Sitting In My Tin Can

I didn’t spend all my time sitting before a computer screen when I was a kid, but let me tell you, my Commodore 64 home computer was truly a fixture throughout my preteen life. The depth and complexity of some of the software titles defied programming logic of today by their astoundingly efficient design, and made for endless hours of intrigue and entertainment due to the ingenuity of their programming.

One such program I remember vividly was “Project: Space Station”, a multifaceted simulation of sheer brilliance that was somehow crammed onto but a single 5 ¼ “ floppy diskette. For those of you younger than thirty years old, a 5 ¼ “ double density floppy diskette could hold about 700,000 bytes of data. To put it into a more modern context, an optical CD-ROM has the data storage equivalency of about 600 of these now obsolete magnetic media units.

    

From keeping your rocket-bound shuttles on invisible rails throughout the launching, to determining which materials and personnel are crucial to the continuance of your orbiting research facility, Project: Space Station put you in the Chief’s chair. For me, the most fun was to be had in arranging the various modules in space using the “Orbital Constructor Pod” – a one-man vessel that gripped the pieces and maneuvered around by farting-out nitrogen. Solar panels, habitation quarters, radiator panels, and laboratories could be connected like Lego blocks in arrangements limited only by your imagination… and most importantly, your budget. Keeping everything within the money was the most challenging aspect of all, and rightfully so – as for any viable, worthwhile simulation, approximation of reality is the penultimate ideal.    

Seeing the awe-inspiring and surreal treatment of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” as performed by Canada’s own Chris Hadfield reminded me of Project: Space Station. There he is, “sitting in a tin can” for real! Being a guitar player myself, it was evident that Mr. Hadfield knows his bar chords, and his vocal performance was indeed, out of this world. It was nothing short of beautiful. Project: Space Station was beautiful in its own right for being ahead of its time. Looking at the International Space Station, I can’t help but think that its designers must have tried their hand at this astounding piece of software history.