Hi all,

I'm a sometimes space-simulation-software guy with a lot of interests. When I stumbled on the free space flight simulator Orbiter in 2005, I got so excited I wrote a tutorial book about it, Go Play In Space. I have other interests that are mostly inactive, like flying airplanes and doing regular outreach events as a JPL Solar System Ambassador. I still blog occasionally about space and other stuff. I also like to write and record songs. In real life, I'm an optical engineer working for a company that makes optical design software, among other kinds. These days I mostly work with our international distributors.

But enough about me! I'm really happy I stumbled on Joe's and his sons' cool project (I found it through a comment Joe left on a 2013 blog post about space settlements). I've been reading and thinking about space habitats since the seventies. Recently I read two books where space habitats are central, SevenEves by Neal Stephenson and Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson. Both great reads if you've got time because you're not developing a space habitat simulator.  

I'm not sure how much time I will have to play and test High Frontier, but I will do what I can and look forward to the many planned features. As an optics guy, I was pleased that windows and mirrors are coming soon. Thanks to Joe & Sons for doing this!

Cheers,
Bruce Irving

We've finished adding mirrors to design mode.  There are actually two kinds:

• Primary mirrors, which are the big holed-disc mirrors added as a separate part.  You can adjust the outer and hole diameter, and angle them either up or down, depending on where you need the light to go.
• Secondary mirrors, which appear on the spokes of torus and barbell habitat modules when you have selected windows for lighting.  These can also be pointed up or down, to reflect light from the mirrors into the windows (which face the spin axis in this case).
  

Here's another example, a cylinder with slightly inverted endcaps, windows, and mirrors on both ends:

Fun stuff!  We still have probably another weeks' worth of work to do on version 0.17, but all the big hairy features are now done.  We'll get that update out to you just as soon as we can!

When we finally get serious about moving into space, we know with certainty that it will have these two features:

1. Habitats (and often ships) will spin to produce artificial gravity.  How much gravity they will produce, we don't know, because we don't have any data on the long-term effects of living between 0 and 1 G.  But we know 0 G is bad (and 1 G is good), so we know they'll spin to produce some amount of gravity.
2. Ships (and maybe habitats) will be nuclear-powered.  That's because accelerating masses in space takes a lot of energy, and the more mass you have, the more energy is required.  So we need something that has a lot of energy for little mass.
   

This cartoon doesn't depict rocket fuel, but its energy density is roughly the same as gasoline.  Uranium is over a million (!) times better.  So this makes it pretty obvious why spacecraft in the future will be nuclear-powered.  (Fusion would be great if we can manage it, but fission will do fine.)

So, given that this is where we're headed, it's frustrating that we've spent five decades going around in space not advancing either of these core technologies.  They're not that hard; the Russians have sent dozens of nuclear reactors into space, including a 10-kW reactor called TOPAZ-II.  I bet we could do better; our nuclear-powered Navy is the best in the world.

And as for artificial gravity, seriously, just spin the thing.  And collect the data today that we need to plan spacecraft and space colonies of tomorrow.

50 years from now, we will look back at the late 20th and early 21st centuries from our spinning, nuclear-powered spacecraft with astonishment.  How could those people have wasted so much time, when the path forward was so clear?

A new NASA-funded study (see this news article) shows how to colonize the Moon (the sensible next step for where we are now) at 1/10th the cost of previous proposals:

Quote:The study, performed by NexGen Space LLC and partly funded by NASA, concludes that the space agency could land humans on the Moon in the next five to seven years, build a permanent base 10 to 12 years after that, and do it all within the existing budget for human spaceflight. The way for NASA to do this is to adopt the same practice that it's using for resupplying the International Space Station (and will eventually use for crew transport) — public-private partnerships with companies like SpaceX, Orbital ATK, or the United Launch Alliance.

I know it's been a long time now since our last update — and we feel really lousy about that, but we are working hard on the next release, and here's proof.

We've just wrapped up support for windows to all geometry types.  I'm sure we'll work a bit more on the material, but the geometry (which is the hard work) is done and working great!

Here's an example of a cylinder habitat with windows for lighting:

In the "Configuration" panel at lower left, you'll notice a new "Lighting" option (with a pop-up menu, which also required new code, but that's done now).  The options there are "None", "Electric", or "Windows".  New (as well as pre-version-0.17 designs) have this set to "Electric" by default, but if you change it to windows, you get something like the above.

Here's the same option set for sphere...


...and for barbell...


And finally, what is perhaps my favorite, the torus:


This is a great one because it's the approach used in the classic "Stanford Torus" design:

The image above is a ray-traced movie I made many years ago, as accurate to the Stanford Torus design as I could make it.  The big oval thing floating above the space colony itself is a mirror, to reflect light down into the colony.  (It's not positioned quite right relative to the light angle in this image, for artistic reasons.)

We're going to need mirrors in High Frontier, too, and for the same reason.  With the basic windows done, that's next on our list (though at the same time, we're also adding more decorations and water-management buildings).  Stay tuned!

Hi. Some of you may already know me as Sailor Barsoom and even possibly as Xenophile. I'm almost fifty and still hoping to live long enough to see the High Frontier open up. I think that a game like this can't help but to help, as it were. Now, if somebody will get hopping on the movies and children's cartoons...

Well, June has come and gone far more quickly than any self-respecting month should do.  We're still working on version 0.17, and since it's not yet ready for release, I thought I would at least show some of what we're up to.



The above shows the water icons that appear above city parts that are short on water.  When you see these blinking icons, you'll want to add some new water-recycling capacity... either a dehumidifier, to pull water out of the air, or a water treatment plant, to purify wastewater for reuse.

We're also getting some more decorations to add personality and ambiance to your colonies.  Here's a statue that should be available in 0.17, honoring one of our heroes.




This week we're picking the whole Strout & Sons troop up and relocating to sunny Tucson, AZ.  It's partly because of all of the preparations for the move that progress on High Frontier has been so slow this month (I know, excuses excuses).  This week we won't get much more done... but by next week, we should be settling in again and ramping back up on development.

So stay tuned here, and feel free to chime in at any point with opinions, questions, our other remarks!

We're going to be working on lighting for version 0.17 (though right now we're focused on water).  This news story today seems quite relevant:

For version 0.17, we want to put in a water cycle.  So we've been getting a grip on water usage; you can see our notes here:
https://www.assembla.com/spaces/high-frontier/wiki/Water_Usage

Most of the water used ends up in the environment, as irrigation for trees, grass, gardens, shrubs, etc.  It's a huge amount — a quarter-acre lawn (a fairly typical back yard in the U.S., I think) uses about 2800 L of water per day.  Most of us don't apply that much because it gets most of its water from the sky, but without rain, that's what it would take to keep that greenery alive.  Trees use even more: about 70 L/day per tree.

So what happens to all that water?  Seems to me there are only three fates:

1. It evaporates — either directly, or through plant transpiration, and becomes water vapor in the atmosphere.
2. It runs down through the soil, finds some aquifer, and ultimately pools wherever that leads.
3. It gets incorporated into the plant itself (or some animal that drinks it before 1 or 2 happens).
   

I have a work blog that I hadn't updated in a couple of years (!).  I decided it was finally time to give back to the Unity game development community by contributing something that I hope is useful.

So, I made this blog post about how to use "UnityEvents" (a new-ish feature added in Unity 4.6) effectively.  I even made a video, since that seems to be the main way that yoots produce and consume information these days.

Anybody else here blogging about anything?  This is as good a place as any to share!