Man Conquers Space is David Sander's project to make a pseudo-documentary movie about the history of space flight, if things had happened as predicted by Colliers. Absolutely brilliant, the trailer will take your breath away. And if you dreamed about those ferry rockets when you were a child in the mid 1960's, the trailer may bring a wistful tear to your eye. It did to me.

Deep Cold is Dan Roam's hyper-realistic alternate history: the secrets of the Cold War in space: 1959-1969. A fascinating "what-if" future of space exploration with professional quality computer graphics.

The man who goes by the name Grimjier of Hobby FuZion is working on a tabletop game played with little plastic spaceships called "Legend of Sol: Torch War". This is set in an alternate history where the North American Space Command and the Supreme Soviet Cosmo forces battle in space in the far flung future year 1960. The early American ships are based on the Boeing X-20 DynaSoar and Project Gemini. The battleships are nuclear pulse Orion drive.

I talk more about Torch War here.

Rob Davidoff has a degree in Mechanical Engineering with a concentration in Aerospace. In other words, he is a rocket scientist. Ian Mitchell is a physics Ph.D. student at the University of Houston studying experimental particle physics. Together they are currently working on a fascinating alternate history of the NASA space flight program called Eyes Turned Skyward. It diverges from our history at the point where the Apollo program comes to an end, and in our time line NASA decides to go with developing a space station, instead of the Space Shuttle. The consequences of not having a reusable launch vehicle in the 1970's are interesting, to say the least.

There is a Wiki with Eyes Turned Skyward Spacecraft and Launch Vehicle Data and Artwork.

There is a forum thread about making Eyes Turned Skyward mods for the game Kerbal Space Program.

David Portree is the manager of the Regional Planetary Information Facility, Astrogeology Science Center, US Geological Survey. His blog DSFP's Spaceflight History Blog is full of great articles on the history of spaceflight. But recently he has been applying his encyclopedic knowledge to crafting an alternate history that he calls "Imagining Another Apollo". Last I checked it was up to part 5, it is interesting reading.

Artist Zach Hajj (a.k.a. Zerraspace) has designed a combat spacecraft that impresses the heck out of me. Mr. Hajj said he studied this Atomic Rocket website in the process of designing this craft, and it shows. Frankly I cannot see any design problems at all with it, everything is covered. For this reason, I have a section for this in both the Art Gallery and the Realistic Design pages.

Please note that this page is for novels that have the Atomic Rocket seal of approval, but the authors created the novels with no help from this website. Other novels where the author acknowledged being helped by this site can be found here.

Theft of Fire by Devon Eriksen has a plot that seems to be the standard "entitled rich princess hijacks a poor asteroid miner to prospect for high-tech Forerunner artifacts". But don't be fooled, Theft of Fire is so much more!

More to the point, the scientific accuracy is surprisingly good. Yes, there is a bit of unobtanium, but that's allowed. Heat radiators, pulsar naviations, spacecraft combat, asteroid colonies, the list goes on and on!

More importantly: the plot is compelling, the writing is smooth, the characters are interesting, and the plot complications are surprising but logical.

I didn’t grow up in microgravity, her stature says. I’m not seven feet tall, like some Belter mining trash. I spent my childhood in tasteful upmarket ring habitats, where we have full Earth gravity, and big open spaces with lots of plants, and we never eat synthetic ham made out of vat krill.

What the hell is wrong with these people?

Madness.

Or it would be madness. Anywhere but Arachne. What stings is that, right here, right now, she’s not altogether wrong.

In the early days of the Diaspora, lotsa folks wanted to hollow out asteroids, spin them for gravity. Rubbish idea. Take it from me, I mine the things. Well, I used to, anyway.

Your typical asteroid’s a loose collection of rocks—all the way from mountains to gravel—held together with gravity, inertia, and even static electricity, I sh*t you not. Bump it too hard, hell, even look at it funny, it’ll fly apart. Sure, there’s some tougher ones that are all one piece, but rock ain’t as strong for its weight as you might think, especially under a stretching kinda force.

Spin ‘em at any sort of rate that’ll get you something like Earth gravity, they’ll fly apart, too.

And, yeah, okay, sure, fine, you could heat ‘em up, melt ‘em into something a bit more solid—but space ain’t cold. Space has no temperature at all. Pretty close to a perfect insulator. Wanna wait ten thousand years for your asteroid soup to cool into something usable?

Didn’t think so.

Nah, hollowed out asteroids are just a sh*t idea all around.

But this is different. This is Arachne.

Same idea, except not an asteroid at all, but an entirely artificial planetoid, a hollow aluminum and vacuum-foamed steel football two kilometers from end to end. When they spun that bad boy up to slightly less than one rotation per minute, for a full point eight Earth gravities, somehow the engineers managed to make the whole business hold together. Dunno exactly how it works, but there’s a spiderweb of aramid and doped fullerene cables latticed over the view of the opposite side. Peer though all that, and you can see people walking upside down on the ceiling, and all the buildings hanging above you in the sky.

There it is. Hotel-India-five-five. The “Heian Maru,” a long cylindrical beehive, covered in hexagonal ports, with projecting sensor booms and comm arrays at its nose and tail. Dronescoop carrier, no doubt returning from Jupiter with a hold full of metallic hydrogen and raw gas-planet hydrocarbons skimmed from the upper cloud layer. All ready to be turned into fuel and plastics and industrial solvents.

All nice and flammable, if you add a little oxygen. If that carrier hits the docks... I can only imagine the fire.

The rest of the ship’s systems seem locked down pretty tight. The more I scroll through stuff, the more ‘access denied’ messages I get. I don’t even know who she is, or where we are going. If I could only get a look at the navigation plotter...

Wait.

How does the computer do the navigation plot?

Pulsars.

It’s called XNAV. X-ray pulsar-based navigation and timing. The Cat triangulates itself by orienting with distant neutron stars, special stars that spin ferociously, drawing gas off of stellar companions, heating it to millions of degrees, pouring out x-rays. It’s absurdly accurate, precise to a measurement of meters within distances that span the solar system—but it’s useless to me. I can’t detect those x-rays without instruments I’m locked out of.

But the principle is sound. It’s as ancient as the time when our ancestors sailed seas of liquid water with nothing but a sun compass, and a sextant to sight the positions of the stars.

Stars. Now there’s an idea.

With precise angle orientation and timing, a couple of high-res images of stars, taken a few hours apart, maybe with some nearby asteroid shots to get a better parallax reading to confirm speed... I’d have to count pixels in the images, do some calculations, run some open source nav software on the data, but just maybe I can plot two positions in space.

And two points determine a line.

Peacekeepers of Sol is the latest science fiction series by master story-teller Glynn Stewart, with Raven's Peace the first novel in the series. Rob Davidoff brought Mr. Stewart to my attention, and it didn't take much reading to find that here was an expert craftsman.

His scientific accuracy is very good, he won the heat radiator award on about page 94 of the very first book I read.

But where he stands head an shoulders above the rest is in his worldbuilding. Specifically how he has carefully thought out the unintended consequences. That's rare among writers. In many cases it appears that Mr. Stewart specifically created the situation generating the consequences so that they could be explored by the novel.

The backgrounds of his series are composed of elements finely meshed like the tiny gears of a Swiss watch, ticking away precisely.

His worldbuilding is so well thought out that I already have used two or three different quotes from his novels to illustrate important points.

And the logical consequences have been thought out. For example, in the Peacekeeper series, civilian starship bridges have holographic projectors. But they are not used on the bridge of a combat starship because the projectors are too blasted fragile. Civ starships are not commonly slammed around by hostile weapons fire, but this is common with warships.

He introduced a new combat starship position on the bridge watch: Officer for Engineering. Nine times out of ten the OE just repeats what the Chief Engineer (down in the engine room) says. But the other ten percent of the time the OE has to frantically collate reports from across the ship and provide summaries to the Captain. Because the Chief Engineer is too busy preventing the ship from falling apart to answer stupid question from the captain. Personally I've never encountered that position in any other science fiction novel, but now that Mr. Stewart has pointed it out to me it is obviously a necessary job.

In the Peacekeeper series the merciless Kenmiri galactic empire had enslaved most of the races around Terra. Then they made the mistake of trying to conquer the human race. This frightened the Terrans, which is always a bad thing. The humans made an alliance with the other races and managed to defeat the Kenmiri, abet by committing war crimes. But now the real fun starts: while all the other races hated the Kenmiri, they didn't like each other much either. And one or two warlords actually wanted to take the Kenmiri's place and reconquer everybody else. This is a nice bit of worldbuilding, giving Mr. Stewart enough of a background to drive the entire series.

More interesting material comes from the Kenmiri's enslavement tactics. It seems they set up slave worlds to be industrial production centers on planets that do not have local food supplies. The Kenmiri have other slave agricultural worlds who make the food, and transport it to the industry worlds. Which means any industry world that revolts will suddenly find themselves starving.

This was a brutal but effective method of ensuring control, and I'm sure it has been done by historical civilizations here on Terra. But now that the Kenmiri are gone, there are now multiple simultaneous humanitarian disasters happening across the former empire. The various former slave worlds need each other, but they don't trust each other. And Terra is desperately trying to deal with this mess, at least with the worlds bordering Terran space.

The worldbuilding parts all click together, they work logically, and they make a fascinating backdrop to the novels.

I find the same quality work in the Starship's Mage series. Here the starships shoot each other with laser cannons and kinetic energy weapons. And the ship travel faster than light by virtue of wizards casting magic spells.

Ah, magic, how unscientific. I should hate this, right?

Nope. Because when you get right down to it faster-than-light starships are fantasy anyway, regardless of whether they use warp drive, stargates, or wizards casting magic spells. What I demand is internal self-consistency. Which the Starship's Mage series has in spades.

That is why Mr. Stewart has the Atomic Rocket Seal of Approval.

Delta-V is the latest technothriller novel from New York Times bestseller novelist Daniel Suarez. The book is about the first crewed asteroid mining company, set in the near future. And the science is hard enough to bend titanium struts around. He did extensive research with aerospace scientists and rocket experts and it shows.

Veteran Atomic Novelist Thomas Mays teams up with Chris Kennedy to craft a novel that is both scientifically hard yet full of rocket-busting excitement. The Mutineer's Daughter gives us a father-daughter pair of protagonists with an iridium-hard determination to smash through everything the universe throws against them in order to be reunited. This is the first book in the In Revolution Born series.

But x-ray detonation lasers are the least of their worries. They both will face incredibly hard choices as both father and daughter face a coming-of-age ordeal. Many readers besides me have noted the novel has the rare welcome flavor of classic Heinlein juvenile novels, not that those were just for young people, perish the thought. This can be enjoyed on multiple levels by all ages.

Yes, the ships have a faster-than-light drive, but Thomas Mays has not one but two degrees in physics. His drive is reasonable, and has the ramifications carefully thought out.

Corsair is the new novel by noted author and game designer James Cambias (review). It is available in hardcover, ebook, or audio book format.

Amazingly enough, Mr. Cambias has managed a way to make the vintage old SciFi troupe of Space Pirate actually work in the real world. All it requires is:

[a] a reliance upon unmanned semi-autonomous cargo spacecraft
[b] computer hackers
[c] the Terra-Luna Lagrange One point as pirate infested waters, right on the direct low-energy path where all the valuable cargo will pass by

Now why didn't I think of that?

You may have noticed I've used quite a few quotes from him in various parts of this website. It is really hard to find a person more qualified to write a novel with a "Atomic Rocket" levels of science-hardness than a person who is one of the experts used as a source for the Atomic Rocket website.

