Considering all the media stuff about Kerbal Space Program, and NASA/Musk know about it...

[Draconiator]

...do you think it would be remotely possible that any REAL space agencies would use Kerbal as the very earliest step/one of the earliest to develop a real space program due to the realism involved? pretty amazing thinking if ya think about it.

[Norpo]

I doubt it, unless they use a crudton of realism mods. kerbal space program is realistic to a degree (by game standards anyways), but it's no Orbiter.

Luckily, realism mods exist in abundance, but I imagine there's more, higher-end simulation software available, allowing for higher degrees of accuracy than the game would allow.

Edited January 22, 2015 by Norpo
self-bowlderize before I get my first infraction

[Motokid600]

No axial tilt even with RSS. Thats one thing...

[Pecan]

No, I think any real space agency has way more accurate and realistic simulators already - or will get them pretty quickly. What they may use KSP for, as we've seen with NASA is a quick way to make a mock-up video to present the idea to the press/public. KSP's parts, physics and solar-system are just too different to be useful for real applications. Graphics purists might sniff at the limitations of KSP's images but real applications don't need to know much about what a vehicle will look like - what they need are all the numbers; mass, deltaV, temperatures and everything else that tells you if/how it will perform.

[Alshain]

Harverster said it... it's a game. While it's a great educational tool, it will not hold up to real space agency tools.

[cantab]

Indeed. I've mentioned previously, why use KSP to work out interplanetary flightpaths individually when you could use a program to consider all possible flightpaths within a range and automatically find the best, for example. KSP just isn't design for mission planning or optimising, and in any case it only covers a tiny fraction of what spaceflight involves.

[Robotengineer]

North Korea uses KSP as their planning simulator, their mission control is a KSP sim-pit. Seriously though, I could see a scientist thinking of a mission, trying it in RSS/RO, then if it works, trying it in a real sim.

[Moar Boosters]

North Korea uses KSP as their planning simulator, their mission control is a KSP sim-pit. Seriously though, I could see a scientist thinking of a mission, trying it in RSS/RO, then if it works, trying it in a real sim.

I'm pretty sure they're still using the demo version.

[Axelord FTW]

KSP is a great game to introduce some mechanics for beginners.

If I had to chose the most educational game I owned KSP would be picked.

But it's not a simulator (even when you stack as many mods as you can to try and make it so).

[RainDreamer]

Nope, KSP is not a simulator. It is a game. Many people in real space agencies play it, because it is one of the place where they can screw around and try the crazy ideas they have and mess things up without consequences. But as a simulator, KSP fall quite short to the task.

Besides, NASA has simulators that can only be ran on their supercomputers, which will do a much better job at simulating real life than what a program that crash when you mod it over 4gb of ram can ever do.

[Red Iron Crown]

Only for the most amateur space programs, and then only maybe. Real national-level space programs hire people who are educated in the math and physics that goes into simulation models like KSP's, and can afford to buy or develop engineering-grade simulation software.

[DBT85]

I just hope that somewhere, in a meeting for something, someone actually said "well it works in Kerbal".

[Streetwind]

[Commander Jebidiah]

elon Musk plays KSP, don't know if he does use it to test rockets and scientists at the JPL play KSP

Edited January 23, 2015 by Commander Jebidiah

[cpast]

I'm pretty certain they just play it for fun (I'm betting that they enjoy space stuff in general, which is both why they play KSP and why they work in the fields they work in). They can also do crazy stuff in KSP that has nothing whatsoever to do with the real world and that you could never, under any circumstances, actually even *think* about pulling off (e.g. Whackjob's stuff).

For actual rocket *testing*, KSP features almost none of the things that you care about. Real rockets have to worry about what's going on in the interior of the rocket, stresses that the materials are taking and exactly where those stresses occur, what exactly will happen during staging, forces exerted on the payload, weather conditions, etc. KSP features none of that. You also care about exactly how much what you're building will cost (keeping in mind what you'll compromise on to get off-the-shelf stuff and what you'll have custom-made, and what tolerances you need on parts). You need to work with actual aerodynamics (which is difficult to simulate properly). KSP is not designed to even approximate actual rocket design, testing, and flight; it cannot really be made to do so via modding below the level of "call fork() and launch a real simulator".

[Aegrim]

The only thing I can think of is for a concept video. But something tells me there would be a lot of laughing when they showed it, not sure if it would be at them or not though.