Rulebook

A game of exoglobalization for 1 to 5 players. Updated Feb, 2021.

These Core rules (including the glossary at the end) comprise the base game, and are expanded by the tutorials, variants, and modules.

A1. Core Overview

Players, representing the spacefaring factions of Earth, bid for patents (space technology cards) and boost them into Low Earth Orbit (LEO) to be assembled into Rockets and their Cargos. Water in LEO is used both as commodity currency and as rocket propellant, and each water container there is called one Aqua. Once loaded with Fuel Tanks (FTs) of water, Rockets fly to promising industrial and science Sites (planets, asteroids, etc.). If prospecting succeeds, a Claim is made. A Claim can be upgraded to a Factory to produce useful new equipment. By extracting water from a Site, FTs are produced both for water propellant and as money (“Aqua”) if shipped back to LEO.¹

a. Core Game Victory. At the end of 48 years (48 Turns per player), the winner is the player with the highest victory point (VP) total.

b. Sunspot Cycles. Each Turn in High Frontier is one year, and the length of a game is measured in Sunspot Cycles of 12 years. Thus the standard Core Game described above is 4 Sunspot Cycles, Core Game plus Modules 1 and/or 2 is 5 Sunspot Cycles, and Core Game plus Modules 1, 2, and Futures is 7 Sunspot Cycles.

A2. Metarules

a. Terms being defined are listed in bold, or italicized if defined elsewhere. Capitalized terms are defined in the glossary. These terms are general ones that appear throughout the process-oriented rules (next bullet).

b. Sequential Processes are presented in the order listed in the sequence of play, and are introduced by a simple overview followed by specific bullets.

c. The Golden Rule. If the text on a card, scenario, tutorial, or variant contradicts these rules, that text prevails.

d. The Modular Rule. Rules in blue font are modular rules that are ignored unless playing with the relevant Module. indicate a rule not used in the Race for Glory game, and a indicates an alternate version of the rule is used in the Race for Glory game. Moreover, rules in the Modules supersede these core rules. If a conflict occurs between Modules, use the publication date as the final arbiter.

e. Learning this Game. See the included tutorial. Also see www.ionsmg.com under the “Video” tab for the link to a YouTube video tutorial produced by Heavy Cardboard.

f. Poster Map. You may wish to purchase an updated “High Frontier 4th Edition Poster-Map” from Zazzle that combines the basic and expanded maps. Go to your country’s Zazzle and search “High Frontier”.

Easily Missed: Water is a commodity used as money, but only counts as money if it is in LEO (Low Earth Orbit). You can’t pay people with water on Mars! A1a

A3. Introductory Games

Space Diamonds introduces the map and moving, Starship Builder (at the end of the Space Diamonds book) introduces the cards, and Race For Glory introduces the core rules prescribed here using a detailed tutorial, with the exception of Radiation Belts H10, supports J, & events D2.

B1. Component List

See Read Me First.

B2. Patent Cards

The 6 types of patent cards in core game are: thrusters (rocket engines), robonauts (remotely-powered mining machines), refineries (ore purifiers), generators (producers of pulsed or steady current), reactors (producers of 3 kinds of radiation energy), and radiators (providers of cooling Therms).

a. White & Black-Sides. The White-Side of a patent card shows a product built on Earth; the Black-Side shows an improved product built in space. Until you build your first Factory on a Site, you will only be using the White-Side of the patent cards.

b. Mass. Listed in the upper left corner, chiefly used to determine its boost costs and its contribution to the Dry Mass on the Fuel Strip.

c. Platform & ISRU. Cards that have an In Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) rating inside a platform icon can be used to ISRU refuel I5a and prospect I6.²

d. Thrust Triangle. Cards with a thrust triangle H2 are capable of moving Stacks. The number on a thrust triangle’s left side is its base thrust and the number on its right side is its fuel consumption. The color of the triangle indicates its fuel grade F4b. If it has a flame icon at its apex, it can afterburn H3a. If instead of a dot icon, it has a push icon in its lower center, it is pushable H3d.

e. Solar-Power indicates a modification to thrust based upon how far from Sol the Spacecraft is located H3c. It is separate and independent from all other numbers and icons in the thrust triangle or on the thruster itself. These modifiers apply only if the card is part of the support chain J1c for an activated thrust triangle. A Solar-Powered Card becomes non-operational J2 if in the Neptune Heliocentric Zone or beyond J3a.

f. Spectral Type. The letter shown on the Black-Side of a patent (C, S, M, V, D, or H), and previewed on the front side, indicates what type of Factory can build it as an ET product I8.³

g. Ability & Restrictions are printed in the colored band of the card J2e. These apply if the card is Operational J3.

h. Support Cards Required to make the card Operational J1 are listed here. The example data field shown requires one Therm of cooling J1d.

i. Wrench Icons indicate movement-modifying supports J5. These modifiers apply only if the card is part of the support chain J1c for an activated thrust triangle.

j. Rad-Hardness. Resistance to solar flares K2d, and Radiation Belts H10.⁴

k. Support Provided. Icons in the top left indicate which supports a card provides J.

B3. Glory & Heroism Chits

The 9 glory chits, placed on the map per C7, are worth 1 VP each when claimed by a Human plus variable VP if brought back to LEO/Bank by a Human L. Each of the 4 Heroism Chits are always worth 2 VP. Both are shown in example A2a.

B4. Playmats

Each player starts with a playmat for storing their cards and Aquas (the blue beads stored in your LEO Stack, used for money and fueling).⁵ It contains a Fuel Strip and net thrust track (used to keep track of the Fuel and net thrust of their Rocket Stack).⁶

B5. Solar System Charts

The six Exploitation Tracks (showing Spectral Types C, S, M, V, D, and H) are found on the map. There are two placards: Sol Sunspot Cycle and Sol political assembly O1.

B6. Crew Cards

Your Crew has a player color, Mass, ISRU platform, rad-hardness, a thrust triangle, and a “humans on board” triangle. The latter means it is Human (see glossary). A Crew is useful to defend against Felonies or repair Glitches. All rules about Humans apply to stacks where the card is located. It cannot be traded, sold, or Discarded (but see N3d).

a. Faction Privilege. This Ability, listed below the rad-hardness, is active in the core game except during Anarchy K2e. They include Blink Telescope, Dharma Refuel, Felonious, Launch Fees, Marketeer, Mooncable, Open Source FINAO, Powersat, Secretary-General, Scrum Troubleshooters, Skunkworks, and Taxes (see glossary). All faction privileges are assumed to be the result of space facilities in LEO. If Module 2 is used, these space facilities are Home Bernals, and faction privileges are disabled until this space station is Anchored in a Home Orbit.

b. Faction Ideology. (Module 0). Used for placing delegates O2c.

B7. Solar System Map

The map shows the Spaces (i.e. the orbits in the Solar System where a Rocket can “halt”), and the routes between the Spaces.⁷ Some of the most useful routes are colored and labeled with signposts (e.g. “Earth-Mars”). The various kinds of Spaces are described below:

a. Sites. Black hexes representing areas of planets, moons, and asteroids that can be landed on. Site features include:

• Size is a number indicating the surface gravity–the larger the number the more likely prospecting will be successful but the more powerful your Rocket has to be to takeoff/land there.

• Spectral Type (C, S, M, V, D, or H) indicates what can be mined and factory-produced there.

• Atmospheric Site is indicated by the cloud icon in the Site hex.

• Hydration (zero to four waterdrops) indicates how easy it is to obtain water there.⁸

• Astrobiology Site is indicated by the leaf icon.

• Submarine Site is indicated by the blue wave icon.⁹ A Factory or Colony here is in a subsurface ocean.

• Push Site is indicated by the push icon . A Factory here yields the Powersat Ability.

b. Intersections. The intersection between two routes is a Space called a Hohmann if the two lines touch or form a corner unmarked by any icon or circle.¹⁰ This includes each corner in the zigzag routes such as those common in the outer solar system.

• Lagrange & Lander Spaces. A Space is not a Hohmann if it is marked by any icon (e.g. a hollow or filled circle or lander icon).¹¹

• Bridges. If the lines don’t touch, they do not intersect and are therefore neither a Space nor a Hohmann intersection.

• Changing direction during movement at a Hohmann requires a Pivot H4c.

• Home Orbits. The Home Orbits for Bernals are marked with a 7-pointed star icon.

c. Burn Spaces. These Spaces are magenta-colored on the map. There are two types: Lagrange Burns and lander burns H5e.¹² Each time a Rocket enters a Burn Space, it must expend a number of fuel steps equal to its fuel consumption.

d. Spaces may also be marked with Hazard H7, flyby H8, or Radiation Belt H10 icons.

e. Aerobrake Path is a route with a dashed brown line. Using this path, a Spacecraft can parachute to a Site by ignoring net thrust requirements and without using Fuel. Entering an Aerobrake Hazard requires either a Hazard Roll or FINAO payment H7e. A Spacecraft can never move along this path against the arrow’s direction.¹³

f. Buggy Road is a route with a dashed yellow line. It is used during buggy prospecting, but can also be used to move Crew H9a.

Tip: Many Lagrange intersections are labeled (L1, barycenter, cycler, etc.). These labels have no gameplay impact. B7b

Tip: The majority of Burn Spaces are either around planets or at the outer edge of each Heliocentric Zone. Closer to the sun, there are routes through the edges of Heliocentric Zones which don’t have Burn Spaces, representing the Interplanetary Travel Network. Use these to trade fuel consumption for time. B7c

g. Heliocentric Zones divide the solar system into concentric circles to mark the decreasing solar energy as you move farther away from Sol. Each zone is named after a planet (from Mercury to Neptune ). These zones modify the thrust of Solar-Powered Rockets and Sails H3c. Solar-Powered Cards are not Operational in the outermost zone.

h. Synodic Comet Site. A Site with a red, blue, or yellow border, which represents a comet whose extreme orbit causes it to become accessible only during the season of the Sunspot Cycle matching its border color.¹⁴ See glossary for details.

i. Signposts & Colored Lines. These have no impact on gameplay and are merely informational. They highlight a possible route to the depicted location and list the number of Burn Spaces to the destination, assuming no Pivots H4c and using flybys H8. The number of Burns, multiplied by your fuel consumption B2d, equals the fuel steps you will need for a one-way trip.

j. Glory Setup. Circles labeled “glory” or “heroism” start with a glory or heroism chit C7.

k. Map Text is merely descriptive except for some printed rules at the kreutz sungrazer B7h, Venus flyby H8c, solar oberth H8e and Luna (I6).

l. Map Locator. A clockface is depicted around Sol as a Site locator, in conjunction with the Heliocentric astronomical icons. For instance, Earth/LEO is located at 3:30 .

B8. Tokens

Includes blue beads (80 water FTs or Aquas), translucent red disks (40 Busted Sites), opaque disks in player colors (Claims, 9 per player), cubes in player colors (Factories, 7 per player), domes in player colors (Colonies, 7 per player), and Rocket Figures in player colors (2 per player).

Token limits: Cubes and disks in player colors are limited to those supplied. For other Tokens, use substitutes if you run out. Substitute domes do not count for VP in the endgame scoring. B8

The number of players can be from 2 to 5 (or 1 in some scenarios). Before starting, decide on any Modules or variants (separate booklet). Note the quick start game V1 (recommended for 4 or more players), the Space Diamonds chit variant iA, and the solitaire/cooperative variant V4.

Player gray: There are no gray components provided for Norse Astronauts/ SpaceX. If you wish to play with one of these Factions, you must use components from an unused Faction color. These components are considered gray in color for all purposes, including starting delegate O1b. C2

C1. Seniority Disk Placement

Use the “Core game” side of the Sol Sunspot Cycle placard. Place 4 translucent red disks in the center (over the Sol icon).¹⁵ These will count the game’s solar cycles, so one disk will be removed each time the seniority threshold is crossed, indicating the completion of one 12-year cycle.¹⁶

C2. Assign Factions & Crew

Deal each player a random Crew, then each player secretly chooses one side of the card that they will play as.