Full disclosure: I did receive an unsolicited autographed copy of the hardback from Mr. Cambias along with some praise that made me blush. But the fact that I have been quoting him on this website for the better part of a decade demonstrates that my high opinion of his work predates this novel.

You all can squabble over Nebula nominations and Hugo award slates. Corsair just won the only science fiction award that really matters: The Atomic Rockets Seal of Approval! Gaze upon it in envy and despair.

The Galactic Marines series was written by SF master William H. Keith, Jr. (writing under the pseudonyms Ian Douglas). The series traces the history of the United States Marine Corps over about two hundred years, starting around 2039. Naturally the novels are rather pro-Marine, but what did you expect from the series title? The military details seem reasonably accurate to me, not surprisingly since Mr. Keith served during the Vietnam War in the United States Navy as a hospital corpsman.

Mr. Keith has done his homework.

The science is impeccably accurate (except for the alien technology, but even that is more fringe science than it is utter technobabble). Dumbo style nuclear thermal rockets, Aldrin Cyclers, Lunar polar ice for in-situ resource utilization, using Vandenberg Air Force Base to launch into polar orbits, the need for an Spaceguard, most of it would not look out of place on NASA's drawing boards.

Then there is smart thinking on the implications of the technology. For free-fall combat, space suits have an attachment point for rifles so that the recoil goes through the marines center of gravity. Otherwise each shot would spin them like a top. And aiming the rifle is through a heads-up-display inside the space helmet, since it is almost impossible to look through a rifle's target scope while wearing a fish-bowl on ones head.

What is even better is how the level of technology progresses over the span of the series, with the logical changes in tactics as new technologies become available. This is hard work for a writer, but Mr. Keith did an excellent job.

He even invented first-rate MacGuffinite.

As you recall, MacGuffinite is some incredibly valuable commodity that provides an economic motive for an extensive Manned presence in space (needed because currently there does not appear to be any such thing). Since SF authors are allowed one scientifically implausible item in their stories, Mr. Keith chose paleotechnology from alien ancient astronauts. Once in place, Mr. Keith proceed to make it do double-duty, to get all the mileage out of it he could.

• Since the alien technology was several hundred years in advance of Earth's technology, it was more than valuable enough to provide motive for dozens of space stations and fleets of ships.
• Since any nation on Earth will take a very dim view of another nation obtaining a monopoly on such tech, this will be the spark that ignites the sort of global and spatial combat tailor made as the background for novels featuring marines.
• There are implications to the fact that this is ancient alien technology. Specifically, if the aliens were in the solar system so long ago, why isn't humanity currently the slaves of said aliens? What happened to the aliens? The main implication is that having high tech did not render the aliens immune from being doomed by one of the nastier solutions to the Fermi paradox (the Great Filter strikes again). This is tailor made to make a worthy long-term background for a series of novels about marines.

Having postulated paleotechnology, Mr. Keith proceeds to try and make things plausible. He did research on tons of crackpot "ancient astronaut" garbage, and picked out bits he could work with. All the while simultaneously having the characters in his novel making it quite clear that there was a difference between real pieces of alien tech and utter fantasy stories about von Daniken "Chariots of the Gods" and related dreck. Mr. Keith chose the real-world Transient lunar phenomenon and the infamous "Face on Mars". The action in the first novel is meticulously set around the various geological features trumpeted by various crackpots. Mr. Keith turns it into sterling examples of Sufficiently Advanced Bamboo Technology.

In other words, Mr. Keith even researches his technobabble.

I should not have been surprised. Back in 1997 I wrote a review of another of William Keith's novels where again I noted the careful research he had done. It's his hallmark.

The Galactic Marines series is in three trilogies. All the novels are written under the pseudonyms "Ian Douglas".

Heritage Trilogy

• Semper Mars (1998) ISBN 978-0-380-78828-6
• Luna Marine (1999) ISBN 978-0-380-78829-3
• Europa Strike (2000) ISBN 978-0-380-78830-9

Legacy Trilogy

• Star Corps (2003) ISBN 978-0-380-81824-2
• Battlespace (2006) ISBN 978-0-380-81825-9
• Star Marines (2007) ISBN 978-0-380-81826-6

Inheritance Trilogy

• Star Strike (2008) ISBN 978-0-06-123858-1
• Galactic Corps (2008) ISBN 978-0-06-123862-8
• Semper Human (2009) ISBN 978-0-06-123864-2

Full disclosure, while I have never met the man, in an interview author Ejner Fulsang did include a link to this site as a helpful starter for SF authors who want their science to be accurate.

I'm only on Chapter 4 of the first novel SpaceCorp (review), and I am already giving it the Atomic Rocket seal of approval. And not just because the author worked at NASA for seven years.

Mr. Fulsang actually figured out a new type of MacGuffinite that makes sense. I am impressed and astonished.

Read the link for the details. But briefly:

[1] To write science fiction novels about lots of people living in space, it would be helpful if there was a sound economic motive to justify an extensive manned presence in space. This is called MacGuffinite.

[2] The problem is that in the real world, there does not seem to be any. Anything that could be mined or harvested could be done more cheaply with robots or remote controlled drones.

[3] Manned space stations would have been perfect MacGuffinite. Unfortunately the invention of the microchip made it cheaper to replace manned space stations with unmanned satellites (for communication, GPS, weather, surveillance, and other financially lucrative functions).

[4] Mr. Fulsang actually figured out how to use the Kessler Syndrome to force the use of manned space stations.

This brilliant piece of background is the crowning glory on top of a compelling novel with space science that is NASA-level accurate. Recommended.

This novel was the inspiration for the tabletop game SpaceCorp 2025-2300

Here Be Dragons is Craig Alan's first novel, but you'd think it was his 100th. Polished, gripping, engrossing, it is all that. But the scientific accuracy measures up to my vanadium steel yardstick. As well it should, the acknowledgements thanks this website by name (along with rec.arts.sf.science and SFConSim-l). He mentioned to me that he spent a lot of time with Atomic Rockets site open in one browser window while writing. As I mentioned above, that was this website's primary purpose.

Several decades before the novel opens, some one or some thing suddenly appears and claims the outer solar system. The nations of Earth cannot find out anything about these "outsiders", except that any spacecraft that ventures past the asteroid belt is hunted down and converted into metallic swiss cheese by kinetic energy weapons. Finally Captain Elena Gonzales and the crew of the Gabriel are given orders to penetrate the line in the sand in a desperate bid to discover the nature of the invaders.

Craig Alan has a believable warships design, plausible weapons, details about shipboard life, military protocol, a future history, the complete package. And the ship has heat radiators!

And at the end of the novel is a nail-biting spaceship to spaceship duel that will have you on the edge of your seat. That battle is just begging to be made into a game scenario.

The current novels in John Lumpkin's The Human Reach series are Through Struggle, the Stars and The Desert of Stars. The science is of top quality hardness, the geopolitical situation is deep and well thought out, the military intelligence details are terrifyingly real. The writing style is clear and flowing, it reminds me of early Heinlein, and of the Niven/Pournelle collaborations. Mr. Lumpkin cites as influences Heinlein, Pournelle, Niven, Forester, O'Brien, early Clancy, and Daniel Keys Moran.

And yes, the novel has plenty of space battle scenes just begging to be made into game scenarios.

Mr. Lumpkin is a Senior Fellow and contributor to GlobalSecurity.org since June 2006. He runs the site's Terrorism Profiles Project. Previously, he was a reporter with The Associated Press in Washington, D.C., where he covered military affairs, homeland security and intelligence matters, breaking several key stories during the Sept. 11 investigation. His professional travels include Iraq, Afghanistan and China. Prior to joining AP, he covered military affairs for the Albuquerque Journal.

This is why the counter-terrorism details in his novel are dead accurate. The geopolitical aspects of his novel are uncommonly realistic as well, for the same reason.

The current novels in James Corey's Expanse series are Leviathan Wakes, Caliban's War, Abaddon's Gate, Cibola Burn and Nemesis Games. The author states that he focuses more on telling a compelling story than he is getting all the science correct (which is as it should be). But outside of a rather powerful fusion propulsion system and alien nanotechnology, his science is gratifyingly hard. Certainly better than 99% of the other novels out there.

His depictions of colonies living inside the asteroids Ceres and Eros are fascinating, with descriptions of a Mos Eisley Spaceport / Blade Runner / tunnel civilization alternating with descriptions of the changes in Coriolis Force as you get closer to the asteroid's axis of rotation.

And the backdrop of the series is interesting as well. Mr. Corey noted that while there were many science fiction novels about near future space exploration, and novels about interstellar exploration, there are practically none about the transitional period between the two eras.

These novels are especially fine examples of "Rocketpunk".

Recently, the novels have been made into a killer TV series on the SyFy channel.

Andy Weir's novel The Martian has science so hard you can walk on it. This is not surprising. Many hard-science SF novels start with scientifically accurate elements which are gradually fudged and tweaked in order to accommodate the plot. But in Mr. Weir's novel, he found that the scientific calculations actually suggested new directions for the plot to expand into. In other words, the scientific accuracy actually helped rather than hinder the writing process. Mr. Weir describes the process here.

The novel itself is a harrowing account of the third manned expedition to Mars. On the eve of departure, a disaster forces the expedition to depart prematurely, leaving astronaut Mark Watney for dead. Unfortunately Watney is not dead. But now he is faced with the daunting task of surviving almost a year on Mars using only the expedition's discarded materials. And mission control does not even know he is there.

Seveneves is the new blockbuster hard-science novel by master writer Neal Stephenson. The novel combines science so hard that it makes 2001 A Space Odyssey look like The Jetsons, the nail-biting cliff-hanger drama of the movie Gravity, the apocalyptic nature of When Worlds Collide and the mythic scope of Frank Herbert's Dune. There was also a character that vaguely reminded me of Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, and another that may have been modeled on either Jeff Bezos of Blue Origin or Elon Musk of SpaceX (or both).

The science is rock solid, and you may see some insightful quotes appear in this website to illustrate certain aerospace concepts. Mr. Stephenson acknowledged the help he obtained from various people working at Blue Origin, Planetary Resources, The Long Now Foundation, Tethers Unlimited, and various scientists (all listed in the Acknowledgments section in the back of the book).

A Sword Into Darkness is Thomas Mays' debut novel, and it is a blockbuster! Kept me on the edge of my seat up til the end. And unlike so many other novels, when it promised a revelation of a dread secret at the end, it actually delivered. Puzzling occurrences make perfect logical sense as the reader learns more. And the ships have heat radiators!

The action starts when astronomers notice something odd in-line with the star Delta Pavonis. Hilarity rapidly ensues.

The cherry on the top is a couple of spacecraft combat scenes crying out to be made into game scenarios.

In hindsight, one could have predicted that the background of the novel would be well thought out and solid enough to walk on. Yes, Mr. Mays does acknowledge he was helped somewhat by the Atomic Rockets website. But more importantly, he has not one, but two degrees in physics. And to top it off, he is an 18-years-and-counting veteran of the US Navy, working as an officer in the surface fleet aboard destroyers and amphibious ships, as well as assisting with research into ballistic missile defense.

There is only one piece of hand-waving magic-tech in the novel (the propulsion system), but its limitations and implications are carefully charted. Science fiction authors are allowed one bit of hand-waving in each novel, I think that's a rule I read somewhere. Otherwise the scientific accuracy is spot on. Well, there also is the mumbly-mumble field used by the mumbly-mumble, but that is actually not totally outside the laws of physics. You'll know it when you read it.

