Golden Studios - Space Apps Challenge

Golden Studios| Orbital Scrap Metal – The Video Game V2.0

Orbital Scrap Metal – The Video Game V2.0

Orbital debris is an ever-increasing threat to space assets such as Earth observation satellites and space stations and explorers. Your challenge is to create an orbital debris collection videogame web-app and imagine the possibilities of new companies that collect orbital debris and salvage the scrap metal to manufacture new products in space.

Astro Text Adventure

Summary

Play in a retro text adventure game where you explore space and collect space junk in the comfort of your home!

How We Addressed This Challenge

More than 500,000 pieces of debris, or “space junk,” are tracked as they orbit the Earth. They all travel at speeds up to 17,500 mph, fast enough for a relatively small piece of orbital debris to damage a satellite or a spacecraft.

This project was our way of adding a fun twist to collecting space debris and using it to make a little bit of money to progress. With new generations not exposed to the dangers of orbital scrap metal, we wanted to have a text game where players explore space and collect scrap metal. NASA takes the threat of collisions with space debris seriously and has a long-standing set of guidelines on how to deal with each potential collision threat. We hope this game can be used in K-12 classrooms as an introduction to space explorations .

How We Developed This Project

Over the course of development we pondered ways to address the problem at hand, and how to make a game of it. Even though the shop was not added to the final product, it is fully developed and ready to go. It took quite a bit of time to get the collection features and combat implemented, so we were left unable to implement the shop. However, the shop valued debris down to even the smallest bit. This project was developed in the python programming language, and we had a lot of fun making it. Throughout the code there are comments that label each section up until we finished. We will make plans to continue the project even after this Hackathon is over.

How We Used Space Agency Data in This Project

We used facts from NASA's Orbital Debris and used the SpaceBird JSON file to determine the length and actions that should take place in the text game. Since our team doesn't have a background in space exploration or orbital space metal, we used these pages to design the scenarios we would put in the game!

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/news/orbital_debris.html

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/WorldWindLabs/SpaceBirds/master/data/all_on-orbit_bodies.json

Project Demo

https://youtu.be/joxhGH7mn1o

Project Code

https://github.com/amcgee3/Astro-Text-Adventure

Data & Resources