“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 we're down to pretty much these 3 screens, and a couple of dozen switches for manual overrides. So this looks like the inside of the Orion spacecraft, other than [there's] a lot more glass than we get to have on the Orion side.”
He explains that in the real world, spacecraft are designed with much smaller windows than their sci-fi counterparts out of fear that ultra-fast moving micrometeoroid impacts, or tiny pieces of debris could damage the glass.
Of course, Chambers saw just one of the many cockpit designs that players can use to construct and control their ships. Regardless, the comments serve to highlight the balancing act that Todd Howard and his team had to strike when crafting Starfield's NASA Punk aesthetic between including real-world spaceflight design elements, and ensuring that they don’t get in the way of player enjoyment.
It must have been a tightrope walk but judging by Chambers reaction, Bethesda seems to have trodden it well.
For example, most ships in Starfield boast artificial gravity, which allows passengers to walk on the floor as if they were on the surface of a planet. However, Chambers also spotted the hallmarks of realistic spaceship design in the sci-fi technology-infused scenes.
“It looks here like they really put some thought into this thing operating in a non artificial gravity environment as well,” explains Chambers. “Hand holds at the top, a lot of hand holds everywhere, and then the thing I really love is, like, the bolts are appearing.”
Chambers elaborates that he could imagine the crew pulling out the bolts fastened to the ship’s interior in order to reveal hidden compartments. Small environmental touches like this draw Starfield’s environment closer to the design ethos of real world spacecraft, wherein every ounce of space must be used, modified to suit crew needs, and if necessary, repaired, as quickly as possible.
“You never know what's gonna break, and what you're gonna need to fix, I think they got it spot on from those types of things.”
The ‘NASA Punk’ aesthetic made itself known in each subsequent scene, wherein realistic spaceship design concepts were juxtaposed with the sci-fi logic and technological evolution that underpin the far future setting of the game.
For example, upon spotting a bunk in the living quarters Chambers noted that crew don’t have the luxury of a bed aboard a real spaceship. Yet with artificial gravity tech this became possible. More importantly, the presence of the creature comfort was true to the current day real world space exploration truth that “having a space of your own'' is vitally important, particularly as an astronaut gets further away from home.
Chambers also clocked Bethesda’s attention to detail when it came to the technology in the player’s spacesuit, including the backpack, which functions as a life support unit for astronauts in the real world. “When you go out into deep space or on the moon, really anywhere, even in low earth orbit around the moon. There it's really, really cold unless you're in the sun. And then it's really really hot.”
Of course, in Starfield the player’s spacesuit backpack can also function as a booster. Chambers reveals that a similar, albeit less powerful Starfield-esque booster pack could be used by future astronauts exploring the Moon in real life in the coming decades.
“I would say, yeah, give them an ‘A’ on the NASA punk aesthetic. It all looks realistic. It looks like the kind of thing that you need to fix with a Phillips screwdriver and a soldering iron. And that's how we build spacecraft today.”
Chambers also gave his thoughts on the fictional exploration timeline that Bethesda created for the Starfield universe, in which astronauts first set foot on Mars in 2050, and begin living in space full time by the year 2100.
“I watched with interest the timeline Bethesda laid out, and I will say they were pretty conservative on humans to Mars. What we've all been working within the industry is this magic date of 2033.”
According to Chambers, 2033 is the sweet spot for sending humans to Mars in terms of radiation output from the Sun and amount of thrust needed to get there. Furthermore, many of the key technologies that we need to make the trip already exist. “So I think we can get to Mars earlier than the 2050 that Bethesda put in their timeline, I think we can beat him to that.”
However, Chambers thought that Bethesda’s predicted date of 2100 for humans living full time in space was more accurate: “To do that by 2100, was the date that I think that the Bethesda folks put out there, you know, that's actually pretty realistic. The ability to, as part of what NASA is doing with Artemis, the international partners, agencies, and all of industry is to create enough of an infrastructure at the moon that it is essentially self-sustaining.”
Of course Starfield’s timeline extends hundreds of years beyond humanity’s fledgling steps into space, to a time when we have established far-flung colonies among the stars. Our story begins in the year 2330, in a time when space travel has become democratized to the point where companies, pirates, and in some cases even private individuals are able to own starships of their own.