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Why NASA's New Video Game Misses the Point
longacre writes "Erik Sofge trudges through NASA's latest free video game, which he finds tedious, uninspiring and misguided. Quoting: 'Moonbase Alpha is a demo, of sorts, for NASA's more ambitious upcoming game, Astronaut: Moon, Mars & Beyond, which will feature more destinations, and hopefully less welding. The European Space Agency is developing a similar game, set on the Jovian Moon, Europa. But Moonbase Alpha proves that as a recruiting campaign, or even as an educational tool, the astronaut simulation game is a lost cause. Unless NASA plans to veer into science fiction and populate its virtual moons, asteroids and planets with hostile species, it's hard to imagine why anyone would want to suffer through another minute of pretending to weld power cables back into place, while thousands of miles away, the most advanced explorers ever built are hurtling toward asteroids and dwarf planets and into the heart of the sun. Even if it was possible to build an astronaut game that's both exciting and realistic, why bother? It will be more than a decade before humans even attempt another trip outside of Earth's orbit. If NASA wants to inspire the next generation of astronauts and engineers, its games should focus on the real winners of the space race — the robots.'"
Us nerds think the rovers on Mars are awesome.. your kids don't care. The simple fact is: robots don't explore space, people do, and when they do it through a robot they're doing it from boring desk. Ever taken your kids to work? That was exciting for about 15 minutes wasn't it?
There's one thing robots in space can never do that humans can: be humans in space.
And hopefully one day everything we do in space won't have to fly under the banner "exploration".
How we know is more important than what we know.
I wonder why the usual stories of alien abduction have green/gray humanoids and not robots? I guess there's no point in rationalizing hallucinations or just plain made up stories, but robots would fit more with the way space exploration is evolving for our own species.
The problem with making a realistic or educational game about anything is that real life generally isn't fun. Space, like everything else, is boring. It's mostly empty with a few rocks here or there, all moving in a very predictable patterns. Even the life of an astronaut is pretty boring, they mostly carefully follow checklists that other people have written.
Humans are programmed to enjoy a few kinds of very specific things. People are different, but in order to be fun games have to exploit some subset of the quirky things we enjoy. There have to be stories, characters we can relate to, frequently-changing visuals, interesting soundscapes, or worlds we feel like we have more influence over than the drudgery of our daily lives.
Welding? Not so much.
This game will waste your life. Don't clicky!
You mean - fucking never.
.... uh .... hmm - nothing flying yet. Gee.
Space Shuttle - designed 40 years ago - flew 30 years ago.
Replacement, designed 5, 10, 15, 20 years ago
Hey NASA - go fuck yourselves. You're done and you put the ass in Astronauts but here's a video game to pretend you're in a space program that won't admit it's dead yet. Or you can play an equally probable game involving aliens and space marines. I'll take the space marines.
Let's be clear: I'm a Space Nerd, and proud of it. I grew up on Astounding/Analog - still have a loft full of back issues from the '30s. My son and I read space books every other night - I can't get Footprints on the Moon without weeping like a baby, just as I do every time I watch Kennedy's Rice speech. Just got me again.
But, NASA, NASA, what were you thinking here? I 'played' this mess for all of 10 minutes, then it was "delete local content" time. It's neither fun, nor educational, it's just a tedious frustrating mess. The only thing it inspired me to do was to bust out my copy of Space Colony and play through it again with Son #1.
Hopefully next time NASA will make up their minds whether they're making a game or a simulation, and stick to it.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Because pretending to put a robot together in a virtual dust-free lab is more fun then pretending to weld a powercable into place on a virtual moon?
People, what a bunch of bastards
And we wonder why the US is falling behind in science. We have people complaining that a simulation isn't exciting or entertaining enough, when that isn't even the fucking point of it. Maybe if it hadn't been distributed via Steam, we wouldn't have the types of people going through it who are wondering where the guns and aliens are...
It always crashes everytime I start it up, all drivers are up-to-date on my PC, etc.
