Project Space Station

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Project Space Station is a game published in 1985 by HESware, originally written for the Commodore 64 home computer, then ported out to both the Apple computer and PC compatibles.

Before he developed a string of venerable flight sims for LucasArts (Their Finest Hour, X-Wing etc.), Larry Holland designed this exceptional NASA mission simulator that gives you the chance to build a space station. This gargantuan task requires astute planning of space shuttle launches over the next 15 years to carry the necessary components for the station. NASA's help in the game shows in the excellent realistic factors, from budgetary concerns to R&D projects you can take in hopes of making discoveries that will save lives and time.

On the other hand, several aspects of the game are (in retrospect) decidedly unrealistic. For example, the two shuttles at the player's disposal for building the space station can be returned to flight in as little as one week, something that could never be achieved in real life (NASA did originially planned the shuttle to be ready to launch again in two weeks after landing). In fact, crash landing the shuttle at top speed would put it out of commission for only about 6 weeks. Of course, without these compromises on realism the game would have been rather long and tedious, like the real thing.

One frustrating aspect of the game were the personalities of the crew characters. Research on space station projects would grind to a halt over mere personality conflicts, so the player was forced to shuffle crew on or off projects in a quest to make the project successful. Progress reports hinted at what kind of crew was needed, but these clues were rather unspecific.

An apparent bug resulted in a possible cheat on the budget phase. After allocating all funds to the module subcategory, a player can go purchase one or more modules, and return to find that the total amount of money available was greater than the initial 10 billion dollars originally allocated. This came in handy when the operations budget ballooned to cover the salaries of spare astronauts kept on the station to rotate in or out of R&D projects to make them successful.