YOU ARE GO! is a privately-held, New Jersey-based firm that specializes in creating spacecraft simulations for the educational and the space flight enthusiast market. YOU ARE GO! was founded by Joseph Nastasi, the principle designer of our current product, A-OK! The Wings of Mercury 2.1.1. YOU ARE GO! is owned by Pyramid Design, a software and web design and consultant firm.

Our plans for YOU ARE GO! extend to a complete product line of space simulations. Some are obvious, others revolutionary in concept.

We feel that using space simulations in education is an excellent way to excite kids and show them the real-world application of many subjects. A line from a poem written by Mr. Nastasi sums up our philosophy: “as far as we reach out into space, as deep we reach inside ourselves.”

Company History
A longtime, passionate interest in space flight and spacecraft technology grew to a fever pitch when he first visited the Air & Space museum in 1981. “I remember looking at John Glenn’s capsule and literally laughing out loud in the middle of the museum! All the years dreaming of space flight built up an unrealistic expectation of what these things actually look like.”

He remembers being both horrified and amused at Mercury’s crudeness. “Exposed wiring and plumbing, clunky switches (that looked all too similar to ones I ripped out of old radio equipment as a child), even the grease-pencil notes on the cockpit wall made Mercury look like the product of an Andy Hardy movie, you know: Mike’s got an old radio, Jenny’s dad has an old diving suit and we can use my grandpa’s barn as Mercury Control.” Mr. Nastasi spent the next decade researching not only Mercury, but Gemini, Apollo and many of the unmanned probes as well.

It is this deep knowledge of early space flight technology that has made Mr. Nastasi a resource for those seeking out information. Mr. Nastasi, through his association with some of NASA’s Public Affairs Officers, has been involved with HBO’s live web coverage of “From Earth to the Moon,” NOVA’s “To The Moon”, a Martin Caiden article on John Glenn and, most recently, as contributor to a NASA history project, The Mission Transcript Collection.

This was not the first time the idea for a spacecraft simulator had crossed his mind. A software engineer by trade, Mr. Nastasi designed a Mercury simulation for the Commodore-64 back in 1982. The computer was not powerful enough to support the level of realism that was desired, so he put the project on the shelf.

When he bought his first Macintosh in 1990, Mr. Nastasi again started to investigate the idea of a spacecraft simulator. Once again, he turned to the Mercury program whose goal was simply achieving and surviving earth orbit. “This simulation was not going to be a cut-down toy. I wanted to duplicate every last switch. And since Mercury was much easier to understand and duplicate than Apollo or even Gemini, I started to design a prototype of its control panel.”

Using HyperCard as his main design tool, Mr. Nastasi spent most of his spare time in 1991 mapping Mercury’s multitude of switches, gauges and indicators to the computer screen. After the prototype was finished, the project was again put on ice until the founding of Innovative Technologies. That firm was originally formed to create industrial interactive simulations, providing firms with custom, cost-effective software simulations of hazardous equipment for training purposes on the Apple Macintosh platform. His interest in space flight gave Mr. Nastasi the idea to create a simulation of a spacecraft as a demonstration of what Innovative Technologies was capable of.

Based on the reactions he received from space flight enthusiasts who saw the prerelease version of the simulator, it was decided to change the focus of the company to producing space flight simulations for the enthusiast market. After months of 80 hour weeks, the software was released in June of 1994 and a 2.0 version was release seven months later. Both versions were well received by the press with positive reviews in Astronomy, OMNI and Quest, the Space flight History Magazine.

Lack of funding forced Innovative Technologies to disband, but interest in A-OK! continued. Mr. Nastasi set up an web site in 1997 and sold A-OK! exclusively on the web. In reviewing all of the customer profiles and comments, it was obvious that there was a large and growing interest shown by educators. The number one request: a teacher’s guide.

During 1997, 3D artwork was designed for a possible new version. During that time, Mr. Nastasi was looking for a tool to help speed development. HyperCard was not really suitable for a real-time simulation, even with XCMDs speeding up execution of critical routines.

At the New York City MacWorld in July, 1998, Mr. Nastasi picked up a CD containing REALbasic, a newly commercialized version of a shareware program called Cross Basic. After a few weeks, it was obvious that REALbasic’s object-oriented, rapid prototyping ability, the ease of the Basic syntax and the compiled nature of the programs created with it, was a perfect fit for A-OK!.

Since that time, a strong customer relationship has been built with Real Software whose responsiveness to add features that we needed made the project all the more viable.

As the design progressed, it was obvious to us that A-OK! the Wings of Mercury would be a winner in the educational and space enthusiast market. That realization lead to the launch of YOU ARE GO!.