Buzz Aldrin's Space Program Manager

Buzz Aldrin's Space Program Manager is a turn-based strategy game about the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union, beginning in the mid-1950s and culminating in crewed lunar landing missions. You direct a space agency, manage its budget and personnel, develop spacecraft and other hardware, and launch missions. You can play as NASA, the Soviet Space Agency or the fictional Global Space Agency (GSA), which combines programs from major space agencies around the world.

Lead a space agency

Manage your agency from its early years through the race to the Moon. Open programs, allocate research and development funds to improve hardware, recruit and train astronaut candidates, and assign them to missions. You also develop facilities with structures and upgrades such as the Vehicle Assembly Building and Mission Control Centre, and assemble teams of Scientists, Engineers, Technicians (SET) and Flight Controllers. Components have reliability factors and can cause catastrophic failures.

Campaigns and sandbox

In the NASA and Soviet campaigns, you compete to be the first to the Moon. The GSA campaign instead has you meet government requests and short-term goals, focusing on exploration rather than competition. All three agencies also have a Sandbox mode, where you can try different approaches without competition restrictions or political pressure. The race-to-the-Moon campaign can be played against other players through Slitherine’s PBEM system.

Programs and missions

You can develop dozens of space programs and research components across several program categories. The game includes missions based on real programs and hardware, as well as concepts that were planned but never launched. Examples include the X-15 and PKA space planes, Sputnik, the Mercury, Voskhod, Apollo and Soyuz crewed spacecraft, and the Mars Viking probe. You can also pursue alternative plans for reaching the Moon, including the Gemini Earth Orbit Rendezvous (EOR) and Gemini Direct Ascent (DA) approaches instead of Apollo’s Lunar Orbit Rendezvous (LOR). The available choices let you rewrite the course of the space race across different playthroughs.

Historical references

The game draws on historical research for its database of launched missions and proposals that never left the drawing board. Its 3D mission components appear in animated sequences, and the Buzz-opedia provides background on real programs, missions and hardware. Each space agency has its own soundtrack playlist, alongside additional tracks for mission animations.