C3. Reserves Setup

Each player takes a playmat and places their Crew into the slot labeled “LEO” with the chosen Faction faceup. Near their playmat, they place the following components in their player color in their Reserve:

a. 2 Rockets (one for map, one to indicate net thrust).

b. 1 Dry Mass Chit and 1 blue/gray Wet Mass Chit for their fuel strip.

c. 7 small cubes (for Factories).

d. 7 domes (for Colonies).

e. 9 disks (for Claims).

f. 2 rectangular chits (for Outpost Stacks).

C4. Patent Deck Setup

Separately shuffle each of the six decks of patent cards (thruster, robonaut, refinery, generator, reactor, radiator), and place them White-Side up near the map.

C5. Starting Aquas

Give each player as many blue Aqua beads as there are patent decks (but not queues) in the game. In the core game, this is 6 Aquas, placed into the LEO slot on their playmat.¹⁷ If quick start V1 is used, start with zero Aqua.

C6. Exploitation Track Setup

Place a blue bead on each of the 6 starting positions of the Exploitation Tracks on the map.

C7. Glory & Heroism Chit Setup

Place 1 glory chit on each Heliocentric Zone in the spots marked with the corresponding astronomical icon: Mercury (), Venus (), Earth (), Mars (), Ceres (), Jupiter (), Saturn (), Uranus (), and Neptune () B7j. Place all glories with their “1 VP” side faceup. Unless playing solitaire or 2-player, place 1 “heroism” chit in each of the 4 Heroism spots (medallions) in the lower center of the map.

C8. Clout, 1st Player, & Sunspot Cube

Every Crew card has a rating from A to M, where “A” has the most clout (political influence).

a. 1st Player. The player with the most clout becomes the “Sol secretary-general” (1st Player).

b. Sunspot Cube. The 1st Player places a cube of his color (the Sunspot Cube) on the “start” position of the Sunspot Cycle, and then starts the game by taking his Turn D1.

After Setup, High Frontier proceeds as a series of years. Each year consists of:

a. Player Turns. Starting with the 1st Player and going clockwise, each player takes one Turn D1.

b. Sunspot Cycle Advance. If a threshold is crossed, see D2a, D2b.

D1. Player Turn Phase

In this phase, each of the players takes a Turn. You may do either or both of the following on your Turn, in any order: move your Rocket and/or perform an Operation. Except during movement or an Operation, you may perform any number of free actions.

a. Movement (H). You may move your Rocket once per Turn. Some Modules allow multiple Spacecraft, and if so, you may move each of them once per Turn.

b. Operation (I). You may perform one Operation per Turn.

c. Free Actions (G). You may perform any number of free actions on your Turn, including the same free action multiple times.

Typical turn: ET Produce a Black-Side Card at Factory (operation). Place Black-Side Card at Outpost at same location. Land Rocket at Outpost (move). Cargo transfer to add Black-Side Card to Rocket (free action). D1

D2. Advance Sunspot Cycle Phase

The 1st Player C8 advances the Sunspot Cube clockwise, which may trigger a threshold:

a. Event Threshold. If the cube crosses an “event” threshold, make an Event Roll K2 and resolve the event (which is applied to all players, starting with the 1st Player).

b. Seniority Threshold. If the cube crosses the “Seniority” threshold, remove a Seniority Disk. If no disks remain, the game immediately ends with scoring per M2. Player order can change if using Module 0 O6b.

Hand Cards represent patented know-how. By moving a Hand card into a Stack (either White-Side up by boosting it to LEO or Black-Side up by ET production at a Factory in space), it becomes a tangible object.

E1. Hand Cards

Store your Hand cards to the right of your playmat.

a. No Hand Limit. Your Hand can contain any number of cards. However academia hand limits apply I2a.

b. Open Hands. Your FTs, Hand cards, and Stacks are free for anyone to examine.

E2. Stacks

A Stack is a collection of cards and/or FTs, placed in a designated slot on your playmat. In the core game, you can have up to 4 Stacks: LEO, Rocket, Outpost #1, and Outpost #2. Store these in the named slots on your playmat. Each has a location on the map as indicated by the location of its Figure.

a. No Card Limits. Your Stacks can contain any number of cards or FTs. However, you may not move a Rocket if its Wet Mass is greater than 32 or its Dry Mass is greater than 23.

b. Stack Figures. If a Stack is created (except for LEO), place a Figure/outpost chit on the map to indicate its location E5, E6. Except for LEO, you cannot create a Stack if you do not have a Figure/outpost chit for it.

c. Stack Creation. Stacks are created by cargo transfer G1, boosting I4, site refuel I5, or ET production I8.

d. Stack Swapping & Negotiated Transfer. See G1e and N3.

e. Empty Stacks. If no cards or FTs remain in a Stack, Discard its Figure or outpost chit from the map. Also Discard any Glitches.

E3. Number of Stacks Permitted

To represent the limits of mission control and spacesuited Humans, you are strictly limited to one each of the following Stacks at the end of your Turn:

a. Rocket Stack – represented on the map by your Rocket Figure.

b. LEO Stack – is always at the Space on the map marked LEO, and is not represented by a Figure.

c. Outpost Stack 1 – represented on the map by your #1 Outpost Chit.

Easily forgotten: A Stack can be made up of just FTs on an Outpost. A Stack could also be made up of a collection of cards (e.g. a Rocket) and its FTs. E3

d. Outpost Stack 2 – represented on the map by your #2 Outpost Chit. During your Turn you may create as many Outpost Stacks as you wish, but by the end of your Turn you must have no more than two of them.

e. Freighter Stack (Module 1) – represented on the map by your big cube.

f. Kalpana Bernal Stack (Module 2) – represented on the map by a finned sphere figure of your player color.

g. Stanford Bernal Stack (Module 2) – represented on the map by a torus figure of your player color.

Easily forgotten: In the core game, you are only allowed one Spacecraft, your Rocket Stack. E3a

E4. LEO Stack Creation

Your LEO Stack is like an outpost that is permanently located in Low Earth Orbit (marked “LEO” on the map). Its cards and Aquas reside in the “LEO Stack” slot on your playmat. Unlike other Stacks, this Stack does not have its own Figure.¹⁸

a. Creation. See E2c. The boost operation will normally be used to create your first LEO Stack.

Mission planning tip: If you are preparing for a huge mission, get a small interim mission going. A 2 card Rocket Stack (or a one card robonaut/thruster Rocket Stack) can do something, anything! A Crew plus 5 tanks of Fuel can claim Mars (although be careful, they could become trapped there). Or a Crew with an efficient thruster can claim a glory chit. E4a

E5. Rocket Stack Creation

Designate a Stack as a Rocket Stack by placing its cards and/or FTs in the designated Rocket slot on your playmat.¹⁹ It must include an activated thruster to move H2, but a Crew is not required and any Stack can be designated a Rocket Stack. Indicate its location on the map using a Rocket Figure. Place a Dry Mass Chit on your playmat’s Fuel Strip according to the Rocket’s Mass.

a. Creation. See E2c. The cargo transfer free action will normally be used to create your first Rocket Stack in LEO by transferring cards from your LEO Stack to your Rocket Stack.

b. Rocket Stack Limit. You may only have one Rocket Stack at a time. If you already have a Rocket Stack, before another is created you must first either Decommission your existing Rocket Stack (free action per G6) or turn it into an Outpost Stack (free action per E6).

c. Place Dry Mass Chit. Your Dry Mass is the sum of each card’s Mass B2b plus 1 for each FT in the Rocket Stack. Place your Dry Mass Chit for your Rocket in the spot on your Fuel Strip with this number F2b.

Easily forgotten: Note that FTs carried as Cargo are not the same as water loaded as Fuel. The mass of FTs carried as Cargo is included in the Dry Mass Chit, while the mass of loaded Fuel affects the position of the Wet Mass Chit. E5c

d. Fueling & Wet Mass Chit. When first created, a Rocket’s tanks are empty. Indicate this by selecting a Wet Mass Chit of the same color F4b as the Spacecraft’s thrust triangle and placing it on top of your Dry Mass Chit. If you wish to immediately add Fuel to your Rocket, either by cargo transfer G1 or site refuel I5, move the Wet Mass Chit to the right per F3b

Mission planning tip: Carefully calculate how much water you will need to get to a destination where you can refuel. First, count the number of Burn Spaces to your destination, and then multiply this number by your fuel consumption B2d. This gives the minimum required number of fuel steps between the Wet and Dry Mass Chits, following the black line leftwards. E5d

E6. Outpost Stack Creation

As a free action G1d, G1e, you can create or convert a Stack into Outpost #1 or Outpost #2 by placing the #1 or #2 outpost chit of your color. You are limited to 2 outposts by the end of your Turn.

a. Creation Methods. See E2c.

b. Location. You can create outposts anywhere, e.g. at a Site where your Rocket is Decommissioned after dropping off Cargo, at a Factory performing ET production, or at a Hohmann transfer where your Rocket has been disabled by a Glitch.

1. The thruster and refinery are made into Outpost #1 at L1, leaving the Crew and sandworm robonaut as the Rocket.

2. On the next Turn, the Rocket activates the thrust triangle of its 12•8 Crew. This allows the Rocket (probe class with Dry Mass = 2 and Wet Mass = 4) to make a powered landing (modified thrust = 13). The Wet Mass goes down 8 steps for the Lander Burn (to 2 1/3).

3. During 2 Turns of ISRU refuel operation, the sandworm (Irsu = 1) adds 6 FTs to the Rocket Stack.

4. The sandworm is made into Outpost #2 on the surface of Mercury, adjusting the Rocket’s Wet and Dry Mass.

5. The 6 FTs are added to the fuel strip, using cargo transfer (free action,

6. The Crew makes a powered liftoff (scout class with Dry Mass = 1 and Wet Mass = 7) delivering the Crew to rejoin Outpost #1.

7. The Crew picks up the Cvd molding refinery (Mass = 3) from Outpost #1.

8. On the next Turn, the Crew and refinery (scout class with Dry Mass = 4 and Wet Mass = 7) land on Mercury.

9. In the same turn a prospect operation places a Claim disk on Mercury.

10. The following Turn a Factory is built using an industrialize operation . This Decommissions the robonaut and refinery. As there are no cards left in Outpost #2, the chit is returned to the player’s Reserves.

c. Fuel Outpost. You can create an Outpost Stack by producing FTs at a Factory I5b.

d. Swapping Outposts. Because of the 2 outpost limit, if you create a third, you must Decommission or redesignate G1e one by the end of your Turn.

E7. Decommissions

A Decommission returns a card to your Hand. Decommissions can either be voluntary: jettison cargo G1g, Phileas Fogg G2c, build colony G3, voluntary decommission G6, and industrialize I7, or involuntary: e.g. Glitch Rolls, Hazard Rolls H7, Belt Rolls, Cme Rolls, or pad explosions K2c.

a. Rocket Fuel. If a Spacecraft Stack loses its last card with a thrust triangle B2d to involuntary Decommission, remove its Dry and Wet Mass Chits.

b. FTs. If the last card in a Stack is involuntarily Decommissioned, Discard its FTs to the Pool.

c. Humans. If your Crew suffers voluntary or involuntary decommission, move them to your LEO Stack/Bank. You may not voluntarily decommission Humans (including Crew) except in certain circumstances (see “Crew” and “Murder/Suicide” in the glossary).

d. Radiator Ablation. A radiator card played in its heavy Orientation (see glossary) rotates to its light Orientation instead of being involuntarily decommissioned upon failing Glitch Rolls, Hazard Rolls H7, or Belt Rolls H10. Ablation can also occur in jettison G1g or Phileas Fogg G2c. Any other involuntary Decommission will entirely Decommission the radiator card.

