fun since playing that old game called "Halley's comet" on my Atari 130XE

As long as I can design and fly my craft/rovers on strange new worlds, KSP will be one of my favorite games.

 

With mods there are endless opportunities as well.  I'm loving it !

[Boris Kerball]

I too cant get enough of it Most nights 4-6hrs wife even brings me up a cuppa tea about Nine -ish and still talks to me..lol I love the sounds i have been playing about 2 months now hav-nt even got to Duna yet moving scientists from ISS station kerbal, to Minmuss Iss station and a Lab on minmus surface, The one and only Mod (Kurrs) docking camera is oorrrssuummm, But now really wanting a space shuttle that would make this game complete for me, landing a shuttle like Nassa on the tarmac is the Ultimate...

[Alpha 360]

I don't under stand, I have only one rendezous with another planetary body, I have landed on Minmus for times, and have attmepted and failed multiple space stations. But I am going to greater heights(hopefully), with KSPI-E installed and a beamed power station in high kerbin orbit, I'm on it. 

[Norcalplanner]

I've always loved space and space stories for as long as I can remember. At the risk of dating myself, seeing Star Wars in the movie theater when it opened altered the trajectory of my childhood. Soon I added other things to the repertoire - Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers, Lego space sets, Star Trek, Cosmos, various PBS documentaries, Apollo 13, From the Earth to the Moon, The Martian, you name it. KSP scratches a particular itch like nothing else I've ever played, providing an outlet for creativity, engineering, clever design, and accomplishment for which I have yet to find an equal.  As someone with an analytical mind, I've always enjoyed figuring out where the lines cross in a given subject - cost vs. simplicity vs. capability vs. flexibility vs. aesthetics vs. pure unadulterated awesomeness. KSP provides an opportunity for this sort of mental exercise in spades.

Edited November 2, 2016 by Norcalplanner
typos

[seeingeyegod]

Lately I've been kind of lacking in inspiration. I'm in a new campaign with high difficulty settings waiting for them to give me a contract to go to Duna as I'm now plenty technically capable of it, in the mean time grinding through the same Mun and Minmus missions I've done dozens of time grinding science and money so I can continue to upgrade buildings and things. Kinda feeling bored because some of my favorite mods don't work anymore and it will be a while till they do again, and all I have to look forward to is stuff I've done before several times. I guess I'll think of new more challenging ways to do things, but to get the resources to do that in campaign I first have to do things I've already done so many times. Blah.