I tried to teach a group of HS students about orbital mechanics as a high school physics teacher using KSP. It was... difficult. Not impossible. But I agree it's an excellent learning tool.
Right, the UI/UX is a lot to just get to the rocket part.
KSP is probably the best game that forces that into your head with a classic simulation that's fun, but I gotta say something like Rocket League was better at building my intuition for rocket behaviors.
Yeah, it's amazing. With enough docking and maneuvering practice I developed some kind of intuition for moving in space. I could maneuver without meticulously planning the burns.
I'm a professional astrodynamicist and I owe my base level understanding of orbital mechanics to KSP. It's a fantastic resource for learning the basics of Keplerian motion.
I doubt SpaceX could put a satellite in orbit with KSP physics. Just the absence of realistic thermal conduction would prevent it. The outer skin temperature typically peaks around 300–600 °C during the densest part of the atmosphere. If you calculate those forces wrong the rocket has a bad day. Best case it is over engineered and has a reduced payload. They might as well do their calculations with pi equal to 3.
Until I played KSP, I had no idea how hard orbit was compared with just going up into space (and generally the greater population thinks the same -- they think that sending New Shephard upto 100km is about the same as sending a Dragon into orbit). I had no idea how you move in orbit, how getting from low earth equitorial orbit to Jupiter takes less energy than getting from the same ship to a polar orbit (and even then that the only real way to change your orbit like that is to go out beyond the moon and back), etc.