Michael
http://s1.sfgame.us/index.php?rec=58163
But I feel the same way about any number of extremely popular games on Facebook, or realistic commercial airline flight simulators - where's the action?
People still seem to like them though.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Maybe Erik Sofge misses the point. This was a tech demo to show they are progressing and drum up some initial interest. It did that. Yes, it's a bit boring... But that's part of the purpose of releasing it... Making the real game less boring.
I only played it once through, but if that's an accurate depiction of how an astronaut would handle that situation, it's AWESOME. When they make the whole game and have a lot more stuff to do and fix, I'm going to enjoy playing it.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
The game doesn't let you skip through the budget hearings. And, when they're finally over, your mission gets cancelled.
Unless NASA plans to veer into science fiction and populate its virtual moons, asteroids and planets with hostile species
Boy, oh boy. Where should I start? Why would you want NASA to make a stereotypical space game? If you want to go blow up aliens, go download Alien Swarm or Alien Breed: Impact from Steam.
, it's hard to imagine why anyone would want to suffer through another minute of pretending to weld power cables back into place, while thousands of miles away, the most advanced explorers ever built are hurtling toward asteroids and dwarf planets and into the heart of the sun.
Quite right. Another example to prove your point: It's hard to imagine why anyone would want to play a fantasy game for 5 hours a day, several months in a row, clicking on some random blob of pixels thousands of times just to get a set of matching pants, shoes, shirt, and rings.
But people do. And we call that game World of Warcraft.
Even if it was possible to build an astronaut game that's both exciting and realistic, why bother?
Because the gaming scene is getting painfully played out for some of us. When people try to make different games... Sure you get your occasional Daikatana... But you also get your Flower, Cave Story, Katamari Damacys, et cetra.
Science Fiction is great entertainment but the televised version of it has certainly spoiled current generations. People on forums ask how much does it cost to build USS Enterprise and if stargates are real. It's no surprise then that an educational game from NASA that is close to reality seems boring. I guess we should praise the people that produced these shows and movies that made them believable, but in the long run they hurt real science.
FTFA, it's no question they aren't going to put space trolls and giant moon worms out there for you to battle in a sim-slash-educational game for lunar exploration and habitat; this isn't 'Pitch Black', people, and Vin Diesel isn't the astronaut.
Now, I don't claim to know a single anything about space exploration, but I can imagine the engineering and thought behind everything that an astronaut has or brings with them has a superior purpose, is highly scrutinized and is, as far as our tax dollars are concerned, thought out.
If they want to make it intriguing, they should throw some puzzle-based problem solving in there: Scenario! We have small tear and/or breech in the cabin... you have access to a Cape Canaveral space pen, a shaving mirror, duct tape and toothpaste. GO!
Of course that's a pretty facetious example, but we know NASA has to deal with these types of things, why not put them in there.
it's hard to imagine why anyone would want to suffer through another minute of pretending to weld power cables back into place
Yeah, no one will go for that idea. It's as silly as creating a game where people pay money so they can water virtual flowers in their virtual garden.
I think in this case it's poor science education that's hurt real science. Honestly, if people can't tell the difference between space opera tech and real tech, there's some problem with those people, not with the space opera.
Sounds as exciting as Forklift Simulator! http://www.forkliftsimulator.com/
The mundane tasks combined with teamwork with random individuals, and a text-to-speech synthesizer? You end up with brilliant videos like this, exploring what life would be like on the moon if modern gamers were sent into space: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hv6RbEOlqRo
"Joy is contagious," he said, peering into the microscope.
...they'll play anything. I look forward to incomprehensible complaints about welding supplies popping up in my Facebook feed.
The game has a solid gameplay base: "survival game". One of these games where people has different skills, and must use these skill cooperativelly to survive. Thats probably the right choice for a NASA game. Re: today problems on the space station.
