HERE, standing in the halls of the Library of Congress, you don’t always have to hit the shelves to time-travel through history. Sometimes, in the Coolidge Auditorium, the most vivid of tour guides takes the stage.

Past descriptive docents have included such Post legends as Ben Bradlee and Bob Woodward; anchors named Ifill and Lehrer, Brokaw and Koppel: even such law-school grads as Sandra Day O’Connor and (then-senator) Barack Obama. For every spring, a noted figure delivers the Herblock Prize’s Lecture, and recalling the arc of Herblock’s own remarkable career — which spanned 13 administrations, from Hoover to Bush the Younger — tends to send the mind tripping through history.

And sometimes, on a special night, the journey back through the annals feels effortless, almost undetected, as the speaker steers and glides the slipstream of past milestones, deftly following the true, fluid line left by cartoonist Herbert L. Block.

And on this warm Thursday night, as the waning moon sits fat behind the Capitol dome, the waxing nostalgic speakers are set to entertain the assembled hundreds.

The night’s honoree is Kevin “Kal” Kallaugher, the longtime political cartoonist and illustrator for the Baltimore Sun and the Economist. Kal always seems to have an impish glint in his eye, but within that — as you can gather from his 20 Herblock Prize-winning cartoons mounted on easels just southeast of us — is also the dead-eye aim of a true satirist.

Kal, 60, takes us back to a time in the ’70s when his life was wide open, as undefined as an American field. He was fresh out of Harvard, having cartooned for the Crimson, and now this young man, of medium height for a mortal, was playing semiprofessional basketball in Britain — a line that he pauses on tonight, aware that the athletic link is a bit less obvious now. We laugh, and we are with him.

There’s ″a natural tension between satirists and the [sensibilities] of society.”— @kaltoons #HerblockPrize pic.twitter.com/Pg40ardOOr

Kal then recalls what seems to be even a greater unlikelihood. This New England native — this Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Basketball Court — had a different pickup game going on, as he picked up extra cash, shilling for his shillings, by live-drawing and selling caricatures on Fleet Street. And now, against the odds, he took his portfolio to the esteemed Economist magazine, as a last-ditch attempt at launching an art career in the UK. It was play-to-pay time, but what were the chances that this wet-behind-the-American-ears artist was going to land such a gig in London?

The answer: Two years ago, Kal published a book of his Economist cartoons, upon the 35th anniversary of that unlikely employment, and he still relishes that fruitful relationship, which has resulted in a raft of awards.

On this night, Kal speaks, too, about the state of political cartooning, particularly in the wake of the most recent well-publicized attacks upon the freedom of expression. As he talks of courage, and of defining your own lines of satiric engagement, he turns to a large pad, and those lines morph into a warm caricature of the late Herblock himself, now cartoon-transported into our midst.

Kal and his live caricature of Herblock, at Thursday night’s Herblock Prize ceremony at the Library of Congress. (photo courtesy of Bruce Guthrie / BGuthriePhotos.com)

From Herblock to Kal, the line of cartooning succession feels alive. So much so that a man suddenly steps off the stage, to get a front-row seat for this living caricature.

That man, it turns out, is the next speaker we’ve all come to hear.

Donald Graham, the great Washington Post scion, has a mind so alive, his curiosity can seem to point in four directions at once, like some weather vane smack in the winds of avid journalistic fascination (and it seems only fitting, then, that the letters of the four direction-points spell out N-E-W-S).

Does any other leader in Washington seem quite so fully tuned into the next digital future, while simultaneously so plugged into D.C.’s past? Even as he scrolls through his iPad onstage, Graham wears history with the comfort of a favorite cotton blazer. So when he steps to the lectern, he points us back to midcentury with the seamless ease of a longtime Georgetown tailor.

Mr. Graham’s Grandpa “Gene,” Mr. Meyer, bought The Post at bankruptcy auction in 1933. (And the reason Meyer wasn’t wiped out by the Crash of ’29, Don notes, was because as a public official, he didn’t think it ethically proper to own stock.) But by 1937, The Post had begun bleeding enough money that decades later, the accounting statements would startle Warren Buffett.

