Bethesda brought a few content creators over to the US Space and Rocket Center for a unique experience. To prepare for Starfield, they got to play in a real life space camp.
Tiktokers Astro Alexandra and Filip Zieba, and YouTubers Myth and LilyPichu, were all brought to Huntsville, Alabama, to see some of the artifacts of NASA’s own space exploration, as well as get a real life feel of what it would be like to really imagine yourself going out into space.
The US Space and Rocket Center is essentially the NASA Museum that is open to the public. It does also offer the US Space Camp, an educational camp that gives anyone the chance to experience what it would be like to be an astronaut. The camp these content creators got to experience was basically the short tour, to relate to some things that they can also experience in Starfield.
For their first Space Camp experience, the content creators were placed in the 1/6th chair. This isn’t exactly like a chair for sitting, as it’s a contraption that allows the rocket center to simulate the gravity of the moon, and other planets. They practiced different jumps with different gravities, to simulate using the Starfield boost packs to get around planets.
Their second experience, was, well, an actual honest to goodness simulation of what you would do in the International Space Station. The content creators were tasked with repairing the ammonia tank assembly, referred to by the technical name of EVA, or extravehicular assembly. All that means is any work done outside a spacecraft. The name of this task was teamwork, which is also something you’ll need with your NPC teammates in Starfield. I suppose it’s actually kind of a boring task, unless you’ve seen the Sandra Bullock film Gravity.
The final task takes them on the multi-axis trainer, which is probably one of the most well known and iconic astronaut training equipment. As seen in many music videos, documentaries, and movies, this is the device that you get strapped onto while it spins you around. This experience simulates the feeling of losing control of a spaceship. We don’t know if Bethesda fully simulated that feeling, but we’re happy to report nobody who took this challenge lost their lunch doing so.
This goes without saying, but when Bethesda set this up, it wasn’t some hypothetical out of touch scenario. Todd Howard himself personally toured the same US Space and Rocket Center, as well as the nearby Marshall Space Flight Center, and even visited SpaceX, in the course of Bethesda’s research for Starfield. There’s no doubt many Bethesda employees experienced what they also did to make their game.
You’ll probably enjoy watching these content creators relate what they experienced to what it will be like when they actually play Starfield, but even if you never get to go to Space Camp yourself, you’ll get a portion of that feeling when you play Starfield for yourself.
Starfield will be releasing on September 6, 2023, on Xbox Series X|S and Windows via Steam. It will also be Day One on Game Pass. You can watch the video below.
