Some years back, the webcomic at the right caught my attention: If Randall Munroe — creator of XKCD and the author of What If? — found the video game Kerbal Space Program (KSP) that informative, imagine what an idiot like me might learn. An absurd amount, as it turns out.

KSP is a flight and rocket simulator that allows players to design and fly vehicles not only on the fictional planet of Kerbin, but throughout its pint-sized and complicated solar system. Though there are pre-built scenarios players can select (e.g., diverting an asteroid on a collision course with your home world), the primary mode of play is an open “sandbox” style, where players have no set objectives, though there are set incentives. Want to explore Kerbin via jet? Go do that. Want to dock with another craft and build a space station? Have fun. How about flying to one of Kerbin’s diminutive moons? Easily done (though landing and getting back are harder). How about set up a mining/refueling base on one of the other planets orbiting Kerbol? I haven’t figured that one out yet, but I’m assured it’s possible.

Though the built-in tutorials leave much to be desired — there are too few of them and they’re a little buggy — the educational value of this game is truly extraordinary: Not since the Europa Universalis games have I learned so much through play (“Oh, so that’s where ‘Old’ Zeeland is! Who knew?”). Moving around in space is very alien to moving around terrestrially, something I knew before, but which I had no feel for until playing KSP. To take one fairly minor example, it’s actually much easier to get into orbit and land on Minmus, Kerbin’s smaller moon, than on the much larger Mun, despite the latter being nearly three times closer. Why so? Because, in space, gravity matters more than the distance between two objects — especially if you’re not in a hurry — and because it’s far easier to land and return from a small object than a much larger one. If this doesn’t make intuitive sense — which you shouldn’t take personally, as this is phenomenally weird — this (superb) illustration from Munroe is a good introduction to the subject.

But besides the physics instruction, the game is a wonderful lesson in problem-solving and care. Though there are pre-built rockets available, most modes of the game require players to design their own. Despite the insanely simplified design (all the internal components and wiring work flawlessly and without any player input), this is still massively complicated and it’s not uncommon for designs to fail on their first launch (or, if you’re me, on their second launch as well … maybe the third, too). Did you include enough lifting power? How about stability control? Was a piece — and, therefore, the vehicle’s mass — off-center? Forget stability fins? Didn’t bring enough fuel? Too much mass? Did you mess-up your staging? You can usually figure it out by tinkering, but it also sometimes helps to look at some math formulas and grab a calculator (or so I hear).

Oftentimes, the results of these mistakes are catastrophic and the ship explodes, killing your cute little kerbinauts in fiery explosions. Other times, your errors are subtle and not immediately apparent. In one rather hilariously tragic episode, three of my kerbins were stranded on the Mun with insufficient fuel to return. No matter, I thought: I’ll design a rescue ship with an extra fuel tank and have them back in no time. After a half-dozen failed attempts to land the rescuer — getting to and landing on the Mun is hard, but landing in a specific spot on the Mun is much harder — I finally got the lander down with enough fuel to get home. Excitedly, I flew my kerbinauts to the rescue ship (using-up their limited jet-pack fuel) only to discover that I’d made a tiny little screw-up: When I added the extra fuel tank, I’d forgotten to slap a ladder onto it. Thanks to my poor planning, carelessness, and impatience, my poor little Kerbins couldn’t jump high enough to reach the crew compartment and were stuck on the Mun for all eternity. Who’d have thought a video game could teach attention to detail, patience, and delayed gratification?

Being slightly closer to 40 years of age than to 30, it’s a safe bet that I’ll never be an astronaut (though, if enough of you join this community, I might be able to afford a little space tourism; just sayin’). After all the hours I’ve spent on this game, I might be able to say with a straight face that I know the first thing about it, though actual engineers are still welcome to put me in my place. It’s not the same as real experience, but the learning is real, as is the fun.

KSP is available for purchase and download from several sources, including its own website. The system requirements are steep, so a reasonably new and powerful computer are a must (an i7 processor and 16GB of RAM work well). The game’s wiki is an invaluable resource for specs and tutorials and there are several YouTube channels devoted to tutorials, explanations, and demonstrations of what can be done in the game.)