The book will soon be published by either Baen Books or a small imprint called Stealth Books. I'll give a heads up when it comes out.

Torchship is the first novel by Karl Gallagher, and I for one cannot wait for the next.

The story follows the trials and tribulations of the good ship "Fives Full" (named after a poker hand). The captain is just trying to make money to pay off the ship mortgage, but it is very hard to do in a universe full of kidnappers of wealthy heiresses, powerful but touchy Terraformers, and interstellar spies.

The story flows trippingly off the tongue, is very engrossing, but more to the point the science is quite hard. Which is to be expected from an author who went to MIT and works for Lockheed Martin.

But in my mind I gave the book a big gold star before I even got to chapter one. Right before is a cut-away view of the spacecraft Fives Full, with the decks arranged properly like a skyscraper normal to the thrust axis, not stupidly parallel to the thrust axis like the Starship Enterprise.

I gave it a platinum star with diamond clusters when I discovered he had figured out a plausible way to force a starship navigator to use slide rules.

The prose flows smoothly, but cleverly drops in enough information so you rapidly get up to speed understanding the Torchship universe. There are also delicious little bits scattered here and there proving that Mr. Gallagher is a very knowledgeable man. For instance, the units of currency are called "keys" or "keyneses" indicating that the interstellar money supply is based on Keynesian economics. This is not explained in the novel, but is obvious to a reader who is well read (or who has access to Google).

I look forwards to more offerings from Mr. Gallagher.

Late breaking news: since I wrote the above Mr. Gallagher has come out with the other two novels in the trilogy Torchship Pilot and Torchship Captain. They are if anything better than the first novel. Check them out!

Vignettes of the Star Empire is a collection of short fiction by Alistair Young, set in his Eldraeverse universe.

The Eldraeverse is a strange and futuristic place, haunted by weakly godlike entities, civilizations that have undergone a Vingian Technological Singularity, and civilizations that are just centimeters away from achieving it. Such a topic in the hands of a lesser author could degenerate into a tiresome confusing mass of disjointed images. But Alistair's encyclopedic knowledge of math, science, Post Singularity tropes, standard science fiction hypertechnology, and writing skill makes his work a joy to read. They have a lilting satirical tone but are build on a rock-solid foundation of scientific understanding. Sort of like a cross between Greg Egan, Douglas Hofstadter, Douglas Adams, and Terry Pratchett.

If you like his work, you might consider becoming one of Alistair's Patreon patrons.

Late breaking news: the sequel is now available, The Core War and Other Stories.

Ian Mallett writes nanofiction that are bite-sized, but packed with full-flavored hard science goodness in every sentence. Recommended!

He also has written a valuable set of on-line calculators for various rocket related matters.

Richard Penn is writing diamond-hard near-future solar-system-colonization novels. His thesis is that no new science and technology is needed to get people into space, just determination and proper engineering.

The Steps to Space Series is in the close future, where small groups and even individuals start taking over the job of space colonization & industrialization from nation-based government space programs and megacorporations.

The Asteroid Police Series is set in a period when small asteroid colonies have actually been established. It follows the misadventures of young Lisa Johansen, who is suddenly thrust into the role of being the local police when a seemingly small anomaly is the thread that leads to the unraveling of a large conspiracy.

However, relevant to our interests is Penn's VESSELS AND STATIONS OF EARTHSPACE AND THE BELT which details the spacecraft and scenarios behind the novels in delicious detail.

Author Andrew Rader has two very educational books for young readers aged 1-6 (parents reading or learning to read). Children will be fascinated by the exciting story and colorful artwork. While along the way they will actually learn about astronautics and space exploration.

The educational material is guaranteed to be accurate because Mr. Rader has a PhD in Aerospace Engineering from MIT and currently works as a Mission Integrator at SpaceX. That's more than good enough for me.

The latest story Mars Rover Rescue is basically The Martian for preschoolers.

Freefall by Mark Stanley is a deceptively simple webcomic. On the surface it appears to be a run-of-the-mill webcomic about a funny blue alien and an anthropomorphic furry wolf. But the science is exceedingly hard, and the plot line covers insightful issues about the future of artificial intelligence (both genetically engineered creature and computer AI) and other deep topics. You may have noticed that at various places on this website I use scenes from the webcomic to illustrate scientific principles.

On a more off-beat topic, there is a theory about the different strategies between male and female shopping patterns in a mall in comics 696 to 700.

Outrim was a regrettably short-lived webcomic about funny (genetically engineered) animals in space. It did make the effort to make the science accurate. You may have noticed the deck plans for their spacecraft on this site.

Schlock Mercenary is another deceptive webcomic. On the surface it appears to be comedy about future soldiers. However, the science is hard. But more importantly, where ultra-tech like teleportation or nanotechnology is introduced, the author has carefully thought out all the consequences and ramifications. In fact he does a better job than most science fiction novelists. It also has very dry and pithy humor, plus many high-IQ jokes that zip by like one liners in "The West Wing".

Unicorn Jelly is yet another deceptively simple webcomic. At the start one is fooled into believing it is just another chibi style manga. Then after it lulls you into lowering your guard it stuns your brain with deep philosophical questions while simultaneously punching you in the gut. It is billed as a "unique retro-pixel philosophical multi-generational scinece fiction epic", and take it from me it is not lying.

Why does it have the seal of approval? In a word: World Building. This is not just a story set on another planet, it is set in another freaking universe where the very laws of physics are different. In the between-chapter segments the author shows you the physics, the implications, the way it affects cosmology, astronomy, planetography and biology, the alternate periodic table of the elements, the culture of the various alien creatures, their language and forms of writing, games, everything. Absolutely breath-taking.

Albedo Anthropomorphics is a regrettably short-lived comic book anthology by Steve Gallacci. The gem were the stories about Erma Felna of the EDF, who was a genetically engineered anthropomorphic cat. There was also a short-lived paper-and-pencil role playing game called Albedo. The science is hard, the military tech well realized, and there were hard-hitting political and philosophical issues raised.

Again, the implications were well thought out by the author.

Example: the various planets are populated by various species of Terran animals genetically engineered to intelligence. Now with most Terran mammals, the female is only sexually attractive to the male when they go into estrus (aka "in heat"). Consequence: there are no nudity taboos, and mixed-gender washing and toilet facilities are the norm. But when estrus occurs the females must go into seclusion and/or use powerful deodorants.

Example: many of the planets were colonized by slower-than-light starships. The planetary cultures that were founded as a consequence have a "shipboard discipline mentality." Consider, on a spacecraft, if a civilian saw something like an air leak in the hull, and didn't report it to anybody, they would be endangering the lives of everybody on the colony ship. So that is a crime.

In the United States on the other hand, if a person sees somebody lying injured on the side of the road, and they try to help the injured one, more often than not they wind up being sued by the injured person. Hands off, do not get involved, it is not your problem.

In the Albedo universe, with the shipboard discipline mentality, it is a crime not to try and help somebody who is injured, and there are "Good Samaritan" laws to protect the helpers.

Example: most of the anthropomorphic have four-fingered hands. As a consequence, their mathematical system is base 8, not base 10 like us humans with five-fingered hands.

GunBuster is a six episode anime series about giant mecha. But there is an attention to scientific accuracy that is gratifying. Laser cannon resemble titanic camera lenses set into the side of the warships, laser volleys are launched at hostile warships too far away to see, the mecha use weapons with californium-252 fission warheads with the ²⁵²Cf being created immediately before battle due to its short half-life.

And this is the only anime I've seen that does relativistic time-dilation properly.

But the tour de force is the science lessons that occur between episodes. They start off explaining using real and accurate science, then seamlessly blend into the science fictional rubber science of faster-than-light star drives and related matters. Well worth watching.

Knights of Sidonia is a manga series adapted as an anime. In many ways it is a deconstruction of space operas like Gundam and Macross, characters act like scifi characters but since this is reality the consequences are usually lethal. The mecha pilots have to worry about fuel, the jury-rigged habitat (and jury-rigged society) can barely produce enough food, valiant young poorly-trained fighter pilots die with depressing regularity, people in the city wear safety belts clipped to rails so they don't fall to their death if the habitat has to do emergency acceleration.

Jay Dugger compared it to William Hope Hodgson's A Night Land set on a generation starship.

The science is reasonably hard, with a few gaffs like magic artificial gravity and spacecraft making a "whoosh" noise in airless space. There is no FTL, if the habitat accelerates beyond the artificial gravity's ability to cope the transverse forces will cause the inhabitats to fall sideways to their doom, the consequences of the invented technology is considered, and it respects scale.

The most important part for me is that it treats artificial gravity as the big deal it is, rather than taking it for granted like space opera usually does. People die when the gravity fails, and the crew almost seem to worship it.

There are gravity festivals (which seem to mostly just look like a typical Japanese festival) and gravity gets slapped onto random brand names the way earth cultures would apply words like "Special" or "Lucky".

Planetes is a hard-science manga (official website, in Japanese) which was adapted into a television anime. It follows the downtrodden crew of the spacecraft "Toy Box" of the Space Debris section of the Technora Corporation. Their job is to sweep Earth and Lunar orbits of tiny but dangerous satellite bits and pieces, hopefully preventing the dreaded Kessler Syndrome. The scientific accuracy is top-notch, the Japanese space agency JAXA served as a technical consultant.

2001 Nights is another hard-science manga. All the stories are set in a common time-line spanning several hundred years, but the first few stories are in the near future. There are a few stories where the science fiction is more fictional than scientific, but for the most part the science is pretty hard.

Artist Nathan Hoste is working on an interesting series artwork called Bodies in Space. The subject is the various hidious ways an unprotected human body is damaged by exposure to the space environment. It is actually quite well-researched.

The Ministry of Space is a graphic novel written by Warren Ellis and illustrated by Chris Weston, published in 2001. It is an interesting alternate history where at the end of World War II the British instead of the Americans got their hands on Germany's rocket scientists. This results in a new British empire in Space. But it is all very scientifically accurate, abet very Collier's flavored.

Chris Weston's amazing British-Colliers-von Braun rockets are a real treat for the eye. Warren Ellis story is believable, plausible, but mordant and containing cutting social commentary. And there are some who wonder if Britain can create a real Ministry of Space.

No Shortage of Dreams is the space exploration history blog of veteran historian David S. F. Portree. He is the only one I know personally who has a monograph hosted on NASA's official web site. When it comes to NASA space history, he is the authority.

If you support him on Patreon, you will have access to patron-only content.

The legendary Scott Manley is an Astronomer, a Scotsman, a Hacker, a Gamer, and a DJ. Relevant to our interests is the fact that he has a keen knowledge of rocketry and spaceflight, and knows how to explain things in an engaging but crystal clear way. I first ran across him in the Kerbal Space Program community, but he does so much more.

You may have noticed a few of his videos around this website.

You can follow him on Twitter. He has a YouTube channel, but of particular interest is the playlist devoted to Science Videos. There you will learn such useful information as why do ion thrusters use xenon propellant, is metallic hydrogen the most powerful rocket fuel yet, and the rocket science of the Expanse.

Beyond NERVA's website is your one-stop shopping to get up to speed on nuclear thermal rockets. The website has been endorsed by Scott Manley himself. You can also follow them in Twitter.

There are educational sections on solid-core NTRs, nuclear pulse propulsion, Low-enriched NTRs, fission power systems, and more! The blog section has periodic new information.

If you want to support Beyond NERVA, they have a Patreon campaign as well.

Matter Beam has set a very difficult task for himself in his blog Tough SF. He is trying to help science fiction authors cope with the biggest problem inherent in the Atomic Rocket website, the dreaded You Can't Do That syndrome.