Each player has a Fuel Strip printed on their playmat for tracking the Fuel Mass steps of their Spacecraft.

a. Dry Mass is your Spacecraft’s Mass assuming its tanks are “dry” (empty). Thus it includes just the Mass of its FTs and cards.

b. Wet Mass is your Spacecraft’s Dry Mass plus the Mass of the Fuel onboard.

c. Indicators. Each Fuel Strip has a Dry Mass Chit in the player’s color and a blue or gray Wet Mass Chit

F1. Wet Mass Fuel, FTs, & Aquas

Fuel can be stored on a Spacecraft in two ways: as Wet Mass Fuel (tracked on the Fuel Strip) or as Cargo (fuel tanks or FTs). Players can internally change between these tankage forms as a free action G2.

a. Wet Mass Fuel. The amount of Fuel is indicated by the number of steps on the black line of the Fuel Strip between the Dry Mass Chit and the gray/blue Wet Mass Chit.²⁰

b. Dry Mass FTs. Each FT bead placed on your Spacecraft Stack is considered Cargo. Each Cargo FT has a Mass of 1. Adding FTs as Cargo will adjust both Wet and Dry Mass F2b.

c. Aquas. These blue beads in your LEO Stack serve as the game’s currency, and are used for boost operations I4, research auction operations I2, negotiation N and paying for FINAO to avoid Hazards H7. They also function simultaneously as Water FTs to be used for fueling and carried as Cargo.

Easily forgotten: You can stop at small wet worlds along the way to ISRU refuel with water, or any small world to ISRU refuel with dirt. F1

F2. Dry Mass Adjustment

A Spacecraft’s Dry Mass Chit on the Fuel Strip indicates the Spacecraft’s Mass ignoring Fuel. This includes the Mass of its cards and its FTs (note that FTs are regarded as Cargo and not Fuel). Adjust a Spacecraft’s Dry Mass before its Movement H.

a. Max & Min Dry Mass. In order for a Spacecraft to move, its Dry Mass Chit must somehow be reduced to ‘23’ or below, as indicated on the Fuel Strip. A Spacecraft with a Dry Mass of ‘0’ is considered to have a Dry Mass of ‘1’.

b. Wet/Dry Mass Adjustment. For each unit of Dry Mass (cards or Cargo Fts) gained/lost, move the Dry Mass Chit one step to the right/left along the dashed red lines. Then, move the Wet Mass Chit an equal number of steps again along red lines in the same direction. If given a choice of paths, never go against the arrowhead.

c. FT Dry Mass Adjustment. When changing internal tankage, either changing FTs into Fuel G2a, or changing Fuel into FTs G2b, move only the Dry Mass Chit in the same way as the previous bullet.

F3. Wet Mass Adjustment

A Spacecraft’s Wet Mass Chit indicates the Spacecraft’s total Mass, and can never be less than its Dry Mass. Like the Dry Mass adjustment F2 and Wet Mass adjustment F3, make this adjustment for a Spacecraft at the beginning of that Spacecraft’s Movement H.

a. Max Wet Mass. Before a Spacecraft can move, its Wet Mass Chit must be reduced to ‘32’ or below, by e.g. jettison G1f, G1g.

b. External Wet Mass Adjustment. If Fuel is added from an external source (refueling or cargo transfer), move the Wet Mass Chit one step to the right along the dashed red lines for each tank of Fuel added G1b.

c. Internal Wet Mass Adjustment. When changing the internal tankage G2, the Wet Mass Chit does not change, since an internal transfer does not change the total Spacecraft Mass F2c.

d. Burning Fuel. Move the Wet Mass Chit to the left along the black lines during a Burn H5, afterburn H3a, or when jettisoning fuel G1f.

• No Negative Propellant. The Wet Mass Chit must never cross the Dry Mass Chit.

Your mission is to take a Mass 3 refinery from LEO to Mercury. You use a 12•8 thruster, a 0•0 Sail card, and 4 tanks of water on the fuel strip (for landing).

1. The Rocket’s Dry Mass = 4 and Wet Mass = 8. Its weight class is scout, so it has no thrust modifiers and a net thrust of zero using the Sail. The 12•8 Thruster has to be activated instead. The 4 tanks of water provide 10 steps of Fuel. This is only enough for 1 Burn of the 12•8 thruster.

2. 11 Aquas are loaded to the fuel strip to bring the Wet Mass Chit up to a Wet Mass of 19.

3. The 12•8 thruster is activated to get through the first 2 Burn Spaces in the orange signpost route.

4. This lowers the Wet Mass Chit 16 steps to 7, and the Rocket is now in the Mercury Heliocentric Zone, which gives a +2 thrust to Sails.

5. The Rocket is scout weight class. Next turn the Sail is activated, for a net thrust of 2. This is enough to sail to L1 just outside the lander burn of Mercury over the next 2 Turns.

Activate Crew thruster Year 2 Year 3 6

6. On the next Turn, the 12•8 thruster is activated, and expends the last 8 steps of Fuel.

F4. Fuel Grades & Mixing Fuel

Fuel and FTs come in three grades: dirt (gray), water (blue) or isotope (gold). This is represented by an appropriately colored Wet Mass Chit for Fuel and blue and gold beads representing water and isotope FTs respectively.

a. Wet Mass Chit must be gray, blue, or gold, representing loading dirt, water propellant, or isotope fuel, respectively.

b. Fuel Grades. From lowest to highest, the fuel grades are: dirt (gray), water (blue), and isotope (gold). This is relevant for activation H2, fuel mixing F4d, and the rate of refuel G1c, I5. A Spacecraft can only have a single grade of Wet Mass Fuel F4d.

c. Thruster Fuel Compatibility. A Spacecraft may be fueled with any type of Fuel, but it cannot expend Fuel in a Burn or use an afterburner H3a if the color of the activated thrust triangle is of a higher grade than the color of the Wet Mass Chit.

• Assuming a Spacecraft must expend Fuel, a dirt thruster can be activated with any color Wet Mass Chit, a Water Thruster can be activated with a blue or gold Wet Mass Chit, and an Isotope Thruster can only activate with a gold Wet Mass Chit.

d. Fuel Mixing. If a Spacecraft adds Fuel of a different grade than the color of its Wet Mass Chit, all of its Fuel becomes the lower of the two grades (swap its Wet Mass Chit to the correct color, if necessary).

• Fuel can be jettisoned G1f or changed to FTs G2b before mixing if you wish to avoid this.

• A Spacecraft with no Fuel does not cause Fuel mixing (swap its Wet Mass Chit to whatever you load it with).

• A Spacecraft can carry both blue and gold grades of FTs.

Except during Spacecraft movement or during an Operation, each of the following free actions may be performed any number of times and in any order during your Turn. They are called “free” because they do not expend your single Operation that you are allowed each Turn.

G1. Cargo Transfer

This free action transfers any number of cards, Fuel, or FTs from one Stack to a Colocated Stack.

a. Dry Mass Cargo. Perform a dry and wet mass adjustment F2 if your Spacecraft Stack had gains or losses of Mass, (e.g. loading or unloading Cards or FTs). Each FT has Mass 1 and is considered Cargo when loaded. Place the FT marker on the Stack.

b. Fueling Rocket. FTs can be loaded directly as Fuel onto the Fuel Strip. For every FT discarded into the Pool from a Colocated Stack, move the Wet Mass Chit 1 spot to the right along the dashed red lines F3b. If mixing fuel grades, either consider the higher fuel grade loaded being downgraded into the color indicated by the Wet Mass Chit F4b, or swap the Wet Mass Chit per F4d.

c. Dirt Refueling. If your Spacecraft with an activated dirt thruster is on a Site and has (or changes to) a gray Wet Mass Chit, and you have either a Factory, or any card present (robonaut or Human) with an Operational ISRU platform, you can cargo transfer dirt fuel. This is regardless of the ISRU rating of the card or the Site’s Hydration (regolith is easy to find). Adjust your Wet Mass F3b to any desired value (for non-crew dirt thrusters), or (as once-per-turn free action) by one fuel tank (Crew dirt thrusters).²¹

Using ET Production, you ET produce a helical railgun robonaut (2) (which has a gray 5•4 thrust triangle) on Psyche (1). On this same Turn,

d. Create Rocket/Outpost Stack. You may also use cargo transfer to create a new Stack (e.g. Rocket or Outpost) composed of cards or FTs (restricted as per E3d, E5, E6).

e. Swapping Outpost/Rocket. You may exchange any of your Rocket or Outpost Stacks on the map with another of your Rocket or Outpost Stacks. Swap their Figures/outpost chits on the map and swap the Stacks (including cards, Glitches, and FTs) to the appropriate new slots on your playmat.

• Flush Fuel. Any Fuel on the Fuel Strip in the original Rocket is lost unless changed into FTs before swapping per G2b.

• Convert Outpost Into Rocket. Set the Dry and Wet Mass Chits to be equal to the Mass of the original outpost F2.

f. Jettison Fuel. Move your Wet Mass Chit any number of steps to the left (following the black line). The Fuel is considered lost to space.

g. Jettison Cargo or FTs. Decommission the desired cards and FT beads from any Stack. If it is a Spacecraft Stack, move both the Wet and Dry Mass Chits a number of steps to the left (along dashed red lines, taking the lower path if you have a choice) equal to the Mass removed. Radiators can be partially jettisoned, see Orientation (glossary) or example G2c.

h. Infectious Glitch. If transferring Cargo and either the giving or receiving stacks are Glitched, performing a cargo transfer is a Glitch Trigger (see glossary) for both Stacks and both Stacks end up with a Glitch.

G2. Internal Tankage

Fuel can be on your Spacecraft stack either as Wet Mass Fuel G1b or Cargo G1a. The following free actions allow you to change your tankage between these two forms within your Spacecraft F3c:

a. FT to Fuel. Move the Dry Mass Chit any number of steps to the left (following the dashed red line) and lose that many FT of the same color as your Wet Mass Chit.

• Wet Mass Chit is left unmoved, as the total Mass of the Stack remains the same.

• Fuel Grade. See fuel mixing F4d if the color of the FTs does not match that of the Wet Mass Chit.

• Reminder. A Spacecraft’s Wet Mass must never be less than its Dry Mass.

Reminder: If you exceed the maximum Dry Mass F2a or Wet Mass F3a, as indicated on your Fuel Strip, your Rocket will not be able to move until you make further mass adjustments. Don’t panic! These actions are nearly identical to G1 but are listed separately because no mass is entering or leaving the Stack. If converting Cargo FTs to Wet Mass Fuel or vice versa,

b. Fuel to FT. Move the Dry Mass Chit any number of steps to the right (following the dashed red line) and gain that many FT of the same color as your Wet Mass Chit. This cannot be performed if your Wet Mass Chit is gray, since there are no gray FTs.

the total weight of the Spacecraft (Wet Mass) does not change. For every 1 Dry Mass of FT Cargo you change

1. The generator is separated to form

to Wet Mass Fuel, your total Dry Mass decreases by 1, and

the amount of Fuel in your Spacecraft increases by 1.

2. You change the Fuel into 2 FT, and

Thus the Wet Mass Chit remains where it is, and the Dry Mass Chit is moved 1

step down the dashed red line. G2

c. Phileas Fogg. Voluntarily decommission any number of non-Bernal cards from your Rocket Stack to move its Dry Mass Chit one step to the left (following dashed red line) per unit of mass Decommissioned (as if changing FTs to fuel G2a). Because it simulates machinery ground up and fed into the engine hopper, this is considered to be adding dirt grade fuel (for fuel mixing, F4d).

• Fogg’s Heavy Radiators. If you have a gray Wet Mass Chit and rotate your heavy radiator to its “light” Orientation (see glossary), move the Dry Mass Chit to the left (following the dashed red line, taking the lower path at intersections) a number of tanks equal to the difference between the masses of the Heavy and Light Orientations.

G3. Build Colony

Build a Colony by Decommissioning a Human Colocated with one of your Factories that does not already have a Colony and placing a Colony dome on it. Follow these steps:

a. Workforce. Decommission one Colocated Human card (Crew or Colonist). They have become settlers, so this is neither a Felony nor Murder. However, it is a Felony to colonize the kreutz sungrazer.

b. Colony Figure. Take a dome from your Reserve and set it on top of the Factory.

c. Delegate (Module 0). You may assign a cube from your Reserve as a delegate O2a. The Ideology must match the Ideology stated on the Crew/Colonist. This causes a vote tally O3a.

d. Exomigration (Module 2) If a Colony consumes a Colonist, perform exomigration 2A6a.

