#spacewar

[videogamepolls]

Have you played Spacewar! (1962)?

Yes

No

I watched someone play it

I've never heard of it

Voting ended onMay 14, 2025

Requested by @driver270

[thejaymo]

COMPUTER SPACE (1971)

"In 1971, a Californian entrepreneur named Nolan Bushnell decided to deliver Spacewar! to the masses. Computer Space—essentially Spacewar repackaged—was the first modern coin-operated arcade game."

SPACE WAR! (1962)

Spacewar! is a space combat video game developed in 1962 by Steve Russell in collaboration with Martin Graetz, Wayne Wiitanen, Bob Saunders, Steve Piner, and others. It was written for the newly installed DEC PDP-1 minicomputer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

"the popularization of video games is better traced to Steve Russell, a graduate student who studied at MIT in the early 1960s. Russell is commonly credited for creating Spacewar with the help of collabora- tors. In Spacewar, each competitor controlled a spaceship. The players navigated the ships on a flat plane around a central sun (with simulated gravity) and attempted to destroy each other with missiles. In an interview with a reporter from Rolling Stone magazine, Russell described Spacewar not as a game, but as a way to “simulate a reasonably complicated physical system and actually see what is going on.”

Came across this whilst researching my book. Thought it was cool.

Quotes from Virtual Justice: The New Laws of Online Worlds by Greg Lastowka (2011) Read more about Computer Space at the Online Museum of play

[wagglewings]

gamer month has arrived

[blasteffect]

The extensive cloud of debris Russia’s anti-satellite test created

Early this week, Russia launched a missile that destroyed the country’s Kosmos 1408 satellite, a large spacecraft that orbited the Earth roughly 300 miles up. The breakup of the satellite created at least 1,500 pieces of trackable fragments, according to the US State Department, as well as thousands of smaller pieces that cannot be tracked. 

All of those pieces are still in low Earth orbit, moving at thousands of miles an hour and posing a threat to any objects that might cross their path. Initially, that even included the International Space Station, with crew members on board forced to take shelter in their spacecrafts as the debris cloud from the satellite passed by the ISS a couple of times.

It’s going to take weeks or even months to fully understand just how bad the situation is, but early visualizations of the ASAT test created by satellite trackers show an extensive trail of space debris left in the wake of the breakup. 

The fragments appear like a dotted snake in orbit, stretching out and moving in roughly the same direction that Kosmos 1408 used to move around Earth. And there’s one thing the visualizers agree on: this snake of debris isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. “There will be some potential collision risk to most satellites in [low Earth orbit] from the fragmentation of Cosmos 1408 over the next few years to decades,” LeoLabs, a private space tracking company in the US sais.

A screengrab of a visualization, created by Hugh Lewis

[tuteramone]

[contac]

[abdulaziz2026]

كانت أول لعبة كمبيوتر، عبارة عن قتال بين سفينتين فضائيتين، وكانت اللعبة تسمى Spacewar سبيسوير وهي لعبة فيديو فضائية تم إنتاجها في سنة 1962، تعتبر واحدة من أقدم ألعاب الفيديو وقد تم تصميمها من قِبل المبرمجان في معهد ماساتشوستس للتكنولوجيا، ستيف راسل ومارتن جريتز، وهي عبارة عن برنامج بسيط باستخدام صاروخين يطلقان على بعضهما البعض.

[retroscifiarts]

| Colin Kapp's Book "The Ion War" Cover by Ken Barr 👨🏻‍🎨🎨 (1978) • ❌➡️ Follow @retro_scifiarts 🛸 • • • [Apparel can be found at] •▫️www.scifi-nation.com ▫️(Link in Bio) • • • #scifi #vintagescifi #scifiart #scifiworld #fantasyart #70s #ufoart #fantasyworld #vintagebooks #scifiartwork #sciencefiction #sciencefictionart #spacewar #sciencefictionbooks #retroart #classicart #scififantasy #colinkapp #fantasyfiction #scifibooks #retroscifi #classicscifi #kenbarr #ufos #scifination #retro_scifiarts https://www.instagram.com/p/CEzW2skIAM1/?igshid=10z8ga7w58b1h