Now, Don Graham, like any good journalist, knows that the eyes of childhood, as universal experience, make for a prime storytelling device. So Don, 70, takes us back to 1955, when the talent that pulled him into The Post’s page as a 10-year-old was the legendary sportswriter Shirley Povich — back in that dreadful decade for both the Redskins and the Senators. But amid the national scare and scourge of McCarthyism — a term coined by Herblock himself — young Don would come to appreciate the unleashed genius of The Post’s multiple-Pulitzer cartoonist.

Literally and figuratively, The Post’s fortunes began to rise largely on the popularity of Herblock and Povich. Amid McCarthyism, the paper was courageous, while Herblock was fearless, and peerless. And this crucible, Don says, would prep Herb for the Nixon years, when Herb saw around corners while others were still trying to find the Watergate’s front door.

Graham tells of how, within days of the Watergate break-in, Herblock visually tied the crime to the White House, and when publisher Katharine Graham saw that very cartoon before going to press, she famously asked him: You’re not going to run that, are you?

Taking on ″McCarthy warmed Herb up for Nixon.” — #HerblockPrize Lecturer Don Graham. @librarycongress @washingtonpost

Don closes with what he calls a “pointless anecdote,” except that of course the point is sharp, because the tale pinpoints just how deeply human Herb was.

Longtime Post leader Donald Graham shares tales of knowing Herblock, while delivering the Herblock Prize Lecture on Thursday night at the Library of Congress. (photo courtesy of Bruce Guthrie / BGuthriePhotos.com)

Now, Povich was a pretty fair golfer, while Herb was the world’s worst. But one winter, Don recounts, the great cartoonist intensely studied the greats of the game, including Palmer. And in their first outing of a new year, after Povich cracked a smart drive, Herb stepped to the tee, took his club back, and — whoof! — topped his ball about 10 yards.

Now, I cannot repeat Mr. Graham’s concluding verbiage verbatim in this space, not with the kiddies so close. But the haymaker of a punch line “kills.”

So let’s just say that on that day, in four-letter fashion, a full-throated Herblock went AWOL from Arnie’s Army.

And with that last laugh, this special ceremony, on this warm Washington night, is one for the history books.

Discussion over free speech ″strengthens our democracy.” — @kaltoons at #HerblockPrize. @librarycongress pic.twitter.com/2YiDKyskPQ

DARRIN BELL is one of the brightest talents we have on America’s editorial pages, and that is perhaps because his political cartoons don’t communicate merely with cleverness and the practicals tools of satire. They also stand up and connect with the depth of emotional content.

When Bell comments on the larger events in Ferguson or Cleveland, Staten Island or Baltimore, for instance, this art from the heart of experience not only makes a razor-sharp point. You often also feel something that cannot be rendered if the artist is drawing from “on high,” instead of from bracing street-level clarity:

You feel, and sense, the fear and the outrage and the fatigue of repeated history, from the socially pent-up to the emotionally spent. These are cartoons that don’t just be; they also breathe.

This, I’m convinced is what the RFK Award judges saw and felt when they decided to award him their 2015 prize for Cartoons, as the RFK Center for Justice and Human Rights announced yesterday.

“Political cartoons are at their best when their authors actually display some human emotions,” Bell tells The Post’s Comic Riffs. “If you can talk about people being treated poorly or denied equal rights and NOT be emotional or sensitive to that, then there’s something wrong with you, and you probably could use some counseling.”

Comic Riffs reached out to the California-based Bell to learn how his emotion-laced experiences with police, and as a parent, inform his editorial work. Here are his poignant thoughts:

MICHAEL CAVNA: Congrats on the honor, Darrin. You not only had a powerful year, but in many ways a momentous one to comment on. Could you please talk what it means to you to win the RFK, especially given the cartoons and topics you won for?

DARRIN BELL: It’s gratifying. It’s an incredible honor, because every time I sit down to create an image, RFK and his brothers, along with Dr. King, are standing there in my subconscious, as kind of a North Star. I’m a child of Baby Boomers. My earliest conception of justice was formed listening my mom reminisce longingly about what we all lost when JFK, Dr. King and RFK were taken from us so soon. No matter who I studied years later, no matter how much I learned of Sakharov, Gandhi, Mandela, Rabin, Tutu, Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and on and on… social justice, in my mind, always wore a mop of brown hair and spoke with a New England accent, when it wasn’t marching in Selma or stoically peering out between prison bars in Birmingham.