Victory tip: Colonies are worth more VP on Astrobiology or Submarine Sites, see M2b. G3

G4. Claim Jump

If you can commit a Felony (which requires Humans, see glossary), replace an opponent’s Claim with one of your own unless it is Colocated with a Factory I7 or a Human opposed to this Claim Jump.

a. Disk Limit. Your Reserve of Claims is limited. If you have no more Claim disks, then you may remove from another of your unindustrialized claimed Sites.

b. Territoriality. As long as no opposed Humans are present, Claim Jump allows you to claim Luna without the permission of the 1st Player I6.1.²²

G5. Load Glory Chit

If you have Humans at a Site in a Heliocentric Zone with an unclaimed glory chit B3, you can add it to a Colocated manned Spacecraft Stack as a free action, low value side up. If this Human brings it to your Bank, it is automatically deposited into the “Glory” circular space on your playmat, high value side up, in a ticker tape parade La.

a. Glory Carry Limit. A Crew or Colonist can only carry 1 glory chit at a time.

G6. Voluntary Discard of Cards & Tokens

During your Turn, you may either Discard or Decommission E7 cards from your Hand or Stacks. Discarding sends cards to the bottom of the appropriate patent deck which can be helpful to participate in auctions I2a. If a Stack contains no more cards or FTs, Discard its Figure/outpost chit from the map into your Reserve. Other tokens can be Discarded into your Reserve with the following limitations:

a. Factories are made of two tokens: a cube sitting on a disk (Claim), and both must be the same color, unless negotiated during industrialization N3 or N6. Discarding a cube makes the Claim available to be reindustrialized I7, and Discarding a Claim makes the Site available to be re-prospected I6.

b. Colony Permanence. A Colony dome is a Human, and neither it nor its Colocated Factory and Claim can be voluntarily Discarded, even if allowed Felonies.

G7. Glitch Repair

Discard a Glitch K2b on a stack Colocated with your Human (including Colonies and LEO).

Easily forgotten: You can hire out your Crew N7 to help (at great expense) a glitched and desperate opponent. G7

Spacecraft are capable of flight. The types of Spacecraft include (with the proper Modules): 1 Rocket, 1 Freighter (plus Mobile Factories), and 1 Bernal. Each of your Spacecraft can move once during your Turn D1a, and (except for Freighters) follow these four steps:

1. Adjust Mass Chits if needed. Set Dry Mass Chit per F2 and Wet Mass Chit per F3.

2. Activate a thrust triangle which will be used to move H2.

3. Calculate Net Thrust (which, among other things, determines how far you can move) H3. If the net thrust is less than 1, you are allowed coasting only H2b.

4. Move until you decide, or are forced, to stop H4.

H1. Movement Restrictions

a. Space Is Really Big. There is no limit to the amount of Figures that can be on any given Space, except each Site can only have one Claim, Factory, and Colony.

b. No Double Moves. No component (Figure, card, Fuel Tank) may move (using the Spacecraft movement rules) more than once per Turn. Any component that moves at least one Space via the movement rules cannot be moved again (by any player) until the start of your next Turn.

Tip: Kludge is beautiful; don’t fall in love with a card or a mission. Make do with what you have, and fly early. Every Turn counts! H1

• For FTs, this applies even if it is changed to Wet Mass Fuel and back.

• Boosting I4 is not considered movement. Thus you can boost a Rocket and move it.

c. No Interruptions. Free actions G and Operations I can only be performed before or after each Spacecraft movement.

Easily Missed: You can ET produce a card and fly with it in the same turn, because it will have moved only once. H1b

H2. Thrust Triangle Activation

One card in the Spacecraft’s Stack with a thrust triangle B2d must be chosen for activation at the start of each movement. The activated thruster must be Operational J3. The specific cards in that thruster’s support chain, J1c must also be decided at this time. The thruster and its support chain cannot be changed mid-movement.

a. Activation & Movement. A thruster may be activated even if it does not have Fuel. The moment the activated thruster is lost or ceases to be Operational, the Spacecraft must immediately halt or coast (see next bullet). You may perform a dirt cargo transfer as a free action G1c, then activate a dirt thruster and liftoff.

b. Coasting. Provided it does not enter any Burns H5 or make any Pivots H4c, a Spacecraft that started its move with an activated thruster is allowed to keep moving, even if it started with less than 1 thrust, ran out of Fuel, or has reached its burn limit H5c.

• Coasting Examples. As long as no Burns are used, a coasting Spacecraft can enter or land with aerobrake paths H6b, use factory-assisted landings H6c, use accumulated Bonus Pivots or Bonus Burns (even if the thruster subsequently became non-operational), or (if Operational) pick up additional Bonus Burns H8b by entering flybys.

Mission planning tip: If your destination is a large one like Ceres or Callisto, activate a thruster with a good fuel efficiency for the cruise and then activate a high thrust engine on a later Turn for the powered landing. H2

3. Alternate destination

H3. Calculating Net Thrust

Tip: Use a rocket token in the top track of the Fuel Strip to keep track of your net thrust. Use of this track is optional. H3

The left number on the thrust triangle is the base thrust. Various modifiers may add or subtract from this number to obtain the net thrust, which is the number of Burns you are allowed to perform during your Turn, and also must be larger than a Site’s Size in order to make powered landings/liftoffs. The net thrust is calculated before each movement, and applied for the entire move of the Spacecraft that Turn. If you activate a thruster that brings your net thrust to zero or less, you may only coast H2b. Use a Rocket Figure to mark the base thrust along the top of your playmat and then sequentially apply modifiers in the following order to obtain your net thrust:

a. Megawatt (MW) Afterburn. If the thrust triangle has an afterburn icon and the thruster is Operational, you may expend F3b the indicated number of fuel steps to increase net thrust by one. This can only be done once per movement. Afterburning increases net thrust by one no matter how many steps are expended.

• Open-Cycle Cooling. Afterburns also generate one Therm of cooling J4d that applies for cards that were in the thruster’s support chain J1c at the time of the afterburn.²³

Tip: A high net thrust helps protect your Spacecraft if it enters a radiation belt H10. Thematically this limits exposure by traversing the radiation quickly. H3

b. Weight Class Modifier. Increase or decrease net thrust by the amount shown in the colored band above your Spacecraft’s Wet Mass Chit. These weight classes are named wisp (+2), probe (+1), scout (+0), transport (-1), and tug (-2).

• Timing. This is calculated after any Fuel is spent to afterburn (previous bullet).

c. Solar-Power Modifier. If the thruster or any card in its support chain has the solar-powered icon J5b, increase or decrease the net thrust depending on which Heliocentric Zone it’s in (-5 to +2, as indicated on the map).

• Multiple Solar Modifiers. This modifier only applies once regardless of the amount of solar icons in the support chain.

• Neptune Solar. Solar-Powered Cards are non-operational in the Neptune Heliocentric Zone B7g, unless they get a push (next bullet). If so, thrust has a -6 modifier.

Mission planning tip: A typical Crew thruster, when lifting off a large Site, will need to carry at least 8 steps of Fuel to enter the lander burn. This much Fuel puts them into a heavier weight class, forcing them to afterburn or carry less payload in order to maintain a thrust greater than the Site Size. H3b

d. Beamed-Power Modifier. If your activated thrust triangle has the “push” icon, either you or any negotiation partner N4a with the Powersat Ability/faction privilege, or with a Factory on a Site with the push icon,²⁴ (as 1marked on the map with the push icon ) can add a +1 modifier. The Powersat modifier works at any range.²⁵

• No Double Push. This modifier only applies once regardless of the number of Powersats.

e. Thrust-Modifying Supports. If the support chain J1c of the thrust triangle contains any thrust modifiers, then adjust the thrust accordingly J5a & J5d. Fuel consumption may also be affected.26

H4. Movement Procedure

A Spacecraft may move any distance along the lines of the map, restrained only by a maximum number of Burns H5c equal to its net thrust H3, and by its Fuel. Spend Fuel equal to fuel consumption for each Burn Space entered H5a.

a. Directional Freedom. If the Space started in has multiple exits, the Spacecraft may choose any of them.

b. Stopping. Except for lander burns H5e, a Spacecraft may stop on any Space B7. Moving into a Site triggers a landing H6 and ends movement.

c. Pivot. A change in direction during a move at a Hohmann B7b is called a Pivot. If a Spacecraft performs a Pivot, it must perform two Burns.²⁷

• Loiter. However, if a Rocket instead stops on the intersection, and waits until the next Turn to move in the new direction, it is not a Pivot and does not expend Fuel H4a.

• Unwavering. Moving straight through a Hohmann without turning does not require a Pivot.

• Ballerina Icon indicates a Bonus Pivot (see glossary).

d. Free Turns. You may change direction during a move at any intersection marked with an icon, e.g. a lander (or half-lander), Lagrange Points, Burns, any Hazard, etc.

e. No U-Turn. Upon entering a Space, a Spacecraft cannot immediately exit that Space using the route it entered by. However, if you halt on a Space, you may move in any direction on your next Turn (loitering, H4c*).*

f. Aerobrake Arrow. You can follow any route, except for an aerobrake path B7e against its arrowhead.

g. Coasting. This can extend your movement per H2b.

Your Rocket takes route blue to Venus. From LEO you pass through 2 magenta-colored Spaces labeled cycler and Sso. Both are Burns, and cost Fuel to enter. Both are Lagrange Points, so changing direction does not cost Fuel.

H5. Burns

Performing a Burn expends a number of fuel steps (not tanks) equal to the fuel consumption B2d of the activated thrust triangle. A Spacecraft performs a Burn in two instances: when it enters a Burn Space, either Lagrange or lander, or wishes to Pivot at a Hohmann H4c and continue moving. For each Burn Space entered, the Spacecraft must expend Fuel for one Burn; for each Pivot made H4c, the Spacecraft must perform two Burns.²⁸

a. Expend Fuel/Adjust Wet Mass. For each Burn performed, move the Spacecraft’s Wet Mass Chit a number of steps left along the Fuel Strip (following the black line) equal to the fuel consumption of the activated thrust triangle H2, possibly modified by supports H3e.

b. Fractional Fuel Use. Some thrusters consume a fractional amount of fuel steps per Burn. Move the Wet Mass Chit partially along the black line to show this. As you progress through Burns, you may place the chit between two spots to indicate partial fuel expenditure. At the end of movement, the total number of steps used is rounded up (move the marker left along the black line to the next numbered spot).

c. Burn Limit. The total amount of Burns you may use during a movement (not including Bonus Burns H8b) may not exceed the Spacecraft’s net thrust, as calculated at the start of each movement H3.

Easily Missed: Losing Dry Mass after movement begins does not change the Dry Mass Chit until after movement is finished. H5b

d. Insufficient Fuel. A Spacecraft may not enter a Burn if it does not have enough Fuel to pay for it (the Wet Mass Chit may never pass the Dry Mass Chit).

e. Lander Burns are a special type of Burn Space abstracting the delta-v required for a Spacecraft to land or takeoff from a Site. They have the following special rules:

• No Stopping. You may not end movement on a lander burn. You may not enter a lander burn if you cannot continue moving through it, including enough thrust and Fuel for any Burns or Site landings later in the same move.

• Bonus Burns H8b cannot be used to enter lander burns.

• Factory-Assisted Landings/Liftoffs H6c cannot be used to enter lander burns (exceptions for Atmospheric Sites H6c and some Abilities).

• Half-Burns. Some lander burn spaces depict only half of a lander vehicle. These still count as one full Burn (for all purposes, including burn limits H5c) but only use half as many fuel steps (do not round until movement ends).

f. Fuel Grade Requirement. Thrust triangles are color-coded with a fuel grade F4b. The Fuel expended when a Burn is used must be the same grade of Fuel or better (e.g., a dirt thruster can use any type of Fuel whilst a water Rocket may only use water or isotope Fuel).

g. Fuel-Modifying Supports. Fuel consumption can be modified per J5c.²⁹ Mission planning tip: To help remember that you

H6. Site Landing & Liftoff

Landing on a Site (hexagonal Space) ends a Spacecraft’s movement; liftoff does not. You must follow one of three methods (powered, aerobrake, or factory-assist) in order to land or liftoff from a Site:

a. Powered Landing/Liftoff. To use this method, the activated thruster must have a net thrust H3 greater than the Site Size (large number on Site) in order to enter or leave it. This does not expend Fuel.

need a thrust greater than the Size, think of the Size number as the intensity of the gravity well, and you must have more thrust than weight to escape. H6

• Synodic Comets have limited accessibility B7h.

with a 3•2 thruster to nysa (Size 3).

