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Kerbal Space Program devs reflect on 10 years of space exploration

The Summer of Doing Our Jobs continues, as we talk to members of development team Squad about Kerbal Space Program, its ten-year-anniversary, its community, and its impact as an educational tool.

Ozzie Mejia

June 24, 2021 6:01 AM

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This is the day that Kerbal Space Program celebrates its tenth anniversary. The team at Squad has been taking players on adventures through space and teaching the gaming world about astrophysics for a full decade, a journey that the team holds in high regard. It's also a journey that members of the development team wanted to reflect on with us here at Shacknews. As part of Shacknews' Summer of Doing Our Jobs, we had the opportunity to speak with Kerbal Space Program Co-Lead Engineer David Tregoning, Head of Production Nestor Gomez, and other Co-Lead Engineer Jamie Leighton to look back at the past ten years of the KSP adventure.

As part of this special interview with myself and Video Editor Greg Burke, Tregoning, Gomez, and Leighton all took a walk through KSP's past ten years. This includes looking back at their collaborations with real world organizations like NASA and the European Space Agency, some of their favorite community contributions and mods from the past ten years, some of the challenges in bringing KSP to China, and much more. We also asked about what it's meant to the team for KSP to become a valuable educational tool.

"That's one of the great things about KSP and being involved with Kerbal Space Program," Leighton told Shacknews. "I read about people in the community, who've said 'I played the game ten years ago and now I'm doing my astrophysics degree and I'm looking to get a job with NASA.' To me, that's one of the greatest things about KSP is it's such a great educational tool and it's actually got people at a younger age to think about space, astrophysics, and get involved in actually getting jobs with these space agencies. To me, that's an incredible achievement of the game."

Kerbal Space Program is still exploring new horizons, as Squad and Blitworks prepare to take the Enhanced Edition to PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X later this fall. For more interviews like this, be sure to subscribe to Shacknews and GamerHubTV on YouTube. Keep following Shacknews throughout the next few months, as we continue bringing you more of the Summer of Doing Our Jobs.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?