I imagine that’s the same for millions of us. Caring about the plight of others, and using whatever platform we have in this life to speak up for people who are otherwise marginalized, is a duty. When I was a kid, I *knew* it was a duty because *they* acted as if it were a duty. And because they sacrificed so much when they didn’t have to at all, in service of that duty.

So you can imagine what winning this award, for those cartoons, means to me. It means I was good at following the North Star.

MC: So what was it like to get the personal call from Ethel Kennedy [delivering news of your win]?

DB: From what I gathered during our conversation, I’m certain she would absolutely hate to hear anyone say this, but … it was like getting a phone call from Mount Rushmore itself. It was very surreal.

I keep my nose down and work, I say what I think I need to say, and I’ve taught myself not to care whether anyone even reads it. I never once dared to imagine Ethel Kennedy — the person who’s worked tirelessly for decades to realize RFK’s unrealized potential — would even *see* any of my cartoons, much less tell me it was an honor to speak with me because of them. That will probably always be the high-point of my career.

by DARRIN BELL (2014 Washington Post Writers Group)

MC: You and I spoke last year about your Michael Brown and Eric Garner cartoons, and how your mom bought you a non-realistic-looking water gun because she knew the realities of being a black male child holding even a toy gun, and the lethal perils that could pose. Could you talk about how your emotions and depth of sensitivity and personal experience inform your cartoons?

DB: One of the common retorts to my cartoons is that I’m being “emotional,” or “angry.” And my reply to that is always, “You’re damn right.” There’s a time to be emotionally detached, purely objective, and entirely analytical. Like when I’m doing my taxes, or playing chess — not when I’m creating political cartoons.

Political cartoons are at their best when their authors actually display some human emotions. If you can talk about people being treated poorly or denied equal rights and not be emotional or sensitive to that, then there’s something wrong with you, and you probably could use some counseling.

That’s not to say you don’t look at all sides of an issue. The dynamic between police and the communities they serve is nuanced. They face real dangers every time they go out on the streets. They never know whether a simple traffic stop is going to get them killed. But you know what? They sign on for that uncertainty. Civilians don’t sign on to risk our lives whenever we go outside. I should feel safe when I’m alone on a sidewalk and see an officer strolling toward me. But I don’t. I feel fear. And the past 33 years of my 40 years on this Earth have given me countless reasons why that fear is rational.

In ’93, I moved to Berkeley for college. One evening I went with some friends across the Bay to explore San Francisco. After a while, I decided to head back to the dorms, but I had no idea how to get back to the subway.

I spotted three officers hanging out on a corner, talking. I approached them and politely asked for directions. I figured: “This is San Francisco, this isn’t L.A. They’re all liberal here. I’m sure they’re friendly.” They never gave me the directions. All three of them put their hands on their guns, glared at me, and said nothing. After what felt like forever, I realized that without even thinking about it, I’d backed up until I ran into the wall behind me. The three just stood there, not saying a word, ready to draw their guns. I said, “Never mind,” consciously trying to modulate my tone so I wouldn’t sound suspicious, or frightened, or hostile, or anything else that might provoke them. I remember slowly walking away, trying not to make any sudden movements and hoping — praying — that someone else would come out onto the sidewalk, so there’d be a witness if anything happened to me. I remember wondering what might have happened if I’d been a few shades darker. That block I had to walk before I could turn the corner and be safe seemed like the longest block on Earth.

You can’t truly deal with the issue of police brutality absent of emotion. These emotions are at the heart of it all.

by DARRIN BELL (2014 Washington Post Writers Group)

MC: There are so very few black syndicated political cartoonists in the United States. Because of that, do you feel any different sense of responsibility, or perspective, or passion in sharing your experience [as a social commentator and satirist] — perhaps not unlike what [Comedy Central’s] Larry Wilmore now tries to do nightly from a much-needed national perch?