4. It can blastoff without burning Fuel, using a powered liftoff.

b. Aerobrake Landing. Entering a Site by following an aerobrake path B7e allows a Spacecraft to land there without any requirements for thrust, Fuel, or activated thrust triangle (you don’t need a thruster to fall down). Entering an Aerobrake Hazard forces a Hazard Roll H7.

• Aerobrake Burnup. Decommission Sail cards immediately upon entering an Aerobrake Hazard, regardless if activated or not.

c. Factory-Assist Landing/Liftoff. If a Site has a Factory, a Spacecraft with an activated Operational thruster may enter or exit that Site without needing a thrust greater than the Site Size.³⁰

• Crash Hazard. If the Space first moved into with a factory-assist liftoff is a Hazard, ignore the Hazard. Using factory-assist incurs a Hazard Roll H7 unless it is colonized or you have Powersat.

• Factory Permission. You may use an opponent’s Factory for factory-assist with their permission.

• Factory Hijack. If you can commit a Felony (which requires that the Space contains your Humans but no defending Humans, see glossary), factory-assist may be performed without permission.

• High Gravity Limit. A Spacecraft may not use factory-assist to move into or out of a lander burn space H5e with the exception of acetylene rocketplanes (next bullet).

Mission planning tip: Worlds 6 or larger have automatic success in prospecting, but you will not be able to liftoff any Factory products off such worlds unless you can attain a thrust higher than the Size. For Size 6 subplanets, you will need a thrust of 7 or more. For Size 9 worlds (Mercury and the largest moons), in the early game only Crew capable of thrust 10 or more will be able to land or blastoff. H6a

• Acetylene Rocketplane Liftoff. A Spacecraft may use factory-assist to enter one lander burn (paying the lander burn cost) from an Atmospheric Site without needing a thrust greater than the Site Size by expending a special water cost using FTs at the Site. This water cost, which is expended without adding to the Spacecraft’s Wet or Dry Mass, is equal to a number of blue FTs equal to twice the initial Wet Mass of the Spacecraft. Then continue movement, treating lander burns as burns that you cannot halt on. This represents winged boosters using fuels manufactured directly from the atmosphere.³¹

Easily Missed: If your industrialized world is size 5 or smaller, it won’t have lander burns and factory-assist can be used to lift product off. This is ideal. In other words, if you have Irsu 3, an ideal

destination would have 3 or 4 drops, be reasonably close, and be between Sizes 3 and 5. Only about 5 asteroids fit these criteria. H6c

Easily Missed: The minimum Dry Mass of

1Spend 20 FT for rocketplane factory-assist43 Burns + afterburn

a Spacecraft (including Freighters) is one, even if all its cards are mass zero (see “Dry Mass Chit” in glossary). This means that a rocketplane must always expend at least 2 FTs. H6c

Suborbital hopping: The rules allow Spacecraft to use lander burns to travel on planets and moons with multiple Sites such as Mars. Since this is a powered liftoff/landing H6a, the net thrust must be greater than the Site Size. [Example H6c]

H7. Hazard Rolls

Certain Spaces are hazardous and if your Spacecraft enters one, immediately roll one die (1d6). If you roll a ‘1’, each card and FT in its Stack suffers involuntary Decommission/Discard. A Hazard Roll is made for the following:

a. Crash Hazard (B7d). See glossary.³²

b. Aerobrake Hazard (B7e). See glossary.

c. Factory-assist. A Hazard Roll is also made if you make this sort of liftoff or landing H6c.

d. Epic Hazard. See 1A6a.

e. FINAO Exception. Before rolling, you may spend 4 Aquas for “Failure Is Not An Option” to avoid this roll. This represents paying Earth-based programmers for a fail-safe operation.

Easily Missed: If you have years invested in a mission, don’t be stingy and fail to pay the programmers. It’s not worth it. H7e

H8. Flybys

Entering a Space with a flyby grants the Spacecraft a number of Bonus Burns equal to the number printed on the flyby.³³

a. Operational Thruster. The Spacecraft is granted these Bonus Burns if it has an Operational and activated thrust triangle J3, including coasting.

b. Bonus Burns. They do not count towards your burn limit H5c, require no Fuel, and can be spent any time you’d normally require a Burn other than lander burns H5e.

c. Venus Flyby. The flyby bonus on the planet Venus can be used only if the Sunspot Cube is season blue.³⁴

Easily Missed: The lunar flyby on route purple is an easy access to valuable sites such as the 4 Galilean moons of Jupiter or the 2 W-class “wet metallic” asteroids (Lutetia and Hertha). H8

d. Multiple Flybys. A Spacecraft may benefit from multiple flybys during a movement.

e. Solar Oberth Flyby ( Heliocentric Zone) grants a number of Bonus Burns equal to the base thrust (not net thrust) of the Spacecraft’s activated thrust triangle B2d.

• No Repeats. As an exception to H8d, a Spacecraft gains Bonus Burns from the solar oberth only the first time in a move it enters it.

• The Lander Burn Space is the flyby. Pay its Fuel cost and make its Hazard Roll upon entry before gaining its Bonus Burns.

• Afterburn. If a Spacecraft performs an afterburn H3a on the solar oberth flyby, it gains one extra Bonus Burn. For a GW/TW rocket (Module 1), afterburning gains a number of Bonus Burns equal to the thruster’s afterburn bonus 1C2.

of 14 rather than zero. You gain 14 1 2

f. Mag Sail. If this thruster is activated, then each radiation belt H10 entered confers Bonus Burns H8b in the same manner as a flyby. Like the solar oberth flyby (previous bullet), these Bonus Burns are gained only the first time a Spacecraft enters a particular radiation belt in a move.

g. Glitch Trigger. Entering a flyby is a Glitch Trigger.³⁵

H9. Buggy Roads

a. Buggy Roads are relevant for prospecting I6 and Adjacency (see glossary).

b. The Martian. With an Operational card with a buggy platform I6b, as a once-per-turn free action you can move your Crew or Colonist to a new Site along any buggy road, creating an Outpost. The buggy itself does not move, except that Crew or Colonists with a buggy platform can alternatively transport themselves.

H10. Radiation Belts & Belt Rolls

Entering a Radiation Belt (space with a radiation icon) incurs a Belt Roll: roll one die (1d6) and subtract your Spacecraft’s net thrust H3. Do not subtract a negative net thrust. Compare the result to the rad-hardness of each card in the Spacecraft’s Stack (listed in the upper-left). Any card with a rad-hardness less than the result is involuntarily decommissioned.³⁶

a. Failure Is An Option. You may not pay Aquas to avoid a Belt Roll.

b. Season Red Radiation. If the Sunspot Cube is season red K1, then all Belt Rolls are made with a +2 penalty.³⁷

Easily Missed: This penalty does not apply to flares, which involve Cme Rolls rather than Belt Rolls. H10b

c. Heavy Radiators. If a heavy radiator fails its Belt Roll, rotate it to its light Orientation.

d. Solar Flare Protection. A Stack on a non-Sol Radiation Belt is shielded against solar flare events K2d.

e. Mag Sails. If a mag sail thruster enters a Radiation Belt, see H8f.

Tip: There are better ways than income to

You may perform one Operation each Turn.

get money, for instance researching then selling cards in the free market. Even better is researching

I1. Income Operation

Receive 1 Aqua from the Pool, added to your LEO Stack/Bank on your playmat.

then letting other players win the auction, because then you don’t bloat your Hand and don’t have to

I2. Research Auction Operation

Choose one of the patent decks B2 and auction off the top card.

a. Academia Hand Limit. A player with four or more cards in Hand may not initiate or bid in an auction.

b. Auction Procedure. As the initiator, you must make the first bid (minimum of 0). Then, in any order, other players (who do not exceed the academia hand limit) may bid. Continue until no player wishes to raise their bid.

spend Operations clearing your Hand of excess cards later. Nevertheless these are situational, as there is no cookbook way to make the most income. (I1]

c. Bid Currency. Bids are made in Aquas (FTs in other locations can never be used as money).

d. Win Procedure. If you win, as the initiator, you pay your bid to the Pool. If somebody else wins an auction you initiate, then they pay their bid to you. The winner adds the card to their Hand.

e. Ties. As the initiator, you win a tied bid you are involved in. If you are not involved, you choose which of the tied players wins.

f. Information. The front side of the top card of each deck is visible and open to inspection at all times. As soon as you announce that a card is up for auction, any player may pick it up to examine its backside. This reveals the front side of the next card in the deck.

g. Bonus Supports. If the card requires supports J, the auction winner also takes the top card of the corresponding patent deck for each required support into their Hand.

Tip: If you want to initiate an auction but exceed the academia hand limit, you may Discard cards as a free action G6 before performing the research. But because you can only perform free actions during your own Turn, you may not Discard cards during another player’s Turn in order to bid in an auction the other player initiates. I2a

• You do not get additional cards to support the bonus supports, only for the initially auctioned card.

• You get the top support of the required type (reactor, generator, or radiator), regardless if it is the correct subtype to support the card purchased J1a.

Easily Missed: If the initiator loses an auction, the winning bid is paid to the initiator. I2d

• Extra supports are not moved from their deck until the auction is won.

On Turn 13, your bid wins the monatomic plug nozzle thruster in an auction. This card lists a support: a reactor ~. You take the top reactor card. Unfortunately, this is a bomb reactor, which doesn’t support the plug nozzle. So next Turn you sell the reactor on the free market.

I3. Free Market Operation

Obtain Aquas by selling one card that is either (a) a Hand card or (b) a Black-Side card in a Stack in your Bank:

a. Selling Hand Card. Return a card from your Hand to the bottom of its corresponding patent deck. Receive 3 Aquas from the Pool.³⁸

b. Selling Black-Side Card From LEO Stack. Discard a Black-Side card located in your Bank (see glossary) to your Hand. Receive Aquas equal to the factory stock price listed on the Exploitation Track B5 for that card’s Spectral Type (letter on the card: C, S, M, V, D, or H). Thus, a Black-Side card could be worth 4, 5, or 8 Aquas. If there are no Factories of a Spectral Type (e.g. the last cube is retired per I7f), then it is worth 10 Aquas.

• Radiators are sold for the same price regardless of Orientation (see glossary).

• Any. Cards that are of Spectral Type “Any” can be ET produced at any Factory but cannot be sold.

Easily Missed: Cards in your Hand are not considered White-or Black-Side. I3a

I4. Boost Operation

Bring one or more Hand cards into the LEO Stack/Home Orbit by spending Aquas equal to the combined Mass of the card(s).

a. White-Side Only. You can never boost cards on their Black-Side, since Black-Side cards are only produced in space by the ET production operation I8.

b. No Movement Restriction. A card may move in the same Turn it enters LEO.

c. Radiator Orientation. Radiators J1d have both a heavy and light Orientation. Choose the card’s Orientation as it is boosted (and pay the appropriate amount of Aquas for its mass).

I5. Site Refuel Operations

The following three operations produce FTs at a Site, and each one is a Glitch Trigger:

a. ISRU Refuel Op. An Operational card with an ISRU platform produces a number of water FTs equal to one plus the Site’s Hydration minus the card’s ISRU rating. Place these FTs in a Colocated Stack, or create an outpost E6c.

• Busted Sites. A Site with a red disk I6.5 can still be used to ISRU refuel.

• Foreign Factories & ISRU. The presence of an opponent’s Claim, Factory or Bernal on a Site has no effect on ISRU refueling.

• Dirt Refueling. Except for Crew dirt thrusters, this is a free action, see G1c.

always be used to freely and immediately refuel a Spacecraft with cargo transfer G1b or internal tankage G2. Either one makes a mass adjustment F3b, Fc. If you are planning on immediately fueling your Spacecraft, feel free to move directly to wet mass adjustment (see examples). I5

1/3WET 4³ X Afterburn (+ thrust X

map location.

b. Factory-Refuel Op. A Factory on a Site can produce either 7 blue FTs (water fuel) or 1 gold FT (isotope fuel).

