Space school
Eleven short lessons for somebody who has never flown a rocket, real or otherwise. Each one explains one idea in plain words, then hands you something to fly that proves it.
Who this is for
You do not need to know any of this to have fun. You can build a rocket, press the big button and watch what happens, and that is a fine way to start. But sooner or later the game will show you a word like periapsis or a number like TWR 1.4, and it will not stop to explain. That is what these pages are for.
Nothing here assumes school physics. If you can count, and you can watch a number on a screen go up and down, you can follow every lesson. Grown-ups who did learn this once and forgot it are welcome too.
The lessons are in order, and each one uses the one before it. Read them with the game open on the other half of the table.
Some of these lessons are also in the game, as guided walks: an arrow, a line to read and a check that you did it. They arrive at the moment they are about rather than all at once — upgrading the Launch Pad to its second level, once Staging is discovered, puts Why rockets throw pieces away on the hangar, lighting the first stage of the rocket it builds starts Getting into orbit, and reaching orbit starts Reading your orbit and then Coming back down. They are the short version, with your own rocket in front of you; these pages are the long one, and say why. See A tutorial for the switch and Play again.
How a lesson works
Every lesson has the same four parts:
| Part | What it does |
|---|---|
| The idea | The thing itself, in everyday words, with something you already know to hang it on. |
| Where the game says it | The exact number or button on your screen that is this idea, so you can see it instead of trusting me. |
| Try it | A flight or a bit of building you can do in ten minutes. It is designed to show one thing, and to be a bit surprising. |
| What you just proved | Three or four lines you can carry to the next lesson. |
Each lesson also ends with the words it introduced, one line each. The Glossary has all of them in one place.
Do the experiments in sandbox
In the shared world every launch charges the rocket's price the moment its first engine lights, and a rocket you break is money gone. Sandbox is your own private copy of the sky: it flies exactly the same way, it costs nothing, it lets you speed the clock up while you wait for something to happen, and it lets you save a flight and load it again to try the same moment twice.
It reads your credits, your tech and your buildings, and it never writes to them. You cannot earn anything there either, so once a lesson has taught you something, do the real version in the shared world and take the money.
What you need before lesson 1
- The game installed and open at the hangar. Install and sign in if not.
- One flight behind you. Your first flight takes ten minutes and gives you the rocket every lesson below starts from.
- Nothing else. No tech, no money, no crew. Two of the later lessons want one cheap tech node, and they say so at the top.
The lessons
After the lessons
When you have finished, you know enough to read the rest of the manual without stopping. Reaching orbit and Landing on the Moon are step-by-step flights of the two big things you have just learned, and Orbits and the other pages under How the game works go deeper on anything that caught your interest.