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terraforming mars... by digging.


Nuke

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At a scale height of 11km, it would take 56km before the pressure hits atmospheric. Of course, the temperature will be higher down there, increasing scale height, so call it ~60km.

In contrast, you can dig down a few dozen meters and put in an airlock to achieve the same effect.

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On 9/28/2024 at 10:18 AM, AckSed said:

This is exactly how the Appendix in the boardgame High Frontier describes its (inhabited) space-mining operations: the robots are on the surface of the benighted spacerock while the workers are orbiting in an artificial-gravity habitat and telepresencing in.

Given the title of the game I assume it likely takes its world building ideas from Dr. O'Neill's case-building book The High Frontier?  I really should read that book.  I watched interviews with him as a kid and was sold on the general idea of orbital habitats and manufacturing in space from him and, of course, books like Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama

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2 hours ago, darthgently said:

Given the title of the game I assume it likely takes its world building ideas from Dr. O'Neill's case-building book The High Frontier?  I really should read that book.  I watched interviews with him as a kid and was sold on the general idea of orbital habitats and manufacturing in space from him and, of course, books like Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama

Not only that; Phil Eklund is an ex-aerospace engineer who has been refining High Frontier (with the help of others in Ion Game Design) for decades. To give an idea of how grounded this is in speculative space science, there are citations in the game manual, every faction is real or based on a real organisation, and every piece of technology is listed in an appendix, each with a citation to the design or concept it originally came from. It's a time-capsule of 2020 astrofuturism.

I love it.

Edit: if you're willing to put up with the clunkiness of VASSAL, there is a free HF4All module. The downloadable rules are available on Ion Games' website and it has a solo mode.

Edited by AckSed
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