Ability on this card protects 51⁴¹ This card may (but does not have to) share supports with the thruster support chain J1c.

you can remain there on Dry MASSGray = dirt

I6. Prospect Operation

A successful prospect operation allows you to place a Claim of your color on a Site that is unclaimed and not Busted.⁴² Performing a prospect is a Glitch Trigger. Attempting to prospect a Site is a five-step process:

1. Operational Requirement. You must have a Stack containing an Operational card with an ISRU rating on the Site (with certain exceptions for rayguns and buggy roads).

• Assaying Smelters. If Colocated and Operational, some Abilities (e.g. Von Neumann Santa Claus Machine and, if pushed, Magbeam) modify the ISRU rating of the card used to prospect. However, an ISRU rating can never go negative.

• Multiple Platforms. If a Stack or card has multiple ISRU platforms, choose one of them to use as the prospecting ISRU.

• Luna. Unless you Claim Jump, prospecting either Site of Luna requires the permission of the 1st Player N4e.

2. Hydration Requirement. That card’s ISRU rating must be equal to or less than the Site’s Hydration (number of water droplets).

3. Size Roll. Roll a die (1d6). A result equal to or less than the Site Size (large number on site) is successful.

• Fully Baked. Prospecting the kreutz sungrazer is always successful (see Glossary, Synodic Comet).

4. If Successful: place a Claim on the Site. If you have no more disks, then you may remove one from one of your unindustrialized claimed Sites.

• The vacated Site may be prospected again by any player.

5. If Unsuccessful: place a translucent red disk on the Site, which means it is Busted (contains nothing of interest). It cannot be prospected again by any player, but can still be landed on and used to ISRU refuel I5a.

There are 3 Types of prospecting, depending upon the card’s platform icon B2c:

Mission planning tip: Look at the Irsu of your Crew or robonaut. This number is the minimum number of drops of Hydration of the world you want to prospect. I62

Easily Missed: Hazard and lander Spaces are ignored when determining Adjacency. I6a

Because Hazard Spaces are ignored, a raygun with ISRU = 0 on the Heo for the koronis family may prospect 10 asteroids in one operation! This includes the asteroids in the karin cluster. Roll separately for each prospect.

a. Raygun Prospecting. If the card used has a raygun icon with its ISRU rating it may prospect multiple Sites with a single Operation and may prospect at range. Choose any number of Sites with high enough Hydration located at and/or Adjacent (see glossary) to the card’s Stack. Resolve each roll separately in the order of your choice.⁴³

• Before Rolling. All desired Sites must be chosen before making any size rolls I6.3.

• Opaque Atmospheres. A raygun may not prospect at a range greater than zero at an Atmospheric Site (see glossary).

• One Re-roll per prospect operation is allowed if using the Ability listed on the Lorentz-propelled microprobe raygun. Make all desired rolls first, then choose a single failure to reroll.

b. Buggy Prospecting. If the card used to prospect has a buggy icon next to its ISRU rating, if you fail your size roll I6.3 for a prospecting attempt, you are allowed a single re-roll.⁴⁴

Easily Missed: The re-roll for buggy prospecting raises chances of success on a comet from 16.7% to 30.6%. I6b

• Buggy Roads. By prospecting one Site, a buggy simultaneously prospects all other Sites with a high enough Hydration I6.2 connected by a buggy road (yellow dashed line) with a single Operation.

c. Missile Prospecting. This has no special rules.

I7. Industrialize Operation

This Operation allows you to build a Factory at a Site where you already have an unindustrialized Claim. Decommission an Operational robonaut and refinery card, along with their required support chains J1c. This places a small cube on top of the Claim, and this combination is your new Factory. Performing this operation is a Glitch Trigger. A Factory on a Site with the push icon yields the Powersat Ability.

a. Overlapping Support Chains. The cards that are Decommissioned can share a support (see J1b, J1c).

b. Stacking Limit. There may only be one Factory on each Site.

c. Spectral Type. The Spectral Type (letter) of a Factory becomes the Spectral Type of the Site it is on, and determines which cards it can ET produce I8. The Spectral Type of the cards Decommissioned do not matter.

d. Exploitation Track. Adjust the blue bead on the Exploitation Track as necessary to keep track of the total number of Factories in play for each Spectral Type. This will be used for stock prices during free market sales and final scoring. If there are 3 or more Factories of a Spectral Type, the bead stays in the lowermost row.

Mission planning tip: A missile robonaut and its supports is perhaps the fastest way to Claim the valuable mid-sized asteroids and moons. I6b

e. Colonies. A Colony can be built on a Factory as a free action G3. Colonies are permanent G6b.

Industrialization always requires the Decommission of a robonaut, and neither Crew nor Colonists can be substituted. I7e

f. Cube Limit. Your Reserve of cubes is limited to 7. To place a Factory, Sunspot Cube, or delegate when you have no remaining cubes, you may Discard another cube as a free action G6. You cannot Discard a Sunspot Cube, colonized Factory, or a Dirtside 2Ba. You cannot become the 1st Player O6b if you have no discardable cube to use for the Sunspot Cube.

g. Radiator & Cooling Exception. It is not required to Decommission or even have a radiator support J4 in order to industrialize. Any card that requires cooling has its requirements met for this purpose (because the nightside of the world provides all the cooling you need for industrialization).

• Industrial Use Only. This does not apply to other operations.

I8. ET Production Operation

Bring8/9a single card from your Hand into play, Black-Side up, at one of your Factories.⁴⁵ Place the card in an Outpost 5/63/42/32/31/21/21/21/21/21214161820222426283032 Stack7/9G1d at the location. 2/3 2/313151719212325272931

a. Spect1r/2al Type. The Spectra10l Ty11pe (letter) of the card must match the Spectral Type (letter) of the Factory Site

b. 1/3Black Ca4rds Only. An ET production operation can only produce cards on their Black-Side. A card without a 1/6 2/932 Bla2ck-Side (e.g. Crew) cannot be ET produced. 11//99 151

c. Movement Timing. A card may move in the same Turn it enters play.

d. Martial Law. You may negotiate N6 or use a Felony N6a to use an opponent’s Factory for ET production.

e. Radiator Orientation. Choose the Orientation (see glossary) of any radiators produced.

Mission planning tip: Once you finally get a Factory going, you need something to build! Be sure to have cards ready of the proper Spectral Type.

10I9. Delivery Operation

If you have a Stack at a Factory that contains both a Black-Side card and the specified FTs, you may move the card

Saturn from the Cassini spacecraft. Picture NASA.

There are 3 types of support cards: generators, reactors, and radiators. These are used to support other patent cards in a stack (such as thrusters, robonauts, refineries, and other support cards). A single support can make multiple cards Operational.

Mission planning tip: Among generators, is common and is uncommon. Among reactors, x is the least common. J

J1. Using Supports

If a card lists supports in its white field to the left B2h, in order to be Operational J3, it needs the indicated type and subtype of support card to be Operational and in the same stack.

a. Support Subtypes. The generator and reactor support types are subdivided into subtypes. Cards that need generator or reactor supports list the particular subtype they need to be Operational. The icons for the subtypes are:

b. Sharing Supports. A single support can be used to satisfy all other cards in its stack that require that type of support. However you must choose no more than one support card for each requirement. Radiators and their cooling therms behave slightly differently J1d, J4.

Mission planning tip: If you need a generator for your thruster, it can be used for your robonaut and refinery as well. J1b

c. Support Chains. The card itself, the supports required by the card, the supports of those supports, etc. are all part of the card’s support chain. You must specify the entire support chain used for movement H2.

Valkyrie: This reactor has the limitation that, if activated per H2, it decommissions cards in that Rocket Stack (including opponent’s cards) with Rad-Hard <4 at the start of the Rocket’s move. This is a Felony if it decommissions Humans. J1c

d. Radiators provide all or part of their Therms as part of the support chain J4. A card’s cooling requirements can come from multiple radiators.

e. Pulsed Generators can simultaneously act to support, and be supported by, a reactor. This is because its function includes capacitive energy storage, serving both as the reactor’s initiator and outputting reactor power as pulsed electricity.

read this as needing either a pulse reactor or an exotic reactor, but in either case needing 2 therms of cooling. J1d

J2. Non-Operational Consequences

A card needs to be Operational J3 to be activated for thrust, prospecting, refueling, and industrializing, or for any printed Ability whilst the card is in a stack. This does not apply to hand cards, cards that are free-marketed, or otherwise not in a stack.

a. Thrust Triangle Activation. A non-operational thrust triangle cannot be activated to move a Spacecraft stack.

b. ISRU Refueling & Prospecting. Except for factory dirt refuel G1c, a stack cannot perform these operations I5a, I6 without an Operational card with an ISRU value.

c. Air-Eater. This refuel cannot be performed without an Operational card with the pac-man icon I5c.

d. Industrialize. Both a robonaut and a refinery needs to have all its support requirements met, other than Therm requirements I7g, or else they cannot be industrialized into a Factory.

e. Abilities & Restrictions become inactive if its card is not Operational B2g. With the exception of movement modifying supports J5, a card does not need to be part of the support chain for its Ability to be active (e.g. magnetoshell or air-eater).

J3. Operational Cards

A card becomes non-operational J2 the moment one of these requirements is violated:

a. Solar-Power. If the card has a sunburst icon then it is non-operational in the Neptune Heliocentric Zone (labeled “no solar power”), unless given a push by a Powersat.

b. Supported. All of its required supports are in its stack.

c. Support Chain Operational. All of its required supports are Operational J1c.

d. Cooling. The card’s stack contains enough Therms to meet its cooling needs J4.

e. Option. You may choose to make a card non-operational.

J4. Cooling Therms

All cards that list one or more icons in its support field require a number of “Therms” of cooling equal to the number of icons. To be Operational, these Therms must be supplied by radiators and/or afterburn cooling.⁴⁷

a. Therm Production. Each Therm can be supplied to a single Colocated card in a movement or Operation.

b. Therm Assignment. Each time a card that requires cooling is used J3, there must be sufficient Therms available for the card and its entire support chain. For example:

• A robonaut or refinery (and its supports) must satisfy their combined Therm requirements each time it is used during an Operation other than industrialization J2d.

• Activation Prerequisite. A thruster (and its supports) must satisfy its Therm requirements to be activated H2.

• Ability Prerequisite. A card’s Ability B2g is locked unless the Therm requirements of itself and its supports are satisfied.

• Circular Support Chains. If a radiator needs a support (e.g. magnetocaloric refrigerator), its Therms can be used to cool its own supports.

c. Therms Reuse. The total Therms produced are not exhausted by any individual Movement, Operation or Action that Turn. Therms produced in a stack may be reused to cool any or all support chains J1c needed during a single Turn. Reuse applies only to Therms produced by radiators, not afterburning J4d.

Easily Missed: A Therm is supplied to a single colocated card for the entire Turn (movement, operations, combat). However, the Therm from afterburn cooling can only be applied to the activated thruster during movement. J4b

d. Afterburn Cooling. If the activated thrust triangle afterburns H3a during movement, it produces one Therm of cooling as if it were a radiator.

• Timing. This Therm only lasts during the current movement, and must be used to cool the activated thruster and its support chain.

• Non-Operational Cooling. A non-operational thruster may afterburn if the single Therm provided is enough to make it Operational (i.e., it is only one Therm short of being Operational).

e. Radiator Orientation. The mass and number of Therms of a radiator depends upon its Orientation, see glossary.

J5. Movement-Modifying Supports

A movement-modifying support, as indicated by a black triangle with the wrench icon B2i, will (if Operational) increase or decrease the net thrust and/or fuel consumption B2d of its Spacecraft. This gain or loss only occurs if the movement-modifying support is chosen to be in the support chain J1c of its activated thrust triangle, as determined during thrust triangle activation H2. Follow the standard order of operations for these modifiers: multiplication and division, then addition and subtraction, and rounding fractions up at the end of the move H5b. There are 3 types:

a. Thrust-Modifying Support contains a positive or negative thrust modifier in its black triangle*.* When calculating a Spacecraft’s net thrust H3e, add or subtract this number.

b. Solar Thrust-Modifying Support contains the Solar-Powered icon B2e in its black triangle. If there is at least one Solar-Powered support in a thruster’s support chain, modify its thrust by the amount of the Spacecraft’s Heliocentric Zone (-5 to +2). This is only applied once, not once per Solar-Powered support.