DB: Yes, I feel like if I don’t say it, I’m not doing what fate, or God, or random chance put me here to do. Other cartoonists do talk about these issues, and many of them do a great job of it. But what would it mean if I, of all people, were to let these issues slide? It would mean a number of things. It would mean I’m living in fear of being viewed as an “angry black man.” It would mean I’m living in fear of those who’ll dismiss what I’m contributing because “of course you think that way, you’re black.” It would mean I’m giving in to people who play what I call the “race card” card. They reflexively distrust, belittle or ignore what black people have to say about race because they think black people are hopelessly biased, agenda-driven, and whiny. Sometimes I feel as if I HAVE to comment, if only to prove that those people don’t have any power to silence anyone.

MC: What most inspires you to continue growing as a creatively committed cartoonist — and do you like having multiple outlets and formats, from comic strips to political cartoons?

DB: My 17-month-old son is what most inspires me to continue growing as a creatively committed cartoonist. We are what we do. One day I’ll be gone, but I’ll leave behind what I’ve done. No matter where he is in life, my son will always be able to open a book of my cartoons and see who his father was at 26. Who his father was at 40. Who his father was at 65. He’ll see in my political cartoons that I was passionate and unequivocal about standing up for what I thought was right. He’ll see more of the same in “Candorville,” but there he’ll also see everything I’m interested in, from science fiction, to fatherhood, to friendship. He’ll see in “Rudy Park” that I knew how to just be silly. He’ll see in my storyboards for film, TV and Broadway that I helped other people tell THEIR stories, too. And as my baby boy grows to adulthood, and someday when he realizes he’s got more days behind him than he has ahead of him, I want him to be able to look back at what his father did and say: “He just got better and better. So can I.”

by DARRIN BELL (2014 Washington Post Writers Group)

DARRIN BELL has just won the 2015 RFK Award for Cartooning, the RFK Center for Justice and Human Rights is announcing this afternoon.

Bell, whose editorial cartoons are syndicated by Washington Post Writers Group, won the award for a portfolio that largely focused on deaths at the hands of police in New York and Ferguson, Mo.

“Robert F. Kennedy has always been one of my personal heroes,” Bell tells The Post’s Comic Riffs. “He and his family embody the best impulses of America. They’ve worked tirelessly to advance the cause of social justice, to give a voice to the voiceless, and to empower the powerless.

“Along with Dr. King, the Kennedys have been a constant inspiration to me and to my work,” Bell adds. “The fact that what I do even caught their attention is deeply humbling.”

“Darrin Bell’s work in 2014 projected a unique point of view — as a black man, he’s ‘been there’ — on the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown,” Amy Lago, Bell’s editor at WPWG, tells Comic Riffs. “And he applies that empathy to all who are disenfranchised and powerless.

“Darrin is poignant yet irreverent,” continues Lago, who nominated him for the award. “And he has this incredible talent for pointing out what should be patently obvious but somehow is not.”

The Post Writers Group also syndicates Bell’s comic strip “Candorville.”

[Q&A: From Ferguson to New York cases, Darrin Bell draws deeply from the personal]

The annual RFK Book and Journalism Awards honor works that reflect “Robert Kennedy’s dedication to human rights and social justice, and his belief in the power of individual action.”

In other RFK Journalism categories, Post photographer Michel du Cille is being posthumously recognized for International Photography, for his portfolio “Ebola: A Desperate Struggle.” Du Cille died last December in Liberia, while reporting on the virus’s toll.

[RIP, Michel du Cille: Photojournalist. Storyteller. Visual genius.]

NPR News, ProPublica, PBS Frontline, the Los Angeles Times and the Miami Herald are among the other 2015 journalism winners.

The awards will be presented May 21 at the Newseum in Washington.

by DARRIN BELL (2014 Washington Post Writers Group)

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by DARRIN BELL (2014 Washington Post Writers Group)

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by DARRIN BELL (2014 Washington Post Writers Group)

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by DARRIN BELL (2014 Washington Post Writers Group)

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by DARRIN BELL (2014 Washington Post Writers Group)

KAL was not, of course, always such an absolute master.