The implementation? It feel like WIP,a early beta of the game. But surprise!, shock!, Is a early beta. The "other" problem with the game is that on the core, the way you solve the problems is boring lame minigames. But what else a game this type can do? non-minigame but a progress bar? will that be more fun? use real science problems? that will be like horrible edutainment software. So whiting the confines of what is feasible, the NASA game is excellent. It only needs now more "maps" and "scenarios". I would love to repair machinery over Europe (the moon), or make a landing with the shutlle. The COOL thing about space is maginificency... what you feels wen you visit the grean canyon: Space is BIG, absolutelly gigantic, it dwells everything we have here. A NASA game can have some of that grandeur, in a inmersive and realistic style. And such thing is nerd-porn.
Soo far, excellent work. Looking forward for future versions of the game :-)
-Woof woof woof!
What I don't understand is this: is NASA really trying to recruit astronauts through a game? Why the hell is that even necessary? Doesn't everybody want to become an astronaut? If they have a shortage, I'll gladly switch careers. I went into this programming business because I thought I wouldn't have a chance in hell of becoming an astronaut.
I guess I first need to learn to weld, though.
I lasted 15 mins max in this game. Woke up when my head hit the keyboard.
- The Kessel run is for nerf herders. I can circumnavigate the entire Central Finite Curve in a lot less than 12 parse
There has got to be drama.
First you've got to qualify. Training on earth. Then near orbit. Then a space station. Then the moon and beyond.
There need to be accidents and malfunctions and politics, alll the usual causes for potential disaster on a mission.
There need to be puzzles. So building things when you don't have all the right parts and have to make due.
There needs to be competition. Objectives. Scarcity of resources with multiple teams after the same stuff.
There needs to be relationships. So alliances, teams and rank.
All of these things add up to a challenging game environment. Less simulation, more game.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Yes, you're right that the current iteration is a snoozer.
I would point the blame directly at the weaksauce administration of NASA, and the several presidential administrations that have been obsessed with politics than real achievement. NASA has for decades been an entrenched bureaucracy, ossified and fearful of human risk.
1) the Space Shuttle - what should have been a testbed for cutting-edge low-orbit lift technologies ended up being a camel-designed-by-committee, grossly non-modular, reusable (the one success), clumsy, and frightfully impossible to upgrade.
2) the ISS - again, this is NOTHING more than a trivial expansion of Spacelab or Mir. In such low orbit it practically needs a bug shield and windshield wipers, its life is circumscribed by the requirements of maintenance flights by the shuttle.
3) Constellation - hardly even needs comment. It should terrify us that in 2010 we can't even re-create the FORTY YEAR OLD TECH that took us to the moon. Seriously.
So NASA lacks any sort of adventurousness or vision, it's unsurprising that a video game promulgated by this tepid organization is boring. They have a video game where ANYTHING is possible. Anything. And this is the extent of their imagination. Perfect.
Here's a tip: it didn't have to suck. Really, it didn't.
Postulate some advancement, and combine genres. You have a zero-gravity flight sim, and need to pilot your craft to Hypothetical Low Orbit Station X, pick up something, and take it with some time-pressure to Hypothetical L5 Station Y. (Zero grav flight sim, realistic attitude control, orbital movement, and yes, plotting much of the course by computer but terminal maneuvers by hand...moderately cool). Once you have stopped at L5, you're sent to the Moonbase, again with some time pressure. Now you're playing a first-person lunar lander because solar flares have made your automated control systems unreliable.
Finally, you can pilot a rescue mission to the Mars Lander team (shades of Oregon Trail!). Once you get there, you find that the command orbiter is perhaps empty, and you're forced to repair it manually (sure you have instructions from earth but the timelag means it's very reactive) and ultimately, have to use the limited capabilities of a suite of surface-exploration robots (like the GREAT infocom game Suspended) to figure out what happened to the Mars Away Team and (hopefully) rescue them. All based on hard-hard-hard science, no postulated Little Green Men or Ancient Artifacts.
I'm no game designer,none of the game systems I listed is LESS than 20 years old. But I think that could make for a fairly compelling game.