Easily Missed: Movement-modifying supports are not applied if the active thruster (e.g. a Sail) does not need them as support, or the support is for an exception (e.g. magnetocaloric refrigerator or D-T gun fusion) listed in J5d

c. Fuel-Modifying Support is indicated by a black triangle and the wrench icon. When a Spacecraft performs a Burn H5a, multiply its fuel consumption (right number in the thrust triangle) by this amount. To indicate a fractional fuel consumption after a Burn, you may place the Wet Mass Chit between two spots. At the end of movement, round any fractional fuel consumption up to the next highest integer. If it indicates “1/1”, this means the fuel consumption is unchanged.

d. Exceptions. Ignore all movement-modifiers for supports needed only for radiators, reactors, Freighters, or GW thrusters. Solar-Power supports can never be used in the Neptune Heliocentric Zone unless getting a push from a Powersat (-6 thrust). Movement-modifiers do not affect afterburning H3a, 1C2.

As the last step in a year, the 1st Player advances the Sunspot Cube one spot clockwise. If it passes an Event threshold, an Event Roll is made and applied to all players.

K1. Colors Of The Seasons

The Sunspot Cycle diagram is divided into three colored seasons: red, blue, and yellow. The season the Sunspot Cube is in determines the accessibility of Synodic Comet Sites B7h, the Venus flyby H8c, and the event K2.

K2. Event Roll

When the Sunspot Cube passes an “event” threshold on the Sunspot Cycle diagram, immediately roll one dice (1d6) and resolve the event: 1 or 2 = Inspiration, 3 = Glitch, 4 = pad explosion/space debris, 5 or 6 = a season-dependent event.

a. Inspiration Event (‘1’ or ‘2’). Put the topmost card of each patent deck and the Colonist queue on the bottom of that deck.

b. Glitch Event (‘3’). Each player places a Glitch (red disk) on their stack with the most cards that have neither a Glitch nor Colocated Humans. Choose if stacks are tied.

• Glitch Roll. If later in the game a glitched stack performs a Glitch Trigger (see glossary), a Glitch Roll is made.

• Glitch Repair. A Glitch is harmlessly removed by a free action using a Human G7.

c. Pad Explosion/Space Debris Event (‘4’). Each player Decommissions their card with the highest Mass in LEO, choosing one if tied. However, Crew, Black-Side, Purple-Side, Colonist, and Bernal cards are immune.

Easily Missed: Crew are “invisible” to pad explosions. K2c

d. Solar Flare Event (‘5’ or ‘6’, Sunspot Cube in season red). Make a Cme Roll to determine overall flare severity: roll one die (1d6) and apply the result to every card in all non-LEO stacks (but see shieldings below). For each card, first add or subtract the modifier printed next to the Heliocentric Zone its located in (-5 to +2) from the die result, then compare the result to the rad-hardness B2j of that card. Any card with a rad-hardness less than the result suffers involuntarily decommission unless shielded:

• Van Allen Shielding. Cards located in the LEO or cycler Space are immune to this event.

• Magnetic Field Shielding. Cards located on a Radiation Belt H10, with the exception of the 14 belts surrounding Sol, are immune to this event.

• Bunker Shielding. Cards on Sites are immune to this event.

Tip: It is dangerous to be flying during season red. K2d

e. Anarchy Event (‘5’ or ‘6’, Sunspot Cube in season blue). Until the Sunspot Cube exits season blue, each player’s listed faction privilege B6a is replaced by an Ability equivalent to the Felonious faction privilege.

• Lawlessness (Module 0). Additionally, the Law indicated by the Active Law is inactivated but it can still move and all Laws may still be lobbied.

• Purge Roll (Module 0). Additionally, roll a dice and consult the dice numbers printed on the assembly. Discard (if possible) one delegate of each player color in this Ideology. If so, this generates a vote tally (O3a).

f. Budget Cuts Event (‘5’ or ‘6’, Sunspot Cube in season yellow). Each player Discards a card of their choice from their Hand (if they have any) to the bottom of the corresponding patent deck.

g. Event Order: If an event instructs multiple players to do something, they resolve it beginning with the 1st Player and going clockwise.

Theory: Faction privileges (but not Bernal privileges) are shutdown during anarchy because of nationalization/seizure of LEO facilities. K2e

The glory chits start in the Heliocentric Zone indicators on the map B3, C7. When you land a Human onto any Site in a zone with its glory chit not yet taken, you may take it and place it on the Human’s card with the chit’s lowest VP side up. Each Crew or Colonist can carry a maximum of one glory chit. However, no glory can be obtained from a Site that a Human has previously landed on.

a. Ticker Tape Parade! If a Human returns back to your Bank with a glory chit on its card, this chit goes into your playmat (in the space labeled “Glory”), with its highest VP side up.

b. Tragedy. If a Human has a glory chit on its card when it is Decommissioned (e.g. death or colonization), this chit goes into the Glory space on your playmat, but remains on its lowest VP side up.

c. Heroism. These 4 chits start on the map’s heroism spots C7. They are only used in games with 3 or more players. The map contains a description of what accomplishment each heroism chit can be awarded for. At any time before the last year of the game, any player can nominate another player, or himself, to be awarded this victory chit. Players vote beginning with the 1st player, and the chit is permanently awarded if the majority agrees (with the 1st Player breaking ties).

Your Rocket Stack has a 0•0 activated Sail, 3•4 Re solar moth, and Crew.

1. You load one tank of Fuel.

Scout +0 net thrust Transport -1 net thrust Tug -2 net thrust Mass chit

Scout transport tug 3 Chit order to enter the +2 wisp class.

Storage 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1

Year 33. Your wisp, with a Dry Mass =

9101 and Wet Mass = 1 8/9, embarks

6claim the glory chit in the Mars

zone. Th1e3net thrust is 2 which

10is t2he base thrust of 0 plus 2 for

1/3 2 being wisp class. This gets it to

the first year of travel.

34. This is in the Mars zone, and

34 2 Required Burns x fuel consumption = steps.

65 & 6. For years 2 and 3 it

between locations. For example, Jettisoning Fuel, move Wet Mass chit as many steps as desired left along . From Dry Mass, move right following intervals X.

Fuel (3+4+6). Aid used to calculate

steps = fuel consumption.

Required Wet Mass only. No Hazard entered. until sum = steps.

Dry Mass Modification: Move both chits right (adding) or left (removing) along

game effect.

Final location is Required Wet Mass.

77. On year 5 it uses the same

it is in a hurry, spends 4 steps of

8Fuel to enter the Hazard Burn.

Lagrange L2.

M1. Core Endgame

The end of the game is triggered when 48 years (four solar cycles) have been completed. This happens when the Sunspot Cube crosses the seniority threshold, as the last Seniority Disk is removed.

a. Endgame with Modules 1 and/or 2 is 5 solar cycles, and with Futures is 7 solar cycles.

M2. Scoring Endgame Victory Points (VP)

The player with the most victory points (VP) at the end of the game is the winner. Resolve ties by most Aqua. If still tied, share the victory or position. VP are awarded for each Token of their color, plus bonus and politics VP:

a. Token VP• 1 VP for each wooden or plastic Token (e.g. Rockets, Claims, Factories) in a player color on the map and (Module 0) on the Assembly.

b. Bonus VP • Factory Stock Price. +8 / +5 / +4 VP per Factory according to its Exploitation Track (2VP regardless of track if game ends in War), (doubled if linked to a Space Elevator). location of the token):• Colony Dome Location. +1 VP (Astrobiology) / +2 VP (Submarine, Bernal).

• Glory & Heroism Chits. As listed on its faceup side.

• Dirtside Hydration (Module 2). VP = Dirtside Hydration (Home Bernal = 6 VP).

• Future Stars (Modules 0, 1, & 2). VP as listed on each completed Future.

c. Politics VP (Module 0): Freedom = +1 VP per Factory cube. Increase the Token VP Honor = + 1 VP per glory chit. for all players according Unity = +1 VP for each Ideology you have a delegate in. Authority = +1 VP per Claim disk. Equality = +1 VP per Colony dome (including on Bernals). Individuality = +1 VP per wood/plastic Token on Sites with Hazardous lander burns.

d. Bernal VP (Module 2): Promoted Cancer Hospital Bernal = +1 VP per Colony dome. Promoted Climate Control Bernal = +2 VP per Dirtside for this Bernal. Anchored / Promoted Sso Diplomatic Bernal (Module 0) = Your delegates in the Ideology of your player color are +1 VP each. Promoted Diplomatic Bernal (Module 0) = Your delegates in the assembly are +1 VP each. Tourism Cycler = +2 VP per Dirtside for this Bernal.

Tip: Always form a Rocket Stack on your last turn for its Token VP. Outpost are cardboard and are not worth any Token VP. M2a

At any time, even on an opponent’s Turn, you may negotiate mutually-desirable deals with the other players. A deal can involve promises and/or the transfer of certain items (see below), but any deals that cannot be carried out in the Turn the deal is made are non-binding.

a. Timing. Deals can be made at any time and on any player’s Turn, but transfer of items (cards, FT other than Aquas, Figures) cannot be done during movement, an Operation, or a free action.

b. Transferable Items & Services. See N1 – N8 for a list of what is transferable. In particular, you cannot transfer glories, Futures, Anchored Bernals, or any promoted card (except unemancipated Robots may be transferred).

Tip: Don’t be afraid to make deals. How often have you desperately needed your ship to have one more thrust for the Turn? Are you missing an exotic reactor or pulsed generator? Need cash for that software upload? N

N1. Negotiated Aquas

Players may transfer Aquas directly to and from each other without restriction.

N2. Negotiated Transfer of Hand Cards

A player may transfer cards from his Hand to other players’ Hands.

a. Academia Restriction. A card that has been traded from a Hand cannot be traded from its new Hand again until the start of its original owner’s next Turn.

N3. Negotiated Transfer of Stacks & Figures

If a Stack, Claim, Factory, or Colony changes ownership, one player removes its Figure from the map and the other replaces it with a corresponding one of their own. If you trade Stack cards to an opponent, transfer the cards and FTs to his playmat. He is allowed to create an outpost or other Stack to accommodate them.

a. Stacked Tokens. See G6a.

b. Component Limits. Keep in mind limits for Stacks E3, disks G4a, and cubes I7f.

c. Free Actions. Only the active player may perform free actions G on their Turn (e.g, their opponents may not withdraw components to comply with the previous two bullets).

d. Crew. Your Crew/Colonist may be moved into an opponent’s Stack (e.g. in a rescue mission) but it is still under your control and provides no benefits to the opponent other than being Human (e.g. glitch repair G7) and thrust triangle activation H2. Either player may Jettison G1g the Crew/Colonist as a free action (this can be a Felony) and it is returned to your LEO Stack (or Bank) if Decommissioned.

N4. Negotiated Faction Privileges

a. Powersat. With this Ability/faction privilege (see glossary) you may negotiate in order to add to the thrust of any pushable Spacecraft (marked with the push icon ) H3d.

b. Felonious. With this Faction privilege, you may allow an opponent to commit Felonies on his Turn (thematically using corrupt bureaucrats or double agents).

c. Mooncable.⁴⁹ You may, as a once-per-turn free action, dirt refuel another player’s Rocket at LEO/Home Orbit, either 1 tank (if it is a Crew), or 7 tanks (if it is non-crew).

d. Scrum Troubleshooters. You may negotiate Glitch repair of any Stack, which cannot be after the Glitch Roll.

e. 1st Player. You may negotiate prospecting Luna I6.1. You may negotiate placement of the seniority disks as legacy votes (Module 0, O6).

N5. Negotiated Factory-Assist

You may perform a factory-assisted landing/liftoff using a consenting opponent’s Factory H6c.

a. Felonious. This can also be done without consent if you can commit a Felony (see glossary).