Year by year, line by purposeful line, Kevin “Kal” Kallaugher, the longtime cartoonist at the Economist and the Baltimore Sun, has built a skill set of the visual satirist’s craft. He flexed his sense of hyperbole, he pumped up his gift for graphical symbolism, and he grew ever stronger at stripping away the noise of the news until what was rippling and resonating on the page was pure and clear and concise truth.

And these days, Kal, at 60, is at a new height of editorial ambition. He takes on big and complex events, local and global alike, with the deft ability to construct an extended metaphor, until the collective images gather a cumulative, sometimes devastating force.

These gifts were on exhibit last year, for instance, in a Sun cartoon about Edward Snowden and the NSA that a group of contest jurors called a “minor masterpiece” — one work in a portfolio for which he was just named a 2015 Pulitzer Prize finalist.

The Herblock Prize judges called KAL’s Snowden cartoon “a minor masterpiece.” (courtesy of the LOC/Herb Block Foundation)

And these talents honed over four decades were deployed to maximum effect as recently as last weekend, when Kal commented on the unrest in Baltimore — in response to Freddie Gray’s tragic case — by drawing upon decades of firsthand knowledge as a keen social observer of his city.

It is for this level of brilliance that Kal will be saluted tonight, at the Library of Congress, as the recipient of the 2015 Herblock Prize. “I consider the Herblock Prize to be a special honor,” the “humbled” Kal said upon announcement of the news in March. “Its mission is to promote excellence in the craft of editorial cartooning, and to highlight the fight against injustice that was a hallmark of Herblock’s work.” (As part of the ceremony, Kal’s acceptance speech will be preceded by the Herblock Lecture, as delivered by Graham Holdings CEO and chairman Don Graham — who, as longtime Washington Post publisher, has a special appreciation for Herblock’s legacy.)

In taking up Herblock’s standard as social-justice satirist in an era of the NSA’s monitoring, and Charlie Hebdo’s massacre, and Baltimore’s brutality and riots, Kal values deeply his twin perches at the Sun and the Economist, where he has great editorial rein.

“Only 14 percent of people on the planet live somewhere where there is freedom of the press,” Kal tells The Post’s Comic Riffs. “And if you dial back to 100 years ago, those numbers would have been really small. So this recent [post-Hebdo] talk of freedom of expression takes place in a very small universe. We need to appreciate this.”

Kal’s appreciation extends both to the political cartoonists who sparked his passion for the art form, and to foreign cartoonists not in that fortunate 14 percent — those who face threats and mortal peril simply to share their opinions through s visual medium.

“Our craft is one where you don’t go to school to be a cartoonist, so you learn from those who came before,” Kal tells Comic Riffs. “So I want to thank them.

“And I’m inspired,” he continues, “by cartoonists who live in the 86 percent, whose [institutionally oppressed] lives are tricky. But they use this unique tool as a voice for change. And I am so inspired by them.”

Kal knows the full worth of his position as the Sun’s cartoonist, too, because it is a job that was once, and for years, taken from him.

“One thing I will talk about [tonight] is my relationship with the Baltimore Sun and the Economist,” Kal tells The Post. “In 2005, in a fit of budget mania that was spreading through the newspaper world, the Baltimore Sun decided that a cartoonist was a luxury, and we parted ways. It took them seven years to rehire me, when a new management team — Tim Ryan and Andy Green — came in. And they invited me back.”

“I hope this would be a lesson for other offending newspapers” who dropped their cartoonists, Kal continues. “Cartoonists should not be a luxury. We are a specific journalistic phenomenon, and newspaper phenomenon. We reduce the world down to a digestible nugget that is enjoyed by virtually everyone. And if you want the young demographic, use more cartoons, not less.” (And he only half-jokes when he says of the newspaper cartooning field: “Visually, we’re competing with the weather map on our own pages.”)

by KAL (2015 The Baltimore Sun / used by permission of the artist)

Kal does feel fortunate, though, that his editorial opportunities are in harmony with his career arc.

“One thing I have noticed about this craft is that it is unlike basketball, where your physical peak is [age ] 27, 28,” says Kal, who was an avid hoopster in his youth. “For the longevity of a cartoonist, you only have to look at Herblock,” adds Kal, citing how the Pulitzer-winning Post legend, who covered 13 presidential administrations, cartooned into his 90s, before dying in 2001.