I'm unsurprised that NASA couldn't manage it.
I agree with Neil deGrasse Tyson that we need to push the envelope. I'm not sure NASA has anything left that can do it (the unmanned programs being the giant exception - they're daring, skilled, and extraordinarily successful).
-Styopa
I played a certain amount of Apollo 18: Mission to the Moon when I was young, and that game was modestly fun without venturing into science fiction. The fun came from a series of fairly difficult mini games requiring precise aiming and quick reaction time.
I fail to see how welding could be turned into a fun and interesting mini-game and even if it could the forced repetition would probably hurt, but I don't think that a game is doomed simply for being a simulation game like a number of other people are suggesting. Cross Country Canada tends to be fairly highly rated on a number of abandonware sites and it's a truck driver simulation of all tedious boring jobs.
Is posting this straight after "Astronauts To Repair Cooling System On ISS" some sort of /. editor humour?
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
There is no shortage of scientists and engineers willing to work for NASA. What they need is more political power. Perhaps a game where you build relationships with politicians, staffers and contractors, convincing them over several years that exploration is a worthy cause. I think they'll find enough welders.
I have not played this game/simulation.
Performing missions in space or for a space vehicle is all about training. Astronauts spends enormous amounts of time training. They train for casualty situations. They train for normal situations. They train for abnormal situation. They don't train simply for just fires on aboard; they have to know which low temp alarms are going to impact other interfacing systems on-board, etc....
Being an astronaut is not very much unlike being a submariner (IAAFS - I am a former submariner). The systems they have to control are complex. One slip-up and suddenly that $2B piece of equipment is so much scrap metal. So, here's why I think our reviewer missed the point. NASA is looking for people who are adept at performing boring repetitive procedures accurately over and over and over again. That's their mission.
People who thrive at their simulation will be the ones who are drawn to NASA's work-sphere. The kids who were wowed by 'The Last Starfighter' and thought they'd become a NASA engineer or astronaut...probably not so much. (yes, I low-balled that reference.)
Something called setting expectations comes to mind. Something along the lines of recruiting for the mind-sets you need comes to mind. Something about planting a seed comes to mind.
I think in this case it's poor science education that's hurt real science. Honestly, if people can't tell the difference between space opera tech and real tech, there's some problem with those people, not with the space opera.
Absolutely correct. And you know what's really scary about the situation? I'd say a good 40-50% of Slashdot readers can't even tell the difference between sci-fi tech and real tech (remember, this is a fairly science-minded community). Just witness the number of people here talking about how easy it is to terraform another planet (never mind that we don't even have the basic tech to begin doing so), or the ones who say we need to "get off this rock" before the sun goes red giant (which is estimated to happen in another 7+ BILLION years -- the planet is currently only 4.5 billion years old -- "modern man" has been here for less than 2 million years [that's less than 1/20th of a percent of the current history of the planet]). If we want to talk about scientific illiteracy, we need to begin right here at home...
Man may one day set foot on Mars. But when he does, he won't be wearing the patch of an agency that stopped being innovative in the 1970's. NASA is really good at doing safe, simple, repetitive missions that involve little to no risk (a nice side effect of government engineers way more interested in keeping their cushy federal jobs than actually doing anything significant). They closest they'll ever come to anything as bold as a Mars mission (or, likely, even a moon mission) is some crappy animation and big talk at a press conference. There is no way anyone at that agency is going to uncover their ass long enough to do anything more risky than yet another trip to low earth orbit or launching an unmanned probe. If you want to really send man into space, your best start is to abolish NASA and start a whole new agency with new leaders and engineers.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
They should leave the space sims to Blizzard. They seem to be doing pretty well with them...
The Moonbase Alpha Boogie
If the current generation is asking seriously how to build stargates etc., it's not because of science fiction, which has been around in various forms since at least a couple of centuries (and televised for at least 5 decades). It's because the current generation is fucking stupid.
s/since/for
That will teach me to change "the 1800s" to "a couple of centuries" without proofing the rest of the sentence afterward.