He has become a major public benefactor for the creative scientific community. And a life-line for me. You wouldn't believe the hate email I get about how my Atomic Rocket website is the biggest buzz-kill in the history of science fiction.

He has his own Discord for discussions about the science in scifi here. Check it out!

Any science fiction enthusiast has faced multitudes of worlds, built for games, movies or stories, that fall apart the moment you take a closer look at them. They might be your favorite worlds: Star Wars, Halo, or lately, The Expanse, so this isn't necessarily a bad thing. However, they force the audience to suspend disbelief more than they should, creating an extra level of difficulty when it comes to hooking them in.

One genre defined by the stuggle to create living settings in science fiction is Hard SF. 'An emphasis on scientific or technical detail' is a sure-fire way to create a realistic and functional universe, but often the need to adhere to realism slows creativity, stresses the narration, leads to unprobable results or otherwise has negative effects. One of the biggest complaints is that it just isn't 'fun'.

Not every can work under the constraints of hard science fiction and still realize their original vision.

This blog therefore try to help authors, world-builders and game designers to create Tough Science Fiction. This is science fiction that is as resistant as Hard Science Fiction to criticism, review and general prodding and poking by the audience, but does not sacrifice the author's vision or core concepts to pure, dry realism. This will be done by proposing science fiction concepts, worked examples, illustrations, simplified mathematics and science explanations that will bridge the gap between realistic science fiction and the liberties taken for granted in Space Opera and Fantasy.

Future War Stories does in-depth analysis on various military topics. For each subject, first is given a penetrating over view of how the subject works in the real world. Then is given a survey of various media science fiction that includes the subject, along with a critique of how close each instance comes to getting it correct.

In other words, what this website is to rocketry, Future War Stories is to military science fiction.

Examples: Dropships, History of Space Warfare, The Broken Elements of Military Sci-Fi.

Luke Campbell is a real-live laser scientist, it's what he does for a living. If you want the last word in accuracy in designing futuristic laser sidearms, go to How to Build a Laser Death Ray. It has theory, practice, online calculators for various items, and artists conceptions.

Rick Robinson's Rocketpunk Manifesto blog is pure gold. His insightful analysis of what this website is all about is well worth reading. I certainly think so, you may have noticed quite a few quotes from it on this website. The comments are worth reading as well. And don't miss his The Tough Guide to the Known Galaxy.

Founder Christopher Weuve says the SFConsim-l forum is one of the things he is most proud of (his exact words were: "I want my tombstone to read Founder, SFConsim-L."). The topic is science fiction conflict simulations (i.e., games) in general, and spacecraft conflict in specific. Add the fact that a few real live scientists and military analysts regularly participate, and you have one valuable forum. I certainly think so, you may have noticed quite a few quotes from it on this website.

Actually, SFConsim-l was the spark that led to the creation of this website. I was a regular on the forum. One fine day in 1999, a gentleman had a question about calculating rocket performance and I answered him. About a year later another gentlemen had some related questions and I answered them as well. Three years after that (in 2003)), after years of constantly providing links to those original posts, it occurred to me to put the information on a solitary web page for convenience. I added more and more information until it made sense to split it into two pages, then four. Last time I checked there were about seventy pages. My, how it has grown.

Moran's SF Worldbuilding blog is well worth reading (and I am not just saying that because he sometimes has links to this website). From effects of kinetic weapons to unintended consequences of force-field technology to the effect of a laser lightsail interstellar project on the economy of the solar system, his posts are in-depth and relevant to our interests.

Myn.phenos of Slovakia is a genius.

In spacecraft design tasks like calculating the volume of irregular components, calculating centers of gravity, and optimal placement of heat radiators is almost impossible to do without computer software tools. But as a general rule, such software costs tens of thousands of dollars, and usually cannot be found outside of, say, NASA.

My.phenos figured out how to do this with the 3D computer graphics software Blender. Which is open source, and is totally free. Genius, sheer genius.

The Spaceship Handbook by Jack Hagerty and Jon C. Rogers. The first part has an entertaining survey of spacecraft from the fictional Tom Corbett TV series to actual early NASA designs, along with incredibly precise blue-prints. But the technical appendix on Atomic Powered spacecraft is worth the price of the book all by itself. The appendix gives the essential propulsion equations, and does a survey of propulsion systems available and on the drawing boards, with hard figures. The end of the appendix contains an extensive table of deltaV requirements for all mission types for the planets and major moons of the solar system. Textbook quality book. And don't miss the companion volume The Saucer Fleet

Opening the High Frontier by Eagle Sarmont focuses on the primary problem of space exploration, industrialization, and colonization: chemical rockets just can't cut the mustard when it comes to boosting payload into orbit. Which is a major problem since about half of a spacecraft's mission delta-V budget is spent just traveling the first couple of hundred kilometers. The other half is enough send the ship all the way to Saturn.

Chemical rocket boosters are just too inefficient and too expensive, they are a savage bottleneck to space expansion. In the book, retired aerospace engineer Eagle Sarmont says it is high time to think outside of the box, since the inside the box solution is getting us nowhere fast.

The first few chapters starts off with a little history, including a timeline of various events in terrestrial exploration, engineering advances in general, and rocketry in specific. Then it gives the reader an in-depth but easy to understand definition of the problem.

Basically a worth-while space launch system needs:

• Reusabilty (because throwing away a booster after a single use gets expensive real fast)
• High Payload Fraction (because the more of the ship that is useful cargo, the better)
• Low Propellant Fraction (because the more propellant, the less cargo the ship transports)

Chemical boosters violate at least two of these needs, and most violate all three.

Having gotten the reader up to speed on the issues, Mr. Sarmont then presents an exploration of various ways to think outside of the box. All sorts of different methods are presented. Then the possibilities are winnowed down to the most promising candidates.

The remainder of the book goes in-depth into the prime candidates, with one chapter for each. Candidates like rocket sleds, air-breathing boosters, and skyhooks. The final chapters cover a few of the marvelous things we could do given cheap surface-to-orbit boost systems: Mars missions, orbital colonies, that sort of thing.

The technical details are presented with a minimum of math but maximum of hard data with clear explanations for the layman.

As an extra treat, the book features stunning illustrations by space artist Nick Stevens. There is a video here.

Recommended

The Rocket Company by Patrick Stiennon and David Hoerr is a novel about a company trying to develop and market a surface-to-orbit solution at a bargain price. But the authors know what they are talking about. They have actually patented the design of their spacecraft. They are also aware of the realities of such an undertaking. In the novel, the executives spend lots of time cultivating relations with various congressmen and FAA execs. Their pragmatic business model is to sell rockets at an attractive price instead of the more risky option of selling cargo boost services. This book will repay careful reading. There are some sample chapters here

Emily Dresner-Thornber is a computer programmer in her day job. But in her spare time she takes her encyclopedic knowledge of economics and applies it to Dungeons and Dragons fantasy role playing game scenarios. These can be found in her Dungeonomics blog.

What makes this relevant to Atomic Rockets is the fact that her intricate well-researched scenarios can be applied to a Rocketpunk science fictional universe with only minor changes. The scenarios are well crafted, full of unexpected ramifications, and evolvable.

You can find quotes from her blog posts scattered through the Atomic Rocket website, especially in the Interstellar Trade and the Piracy sections.

Rob Garitta has been involved with science fiction role playing games for a very long time. In his blog Twilight of the GM he writes about games and scenarios for SF RPGs in general, and the Traveller RPG in specific.

His observations are insightful, pithy, amusing, and right on the money. You can find numerous quotes from this blog within this website.

And do check out Surreal Estate Games, with all of Mr. Garitta's with and wisdom packaged in RPG format.

Chris Wolfe's Bootstrapping Space blog is self-described as "digital workspace for me to collect my thoughts about humanity becoming self-sufficient in space". As you can see by reading his blog posts, when he does research, he digs deep.

You can find various technical quotes from his blog within this website.

The Hot Equations: Thermodynamics and Military SF by Ken Burnside is available directly from Ad Astra Games.

This should be required reading for all hard-science science-fiction writers. Ken gives the straight dope about how thermodynamics affects combat spacecraft detection signatures and detection parameters, dealing with waste heat from power reactors and propulsion systems, the three broad categories of rocket propulsion and their constraints, influences on your science fiction novel's background universe, delta V and piracy, space combat weapons, ranges, and locations. All very relevant to our interests.

Late breaking news: Ken has issued his latest essay: Objects in Motion. It has pretty much everything a science-fiction writer needs to know about orbital mechanics and spacecraft trajectories. It is available in a bundle from Ad Astra Games.

Later breaking news: Ken has a new valuable essay: Architect of Worlds: Comprehensive Rules for Worldbuilding. This has all the equations you need for creating a solar system and planets of interest for your science-fiction writing needs.

Astrosynthesis is a brilliant computer program (for Windows only, alas) that assists in the creation of three dimensional star maps.

But it is so much more. The software was intended for the game master of a Role Playing Game to design the background universe, keep track of the various solar systems, map specific planets, draw trade routes, calculate interstellar empire spheres of influence, store notes about specific systems and planets, and generate video files depicting "fly throughs" of the map.

Which can come in real handy for a science fiction author trying to make a background for their novels, and trying to keep all the details straight.

Walter Hunt, noted SF author, used Astrosynthesis when creating the background universe for his Dark Wing series

Over the years I had attempted to create my own 3D mapping software, but AstroSynthesis blows my pathetic efforts right out of the water. It is well worth the price.

Features include:

• Zoom in, out, rotate, and pan around your star map
• The built-in star system generator creates detailed information about stars, their planets, moons, planetoids, and other objects taking into consideration matters of astronomy, physics, atmospheric chemistry, and planetary sciences during the generation process
• The animated display of planet orbits around stars move according to Keplerian rules of planetary motion
• Automatically generate editable surface maps of any terrestrial planet, or import your own maps
• Ships, Fleets, Space Stations, and other bodies are displayed as 3D models, use the supplied models or import your own
• Assign images for uses as blazon images on the 3D map to identify political affiliations
• Display stellar routes between systems, labeled with distances. Assign routes manually or let the program generate hundreds or thousands of star routes automatically based on your criteria
• Track detailed system information for hundreds of thousands of stars, can handle star sector data files up to 4 gigabytes in size.
• Enhance the functionality with 3rd party plug-ins. Many are available, or write your own in VBScript.
• Includes real-world maps of stars withing 1000 light-years of Sol, or generate random maps for your own
• And many more features, read about them here

For advanced users (like me) who can program in Python, VBScript, or other languages which can handle SQLite, XML, and CSV; you can write code to automate the creation of maps and/or auto-translate real-world star catalogs into AstroSynthesis format.

The above images is from my attempt to use AstroSynthesis to lay out some interstellar empires on a real star map. Yes, this took a lot of Python and VBScript coding. You can download the AstroSynthesis file here and the readme file here. Warning: you need to purchase the AstroSynthesis software to display the map, it is Windows only, the file is a work in progress and contains mistakes, and the blasted thing is 3.5 megabytes.

Galaxy Map is Kevin Jardine's professional quality mapping of various features of our Milky Way galaxy. Drawing from primary sources, he has synthesized the most comprehensive astronomically accurate map you are ever likely to have access to.

The Evil Dr. Ganymede (aka Constantine Thomas) has a web site on the topic of mapping stars to a three dimensional star map. He covers converting coordinates, discusses various datasets, and map making.

