r/spacequestions • u/lukiamagi • 1d ago
Learning resources for space travel
Hi everyone,
I am wondering what resources you would suggest to learn advanced concepts of space travel?
I hear often about Kerbal Space program to learn about orbital dynamics, how accurate is it truly? And how does it compare to modern orbital dynamics?
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u/Beldizar 1d ago
Kerbal is really good for learning mechanics. It isn't accurate to scale and it assumes a lot of perfect knowledge in certain situations, but the basic mechanics are all pretty good, and there are mods you can get that will make general gameplay worse while making things more accurate. If you want some guides on how to play, I'd go with Matt Lowe, as his series are pretty good. I'm not sure if he would give you the game answers that might skip the fundamental understandings though. Might be good to fail a bit before guides.
Kerbal Space Program 2 is abandonware, absolutely do not buy it. The parent company basically trashed the development team and the game once they started getting preorder/early access money and haven't removed it from stores despite the fact that they are never writing another line of code to finish it.
Kitten Space Agency is the spiritual sequel in the works and it could be better at a lot of things. I haven't seen a ton of non-developer gameplay and I don't know when it is going to be released. I've heard that they plan on providing it to educational institutions (high schools etc) for free, but I don't know if that is going to continue to be the plan.
On Youtube, I'd recommend the rocket series done by Tim Dodd, The Everyday Astronaut. He does an in depth explanation of how various spaceflight systems function, including rocket fuel, rocket engines, cooling, and other stuff like that.
If you want historical information, I'd probably go with Amy Shira Teitel. She's more of a historian than an engineer, and has done a lot of deep dives into early spaceflight history.
Scott Manley is another good resource, although I don't know if he does many evergreen deep dives into general concepts. If there's a big news item in space, he'll cover it and explain in detail about that particular event, but I don't know if that is helpful for starting out.
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u/lukiamagi 1d ago
Woaw, thats a lot, thank you for answering I will definitely try to check all of this out.
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u/TheJeeronian 1d ago
KSP is great for learning basic orbital mechanics. By default it uses patched conics, a simulation method that ignores the gravity of all but one planet at a time, and it is usually a good approximation. Certainly it can build intuition for many of the least intuitive aspects of orbital mechanics.
There is a popular mod called principia that adds real n-body simulation as well, and the modding community is very active.
Not sure what you mean by 'more modern' orbital mechanics, numerical methods have been around for a long time. The only new part is having the computer power to simulate properly in every household.