I've recently been playing this game with my friends:
http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/47055/high-frontier
As space buffs we're really, really enjoying it. It's a boardgame that lets you plan various space missions to exotic locales like the Moon, Mars, and various asteroids.
And it features exoglobalization wherein various space agencies try to build factories in space - with the factories primarily generating water for spaceship fuel (cheaper than to lift water from earth to LEO), and various nanotech products which need zero G to be produced.
For instance, in my last game I started off with a manned mission to the trojan Eureka using a solar sail, which returned scientific samples and earned me VP. Then I setup a Mars base by first sending the ship to Deimos, where we extracted water to get enough fuel for a landing. With the factory in Mars, I was then able to improve my Solar Sail so that I could use it for a manned mission to Mercury, which gave me the game.
So... my question is this: How realistic is this game based on current known science? Are we really going to space to make factories which produce super-strong carbon nanotubes which cannot be produced on Earth? Can we use that stuff to make a Space Elevator? Presentation-wise, the game looks solid on the science side (and it was designed by a rocket scientist) but I was wondering what the science buffs in SD.net think of it.
"High Frontier" - How Realistic is It?
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Re: "High Frontier" - How Realistic is It?
Pretty unlikely. At the atomic scale and on the timescale of molecular interaction, thermal and quantum effects utterly dominate over gravity. Gravity is relevant for some slow processes such as crystal growth that depend on maintaining a uniform environment over a relatively large volume, but the whole point of nanotech manufacturing is to replace bulk chemical processes with ones that keep the relevant molecules under positive direct control (the way that enzyme-catalysed biochemistry works). None of our current techniques (e.g. 22 nanometer semiconductor manufacturing) would benefit from zero-G, it might make some things a little easier but it would also make lots of things more difficult. As for high vacuum, you would need ridiculously cheap orbital lift capability for that to be cheaper than just building vacuum chambers, and again it makes some things a little easier but a lot of other stuff harder (e.g. having to switch to vacuum-safe lubricants for all the machinery, have to maintain things in spacesuits).Zinegata wrote:So... my question is this: How realistic is this game based on current known science? Are we really going to space to make factories which produce super-strong carbon nanotubes which cannot be produced on Earth?
If you already have a large-scale space colony it will make sense to put some manufacturing processes in zero-g (non-spun) and/or unpressurised modules, but manufacturing things is not a compelling reason to build a space colony in the first place.