“You should get better with every decade, because your breadth of knowledge is growing. You improve your drawing. And your pool of ideas, instead of getting shallower, gets broader and deeper,” says Kal, who in February also won Europe’s Grand Prix Award for press “cartoon of the year. “So I think I’m doing my best work right now.”

“It’s so much fun at this stage,” enthuses Kal, who a couple of years ago marked his 35th anniversary at the Economist with a Kickstarter-backed book, “Daggers Drawn.” “Now the drawing is fun. For decades, it was hard work and pressure and a lot of frustration. In the early days, having to do so much practice, it was boring and hard. Now I draw and like it so much, I don’t even know I’m drawing.”

In drawing for decades, Kal also cherishes the connection that a civic-oriented cartoonist especially establishes with his audience. “By doing daily political cartoons, you have a long-term conversation with your readers,” he says. “You establish a rapport, and every cartoon is another sentence in that conversation.”

And in Kal’s case, that applies to being bicontinental, as he has long fostered his largely separate audiences in the UK and the USA. “At the Economist, I deal with the very national stuff — European budgets and British elections. And then I come back to Baltimore and do the traffic-light stuff,” as well as larger stories like the Freddie Gray case. (And of Baltimore’s recent unrest specifically, Kal says: “We got a body-blow on this one. It’s like the city was mugged and it was a setback. It was sad.”)

It was the Economist that gave Kal his start — which, had the hiring process not worked out, might have been his cartoon career’s ending, as well.

The Norwalk, Conn., native had studied art and design at Harvard, even making a 13-minute thesis animation based on his comic strip, “In the Days of Disgustus,” that ran in the Harvard Crimson. Soon after graduation, he landed in London, playing basketball abroad and doing Fleet Street caricatures to pick up some cash. That encouraged him to try to kickstart a full art career; portfolio in hand, he was a Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s journalistic court. Fortunately, the kings that ran the Economist liked this American court jester’s illustration style. The relationship — which eventually grew to include political cartoons, as well — has been mutually fruitful for nearly four decades.

“My personal goal was to be able to do daily political cartoons for a British audience and not be automatically recognized as an interloper from across the sea,” says Kal, who lived in the UK for years. “What that requires is a depth of understanding of languages and idioms, let alone politics and the issues. I studied really hard — and had a really tolerant wife — and learned everything I could about the country and the society.”

In tracing this career history at tonight’s event, Kal plans to illustrate, too, how Herblock inspired him.

“His work was a combination of his compassion and his dogged pursuit of justice,” Kal says. “It was justice for the benefit of the small guy, and he was always there, always ‘on.’ … That is a main part of the real focus and power of cartooning. You have the opportunity to remind people over and over about justice.”

And when Kal stands on that Library of Congress stage tonight, he plans to summon the spirit of Herblock not only through words, but also with at least one image. He will honor Herblock by doing a live drawing — and will have the legend “talk” back to offer advice.

And part of this inspiration for that piece comes from the lone time he met Herb, several years before Mr. Block’s death.

“I was hosting the AAEC [Association of American Editorial Cartoonists] convention in Baltimore” in the mid-’90s, Kal recalls. “I was going to be AAEC president the next year, and was the ‘organizing genius’ — handling this herd of cats — so I invited Herb. He never spoke in public, but he came to this because he liked cartoonists.

“So he came early, we hung out and we had so much fun. It was like an elongated Q&A, and a bit of a ‘chalk talk.’ He just loved hanging around cartoonists.”

Tonight, two decades later, fans can love hanging around another special cartoonist. The one whose name will be newest on the Herblock Prize itself.

