Moonshot: How Kerbal Space Program’s creator launched an indie darling from out of nowhere

The moon is 238,900 miles from the Earth. That’s a great distance, and it’s about how far away Kerbal Space Program creator Felipe Falanghe felt from success when he came up with the idea for his realistic space-shuttle-building game 11 years ago.

Today, Kerbal Space Program has thousands of players and a dedicated, passionate community. The game has players piecing together spacecraft to enter orbit, travel to other planets, and land on virtual moons. Its physics operate under the same rules as reality, and it is not easy. It’s literally rocket science — but instead of acting as barriers to the fun, space-loving gamers flocked to the title exactly because it is such an accurate representation of space travel.