Adric Ridel has a bachelor's of science degree in Astronomy and Astrophysics, a masters of science in Physics, and is working towards a PhD in Astronomy. He has created a series of rotating star maps using the RECONS star database and others. They are most impressive, give them a look.

The movie and novel 2001: A Space Odyssey are classics of science fiction. But for our purposes, both contain one of the most scientifically accurate depictions of future space exploration, ever. The novel does help explain what the heck is happening in the last part of the movie, but that is besides the point. Other novels by Sir Arthur C. Clarke with great space exploration details include Earthlight, Islands in the Sky, and The Other Side of the Sky.

Apollo 13 is a historical documentary that somehow is also a terrifying thriller. It tells the real story of the accident that almost claimed the lives of NASA's Apollo 13 astronauts, and the heroic efforts taken to save their lives. The buzz on the street was "the best science fiction movie of 1995 was not science fiction".

Destination Moon is a movie that is an oldie but goody. Based on a story by the legendary Robert A. Heinlein, it is exceedingly scientifically accurate. It does give one a feel for how a real atomic rocketship would operate.

Conquest of Space is another movie that is an oldie but goody (if you ignore all that "things man was not meant to do nonsense"). It has a real live honest-to-Collier's wheel space station, space taxis, and a Mars mission right from von Braun (except with a single ship instead of a fleet). It also includes a couple of reminders about the direction of "down" on a rocketship.

The Expanse is a TV series on the SyFy channel, based on James Corey's Expanse novel series.

This is the most scientifically accurate TV show I've ever seen. Bar none.

It also is incredibly close to the novels, which is rare.

First off, they actually have their spacecraft laid out like a skyscraper, the way God and Heinlein intended. Not stupidly like an airplane, like Buster Crabbe's silly rocket ship from Just Imagine. Skyscraper spaceships are even more rare than media science fiction displaying no sound in airless space. The Expanse gets a big gold star in RocketCat's list for getting spacecraft orientation right. The ships are gorgeous as well.

Secondly, they correctly make the point that in space the most valuable commodity is water. And the political situation hinges on it. True this was from the novels, but the TV show made a point of stating this in cold text printed on the TV screen during the introduction.

There is a tense situation in free fall where the crew is trying to get to an escape ship while under fire. They manage to avoid a disaster by the clever use of Newton's Third Law.

A spacecraft is on a high-delta V course from Saturn's rings to Ceres. They have to do an emergency rendezvous with a ship in distress. We are treated to the scientifically accurate spectacle of a "flip-and-burn", where the spacecraft flips to point its engines opposite its vector before thrusting. While the crew is injected with medication to help survive the high g load. It was glorious.

And there were lots of little nice touches.

The economic forces which lead to the colonization of Eros and Ceres has been well thought out.

Ceres has been spun up to provide artificial gravity in the interior tunnels. The production managers for the TV show were scientifically savvy enough to realize this means the airlocks to the surface of Ceres will be in the floor, not the wall. And if you pour whisky, the stream will curve due to the Coriolis effect.

In the low centrifugal gravity of Ceres, a bird can fly, fold its wings, and hover for a few seconds as it gently drifts downward. People in non-thrusting spacecraft float in microgravity, unless they are using magnetic boots (with glowing red indicator lights on the heels).

Belters are tall, skinny, and weak due to growing up in low gravity. On Earth, a belter terrorist is captured. Security tortures him for information, by simply putting supports under his armpits and forcing him to stand under 1 g for prolonged periods.

There is a plausible reason for enemy soldiers to attempt boarding of your spacecraft.

The protagonist lives in the flying ghetto of Ceres. He has a smartphone/pocket computer that is transparent, like the one Tony Stark had. This shows the setting is futuristic. But because Ceres is a slum, his smartphone has a big crack across the screen and he cannot afford a new one.

The accents spoken by the people living in Ceres is delightfully different. To my untrained ear it did not sound like stock Chinese or middle European, it sounded like a realistic mix of several nations. Which makes sense for Ceres. The Belter creole was spot-on perfect. As was the ASL-like hand gestures for certain words, this grew out of communicating when one or both of the people are in a space suit with no working radio. You see this in the first episode when Miller has the slum-lord in the airlock.

And the flood-walls on Ellis Island was the perfect touch.

The only questionable bits I personally noticed were minor. One ship has stealth technology, which will require incredibly advanced heat-sink technology. The space suits have large illuminated face plates, but you have to have that in a TV show or you cannot see the actor's faces. In the show's favor they do something brilliantly innovative that I've never seen before. They had some close up shots of the actor's faces taken from inside the helmets! And the spacecraft interiors were a bit luxuriously spacious, but again you have to have that in a TV show for filming purposes.

I'm focusing on the scientific accuracy because that what this website is all about. I will say that the writing is top-notch, the acting is bang-on, and the story is riveting. The opening title sequence reminds me of a futuristic "Game of Thrones".

All in all, this series has gotten me more excited than any other media science fiction I've seen in a long time.

Recommended.

The Expanse: The Syfy Channel Is Going Big

In a critical scene, two Belters are on a ship that’s under thrust, and they’re running across a gantry. The thrust provides an artificial gravity, so their magnetic boots are off. But the drive cuts out, and they immediately start floating up and away from the gantry. One of the Belters grabs the other, attaches his tether to her, and kicks her up, away from the gantry. I was baffled for a second—I thought he was trying to kill her—then realized what he was doing: She went up, but he went down, to the gantry. Once he hit it, he switched on his mag boots, got his footing, and then used the tether to drag her down.

I almost whooped with joy! That scene was scientifically right on the mark. Perfect. I was talking to Ty Franck, one of the authors of the books, and he told me that Naren Shankar, an executive producer on the show, has a Ph.D. in physics, and he’ll start drawing diagrams as he discusses a scene, explaining how the forces work and why things go a certain way. When Ty told me that I may have blacked out for a second or two. I think my heart exploded.

Finally, I remember thinking.

I've seen the first four episodes (five counting Dulcinea) and confirm: this is the best television SF we have ever seen.

Newton's laws of motion dictate the behavior of everything .

No absurd spacecraft swooping about like WWII fighters, no moronic stopping on a dime, course changes pay momentum's price.

When spacecraft engage at distance, missile thrust plumes are detected, and then ... and then ... there is the appropriate long interval, because the distance to be crossed actually friggen means something and the psychological effect on the crew is freaking visible.

Point defense cannons that glow with the heat of friction — it almost made me cry, honest to god, at the absolute grandeur that the legacy of Star Trek has robbed from the beautiful thing SF should be.

Gravity is a nail-biting edge-of-your-seat movie that somehow manages to simultaneously be quite scientifically accurate. Yes, there are a few things that are not quite right, but they were conscious decisions made by the producers for story purposes. Even with that, the movie is still more scientifically accurate than 99% of all other media SF. This movie is also bests viewed in a 3D movie screen. Not because it has things being poked into your eyes, but because it has things drifting far far away into the abyss of space.

The blockbuster movie The Martian is closely based on the novel by the same name.

If you are a fan of this website, you must see this movie.

The movie has been described as "a love letter to Science". The theme is how a man can survive and escape an impossible situation by keeping their head, dividing the problem into step-by-step sections, and using clever engineering to defeat each section. Unlike the slew of recent dystopian movies, this one is empowering and inspiring.

For me, the theme of the movie is summed up in one line by the mission commander when Johanssen starts to freak out. She cooly tells Johanssen "Keep it together, work the problem"

From a spacecraft standpoint, the Hermes and the Mars Ascent Vehicle will repay careful study. I have some notes on the Hermes here.

When director Ridley Scott started work on the movie, he made a cold call to NASA asking for some technical information. NASA's PR department basically exploded. They told Mr. Scott he could have anything he wanted, the PR department cleared their schedules, and went to work 24-7 assisting. They knew this would be a ratings bonanza for NASA, and would be a killer promo for NASA's real Mars initiative. Most of the hardware seen in the movie is based on real NASA designs. A fact that NASA stresses in their promotion blitz.

Needless to say, NASA heavily promoted the movie on the official NASA website.

When NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter discovered evidence of flowing liquid water on Mars, they kept the story secret, releasing it only four days before the premier of the movie. The New York Times noted this as proof positive that NASA had the whole cross-promotion thing down.

Wanderers is a short film by Erik Wernquist. Narrated by Carl Sagan, it shows why space exploration is so important. WATCH THIS MOVIE RIGHT NOW! and be sure to make it full screen.

Diaspora is a science-fiction tabletop role-playing game by VSCA that was a 2009 Indie RPG Award nominee (review, review). It is set in a gritty future where the players fly fusion drive spacecraft, exploring lost worlds with thousands of years of history.

But for me the interesting part is that along with the rules for role-playing in this universe, there are also a set of mini-games used to determine the outcome of major events. And one of these is a space combat module.

One of the authors mentioned that the Atomic Rockets website was quote "a hugely important resource for use while developing Diaspora" unquote, and it shows. The space combat is streamlined (since this is a role playing game, not a full blown simulation) but the scientific accuracy is all there. The ships even have heat radiators!

As an RPG, it has some very shrewd game mechanisms and innovative designs that I personally was very impressed by. This game will appeal to players who want to participate in telling the story instead of being passive consumers of the game master's story line. In other words, this is a game for frustrated story tellers. The point being, obviously it is also a game for professional authors.

An important part is the pre-game segment where the players participate in creating the game universe (do NOT skip this part in favor of some pre-made universe, it is a vital part of the game. The players have to participate). The creation has three marvelous side effects:

1. The players become incredibly invested in the game universe since they helped create it
   
   
2. You wind up with a universe far more interesting and nuanced than any single game master could possibly create by themselves
   
   
3. The game master is given critical clues as to the sort of campaign the players desire, by the creation process. This makes the game master's life much easier, and helps ensure the players get the game they want

And quite a few reviewers said if they never got a chance to use the cluster they made in a Diaspora game, they jolly well were going to use it in some other RPG system because the cluster was just too cool to let go to waste. The players found their generated game universe to be utterly fascinating, multi-layered, and something wonderful that they had created. SF authors take note, the created game universe could be used as the background for a novel as well.

The other mini-games could actually be played as stand-alone games. As with all role-playing games there is a personal combat mini-game so the heroes can fight the bad guys. The space combat mini-game will satisfy your military starship needs. The platoon combat mini-game lets you play army combat. And for anything else there is the incredibly versatile social combat mini-game. The latter can handle whatever you can imagine: a political campaign, a seduction, diplomats negotiating a treaty, interrogating a captive, a media advertising blitz, maneuvering in palace intrigues, the possibilities are endless.

Pretty much every role-playing game is about the actions of the characters. But in Diaspora (as with all FATE derived games) there is the "bronze rule" or "FATE fractal": Everything Can Be A Character. Such as: street-gang factions, planets, cities, neighborhoods, political parties, organized crime families, space stations, etc. For instance, there can be a place called Mos Eisley Spaceport with a characteristic aspect of "No Greater Hive Of Scum And Villainy".

People interested in Diaspora will find more material in the Board Game Geek Diaspora page and Diaspora forum.

The Fate Space Toolkit (PDF) is an expansion module for the Fate Core role playing game You need both in order to play. Review here. Printed edition was scheduled for April 20, 2020, but the coronavirus pandemic may delay that.

This is a "tool kit" that a game master can use in order to easily custom build their own outer space based game background. It does come with several pre-made backgrounds to get you started.

Relevant to our interests, the "Mass Driver" universe is very rocketpunk, very Expanse flavored, unusually scientifically accurate, and it has heat radiators!