Recent Herblock recipients:

[2014: Jen Sorensen becomes first woman to win the Herblock Prize]

[2013: Dan Perkins (aka Tom Tomorrow) on the need to support your friendly alt-cartoonist]

[2012: Matt Bors on the changing state of political cartooning]

[2011: Matt Wuerker is moved by the moment]

Kerbal Space Program
Developed by: Squad
Published by: Squad
Available on: PC

Video games excel at manufacturing fear and self-doubt and then reward players for escaping those fears and doubts with vanities (trophies, confettied explosions, cadavers). Anything can be made fun in video-game terms if the game can create anguished expectations of failure and then train its players to figure out which combinations can be used to erase those feelings. On these terms, “Kerbal Space Program” is a miracle, a game that engenders wonder at its scale and awe for its complexity. It has all of the true grandeur of a masterwork.

First released as a public prototype for building and launching virtual rockets in 2011, “Kerbal Space Program” has steadily grown into a space exploration game that’s drawn the admiration of SpaceX founder Elon Musk and NASA, which designed an asteroid redirect mission for the game. After nearly four years as a public beta, the game has finally reached its official commercial release with version 1.0, which includes interplanetary travel; a career mode built around a system of research, funding, and contracts; and a series of missions, which includes using satellites to build an orbiting communication network. Surrounding it all is a constant stream of community game modifications, which experiment with everything from travel to new solar systems to ambient radio chatter.

“Kerbal” skirts the realism of full simulation. It is full of exquisite detail that requires an almost meditational thought process to accomplish simple-sounding acts — balancing fuel tanks, arranging solar panels, equipping a flight computer capable of holding a steady trajectory, etc. Simply getting off the launch pad with the right kind of equipment demands intense and prolonged attention. In my first 20 hours with the game, I had managed to build and launch a spacecraft, transfer orbit from the game’s version of Earth to the moon, and learned to dock with an orbiting satellite.

(Courtesy of Squad)

Beneath each of these seemingly-simple tasks is a series of systems whose geometric interrelation can seem overwhelming. But there is something about the tranquility of space and its massive timescales that makes the complex seem possible, able to be broken down into manageable tasks. Rather than simply pointing your ship at an orbiting space station and accelerating, you use your rockets to adjust your orbit to the same plane as your target, expand your orbit to intersect with the target at the right place, all the while managing your speed and ensuring you don’t throw off your orbit’s arc in order to arrive at the point of intersection at exactly the right time.

These operations are managed across several views: a map screen that shows the solar system and its overlapping geometry, a cinematic view of your ship as it moves through space against the electric blue edge of planetary atmosphere, and an inner cockpit view that puts you alongside the bulge-eyed green astronauts whose slapstick hyperbole stands in for human wonderment. Spanning all three views is a navigation ball that shows your rotational position, a tool that allows you to shift trajectories and make fine grain adjustments in any view.

(Courtesy of Squad)

Though you can speed up time to keep up the pace of play, Kerbal’s slowness can be a tonic for the manic neediness of other games. I found particular satisfaction in setting an orbit, planning a maneuver for its far side, and then walking away from the computer for 20 minutes as the vessel drifted against the nebula. The potential success or failure of my calculations regarding fuel, transfer orbits, and what might be necessary to turn calculated trajectories into actual ones were deferred by long stretches of contemplative idyll in a starlit vacuum.

And as with all space exploration, there’s a sublime morbidity running through it all — the potential helplessness of running out of fuel two planets away from home, or accidentally deploying one’s parachute too early during re-entry, leaving one’s landing pod to crash fatally into the ocean. There isn’t much spectacle or theatricality in these moments of doom, but the complications of the systems that produce them can often create a feeling as acute as any high-intensity combat game.

“Kerbal Space Program” is the kind of game one’s never finished playing. Its ends always feel open to negotiation. It is a purer form of game play. Rather than a ritualistic capitulation to an unchanging condition, it creates a system of wonderment within an ever-expanding boundary of possibilties. Even the game’s susceptibility to bugs and its ungainly interfaces belie a wild expansiveness, technical byproducts of a thing attempting to do things no one planned for it to do.

These less refined elements provide another quality that few video games bother with, incentive toward moderation and reminders that there is just as much insight and experience to be had outside the game as within it. “Kerbal” is best appreciated as a space for lingering contemplation spread across three radically different dimensions of experience — the theoretical, cinematic, and subjective. Like space travel itself, the deeper one goes, the greater the sense of smallness, creating a burgeoning humility for how much is still undiscovered.

Thomsen is a freelance writer.