9.2 TIPS FOR INEXPERIENCED ROCKET CADETS 9.0 BACKGROUND “What do I do first?” You need to research a card (thruster or 9.1 DESIGNER’S NOTES robonaut) with a low fuel consumption. A “1” is great, a “4” The original concept for this game was a “Lords of the Sierra Madre” in is marginal. The PRC player*** can consider an dash to space. With mines, ranches, smelters, and rail lines all purchased and claim Hellas Basin on Mars, using just his crew card. He controlled by different players, who have to negotiate between them- needs 19 fuel steps (6 WT) along the red route to do this. selves to expand. But space does not work this way. “What does my rocket need?” Your rocket needs 4 things: Suppose you have a smelter on one main-belt asteroid, powered by a • A card with a thruster triangle (2.4D) to act as a thruster. • A card with an ISRU rating, if its mission is to prospect. beam-station on another asteroid, and you discover platinum on a third • A refinery, if its mission is to build a factory. nearby asteroid. Unfortunately for long-term operations, next year these • Enough fuel to get to the destination. asteroids will be separated by 2 to 6 AUs.* Furthermore, main belt Decide between a small rocket able to make multiple claims, Hohmann transfers are about 2 years long, with optimal transfer opportu- or a big rocket including a refinery and robonaut able to nities about 7 years apart. Jerry Pournelle in his book “A Step Farther industrialize the first successful claim. The big rocket will be Out” argues that a “belter civilization” is impossible for these reasons. more expensive to boost and to fuel. From a given asteroid, it’s easier to get to and from Earth than from another asteroid (unless the asteroids are in the same Hirayama family). “I need funds!” Researching a card and selling on the Free So, the game design had to make travel between asteroids take a long Market is almost always superior to the Income Operation. time, but not cost so much fuel (low delta-v). “OK, I have a rocket boosted, where do I go to prospect?” Space travel is extraordinarily inefficient compared to surface travel. Both Look at unclaimed sites for their hydration (your ISRU must fuel and propellant are conspicuously missing in all that emptiness. Every be at least equal to land) and size (your prospecting roll bit of mass is valuable in space. Water and dirt, both dirt-cheap on Earth, must be equal to or less for success). These are the most become expensive propellants out there. In order to husband the important rules in the game. valuable supply of propellant, it has to be expelled as fast as possible. “OK, how do I get there, and how much fuel?” The tapestry of Kinetic energy scales as the velocity squared, so all the energy squan- space is extraordinarily complex. The daunting labyrinthine dered making the propellant move fast leaves little to move your rocket. map is designed around the “interplanetary transport This is why rockets are power hogs, each needing 10X or a 100X more network” (Hohmann spirals distorted by Lagrange gravita- energy than a factory. An electric rocket in this game consumes 60 MWe tional points). Beginners should follow signpost routes, to develop barely enough thrust to lift me off the ground on Earth. And and stop at each Hohmann intersection where a turn is thus, this game centers on rocket design more than factory location. necessary. Bring steps of fuel equal to your fuel consump- Because LEO is drier than the driest desert, there is money to be made by tion times the number of burns to your destination. Unless importing water from nearby worlds. The closest hydrated body to LEO, making an aerobrake or direct landing, don’t forget to bring speaking in delta-v terms, is the moonlet Deimos (closer than the Earth, lander fuel equal to the site’s size. Or better yet, bring a 9•6 closer than Luna.) Google “The Deimos Water Company” by David Kuck thruster (like missile crews). Switching to this during the of Oracle, Arizona for details. turn of touchdown saves lander fuel. Imagine MET tugs working an asteroid mine 10 km/sec from LEO. Every “OK, what is a lander?” Interplanetary spaceships, with their gram of ore returned will need 2.718 grams of water propellant to move it unwieldy radiators and low thrust engines, seldom land on to LEO.