Buzz Aldrin once famously pronounced that he had only two interests: “Space exploration and hip hop.” Similarly, while YouTuber Scott Manley has made a name for himself with his videos on rocketry, astrophysics and general space stuff, it turns out that—as befits a Scottish man of a certain age—he’s also a DJ. In a new video that brings these two interests together, Manley takes on the hitherto unattempted task of flying a rocket using a DJ controller.
Since he’s not the richest man in the world and thus doesn’t get to smash real rockets into the moon for shits and giggles, Manley’s efforts are confined to Kerbal Space Program, the 2015 rocketry simulator that’s rightly renowned for its impressively accurate physics. Manley has made loads of videos about KSP over the years, and he’s clearly a dab hand on the decks, so if anyone can manage to land a virtual rocket on the virtual moon with a portable DJ controller, it’s probably him.
The first task, of course, is actually getting the controller to, y’know, control. The device Manley’s using appears to be a Numark DJ2GO2, a nifty little USB-powered two-channel gizmo that looks like a whole lot of fun for portable DJing purposes. As he explains, its output is entirely MIDI, so all that needs to be done is to map those inputs to the relevant keys/mouse inputs for the game, and then the stars—well, OK, the KSP moon—awaits.
Still, things get off to a pretty rough start when our hero decides to ease into things by attempting to fly a plane, rather than a rocket. It turns out the controller is awfully sensitive for these purposes, resulting in the sort of take-off that would make you wish you were dead, and the sort of landing that would make you actually dead.
This does not bode well for piloting a rocket into orbit, but it seems that the DJ2GO2’s controls are actually better suited for rocketry than flight—or perhaps Manley’s just got the hang of things a little better by the time he directs his attention to the KSP launchpad. Either way, he gets his rocket into orbit with a minimum of fuss—no small feat, as you’ll know if you’ve ever attempted KSP yourself—and after jettisoning the big old first stage, he’s off to the moon.
And if Manley makes take-off look easy, then he makes easing the lander down onto a soft bed of lunar soil look goddamn trivial. In doing so, he answers a previously unasked question in human history: can you fly a rocket using a DJ controller? The answer, it appears, is “yes.” If you fancy trying this yourself, Manley’s Python code for converting MIDI inputs into KSP commands is available via his Patreon. Godspeed.