Full disclosure: it also mentions this website in the game's appendix, in the list of further source material. Reading the rulebook I can see where their careful study of this website has paid off, and places where they have included scientific material that was new to me. Impressed the heck out of me!

There is an early section of the rulebook which is a quick but accurate primer on basic rocket science. It covers thrust, specific impulse. delta-V and everything! It quickly gets the players up to speed on the basics.

Written by Bill White, C.W. Marshall, Joshua A. C. Newman, Mikki Kendall.

Plus it has sweet artwork by Brett Barkley, Kurty Komoda, Joyce Maureira, and the incomparable Juan Ochoa!

Delta

Spacecraft are build with a modular system.

In this background, the wealthy corporations use grinda VASIMRs in their expensive spacecraft, while the dirt-poor asteroid miners use cranky radioactive nuclear thermal rockets (NTR) in their broken-down mining ships. Nobody except teenagers or the desperate use thumpa chemical rockets. NTR's have the "aspect" of TOUCHY BEASTS, which means the game master or players can throw in a plot complication based on trying to prevent the cantankerous contraptions from going critical or other catastrophe. Grinda VASIMRs are mainly used by the premier shipping lines; asteroid miners (mass drivers) are by and large too poor to afford to have one installed.

As you can see, the game designers chose two engines to illustrate the SUV class / Economy class dichotomy.

A drive's impulse rating is compared to the ship's mass to find the factor used to modify the distance the spacecraft can travel in one game turn. If the impulse is high the distance is increased, if the impulse is low the distance is decreased.

Obviously "impulse" is "specific impulse / exhaust velocity", which is the rocket engine's "gas mileage" rating. The higher the impulse, the higher the delta-V increment per unit of propellant expended. In terms of the game's mechanics, it increases the "distance" traveled, where "distance" is measured in units of delta-V. So the VASIMR Drive with its higher impulse is the representative of the low-thrust + high-specific-impulse Economy class engine.

A drive's thrust rating is compared to the ship's mass to find the factor used to modify the days that elapse on the spacecraft in one game turn. If the thrust is high the number of days is reduced, if the thrust is low the number of days is increased.

Even more obviously "thrust" is rocket engine thrust, which measures how rapidly the engine can accelerate the spacecraft. The faster the ship can accelerate/decelerate, the shorter the elapsed mission time. So the NERVA Drive with its higher thrust is the representative of the high-thrust + low-specific-impulse SUV class engine.

Heat build-up is combated with heat radiators. So this game wins a Heat Radiator Award!

In other words, an author playing around with the ship travel part of the "Mass Driver" universe will get a feel for the difference between the two engine types. Very educational.

Like Diaspora, the game is based on the Fate RPG system. This game will appeal to players who want to participate in telling the story instead of being passive consumers of the game master's story line. In other words, this is a game for frustrated story tellers. The point being, obviously it is also a game for professional authors.

As a side note, while all the authors of the Space Toolkit are of high standing in their field and have collectively won this Seal of Approval, Joshua A. C. Newman is the author of another RPG with the seal of approval, Shock: Human Contact.

Green Ronin Publishing got the license to craft a table-top role-playing game based on the seal-of-approval-winner TV show The Expanse. Green Ronin financed the project with a Kickstarter, which met its funding goal in one hour flat. Of course I was one of the funders.

The quickstart rulebook is available for non-Kickstarters right now, and the main rulebooks will be coming out soon.

I have just got the initial PDF files from my Kickstarter backing, and I am happy to report that Green Ronin has done this project up proud. It has the full scope and flavor of the TV series. It has hard science that measures up to RocketCat's vanadium steel meterstick. And it has Heat Radiators!

The section on Spaceships has great explainations about velocity, thrust, thrust-to-weight ratios, apoapsis & periapsis, circularizing orbits, prograde & retrograde, planet spheres of influence, Hohmann transfers, Brachistochrone trajectories, all the good stuff. The game includes a handy-dandy map of the solar system with various important locations from the TV series indicated. But the cool part is tables for average distances between the locations, communication timelags, and travel times (at 0.3g, 1g, 7g, and 12 g accelerations). And of course the obligatory RPG player-character equipment-lists containing high-tech gear, drones, vac suits, and plenty of assorted weapons.

The game mechanics are based on the Adventure Game Engine (AGE) rules found in such Green Ronin RPGs as Fantasy AGE, Blue Rose, and Modern AGE.

The rulebook artwork was done by an extensive team of artists, and all of it is top-notch.

Recommended.

Orbital 2100 by Zozer Games (Paul Elliott) is a role playing game "worldbook." This means you also need the Cepheus Engine rulebook in order to play. If you just want to read about the Orbital 2100 universe you do not need the Cepheus Engine rules.

Hard science? Absolutely! The introduction includes Bruce Sterling's quote about the Gobi Desert. The lunar nation is dependant upon Earth for their vital supplies of nitrogen. Spacecraft use closed-cycle gas core nuclear rocket engines, which are bimodal yet! Lo and behold, there are even heat radiators!

The setting is the situtation during the industrialization of the solar system. Not quite as dystopian as, say, The Expanse. But neither is it all utopian goodness and light like a Robert McCall painting. As they put it: "the future of space colonisation envisaged by planners of the 1980s, albeit with a healthy dose of realism."

The political reality and background history is all too plausible. Earthbound nations focusing on short term gains and practical projects like orbital solar power stations. Luna nation wanting Earth to invest more in expanding into the asteroid belt, but stymied by Earth's reluctant to throw money down what they see as a rat-hole. Followed by a brushfire war, which escalates, up to the point where Earth launches military troopships into orbit. Which abruptly return to Earth when Luna Nation takes a page out of THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS

The hot war is over, the cold war begins, but there is still trade between Earth and Luna because frankly they need each other. They don't like it very much but survival makes strange bedfellows. The situation is full of tense possibilities for all sorts of interesting stories.

Shadows Over Sol is a role playing game written by Thorin Tabor. There is a free quick-start sample here.

The game is set in a near future (200 years) industrialized solar system. No FTL (which is a plus), with a flavor along the lines of The Expanse and Outland. The various megacorporations try to sabotage each other, there are huge space habitats that are independent nations, and there are also places functionally equivalent to wild west frontier towns except set in space.

But then there is horror. Ranges from small time horror like Mimic, Splice, and Species then to medium horror like Alien, The Thing then all the way up to major-league eldritch cosmic Cthulhu-esque horror. Some are bioengineered monstered created by various corporations for corporate wars, and they still lurk in abandoned colonies. But others are big-time evil deities that predate mankind, sleeping in forgotten corners of the solar system.

However, our focus is on the technology. And it is obvious that Mr. Tabor has done his homework. The spacecraft use practical fission-fragment engines instead of torch drives. Realistic transit times, e.g., six months from Mars to Ceres. Passengers spend transit times in suspended animation. Combat rated spacecraft have heat-sinks. Detailed and accurate descriptions of various locations in the solar system. Space colony types such as Stanford Torus, Bernal Sphere, and O'Neill Cylinder. Not to mention space elevators.

The cherry on top of the sundae is that the power reactors have heat radiators!

I have read some pre-release excerpts from the worldbook and must confess that I was blown away! Mr. Torres mentioned that he has used this website as a resource to get the science correct, and he has done a rocket-roaring good job. Spacecraft propulsion systems have realistic numbers, the space combat system is diamond hard, there ain't no stealth in space, spaceships are NOT stupidly laid out like belly-landing aircraft, and the ships have heat radiators! Mr. Torres let me peek at the spreadsheet he created to calculate the parameters of all the spacecraft, which used data and formulae from this website. Slick piece of work!

There are sidebars explaining various scientific details. These could have been taken from my website except they are written far better than anything I could write.

Plus as an added bonus the book includes an accurate three-dimensional star map out to about 30 light-years or so from Sol (also available as a PDF download). Yes, it is accurate, I checked it against one of my own star maps I created using the Hipparcos stellar catalog. There is also a dynamic 3D star view written in VRML (at the above download link) which can be seen with standard VRML viewers for Windows, OSX, and Linux. This is to allow the players to familiarize themselves with the stellar neighborhood. See demo video here.

And in the interest of education, an appendix does list the specific points where science fiction science was added for game purposes (after all, you have to have FTL travel if you want starships).

This is the sort of top-notch work I was hoping for when I wrote this website. Mr. Torres has done his homework and it shows. I'm going to be purchasing a copy of this one when it comes out. The Kickstarter launch will be happening soon.

Shock:Human Contact is a science-fiction tabletop role-playing game by game designer Joshua A.C. Newman. The science is admirably hard. In the game, quite a few planets have been colonized by slower-than-light generational ships over a period of a thousand years. However, things on Earth got a little ... disjointed .. after a global war. Earth is reborn with the help of The Academy, a meritocratic democracy of scientists who seek to improve the lives of all in reach.

Now the Academy wishes to help the lost human colonies. But over the millennium, they have drifted quite a bit culturally. So each contact is much like first contact with an alien species. The academics in the team must be very careful, choosing between arriving openly or first sending in black ops anthropologists to prepare the way.

The game book is worth reading even if you never intend to play the game, just for the concepts included. There are details about the starship, guidelines to creating the colonial societies, notes on making alien alphabets and writing systems, nanotechnology tools, all sorts of goodies. It is like a fascinating mix of J. D. Bernal's immortal The World, the Flesh and the Devil, Freeman Dyson, Greg Egan, The Medium Is the Massage, Future Shock, and Edward Tufte

Don't miss Joshua's main website xenoglyph, it has aliens, strange alphabets, and cool writing. If you like it, you might want to become one of Joshua's Patreon patrons.

Attack Vector: Tactical (store) (review) is a paper-and-cardboard tabletop wargame of spacecraft combat by Ken Burnside (yes, kiddies, back at the dawn of creation, games were not on computers). You might have noticed the many quotes from Mr. Burnside gracing this website. It is by far the most scientifically accurate spacecraft combat game of all time, but it is also remarkably playable. If you really want to get an intuitive feel for battling rocketships, you would do well to play this game.

If one wants a paper-and-cardboard wargame where you can adjust the "hardness" of the science a bit in order to simulate your favorite media SF show (or to model you own custom SF universe for your novel), try Mr. Burnside's Squadron Strike (store). The game includes a ship construction system that can be used to recreate your favorite media SF ships. And I mean create them in detail. His system is more versatile than Hero System's Champions RPG, it can easily handle the fine nuances between the science fiction weapon systems of any SF TV show or movie franchise.

Late breaking news!. Mr. Burnside has set up a Patreon Campaign so you can help fund him to start creating massive amounts of starships designed for Squadron Strike.

On the other hand - Winch's analogy to victorian era fiction about flying dreadnoughts and the "Who the hell thought of an Immelmann turn?" question sort of underscores why I want to model how space combat works using known physics as a gameable experience.

It won't be WWII in space. It won't be the Iraq war in space, it won't be subs in the North Atlantic in space. It will be its own unique thing.

To figure out what that unique thing is, you need to understand the environment of space, how it differs from a planetary environment, and once you have those differences modeled, you need to work out the tactics for this new environment, much the same way WWI biplane pilots had to work out the tactics of air to air combat.

Now, it's certain that I've got things wrong with the Attack Vector: Tactical model. When they get pointed out, I fix them. On the other hand, to the best of my knowledge and belief, it's the first serious attempt at trying to model what the tactical environment looks like.

World War II/Battleships/Fighters in space is about as likely to be an accurate model of space combat as, modeling jet air-to-air combat with pike square formations. Attack Vector: Tactical is probably akin to saying that jet fighters behave like World War I biplanes, only faster. It's still likely wrong, but it's probably much LESS wrong.