This game is an example of when you give a government institution (with no reason to stay in business) loads of cash. The manager of this project probably was some government drone who probably had no clue what made a game great, but the government put that person in charge anyways. Both my kids and I are real space fanatics, and we openly mock this sad game. This game drains all the potential wonder and adventure of landing on the moon...
In the 60s, people never asked if the USS Enterprise can be built for real, and the science education level was the same or worse than today.
The game will not even load (last time I checked if) you are running Windows XP 64bit. That kind of prevents me from beginning to be bored.
Yeah, because Eve online mining is so compelling! Yet, people suffer it to access rest of the game, so NASA just needs to put up space combat and aliens & we are set!
I don't have an intelligent phone, so I need to be.
40-50%? It probably only seems so high because the space colonization nuts come out of the woodwork in every space-related thread.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I found the game to be ok. In single player mode you can go and optimize your hardware fixing strategy. I mean this is some low key intellectual challenge if you are looking for it.
I can't really think of anything that doesn't have some realism and gets fiendishly difficult to play/implement real quick. Just look at the ill fated "Outpost 1" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outpost_(video_game) ), I have never seen the Management Ai in it, just to mention one issue.
Personally I would like to see some free form game that dwells on orbital mechanics, there are interesting limitations and it wouldn't have to include pea soup clouds like X3, Freelancer, and assorted ilk in the game. Also it would have some chess like nature since you can essentially see everything but can't necessarily get to it (read some A.C.Clarke stories). Also mechanics is kinda intuitively understandable and you need only finish highschool to get an introduction. Well I'm kidding of course, I went to my favourite university library and found two tomes in a series (~450 pages thick) on celestial mechanics (ISBN 3-540-40749-9), and I'm sure there is more. Coincidentally Poincaré laid the foundation to chaos theory with his work on the three body problem, they never told me that in high-school. Well maybe five generations down the road we will be able to play with it.
Anyway, I expect only a little bit more than NASA has come up with.
Je me souviens.
where everything, including going to the bathroom, is done by committee.
I tried Moonbase Alpha, but found the performance to be terrible even with the graphics settings set to the lowest level. If I'm going to be playing a game on the moon, I don't want it to be so realistic that there is a seven second delay between me pressing a key and something happening.
That's unfortunate as it looked like a neat toy. Somehow I doubt that it would have ever let me blow up the nuclear fuel dump though.
Boring game. Slow. No combat.
However... I LOVED that game. Exploration. Real physics. Took a LONG time to get anywhere (well you could dilate time and choose to ignore the physics, which I did often... and the time dialation was a must after all i don't have 800 years to spare trying to get to another solar system).
And they had real solar systems! With planets, some Earth like.
Trying to dock with another spacecraft... damn near impossible, especially if it was traveling to another planet.
Oh please bring an updated version of that game back!
I am downloading this NASA game today. Sound like it is right up my alley.
> but in the long run they hurt real science
Hmm... maybe. On the other hand, how many astronomers first got interested in space as youngsters because they saw Star Wars? For a certain age group (born after the lunar landings), I'd bet it was a pretty high percentage.
Not an incorrect observation - but it bears noting that the game wasn't put together overnight, and until very recently the above wasn't true. President Obama campaigned heavily here in FL, and presumably in other space industry areas like Houston, on the promise that Constellation and Orion, which would have been putting people back in orbit in 2015, would be continued and even beefed up. It was only in mid 2009 that he reversed course on space, and I'm sure this game was well into development by then.
40-50%? It probably only seems so high because the space colonization nuts come out of the woodwork in every space-related thread.
Even if it's not quite that high, it's still far higher than it should be given the supposed science literacy of this community.
Space exploration has to be a prequel to colonization. Otherwise we're all just sitting at the bottom of our gravity well, waiting for the asteroid. We should instead be on the asteroids... preferably not one that's going to hit a planet.
