I’m personally responsible for blowing up 93 Falcon 9 rockets. You can step into his shoes with SpaceX Falcon 9 Lander, which makes Kerbal Space Program seem like a breezy game of Animal Crossing.
Advertisement
SpaceX, which was founded by Tesla mogul Elon Musk, has plans to launch a privately-owned ship into orbit and have it return safely to earth. The most recent issue in late June was an explosion shortly after launch.
Attempting to re-land the Falcon 9 has confirmed to be extraordinarily tough, with SpaceX having tried twice without success.
You have to land the rocket using only the arrow keys (gamers will know you can also use the WASD keys).
The game is inspired by the classic Lunar Lander game with a multi-million dollar prototype spacecraft as its main character. Scatch is run by the MIT Media Lab. The SpaceX version was released on September 15.
Trying to land this first stage is tricky (read: explosive) business, so Musk has been testing landing it way out in the ocean on a drone ship. You have a Martian colony to build and it won’t be a cake walk, but it is worth taking a try.
Advertisement
If you found Flappy Bird to be hard, here’s another game that will leave you slamming your head on your computer keyboard. True, you aren’t guiding a $60 million hunk of rocketry like the folks at SpaceX, but the game serves as a vivid illustration of the monumental challenge the company has taken on. The game isn’t completely programmed against you. SpaceX has been trying to figure out a way to recover the first stage of its rockets by landing them on a platform floating in the middle of the ocean.
