How Accurate is Starfield's Space Travel? We Asked an Expert
“Our mission was to convey the wonder and majesty of space exploration, to evoke the golden-age of early spaceflight, and we’ve been referring to this approach as ‘NASA Punk’”. That’s how Starfield art director Istvan Pely described the distinctive look of Bethesda’s latest grand-scale RPG during a lengthy presentation earlier this Summer.
It was the first time we were given a truly in-depth look at the spacecraft that would inhabit Bethesda’s sprawling sci-fi universe and its ‘NASA Punk’ aesthetic. “This means a design language where the tech is advanced, yet still looks grounded and relatable,” expounded Pely.
To mark Starfield’s launch IGN drafted in the expertise of Robert Chambers, a real-life spaceship expert (yes, really), to analyze what Starfield gets right about space travel, its NASA Punk aesthetic, ship design, and a whole lot more.
Chambers is the Director of Strategy for human spaceflight at Lockheed Martin, the company developing NASA's next generation Orion spacecraft, which is set to return humanity to lunar space for the first time since the end of the Apollo-era over 50 years ago. Alongside personally working on the Orion spacecraft, Chambers is also a fan of the Elder Scrolls and Fallout RPG series, so he’s the perfect person to critique Bethesda's self described 'NASA Punk' Starfield aesthetic.
We showed Chambers scenes from spaceship interiors featured in the June Starfield Direct gameplay deep-dive to see if Bethesda's 'NASA Punk' style and its nods to realistic spaceship design is grounded in reality.
“That little command center in the cockpit is spot on,” notes Chambers, immediately taken by the realism of the touch screen controls. “You know, the shuttle had like 2,500 switches and dials. For Orion
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