Science Fiction is great entertainment but the televised version of it has certainly spoiled current generations. People on forums ask how much does it cost to build USS Enterprise and if stargates are real. It's no surprise then that an educational game from NASA that is close to reality seems boring. I guess we should praise the people that produced these shows and movies that made them believable, but in the long run they hurt real science.
First of all, stargates should be real, and the fact that we don't yet understand how to do something similar to them is a deficit. Imagining a world where we'll never ever attain such technology is shortsighted to the point of being just plain stupid. Do remember that there was a time that the scientists told us the world was flat, the earth follows a tetrahedral pattern, that you can map a person's brain by their skull shape, and that we descended from Neanderthals. Simply because it isn't yet supported by our limited and weak understanding of the universe, doesn't mean we need to start labeling everyone as idiots. Could you imagine where we'd be if da Vinci had shared your scorn?
Sorry, but elitist attitudes like this one do more to harm education than any science fiction author ever has.
At any rate, games are supposed to be fun, are they not? Usually, typically imagination and fun go hand in hand.
The astronauts do not go to do science or explore, robots can do that better more reliably, cheaper, and we don't need to get them back, astronauts go to experience it ...
That's true to a degree, the astronauts largely accept the science and the more mundane work as the price of their experience. Although Harrison Schmitt of Apollo 17 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Schmitt is the counterexample where the science is a major motivation. Schmitt was the first scientist, as opposed to military pilot(*), to walk on the moon and his expertise led to significant discoveries.
However the astronaut's motivation for volunteering is not very relevant. The more important point is why does/will NASA send astronauts rather than robots. Sure there is the inspirational factor, a generation or two of children were inspired to study math and science because of Apollo, but frankly a human can do more. Today robots cannot match human judgement and more importantly human improvisation. The various Mars probes are amazing technological achievements but they get stuck on things that humans will not, for example the soil being clumpier than expected and not falling through a grate. Robots excel at performing the expected under expected conditions. Humans excel at working around problems when things do not go as expected.
I agree that robots are far more cost effective and we should continue to use them to a large degree. However we will make faster progress if we also send the occasional manned mission to handle the more challenging things.
(*) Yes other astronauts had scientific and engineering backgrounds and went on to accomplished careers in those fields but they were originally selected for the astronaut program due to their military pilot backgrounds. The science / engineering backgrounds were valuable but secondary factors.
I'm a combat flight simulation game lover. When I play Janes F/A-18 10 years ago, my friends spectating the game kept asking me: is your jet flying? is your pc hanging? where're the enemies? To them, the flight simulation game is just too realistic too slow pacing and too boring. They would prefer those fast pacing but fake Ace Combat series games, or even the 2D arcade shooting game. Another good example would be Operation Flash point Vs Counter Stike. People always like simple but entertaining games
Great post.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
Now NASA is in real trouble. For the last two decades, the best-working part of NASA has been the PR and lobbying operation. If that's tanking, they're really dead.
NASA has two fundamental jobs: 1) robotic exploration, and 2) finding some way to get significant mass into orbit. Their last three tries at 2) have been flops.
It will be more than a decade before humans even attempt another trip outside of Earth's orbit. If NASA wants to inspire the next generation of astronauts and engineers... blah blah blah
Wow, a whole decade away? clearly out of reach of the next generation... wait, what?
Did this reviewer really play the game? Robots are required to be deployed to fix the machinery area with steam.
Let's face it real life isn't as exciting as games. See previous post http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=10/08/04/0013252
If you want drama and cash, then I say NASA should do a reality TV show. And no, I don't mean just start filming and interviewing the actual astronauts. No one wants to watch those boring nerds. I mean take your classic reality TV personalities, put them in a rocket and send them to space. Think "The Real World" or "Survivor" but IN SPACE! I figure you can put in one or two nerdy types who are really excited about the opportunity to be in space and are interested in the workings of a space station (make it one guy one girl, who the (nerd) audience hope will get together) and mix in some unintelligent, yet good looking whack-jobs who are in it for the prize money and the camera time. Watch as they piss off the space geeks by getting in the way of experiments and hooking up in the cargo bay. While everyone is rooting for the two geeks to hook up, the guy geek really wants to bang one of the hot whack-jobs, who are obviously not interested and already are hooking up with the other hot whack-jobs. You don't have to be a space fan to want to watch this. I generally hate reality TV, but I'd totally watch just for the great space station footage (and who are we kidding, the drama too).
