Ad Astra - A New Sim Type And What It Means For 20

Long before 20 was even a inkling of a concept, I was obsessed with space. I can probably attribute a good chunk of this to my time at Space Camp in 2016. I was instilled with an undeniable drive to become an astronaut which eventually led me into the Navy. Said obsessive drive eventually led to my callsign as it is today, as Spaceman was how my recruiter identified me to basically everyone in the Navy recruiting command, and it just stuck. Although I still have little clue, how we got from there to here.

Recently, I’ve had my eyes open to more than a few people in the 20 community who are not only familiar with a simulator named Reentry, but are interested in joining in some missions in it. I myself remember Reentry’s early days. I remember it in 2017 when I was making my own space simulators off of a TI-84 calculator. While I still maintain that my TI-84 space sim was underrated and should have been picked up by a major game studio for distribution on calculators across the country, Reentry has improved quite a bit. The most recent update completely reworked VR, basically making it first in class for space sims.

So I started to wonder if 20 could do something with this, and I’m convinced we can. While I don’t think it will be a massive campaign. I do believe we can at least simulate a true moonshot. It would be, too interesting of a challenge to not try. So that’s where the Ad Astra campaign comes in. I’ve spent all week training on the systems of Gemini and Apollo, and at some point in the near near future, we will be simulating a full moonshot, from the first steps of Mercury, to a Landing on the Lunar surface with Apollo. Each mission will consist of program objectives, the potential for catastrophic failures, and real challenges that the crew will have to overcome.

This is a whole different level for space simulations, and It’s worth trying out, just to see if we can make it. I’m personally excited to see if my motley gang of flight simulators can be taught advanced spaceflight theory because their lives actually depend on it. I suspect a solid 80% of the fun and terror will come from having stuff break and having to troubleshoot it based off their knowledge of the spacecraft systems. Frankly, I’m just excited to get into spaceflight sims again. With that in mind, I sincerely hope you’ll check out Ad Astra when additional information becomes available.