** Therefore, every nugget of material moved must be refined as a world. It is assumed they carry a chemical lander for that. pure as possible before freighting it, and there must be a source of water Thus, lander fuel is independent of your engine, unless you at the site. And the rocket transport itself must be as light as possible. have a modified thrust greater than the site size. If so, you Rockets with gossamer radiators and spidery trusses will glide with a can land or lift off directly for no fuel. However, the larger majesty that recalls the featherweight bulk of Zeppelins. worlds are surrounded by burns that cost fuel to escape: 1 burn for Luna, 2 for Mars and Mercury, and 4 for Venus. The High Frontier is a frontier of mysteries. Why are there no worlds of size 7 or 8? Why do the largest Trojans have the most tilted orbits? Why does “OK, I prospected. What refinery do I need to build a factory?” Hyperion rotate chaotically? Nobody knows. Phil Eklund, 2010. Any refinery can be used to build any factory. However, if you are using a factory to build new refineries, the refinery *1 AU is the average Sol-Earth distance. ***NASA and ESA players can do this as well, but risk **Calculated using the rocket equation, see the footer being claim jumped by the PRC if he is in the game. built must have a product letter matching the site spectra. on page 1. 2.718 is Euler’s number. This is the most commonly confused rule of the game. Beam-Energy – An electric rocket has a high fuel Manufactories vs. Nanofactories – The ancient Aerostat Gondola Factories – A factory floating economy but suffers from a low acceleration if it manufacturing style of engineering handles atoms and in an atmosphere can liquefy valuable gases for carries its massive powerplant and generator around. molecules in bulk. This has produced everything from propellants and fusion fuels. For instance, a If it receives its energy from a laser beam instead, it is flint chips to computer chips. The new zero-gee hydrogen-balloon factory floating just beneath the much faster. Such a beamed-power system would nanofacturing engineering handles individual atoms clouds on Venus extracts hydrogen, carbon, need: (a) the high efficiency production of megawatt and molecules. It constructs objects using sequences oxygen, nitrogen, sulfur, and possibly phospho- laser beams, (b) adaptive optics with handshake of chemical reactions directed by nonbiological rous from the “air de Venus”. Contrasted with the feedback over light-minutes of range, (c) a receiving molecular machinery. The fullerene C60 nanotubes, hellish surface, temperatures and pressures at Fresnel lens (actually a series of thin lenses, as a nicknamed “Buckytubes”, will be the most important such altitudes (50 km) are about Earth normal. normal lens would be far too heavy), and finally (d) a nanofacturing product. The space production of Humans working outside the gondola won’t need blackbody cavity or photovoltaics to convert the beam carbon nanotubes doesn’t introduce catalyst impurities space suits, only an oxygen tank and protection energy into useful electricity or thrust. High Frontier and isn’t restricted on length, as it is on Earth. from the acid rain. On Saturn, a hot air balloon assumes a 60 MW beam; currently only gas lasers Depending on their structure, diameter, and chirality, some 212 meters across would extract the rare provide such powers. The output wavelength for a nanotubes with diameters in the nanometer range have isotope Helium 3 for use in clean fusion reactors CO2 laser is 10.6 µm (infrared), which is not great either metallic or semiconducting properties. Kevlar- back on Earth. Liquefaction of 2200 ton/yr of because the longer the wavelength, the wider the coated nanotube composites and nanotube-reinforced 3He-D fusion fuel, plus 4800 ton/yr of H2 beam spread due to diffraction and the less energy plastics exhibit ultrahigh tensile strength and stiffness. propellant, requires 10 MWe, plus another 400 carried per photon. What is needed is a solid state or Nanotubes can form the backbone structures of MWe for separation processes. These sites are disk laser with blue or green light output, however so molecular machinery, or can be used as fine flexible windy (350 kph on Venus, 1440 kph on Saturn), far solid media cannot withstand the high fluences for fibers woven to fifty times the strength of an equivalent and deep in the gravity well. The escape delta-v is a continuous cw or pulsed run. mass of aluminum. Courtesy K. Eric Drexler 10 km/sec on Venus and 15 km/sec on Saturn. Personal communication, Dr.Andrew V. Pakhomov and Dr. Leik Myrabo. 12 Courtesy Peter Kokh, “Moon Miners Manifesto”, 2009. 9.3 GAME SCALE 9.4 PATENT DESCRIPTIONS The technology of High Frontier is real. • Each turn is one Earth year. Note: Temperatures are listed in degrees Kelvin (K), (where 0 K is absolute zero, and water boils at 372 • Each Crew card is an eight-man crew with life support.