Voidstrikerby Irrational Designs is very similar to Squadron Strike. It is a tabletop starship combat game that can be played with cardboard counters on a hex map or with starship miniatures on the table. Charles Oines does offer Voidstriker ship miniatures at his Shapeways store, but you can use whatever miniatures you have.

The difference is that Voidstriker reduces the level of detail somewhat in order to make the game quicker to play and to handle larger numbers of ships. It is still very scientifically accurate. It includes a ship construction system sufficiently elastic to accommodate most media SF combat starships, or to create your own unique ships. The rulebooks, playing maps, and plastic starships are all available as separate units, so the player can only purchase just what they need.

The combat spacecraft move using RocketCat Approved vector movement, much like the vector system in Triplanetary. With the additional merit of being one of only four tabletop starship wargames capable of handling displacement.

For purposes of gameplay and ship design ships are characterized using the standard armor, guns, and speed dimensions; like pretty much every other starship combat game. With the additional merit of again being one of only four tabletop starship wargames which handle Ken Burnside's additional two dimensions of Command & Control, and Endurance.

Perhaps this is not surprising because:

• The other three wargames were all created by Ken Burnside: Attack Vector: Tactical, Squadron Strike, and Saganami Island Tactical Simulator.
• Charles Oines and Ken Burnside have collaborated on games before

Late breaking news: as of 1/4/2016 Voidstrikeris now free! The rules, ship book, map, and counters are available as PDF downloads. You still have to pay for the miniatures, though.

Later breaking news: the Voidstriker page has vanished. I am trying to contact Mr. Oines to see if the rules are hosted anywhere.

Later-later breaking news: The Voidstriker rules and Ship Recognition Guide can be downloaded from the Internet Archive

Don't forget to download the Ship Recognition Guide, because it also contains the campaign rules.

For fun, designer Charles Oines made the good ship Rocinante from The Expanse into Voidstriker terms:

Tachi Class Gunship ("Rocinante")
    Off: 224, Def: 212, Msc: 226, CV: 221

Hull Data                        
    12 Hulls (8 UDST, 2 Fuel, 1 Misc, 1 Magazine).
    Target Size 0.
    Armor: 16 (6/6/4).    
    Structure: 12 (6/6).
        CRRMA A
        UAAAA A                
    Frame: 3
    Fuel: 112 pts., 28 burns.
    Troops: 2 Squads.
    Cargo: 30, Supply: 9, Endurance: 3 months.
                        
Gadgets
    6 Weapon Concealment (PD guns)
    2 Chaff Pods (def)

Performance
    6 Actions.
    High Powered Std Reaction Thrusters.
        Thrust Ratio: 2/1.
    No Jump Engine

Weapons                        
    6 Single Point Defense Guns, concealed (D)(2All, 2FPA, 2FSA)
    2 Torpedo Tubes (20 Light long-range torpedoes)?

Charles Oines also had some thoughts about implementing heat radiators in the game:

Voidstriker Heat, the totally untested basics:

Doing things (actions, in other words) adds to your onboard heat, radiators disperse it. At a base level, actions produce 0, 1 or 2 points of heat based on how energetic those actions are. Radiators disperse heat during the record keeping phase. Ideally, most ships will run hot when doing fun stuff and cool down when doing boring stuff. If your heat after dispersal is over your actions, you lose the difference in actions until your heat is down again. Thus, if a ship with 4 actions is stuck with 6 heat at the end of the turn, it'll only have 2 actions next turn.

Radiators fit into medium, heavy and main hardpoints and disperse 1, 2, and 4 heat respectively.

Nods to realism: reactionless drives generate more heat than reaction drives do. Dumping remass could reduce heat. Having an action specifically to disperse heat should probably be there too — maybe it burns out a radiator but gets rid of 2x the radiator's usual heat dispersal. Overheated ships easier to get target lock on?

Nods to superscience: Shields up affects cooling? Impellers can flush the heat toilet into hyperspace?

High Frontier (Buy) (review) (review) is a paper-and-cardboard tabletop wargame where the players are corporations competing to industrialize space. It also gives science fiction writers and other interested persons a way to plot orbital transfers between various locations in the solar system, without requiring calculus. The basic game gives you command of the inner solar system, the expansion pack gives you the rest. Mr. Eklund is a real live scientist, the game is breathtakingly scientifically accurate. And a lot fun to boot!

Having said that, be warned that this is a game about rocket science, it ain't checkers in space. There is a learning curve. On the plus side, the rocket science is handled by the game components. Players will be OK as long as they know how to add and subtract.

And just because this game is only about prospecting and industry does NOT mean it is boring. Quite the opposite, there will be plenty of white-knuckle moments. Read the game session reports below if you don't believe me.

Any science fiction author writing on the topic of exploring and industrializing the solar system can readily create a historical background with impressive scientific accuracy by merely playing a few games and taking notes. The explanations of the various technologies in the game are in the appendix, and are almost worth the price of the game.

You may be interested in these lurid and cinematic game session reports:

• Cubes of DOOM (warning NSFW language)
• 21 years on Mars, a tragedy in three parts
• "My God, it's full of stars!" and Other Things Screamed Out the Bunghole (warning NSFW language)

Mr. Eklund had given his permission for a VASSAL module of High Frontier 3rd Edition. VASSAL is a computerized game engine for building and playing online adaptations of board games and card games. It allows users to play in real time over a live Internet connection (in addition to playing by email). It runs on all platforms (at least the ones that support Java), and is free for personal use. You can download it here.

He has also given his permission for a Cyberboard moduled for High Frontier 3rd Ed.The Cyberboard program is free, but only runs on Windows.

The commercial STEAM game Tabletop Simulator ($20 US) has two free Eklund approved modules of High Frontier 3rd Edition so you can play solitare or real time over live Internet connections: Matt's Version, Eskander's Version

You will, however, need a copy of the rules from the boardgame in order to play. In his online store, Mr. Eklund says the 3rd Edition rules are available for free here.

There are some useful third-party game aids, tutorials, lists of the various rocket propulsion systems, lists of good places for prospecting in the solar system, and game variants available for download at BoardGameGeek. In particular I recommend the Instructions and Variants document. The game rulebook is confusing and unclear, with the information needed to perform the various game tasks fragmented and scattered. The Instructions and Variants is much more lucid, with all the information for each task gathered in a single location. Plus it includes several amusing scenarios. My personal favorite is the 2001 scenario, recreating the events and hardware in the novels 2001 A Space Odyssey and 2010 Odyssey Two.

The BoardGameGeek High Frontier Forum and the High Frontiers Yahoo Group are good places to ask game questions and read about strategy.

In 2013 Mr. Eklund came out with the High Frontier Colonization Expansion (2nd edition) for High Frontier. It takes up where the first one left off. The solar system map is expanded out to Pluto, each player is based on a Bernal sphere in various strategic locations, and a host of new technologies (all based on reality and scientifically accurate) have been introduced.

In 2017 Mr. Eklund came out with High Frontier 3rd Edition. This includes the first edition combined with the Colonization expansion plus the Interstellar expansion.

During my last game of Phil Eklund’s HIGH FRONTIER I found myself making a very difficult decision and dealing with some pretty harsh consequences. I had spent what amounts to about twenty years of game time attempting to build a factory on Mars to manufacture highly valuable products that cannot be made on Earth. This epic journey from constructing a rocket on the Blue Planet to harvesting resources on the Red Planet included an earlier unmanned mission where I was able to stake a claim to the site thanks to orbital prospecting.

I also had to spend time and resources in acquiring the patents necessary to build a suitable thruster system, a resource-extracting Robonaut, and a refinery to make the trip and set up shop. I also needed to acquire enough 40-ton bags of water, not only the game’s abstract measure of capital but also a handy storage solution for hydrogen, in order to boost the mass of all this equipment into low Earth orbit so that I could then stage the mission. And then there was the matter of balancing out fuel consumption with thrust and making sure I had enough gas to get there.

That was a huge problem. Landing on Mars required more fuel that I could really afford, or even take given the build and weight class of my vessel. I decided on a route that would take me through a couple of orbital aero braking zones, which eliminate the need for spending fuel to make planetfall. All I had to do was not roll a one in either of them. The first one, I passed. My heart was pounding. I felt a sense of uncertainty and fear. On the second roll, the result was the dreaded one. My craft—along with all of the time and resources spent to get so close to my goal…disintegrated. It was the single most thrilling die roll of any game I’ve played all year.

Polymath Andrew Doull got a license from Phil Eklund permitting Doull to create a table top role playing game based on High Frontier. Yes, the table top boardgame is so full of worldbuilding that it easily supports roleplay. The game is called Sixty Years In Space, free samplehere, you may purchase the full game here.

The attention to scientific detail is breathtaking! And useful. Science fiction authors and worldbuilders will find tons of useful data here.

Sixty Years In Space is the officially licensed tabletop roleplaying game of the High Frontier board game, which means it already starts with all the hard rocket science that the board game includes. And the inspiration doesn't stop there: you'll be exploring the solar system, finding water and building factories just like in the board game except zoomed in to the scale of individual crew members rather than from the perspective of the mission control. But it doesn't limit itself to the practicalities of space exploration at a human scale. While you're in space, Earth society will be changing, including your mission control, and a significant part of the game is deciding how your crew reacts to the missions your are assigned and the technologies imposed on you.

The game is extremely crunchy - the core rules and first 4 supplements run to nearly two thousand pages - and covers everything from microgravity health risks to robots to colonies. Rather than having a fixed future, your crew will be responsible for defining and reacting to it over the course of their lives, with potential life spans measured in the millions of years or more. It also doesn't have a game master, instead relying on random tables to create missions, other factions, rewards and even space dungeons!; condensing systems modeling insolation, agricultural area and population distribution down into relatively simple maps generated by dropping different coloured counters and dice and placing playing cards. And if you're fascinated by the High Frontier board game map, the A Lot of Zeroes supplement has an appendix which provides guidance on how to create maps for solar systems other than our own.

It's hard to overstate just how much stuff is in this game, with small gems of insight on each page about what a part of a possible future in space might look like. But fortunately you can download the first 120 pages of the core rules for free along with a chapter on space infrastructure and terraforming from the This Space Intentionally supplement, even if you don't envisage playing the game with your regular gaming group.

Legendary game designer John Butterfield (Stargate, Freedom in the Galaxy, Voyage of the Pandora, Universe RPG and Delta Vee) was inspired by the SpaceCorp novel to create the game SpaceCorp 2025-2300AD (main site here, review here and here).

The game models the expansion of the human race into space. It does so in three eras:

1. Mariner's Era 2025-2069: expansion into cis-Lunar space, Near Earth Asteroids, and Mars
2. Planeteers's Era 2070-2149: expansion into asteroid belt and outer solar system
3. Starfarers's Era 2150-2299: expansion into the fourteen closests star systems to Sol

Three Eras allow the introduction of more advanced play in stages. The first Era introduces the basic concepts of the game. The second Era adds travel between remote planets, radiation penalties, genetic advancements and tech breakthroughs. The third Era introduces interstellar travel, generational time and colonies.

Game wise SpaceCorp is much like a simpler and more accessable version of High Frontier. Less attention to microscopic technical details and more focus on the big picture (I still like High Frontier, but hey, I'm the creator of the Atomic Rocket website. Which is all about the microscopic technical details). The game rules include a solo version for those of us who have difficulties finding people to play with.

And obviously science fiction authors will find this game very useful to generate a near-future space industrialization background for their novels.

