Orbital Rendezvous
About a month ago I downloaded a “casual” game onto my computer to play at lunchtimes called “Kerbal Space Program”. In the game you take charge of the space faring endeavours of a race of little cartoon people as they build rockets, crash them, and scream towards inevitable fiery deaths at your hands. That was fun, you think. I'll have another go tomorrow, you think. Just ten minutes, you think.
And then you get good at it.
Suddenly you're building multiple stage monster rockets, capable of breaking the home planet gravity, and visiting nearby moons. You're building command modules, lunar landers, figuring out free return trajectories, and attempting all the things the Apollo Project Manager went grey over. While other people are having their lunch, you're circularising your lunar orbit, and preparing the lander you invented. While you descend towards your hap-hazard moon base, a small crowd gathers around your desk, watching the final minutes of the approachticking the fuel down, wondering if your little cartoon dudes will make it. Somebody murmurs “how the bloody hell did you do that?” as you park your lander neatly next to the others on the moon's surface. and you realise your life has been sucked into this cartoon spaceship construction kit. As you watch the webcam of the crews faces turn from smiles to horror when missions go wrong, you feel guilty for their impending demise.
Kerbal Space Program. Don't do it. It will suck your entire life down the toilet. You'll end up playing it at 2amtrying to reach orbit on Jupiter after leaving home with a rocket eighteen times the size of Apollo. You will invent another rocket to go rescue the guy stuck in orbit, and that brave soul will become stranded too, because you forgot to provide enough electrical power for his ship to keep going. Before you know it, you hear birdsong outside the window, and realise morning on this world has already arrived.p.s. I have another rocket on the drawing board to go on the biggest rescue attempt of all time. It will only take an hour or two, honest.