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Comment by rowanseymour | Hacker News Reader

So excited to play this but also sad that they didn't get the IP to use Kerbals. Not loving the cutesy baby kittens.. should have gone with a more serious animal like capybaras.

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'Kapybara Space Program' has actually already been done as an April Fool's post by the previous studio that worked on Kerbal Space Program 2:

https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/topic/216143-kapybara-s...

I think the angle is at least partially that "Kitten"/"Kerbal" both start with a 'K' and are 2 syllables making the game names sound very similar (in both full form and abbreviation).

Of course, I'm sure there will be Kerbal mods if the game proves anywhere near as popular!

"Kapybara"

The main reason for them being kittens is to incentivize valuing the astronauts lives without forcing a gameplay related penalty for killing or losing them. The disposability of astronauts is something the devs of this game think was a mistake in KSP. But at the same it's not a game about forcing the player to behave a certain way, so making them kittens is the middle ground.

What disposability? Kerbals were never disposable! If you crash your little green astronauts on some moon or planet, you're supposed to send a rescue mission after them. And should that rescue fail too, stranding more Kerbals, you just keep launching more rescue missions, until you successfully establish a colony :).

Rescue missions were one of the funniest and challenging parts of KSP, and a cannonical meme of the community.

Giant tardigrades would have been fun. Serious, authentic space travelers... not so much on the cuteness factor, though.

The next spiritual successor should allow us to customise the species, and let us deal with whatever consequences that might bring!

Like, you might have a aquatic space-faring species, which requires you to bring lots of water into space. More rockets (and struts!) will be needed, but at least you get really good radiation protection out of it!

Tardigrades ought to be a cheat code, you can just glue your crew to the outside of the booster and they'll probably be alright so long as you don't glue them to the fiery end!

I don't know why but I found myself thinking "Capybaras would make much more sense." And I meant it.

Something about their resolute "ok I'll deal with this" facial expressions while being absolute units body-wise seem right for comical astronauts.

I bet there will be mods in no time to bring the Kerbals back :)

There was a mod within 24 hours of the tech demo being released :)

Perhaps it will be moddable to have whatever animal a modder might choose to put in there.

I'd like to play Minion Space Program.

Aren't the kerbals basically minions with dignity?

Not mine. My kerbin's ocean is full of them now.

Not sure if that's more or less bad than the dozens of kerbals polluting my LKO for, uh... reasons.

Since I play with no mods I guess they're all still technically alive since they don't require food or water and have an apparently infinite supply of oxygen.

Isn’t that NASA?

I would play this if it allowed one to steal the moon.

Yeah I don't think i can stomach cute kittens in my rockets that go boom on launch at least 80% of times. At least Kerbals were strange enough i didnt care

KSP 2 killed the franchise so decisively the KSA devs might be able to license Kerbals for not too much.

Day -1 mod will bring space frogs back.

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