02-28-2015, 02:46 PM
I've just stumbled upon this amazing video by astronomer Scott Manley. It shows the solar system out to Jupiter, with all the known asteroids over time. Each is color-coded according to how far it comes into the inner solar system, and highlighted when they are first discovered.
It's a really fascinating watch — I recommend hitting the full-screen button so you can better see what's going on.
The video only goes up to 2012, by which time there were over half a million known asteroids. Each one of those could probably supply all the materials needed for a decent-sized space colony (we can't yet see the really small ones except when they happen to buzz past the Earth, which is rare).
This is, unfortunately, one place where we're going to have to skimp on realism a bit in High Frontier... while you certainly will be able to build a lot of colonies in the main asteroid belt, the sheer scale of reality is too much to capture in a video game!
It's a really fascinating watch — I recommend hitting the full-screen button so you can better see what's going on.
The video only goes up to 2012, by which time there were over half a million known asteroids. Each one of those could probably supply all the materials needed for a decent-sized space colony (we can't yet see the really small ones except when they happen to buzz past the Earth, which is rare).
This is, unfortunately, one place where we're going to have to skimp on realism a bit in High Frontier... while you certainly will be able to build a lot of colonies in the main asteroid belt, the sheer scale of reality is too much to capture in a video game!