"It's not whether you win or lose, it's how drunk you get." -- H. J. Simpson
Last summer I did quite a bit of research on the findings from recent space exploration ventures and the papers and articles were really depressing.
Whenever you see the occasional article titled "possible trace signs of life on Planet-X" you know its just an attention grabber because the reality is that no life above the micro-level has ever been found.
So until we can send manned space flights outside of our own galaxy and spark some hope of actually finding something relevant, I don't really care about NASA space-sim video games and freakin micro particles on Mars that "could" indicate water, which "could" indicate life.
If they really wanted to do something interesting, they should incorporate terra-forming into the game and at least add some excitement back into the scene. I mean, it doesn't have to be Spore or anything, but at least give us a reason to care about space exploration, because other than terra-forming I'm really not interested at the moment.
You're missing the point. You are taking for granted an assumption that NASA is sincerely trying to play some useful role in promoting space exploration in the service of desirable national goals and purposes. That is a false assumption. NASA has one mission and one mission only: to channel public funds towards defense and aerospace industries.
Everything they do, without exception, is in service of that purpose. If there are intelligent and sincere people within NASA who somehow manage to heroically divert some of that money towards scientific or engineering research and space exploration by unmanned missions, it is a tribute to their personal and individual professional integrity and moral and ethical standards. The institution itself, however, is a profoundly corrupt gravy train.
This is why they insist on emphasizing manned space exploration at every turn. It substantially maximizes the amount of money that "needs" to be channelled to the military/congressional/industrial complex that Eisenhower warned us about just over 50 years ago..
What about India's and China's plans to go to the moon, six years and three years away, respectively?
Unless NASA plans to veer into science fiction and populate its virtual moons, asteroids and planets with hostile species, it's hard to imagine why anyone would want to suffer through another minute of pretending [...] If NASA wants to inspire the next generation of astronauts and engineers, its games should focus on the real winners of the space race — the robots.'"
Populate the moons and asteroids and planets with hostile robot probes: Problem solved.
Make it a race between astronauts and robot probes: Problem solved.
Hire Scrameustache for all your lemons-to-lemonade game design needs! I Shower!
You can't take the sky from me...
Every time the conversation arises about NASA's "game", nobody ever mentions it. I had many a great evening playing Moonbase when I was younger, back on my old IBM PS/1. I was hoping that NASA would have done something similar to it, where SimCity meets lunar terrain.
Nasa should instead make a video game dedicated to message board spam/trolling and include random images of my penis. That would make an excellent game.
If they incorporated terraforming into the game I think I would probably be interested.
Originally we went into space with the intention of exploration and discovery, but in the last couple of decades all the interesting articles on planetary exploration were just attention grabbers with the title "possible traces of life found on Planet-X", which I read with excitement only to find that these articles were pretentious at best. The only thing we've ever found were trace amounts of water molecules on mars and Jovian moons like Europa and Titan that "might" indicate life could exist at the micro-level...how exciting...
So until we terraform something or start entertaining the possibility of manned flights outside of our own Galaxy, my enthusiasm and hopes of finding life in space is gone.
My country was colonized by the Portuguese, Dutch, British and Japanese. Let me tell you something, they did it not for the "White man's burden" or "Asia for Asians" but for money and resources, pure and simple. Science fiction has bred several generations of people with unrealistic views of space exploration. We are creatures of this planet. We may try to leave, but we will not last long away from it. We can try to artificially reproduce Earth-like conditions for long-term missions, but there are nearly infinite variables here on Earth that essentially we will fail in the attempt. Accept the fact that we will not survive long without the Earth, that space "colonies" will never be self-sufficient. We will not likely "terraform" a planet or do other grandiose things like FTL. In fact, we will never likely even leave the solar system and visit other stars. What will we do when we get there anyway, that robots can't do. There are no green space alien chicks for you to have sex with. The outer space is not the secular version of the Hereafter. It is not the eternal salvation or the promised land. Accept these premises, and we can begin to do real science.