N6. Negotiated On-Site Operation

You may use an opponent’s Claim, Factory, Crew, Colony, Bernal, or Colonist to perform an On-Site Operation (e.g. site refuel, prospect, industrialize, and ET production).

a. Felonious. If you have Humans present and your opponent does not, these can also be done without consent if you can commit a Felony (see glossary).

b. Lunar Mines. If you are the 1st Player C8a, you may negotiate permission to prospect Luna.

Hazard is ignored during liftoff.

N7. Negotiated Abilities

You may share an Ability listed on a Stack card or Colonist specialty 2C1 with an opponent’s Colocated Stack.

N8. Negotiated Glitch Repair

A Glitch on an opponent’s stack Colocated with one of your Humans is always automatically removed, regardless if you or your opponent performs the glitch repair free action G7.

Jupiter with shadow of Io. Picture NASA.

Welcome to your first Module, a body of rules which you can add to your High Frontier experience. In this Module, Factions elect representatives from their population as delegates into 7 different Ideologies, each with its own Law.⁵⁰

a. The Assembly is the hexagonal area on the placard where Factions use elected delegates to manipulate policy and gain advantages in the political arena through Laws.

b. Ideologies include the freedom, honor, unity, authority, equality, individuality, and (in the center) centrist areas of the assembly.⁵¹

c. Economic vs. Political Pull. You gain delegate cubes by fundraising, building Colonies, or exomigration 2A6. You are limited to 7 cubes, which can be used either as Factories or as delegates. Thus, the more you use for Factories means the fewer you can use for delegates. If you run out of cubes for delegates, you may remove a Factory per I7f and vice-versa.

d. Active Law. A gold star on the assembly indicates which Law is active.

e. Anarchy. Delegates can be killed by the anarchy event K2e.

O1. Political Assembly Setup

In addition to core setup C, find the assembly placard and set up the assembly as follows:

a. Active Law (gold star) is placed into the starting centrist ideology.⁵²

b. Starting Delegate. Each player adds one cube into the Ideology of their player color.

Note: if continuing a game of “Bios:Origins 2” in a grand campaign, the Active Law starts depending upon the end condition of the game: if it ends in pacifist or unity it starts in unity, if it ends in agnostic or equality it starts in equality, if it ends in abolitionist or freedom it starts in freedom, and if it ends in the middle it starts in centrist. O1a

O2. Delegates & Fundraise Operation

The new fundraise operation gives you 1 Aqua, adds 1 cube into the assembly, and moves one cube in the assembly.

a. Delegates are any cube of a player color in the assembly. You are component-limited to 7 cubes I7f. You cannot use your big cube as a delegate (Module 1).

b. Fundraise Operation replaces the income operation I1. It is performed in 3 steps:

• Receive 1 Aqua as income.

• You may elect (add) a delegate from your Reserve into your faction ideology B6b or an Ideology where you already have a delegate.

• You may move any one of your delegates to an adjacent Ideology.

c. Representation. If you build a Colony G3c or exomigrate 2A6c, you may immediately place one of your cubes as a delegate into the Ideology as indicated by the politics of the Crew or Colonist used. See I7f if your Reserves are empty.

Easily Missed: When playing this Module, the income operation in the Core game is no longer available. O2

O3. Law Activation

After an Operation, free action, or other game effect that places, removes, or moves a delegate is finished, perform a vote tally then activation:

a. Vote Tally. Check to see if any Ideologies have equal to or more delegates than the Active Law (the active player chooses if tied). If so, the active player must move the Active Law into an Ideology with the most delegates. If tied with the current Ideology, the Active Law may stay.

b. Activation. Immediately following the vote tally that moves the Active Law into a new Ideology, the Law associated with that Ideology becomes active and may be used by any Faction on their Turn.

O4. Lobby (new free action)

As a once-per-turn free action, pay 1 Aqua and Decommission 1 of your delegates in an inactive Ideology to use its Law throughout your Turn.

a. Centrist Law O5g is exceptional in that it may be lobbied only during the pad explosion/space debris event K2c.

b. Anarchy/War. Laws may be lobbied during Anarchy K2e or War. Payment is waived during War.

Easily Missed: In peace-time, you must pay 1 Aqua to lobby. O4

O5. Laws

Every Ideology has an associated Law, which if activated O3 modifies rules for all players:

a. Free Trade Act (freedom). You may sell two cards for 5 Aqua total with a free market operation I3.

b. Paleoconservative Directive (honor). During a fundraise operation, your income O2b gained is equal to the number of glory chits that you hold anywhere.

c. UN General Assembly (unity). Every other Ideology with 2+ delegates also has its Law activated O3b, but no player may lobby any Laws.

Easily Missed: Under paleoconservative directive, if you have no glory, you gain no income from fundraising. O5b

d. Martial Law (authority). Once per Turn right after completing the vote tally O3a of a fundraise operation, you may additionally Discard an opponent’s delegate. Thus, the player moving the Active Law into authority via a fundraise can remove one delegate that same Turn. Martial law prevents changing the 1st Player at the end of each cycle O6b.

e. Research Grants (equality). When initiating a research auction operation I2, you must skip the auction and instead pay 1 Aqua to take the top card of any patent deck without bonus supports I2g or academia hand limit I2a.

f. Freedom To Roam Treaty (individuality). You may treat an opponent’s Factory or Bernal as your own for the purposes of On-Site Operations, factory-assist, Promotions, or Space Elevators without needing the owner’s permission.⁵³ Other uses of a Factory or Bernal, such as Powersat, are unchanged by this treaty.

Easily Missed: All of the Laws modify existing operations. So you’re still doing a free market op, a research op, etc., but you’re modifying it with the active law. If lobbying, as a free action you can expend a delegate to treat another law as the active law. O5

g. Mishap Insurance (centrist). During a pad explosion/space debris event K2c, any Faction with a delegate here gains Aquas equal to the Mass of his decommissioned card. A player may lobby this to gain the insurance (outside of his Turn beginning with 1st Player) after the Event Roll K2.

O6. 12-Year Legacy

Whenever a seniority disk is removed, the 1st Player adds it to an Ideology of their choice in the circular spot. This will count as a legacy vote only during the final vote and has no other purpose. They cannot be moved or removed.

a. Final Vote. Placing the final seniority disk into the assembly ends the game. The final 1st Player performs a vote tally O3a, counting both delegates and legacy votes. The final Active Law affects scoring per O7.

b. Term Limits Baton Pass. Except during active martial law O5d, and assuming the game has not ended per the previous bullet, the 1st Player must then assign another player to be the 1st Player.

• Cube Swap. A new 1st Player with no available cubes I7f must discard a valid cube immediately. If this is not possible that player cannot be chosen as 1st Player.

• Big Cube. You cannot use your big cube for the Sunspot Cube (Module 1).

O7. Political Scoring

After the final vote O6a, if there is no current Anarchy/War calculate endgame scoring M2c as follows:

a. Freedom. +1 VP per Factory cube.

b. Honor. + 1 VP per glory chit (in your Spacecraft Stack or playmat).

c. Unity. +1 VP for each Ideology you have a delegate in.

d. Authority. +1 VP per Claim disk.

e. Equality. +1 VP per Colony dome (including on Bernals).

f. Individuality. +1 VP per wood/plastic Token on Sites with Hazardous lander burns.

g. Centrist. No VP changes.

Magellan synthetic aperture radar mosaics from the first cycle of Magellan mapping are mapped onto a computer-simulated globe to create this image of Venus. Picture Jpl/NASA.

Definitions of capitalized terms in the Core rules and Modules are found here. These are the game’s most fundamental concepts.

1st Player. The player who owns the Sunspot Cube, and thereby becomes the Sol secretary-general. He starts each player turn phase D1 after events and completes the sunspot cycle phase D2 at the end of each year. The 1st Player is determined during setup by the Crew with the best clout C8. Prospecting Luna requires the permission of the 1st Player.

Ability is printed in the colored band of certain cards J2e. It includes restrictions. It applies only if the card is Operational J3. You can declare a card non-operational for the Turn if you wish to shut down its ability. A Factory on a Site with the push icon yields the Powersat Ability. If a card is promoted 2A3, any abilities on the unpromoted side are lost. Abilities on unpromoted Bernals require the Bernal to be Anchored 2A5.

Active Law. In Module 0, as soon as the gold star token enters an Ideology, it makes the Law associated with that Ideology active O3 while there is no Anarchy/War.

Active Thrust Triangle. In a moving Spacecraft stack, one Operational card with a thrust triangle is chosen to provide thrust for its move H2. It is suggested that this card go on top of the stack.

Adjacent. A Space is adjacent to another Space if you can trace a route from one to the other (along the lines of the map) without passing through another Space. Ignore any Space with a Crash Hazard (including Crash Hazard Burns but not including Aerobrakes) and lander burn Spaces when determining adjacency (since these represent abstractions, not distance). Adjacency is relevant for e.g. rayguns and Dirtsides.

a. Buggy Roads. Spaces connected by yellow dashed lines are never adjacent to each other (since the horizon blocks line-of-sight).

Aerobrake Hazard. A Space marked with the parachute icon . Entering it represents flying into the atmosphere to decelerate for landing, orbital adjustment, or scooping.

a. Aerobrake Hazard Roll. When entering an aerobrake hazard, make a Hazard Roll unless using FINAO H7e. The Ability of certain cards, if Operational, allows the stack they are in to forgo this roll.

b. Air-Eater Operation I5c is performed on an aerobrake hazard if you have an Operational card with the pac-man icon. Each Turn of refuel requires either a Hazard Roll or FINAO.

c. One Way. A Spacecraft cannot move against the arrow’s direction on an aerobrake path B7e.

d. Ballistic Re-entry. You may use coasting H2b to follow an aerobrake path B7e.

e. Solar Sails (photon heliogyro, electric sail, photon kite sail, mag sail, etc.) are involuntarily decommissioned if their stack enters an aerobrake hazard, even if they are not activated.

Anarchy can happen during season blue, as an event K2e. Because this danger is periodic, think of it as representing a divisive election year. During anarchy, all players lose their listed faction privileges B6a, but gain the Felonious faction privilege. (Module 0) Anarchy has 2 additional effects: it inactivates the effects of the Active Law (which can still be lobbied), and also makes a 1d6 Purge Roll, which removes one delegate of each Faction in the Ideology of the number rolled. Anarchy ends when the Sunspot Cube exits season blue.

Anchored indicates a Bernal that has undergone the anchoring operation 2A5, meaning local materials have been employed to provide it with a habitable atmosphere and radiation shields. Place a dome on the Bernal Figure to indicate that it is now an anchored orbiting colony. Anchoring has special requirements 2A5a, 2A5b, 2A5c, 2A5d and special effects 2A5e, 2A5f, 2A5g, 2A5h, 2A5i. Anchoring in a Home Orbit also has special effects 2B3, 2B4.

Aqua is the name given to blue beads (water FTs) stored in your Bank. Each represents an orbiting 40-tonne water tank used as currency for auctions, paying off programmers, etc. They may also be used as Water FTs for fueling.

Astrobiology Site is a Site with the green leaf icon. Because this Site may contain the original condensate from the protostellar nebula in “cosmic” abundances, a Colony here is worth an additional victory point M2b.

Atmospheric Site is one in which the cloud icon appears in the Site hex. This is relevant in liftoffs H6c, in raygun prospecting I6a and air-eater refueling I5c. It is also relevant in some Futures. All atmospheric sites have nearby Aerobrake Hazards. Except for Mars, all Atmospheric Sites have aerostats. Atmospheric Sites include:

• Mars: Arsia mons caves⁵⁵ , north pole, hellas basin buried glaciers.

• Jupiter: Although atmospheric, Jupiter’s gravity well is too steep and too radioactive to have a Site.

• Saturn: Saturn aerostat.

• Titan (Moon of Saturn): Titan aerostat, ontario lacus, kraken mare.

• Uranus: Uranus aerostat.

• Neptune: Neptune aerostat.

• Triton & Pluto are not atmospheric sites, although their deep thin vapors allow aerobraking where indicated.

Bank 3A3j. The single Space on the map where your Aquas are considered to be stored, which is normally LEO. Your Bank shifts to your Home Bernal 2B3a, or your ET Home Bernal 3F, whichever is furthest from Earth.

Belt Roll H10. This roll is made if entering a Radiation Belt, and is not made if suffering a flare K2d. