Before I discovered and played KSP, I..

[weezl]

Don't trust a dog to dock? Can you calculate the perfect intercept to get a frisbee into your mouth, and at the correct angle too? I didn't think so!

Personally I trust my dog to pilot a rocket any time.

Well done. I stand quite corrected. LOL!

Edited June 28, 2014 by weezl

[Chrisd857]

Don't trust a dog to dock? Can you calculate the perfect intercept to get a frisbee into your mouth, and at the correct angle too? I didn't think so!

Personally I trust my dog to pilot a rocket any time.

http://img3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20130808161211/wallaceandgromit/images/8/85/Wallace-Gromit-A-Grand-Day-Out-aardman-6899444-640-480.jpg

Did you have a grand day out? [/pun]

[Madrias]

Before I played KSP, I could actually enjoy most Sci-Fi movies. Now I have to continually point out that "You don't burn straight up out of the atmosphere to return to orbit!" or "No! You don't run the engines constantly until you get where you're going, then 'magically' slam on the brakes." Or of course, "Those landing legs are insufficient for the weight of that craft." and "Where's my re-entry plasma flares? They've hit atmo under full burn!"

[Lysergic]

When I started I knew you didn't just point at the Mun and burn to get there. But with my first spaceship I had no idea what any alternative might be so I did it anyway. Failed.

[Johno]

I was already a science teacher before KSP, so I knew orbital mechanics. But like so many others, there's a difference between understanding the Physics, and knowing how exactly to control the spacecraft so that it does what you want!

ALSO . .

Before playing KSP, it would have been reasonably easy to cope with the scene from Star Trek - Into Darkness where the Enterprise is dead in space and falling towards Earth. Now, of course, I look at that and realise that the crew have about 4 days to get everything sorted out. Kind of ruins the suspense.

[Apollo91]

I had X-Plane experiance, flying both the NASP and a recreation of the space shuttle. Doing that, I learned a lot, especially this little gem, which is the site I used to learn orbital mech. I programmed the math into excel and, once on orbit, would use it to calculate burns. Thing was, the only thing X-Plane could be relied on to do right was altitude changes, but even wrapping my head around that was a neat twist.

The biggest thing KSP taught me isn't a nitty-gritty about orb mech or anything, but mainly just the ability to look at these great machines we built as a collection of CHOICES. The Saturn V had five F-1 engines in its first stage because they wanted fewer possible points of failure and less mechanical complexity. The Russians went with the opposite fo the N-1, but for the same reasoning, really: we went with five engines because it's easier to produce five perfect things then twenty, they went with over twenty engines because then even if a few failed the mission was still a go.

Looking at all the engineering in aerospace and realizing that these things weren't a product of some type of inescapable "progress" but that they were the result of people making decisions about how to achieve something using machines was mind-bending and life-changing to me. It started a whole interest in the history of engineering and how the machines I've always loved came into being, and that took the field of engineering out of the realm of cold metal and into the human story of who we are; and that is the greatest gift this game could possibly have given me.