You meet virtual Muslims and make them feel better about their contributions to science.
http://nasawatch.com/archives/2010/08/political-comme.html
Political Commentary Disguised as a Video Game Review
Keith's note: I got an email from an editor at Popular Mechanics asking me to consider posting a link to this article on NASA Watch. I read the article and responded that I thought that the author had used the excuse of reviewing a video game as an opportunity to just dump on NASA, Obama's space policy, etc. Indeed, the bulk of the article seems to have nothing whatsoever to do with the video game it purports to review. Rather it goes on at length about how bad NASA has been. The editor tried again and again to convince me that I was wrong, but in re-reading the article I am now firmly of the opinion I originally voiced.
To be honest I have not played the game since it is not functional on Macs without running windows. So I have no idea if it is as "excruciatingly boring" as the reviewer claims it to be. That said, NASA aimed this game at an audience: students. This review makes no mention as to whether the reviewer is a student or if any students were asked to review the game and provide feedback for inclusion in this "review". So if there is a mismatch between reviewer and intended audience one would expect that the review is inherently flawed, yes?
If Popular Mechanics wants to dump on NASA, by all means, have at it. But trying to cloak political commentary under the guise of a game review is rather misleading to prospective readers.
It's important to point out that this game was NOT funded by NASA nor was it designed or built by them. It was done by the same team that did America's Army. All NASA has done is give them permission to put NASA's "stamp of approval" on the game. It's up to the developer to figure out how they are going to make it into a profitable game and pay for it.
Which of course is actually WORSE than the idea of NASA funding it. The developers are showing little understanding of how to create a game that has broader appeal let alone a feasible business model or revenue model that will fund it's continued development and growth.
And it also is commentary on NASA that they've managed to allow a dog of a game concept to have their name on it.
NASA would be far more successful to get the message out that "space is cool" and "science and math is important" if they'd encouraged development of "Farmville on Mars" or "Evony on Mars minus the combat"
Thank you for perpetuating the current apathy towards space exploration Mr Dull.
It's a game that was not designed on the old standard of "if you can't make it good, make it blow up," so no, it doesn't includes any WMDs, for the great disappointment of the article author. It instead focuses on teamwork, but strangely, teamwork doesn't translates in "kill more than your mates," as it should. The pacing is so freaking slow, it feels almost like the real thing. It makes a bunch of complex tasks extremely simple with a bit of abstraction, which makes it a bit educative, and a bit boring; and I can see it evolving all the way to realistic problems, which would be really educative, and consequently entirely soporific. Worst of all, the only flashy thing is the damn sun glare. *You* miss the point (@Slashdot; the article was pointless to start with). The game is short and slow, but still thrilling, full of potential; just like humanity's space steps. But just like any realistic sim, this is not for every gamer. These usually require a long term commitment (instead of, you know, just quick discharges) and a masochistic desire for knowledge, to climb their steep learning curves. If you ever made it out alive from an encounter in your SU-27, or after a few dozen cold pizza and corpse slices, finally managed to operate a subdural hematoma (must... wet... BREINZ!), you know what I mean. But in Moonbase Alpha, the bite sized abstractions and the pacing means you don't have to be masochistic, not even a gamer, to get immersed in your suit. I don't expect Astronaut to live up to my hopes, just like I don't expect us to land on Mars tomorrow. But with more content, variety and polish, it may easily become the most interesting cooperative and/or non-violent experience I've ever seen.
It's a game that was not designed on the old standard of "if you can't make it good, make it blow up,"
What? Not even if you set the date to Septemer 13th 1999 ?