SpaceCorp is currently available from Amazon.

Ray McVay of Blue Max Studios is the creator of the incredible Black Desert role-playing game. As his bio states he is a game designer specializing in hard science fiction spacecraft and world building. Take it from me, he is doing it right, his science is good and hard (I should know). You may have noticed that I included his brilliant expansion of the "Mission Control" model here on this website.

Ray McVay says "Will Draw Spacecraft for Food...", meaning that he is open for spacecraft art commissions.

In December of 2016 Blue Max studio released their first issue of LAUNCH WINDOW. The publication features hard-science stories along with the additional information allowing it to be used with Role Playing Games. It was specifically designed to be used with the Cepheus Engine (a refinement of the classic Traveller RPG) but can be adapated to any of the huge family of OpenD6 RPGs.

Since this is Blue Max studios we are talking about here, the science in the stories is hard. Diamond hard.

LET FREEDOM RING: This is a tight near-future story about the adventures of the Repo ship Annabelle Li and her intrepid crew. Literally "her" crew, because the ship is the physical body of the artifical intelligence Annabelleli.ind. The ship receives a seemingly straightforward repo job on the ship Lady Libby of Antioch, but of course "seemingly" is the operative word.

Hard-science goodies include the economy of laser launch installations, armature drones controlled by Annabelle Li with power/data sockets instead of feet, and genetically engineered gorillas.

Game goodies include Cepheus Engine game stats for the major characters, including Annabelle Li.

STAR MORPHS are a set of geomorphic starship deck plan hex maps for use with RPGs. Included are several encounter tables to surprise the game players.

GONE! AT 7 KM/S is an article about interplanetary repo companies in general and Recoveries Ltd. in particular. This is the repo company the Annebelle Li works for. Included is the company's history, business model, and Cepheus Engine game stats for the major characters. Including Kenny Winchell.

STARGOSY is a far-future story set in an interstellar empire with an Egyptian flare to it. While it has the obligatory non-science FTL starships, it otherwise is quite scientific.

Of special notice is the ramifications of "forking" technology, where individuals can be duplicated. Such people have numbers in front of their names to indicate which copy they are: e.g., 2Newman, 3Newman, 4Newman.

As with the other story, game goodies include game stats for the major characters and ship diagrams.

NIBUUS CLUSTER CLASS-3 PINNACE is an article about a small combat shuttle common in the Stargosy universe. Ship details, full Cepheus Engine game stats, and ship diagrams are included.

HICHIKARS SPECIES is a tongue-in-cheek article about an alien species based on the novel Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. With full game stats of course.

Jovian Despair is a 2-page role playing game created by TauCeti Deichmann. It won an honorable mention in Top Secret Games Two-Page Tabletop Contest.

They said: "The story of a lone crew’s struggle against the omnipresent dangers of space as society collapses around them. In a beautiful way, this game turned a lot of common tabletop paradigms on their head, resulting in a science-fiction game that makes the player feel like are truly part of the universe. It’s character and setting creation really blew us away, to say nothing of its other well designed mechanics. If you are at all a fan of science fiction, this game is worth a long look." Kind of like a depressing version of The Martian.

I too think it is extraordinary, and not just because the author included a kind word for my website.

Just look at the gorgeous spacecraft illustration they did. It has all the right stuff! A ship's spine with hab module at one end and the nuclear engine at the other. Up and down oriented along the thrust axis! Heat radiators! Heat radiators trimmed to stay inside the shadow shield! Propellant tanks trimmed to stay inside the shadow shield!

That's scientific accuracy!

Cosmic Ocean is a simulation game under development by Aaron DeVries. The KickStarter is here.

The game is an exploration game, much like a sailing simulator. But instead of a sailboat traveling to islands and coastlines, it will feature an antimatter-powered scientifically accurate starship voyaging to near by star systems and planets. And the starship has heat radiators!

Well basically it started as a project where I wanted to develop a game that captured interstellar travel as a long haul instead of the usual FTL.

Originally the ship was going to be a Valkyrie style traction starship. But since the aesthetics I'm aiming for is that of "sailing the ocean but in space" I went with a more Enzmann style ship with large vertical radiators that gave off a tall ship vibe. The ship itself is a matter antimatter beamcore design with a habitat section out in front, complete with an artificial gravity wheel. It's powerd by hydrogen anti-hydrogen and uses a large monolithic impact shield out front made of sintered asteroid material.

The ship is built and operated by the "Terran Space Command" a multinational space development and exploration agency. In terms of the game it's a stylized depiction of space with everything being located on a single plain. The ship is newtonian so deceleration requires a flip and burn, with the player needing to account for this as it obviously takes as much time to slow down as was taken to speed up.

I do have plans to eventually add other starship to the game that can be selected with different attributes. Current ideas include a photon ship, inertial confinement fusion, and a large Orion drive based ship. However currently it's just the Horizon which is the antimatter beamcore ship.

ΔV: Rings of Saturn is the hot new game from Kodera Software (press kit, videos, twitter). It is available for Early Access from Steam. Many real-world propulsion systems are available, and the author is working on implementing Zubrin's infamous nuclear salt water rocket! The physics are accurate, the movement is Newtonian.

Zubrin nuclear salt water rocket clip

Children of a Dead Earth is a breathtakingly scientifically accurate space combat computer game by Zane Mankowski, available on Steam for Windows and Macintosh.

Reading the scientific details on the developers log will quickly show you that Mr. Mankowski's attention to detail is astonishing (actually you should read the developer's log even if you have no interest in the game). Of course what immediately got my attention was the presence of heat radiators, which is all too often overlooked. But there is so much more!

Other games cut corners by calculating orbital trajectories using the inaccurate Patched Conic Approximation, this game goes full NASA and uses an N-Body Simulator. This means (unlike other games) it handles hyperbolic orbits and Lagrange points.

During combat, the mass balance of the ships are recalculated as the propellant tanks are emptied, since this alters how the ship will tumble when torqued. A railgun accelerates its armature based on numerical integration of force equations. Spacecraft design section allows user to tweak everything from the stoichiometric mixture ratio of the bipropellant rockets to the armature and rail dimensions of railguns. When your arclamp pumps your solid state laser, the pumping bands are going to have to match up with the actual emission spectra of your excitation gas. When the photon absorption of a material is needed, it is derived from actual refractive index spectra data.

This game has not been released yet, but had a successful Kickstarter, and the latest developments are reported on their website. They also have a growing community on Discord. Check it out! I am most impressed, and not just because the developers study this website closely. They also monitor the Tough SF site and enjoyed Children of a Dead Earth.

Impeller Studios was formed by developers whose credits include Crysis, Far Cry, MechWarrior 2: Mercenaries, and the X-Wing series. They have the talent.

However, they are hereby awarded the Atomic Rocket seal of approval for their focus on hard science. And not just physics, they use military science as well. The user interface designer stresses that his designs have to be run past not only scientific experts, but military ones as well.

There are no silly skiffy tropes like technobabble force shields, only things that have survived online debates by the scientific community. They actually hired an engineer to check the math. The game designers are proud that they got into the true nitty-gritty details of how a combat spacecraft is put together.

This means they had to do a deep analysis of strategy, since almost none of the other spacecraft combat games strategies could be used.

I am looking forward to this one.

Kerbal Space Program (wiki) is a jaw-droppingly amazing educational computer program (Windows, Macintosh, Linux; requires a 2.0 GHz dual core cpu to run well) that teaches astronautics and space exploration. Do not be fooled by the cute little green men, this game will painlessly teach you some serious spacecraft and mission design. Not to mention piloting. Science fiction authors please take note.

The scientific details are just as hard as in Orbiter (see below), but presented in a far more entertaining fashion. Plus the graphics are astonishing, even with the dorky green men. Don't take my word for it, watch the trailer below.

The demo game is free, and the full game is a bargain.

And just like Orbiter, there are clever people making "mods" (new spaceship parts) and "add-ons" (plug-in calculators to make the pilot's life easier). if you are clever, you can make some as well. Unlike Orbiter, some of the mods are weapons.

Currently the game is only a "sandbox". That is, there is no goal, there is no "boss battle", you are just playing for your own amusement. (Late breaking news, while sandbox mode is still available, they have added a "career mode") Paradoxically this makes the game incredibly addictive. There is always the temptation to try "just one more" new twist on an old rocket design. Players invent personal challenges, like creating elaborate space station designs then trying to figure out how to boost all the components into orbit. There are a few game scenarios, which are like elaborate puzzles. Check out the Rendezvous With Roche scenario, and Sir Jodelstein's attempted solution. And the KSP devs promise that eventually there will be a "career mode" for the game.

The Orbiter Space Flight Simulator is a stunning computer program (for Windows only, alas) that allows the user to fly various spacecraft around the solar system. And there is a thriving community of cunning programmers making new spacecraft plug-ins for you to use (everything from the International Space Station to the Serenity from the TV show "Firefly"). If you too are cunning, you can create your own add-ons. And did I mention that the program was free?

I was amused that Steven Ouellette has created an add-on that duplicates the Rolling Stone from the Heinlein novel of the same name.

• Launch the Space Shuttle from Kennedy Space Center and rendezvous with the International Space Station.
• Recreate historic flights with addon spacecraft packages: Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Vostok and more.
• Plan interplanetary slingshots and tour the solar system with futuristic space craft.
• Design your own rockets, or download addons created by other users.
• Learn about the concepts of space flight and orbital mechanics by playing and experimenting.

Independence War (store) is an amazing computer game (for Windows only, alas) that puts the player in command of a spacecraft that obeys hard-core Newtonian physics instead of silly Star Wars nonsense. You will quickly find that a combat spacecraft does not behave like a fighter jet. It is more like an over-loaded 18-wheeler at high speed on a freeway covered in black ice. The controls are interesting, and the linked scenarios are fascinating. At one point I was in a task force escaping from deep in enemy territory when my FTL drive was destroyed by a hit by enemy particle beam cannon. I thought I was dead, until I noticed a friendly repair ship with an invitingly large hangar bay. In desperation I swooped in, and was treated to a video cut-scene of my ship barely entering into the bay, scraping its belly in a shower of sparks.

I did find that it is much easier to play if you have one of those fancy joysticks with lots of triggers and hat switches. I was in a dog-fight when out of the corner of my eye I noticed a flicker behind my ship. I suddenly realized it was an enemy missile doing its best to fly up my tailpipe and vaporize me. If I had to search the keyboard for the "launch decoy flares" button I would have been doomed. Instead an instinctive flick upward on the left hatch switch fired off the decoy and saved my posterior.

The game is out of print but it is available for download from Good Old Games for about six dollars.

Mass Effect 2 is an award winning video game from Bioware. It was one of the titles in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die. It appears that one of the developers was a fan of Ken Burnside's Attack Vector: Tactical and my Atomic Rocket website.

In the following video clip, "Serviceman Burnside" is apparently Ken Burnside, and "Serviceman Chung" is apparently me. A very nice Easter Egg, done with respect and admiration.

TorchShips is a computer game that is currently a Kickstarter project. This project will only be funded if at least $40,000 is pledged by Sunday Jun 17, 11:13pm EDT.

Developer John Gillespie is not fooling around. He wants this game to have plenty of scientific accuracy and is doing his homework. Including doing research by reading this website, which always gives me a warm glow inside. His combat spacecraft are not powered by prissy little ion drives, no they have brutal gas-core nuclear thermal rockets. And they are armed to the teeth. He draws his inspiration from novels like Ender's Game, Time for The Stars, and CJ Cherryh's Downbelow Station.

This looks like it is going to be good!