Devs: Thanks, on behalf of my eight-year-old

[Nikolai]

All this work was done by Rareden, not by me just so you know, but let your daughter have a look at this.

I already have four of his wallpapers rotating on my desktop every thirty minutes. She loves them. On her own desktop is a picture she made in MS Paint depicting a United States Moon landing. (It looks about like you'd expect an MS Paint depiction of that to look; the Earth isn't quite round, and the shadows are wrong, and things aren't shaded at all. But I adore it.)

[Flymetothemun]

I already have four of his wallpapers rotating on my desktop every thirty minutes. She loves them. On her own desktop is a picture she made in MS Paint depicting a United States Moon landing. (It looks about like you'd expect an MS Paint depiction of that to look; the Earth isn't quite round, and the shadows are wrong, and things aren't shaded at all. But I adore it.)

C'mon, show us what she made! Let's see how much she knows about Apollo!

[The Jedi Master]

You saw this did you not?

http://imgur.com/a/sW3Tz

some students used KSP and some props to run a mission control simulation.

How did they do that? Do I sense a MP mod?

[nyrath]

How did they do that? Do I sense a MP mod?

No they didn't (and don't say the "M" word).

It only worked because KSP is so close to reality. The way I understand it, the pilot was locked in a room with the computer playing KSP. He locked the game into IVA mode, where he could only use cockpit controls and see using a small viewport window.

Meanwhile, the mission control people were in a separate room, with synchronized watches. They had a big white board, and tools like Innsewerants Space Agency's ISA Mapsat readouts. They also had a web cam aimed at the pilot, and a cell phone. The mission control capsule communicator was the only member of the team who could use the cell phone to communicate with the pilot.

The mission control people just used mathematics to calculate the required trajectories, and passed the settings to the pilot. They had no access to the computer running KSP.

Read the link for details. It worked quite well. And this would be incredibly educational for a group of gifted students.

http://imgur.com/a/sW3Tz

[nyrath]

I feel like I should be the one congratulating (and thanking!) you. I discovered your "Project Rho" website some years ago, and was inspired by your conversational and engaging writing to try to make basics of rocket science understandable to kids. Until KSP, I lacked the proper tools (I tried a few times to lead classes for older kids with model rockets with very limited success). In a sense, I hope that my daughter will teach me what I need to know before attempting to figure out how to reach broader audiences more effectively.

Things I try to do on my website to make it understandable and engaging:

1. Break up walls of text with lots of amusing pictures
   
2. Understand the concepts enough so you can translate them from Science-ease into Colloquial English (though USA slang will confuse international readers)
   
3. Use humorous images in your explanations
   
4. Give some examples of practical consequences of the abstract principles
   
5. Add a few sarcastic jokes when appropriate
   
6. 
   

Example:

Hydrogen gives the best exhaust velocity, but the other propellants are given in the table since a spacecraft may be forced to re-fuel on whatever working fluids are available locally (what Jerry Pournelle calls "Wilderness re-fuelling", Robert Zubrin calls "In-situ Resource Utilization", and I call "the enlisted men get to go out and shovel whatever they can find into the propellant tanks").

Example (where the kinetic energy weapon equation is illustrated by the deadly effect of used kitty-litter impacting at 12.24 kilometers per second):

http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacegunconvent.php#id--Kinetic_Kill_Weapons--Equations

Edited May 1, 2013 by nyrath

[Nikolai]

C'mon, show us what she made! Let's see how much she knows about Apollo!

Here you go:

She made it when she was seven, and was pretty proud of the flag. You can't see much hardware outside of the spacesuit.

[Nikolai]

Things I try to do on my website to make it understandable and engaging:

1. Break up walls of text with lots of amusing pictures
   
2. Understand the concepts enough so you can translate them from Science-ease into Colloquial English (though USA slang will confuse international readers)
   
3. Use humorous images in your explanations
   
4. Give some examples of practical consequences of the abstract principles
   
5. Add a few sarcastic jokes when appropriate
   
6. 
   

All great stuff, thanks. It's easy for me to get hip-deep into the math; obviously, most kids have a limited attention span when it comes to that sort of thing.

[lobsterbark]

+1 rep point, for being awesome.

[Flymetothemun]

Here you go:

She made it when she was seven, and was pretty proud of the flag. You can't see much hardware outside of the spacesuit.

Pretty nice for a 7-Year Old. Be sure to give your daughter 100 internets (Or an equivalent reward) today!

[PringleMan]

As a soon to be graduate of an Astrophysics and Planetary Geology degree, and a (hopefully) future graduate of a Plasma Physics Masters degree, I hope to see your daughter in one of my classes one day. I know I would not academically be where I am today if it were not for my own father's endless patience with my endless questions. Salute sir!

[Westo454]

For paint, that's a good picture.

