Rowsdower

Our very own Calisker and NASA's Robert Jacobs recently sat down with Red Thomas from MMORPG.com to DISCUSS Kerbal Space Program: Asteroid Redirect Mission. Here's a short excerpt where they talk about the development of ARM. Ricoxg: What was it like around the office at Squad? Holztman: It started [as an idea] on Twitter, and it soon expanded to a conversation with Squad’s owners, Adrian Goya and Ezequiel Ayarza. Ultimately, we were communicating with the team at NASA almost daily to make sure we were doing their work justice. A lot of credit has to be given to Felipe Falanghe, KSP creator and lead developer, as well as our technical artist and developer, Chad Jenkins, and our QA director Ted Everett. The entire team crushed it but these three worked some seriously brutal hours to make this update the biggest the game has seen. Ricoxg: Can you tell me a little about the development process? What were some obstacles, and where did the ideas for things like the tracking station/asteroid capture come from? Holztman: The team wanted to combine the real Asteroid Redirect Mission with the game as much as possible. The tracking station is intended to emulate real life, as NASA is working hard to evaluate all of the asteroids out there that pose a threat to Earth. Where the team took some liberty was the Advance Grabbing Unit, otherwise known as “The Claw,†that is used to redirect asteroids. It can actually grab other things too so if you want to redirect Kerbals, go for it – but please be careful!