Your daughter gets 20 internets from me.

[TheSuperintendnt]

lol and my dad doesnt think KSP is educational....

I have a heck of a time watching movies that go into space....

[Nikolai]

For paint, that's a good picture.

Oh, I know. It's all part of her personality, it seems to me. For as long as I can remember, she's always been the sort to watch, wait, think, and watch again. For as long as it takes until she thinks she understands it. I can't tell you how amazing that is to me. (The downside, if there is one, is that it can take her longer to do some things than you probably think it should. But you can be sure that when it's finally complete, it will be done as well as she knows how.)

When it came to MS Paint, that meant going over the flag -- the part she wanted to focus on -- pixel by ever-lovin' pixel. I'm pretty sure I'll have to buy her a tablet when she gets older. Or a bunch of model rockets. Whatever she wants to do, I'm sure she'll be good at it; she wouldn't let herself not be. I often find that I just have to find things that capture her interest and get the h*** out of her way, just offering guidance or support when she needs it. It's an amazing, awe-inspiring thing when the wind hits her sails and she just goes, faster and further than I ever would have guessed she could.

[Nikolai]

lol and my dad doesnt think KSP is educational....

I have no idea why not. Maybe he doesn't understand physics. (Physics is hard.) Or maybe he can't get past the idea that difficult concepts can be communicated with little green muppety things that look like characters from a children's cartoon. Or maybe he doesn't know enough about the program and how it works to understand its educational potential.

I remember talking to a good friend and theater major in college when she asked, "So what do engineers do, anyway?" I answered that, in a sense, we're professional inventors; it's our job to know how the universe works in a practical way so that when someone needs a machine to do something, we know how to build a thing that will do that with a minimum of time, money, and effort wasted on guesswork. To illustrate the point, I gestured toward her stereo. "That CD player? Someone had to design that. They needed to know how to put all the parts together so that it would work."

What surprised me is that that blew her mind. It had honestly never occurred to her that someone, somewhere, had to know enough about electronics so that they could sit down and make decisions about how her stereo would be designed and assembled. She was fairly smart, and if she'd ever been asked to, she probably would have been able to invent something kind of like the design process. It had just never had a chance to cross her mind, so it was an entire way of understanding and dealing with the world that she was (unintentionally) blind to.

I don't know your dad, obviously, but my experience has taught me that when people don't understand things, it's usually simply because they've never had much reason to give it much thought. I'm also something of a hopeless optimist when it comes to educating young people about science. Maybe all he needs is some idea of what you've learned and how you learned it. If there's a cure for his lack of understanding, it lies in communication.

[loppnessmonsta]

lol and my dad doesnt think KSP is educational....

I have a heck of a time watching movies that go into space....

Ask him if he knows how to (theoretically) perform a gravity turn, circularize an orbit, transfer to another orbital body, re-circularize, do whatever the particular mission is, and then bring it all home again. Which is something most of us figure out how to do in the first few weeks of playing KSP.

[HGGundamReviews]

lol and my dad doesnt think KSP is educational....

I have a heck of a time watching movies that go into space....

Ask him if he knows how to (theoretically) perform a gravity turn, circularize an orbit, transfer to another orbital body, re-circularize, do whatever the particular mission is, and then bring it all home again. Which is something most of us figure out how to do in the first few weeks of playing KSP.

Do what I did with my father back in the day when he was getting on me for playing Microsoft Flight Simulator, sit him down with you and run a simple mission perhaps one of the tutorial missions just so he see's exactly what it is.

I'm 35 now, and my dad is glad I got into science and computers back then, because he can't program a VCR with out me

[blenderman]

She finally did it!

... Last night, she came running up to me. "Dad! Dad! Dad! Come look!" -- and she took me to the computer and proudly moused over the periapsis and apoapsis in the map view. Both were higher than 70,000 meters over Kerbin.

... you should hear her talk about technical issues surrounding spaceflight with her friends! ("I was going to turn retrograde and land, but I ran out of fuel. It doesn't matter, though; Jebediah looks pretty happy anyway.")

That is so awesome. KSP inspires!

[The Betpet]

That's just awesome! Sharing an interest with your kids is rewarding already but something that requires time, effort and thought is all the more rewarding

[Merinsan]

lol and my dad doesnt think KSP is educational....

I have a heck of a time watching movies that go into space....

My son was playing (learning?) KSP in school last year. It was actually part of their classes. I don't know what they were supposed to be learning, but I think it shows it's educational!

[Amram]

Just remember who started this when she plays kerbal instead of doing homework...

except if the career she goes for turns out to be in some way directly related to astronautics, its not really a game anymore, rather its closer to extracurricular studies given the head start it can provide.

Edited May 2, 2013 by Amram

[BeefTenderloin]

N'aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaw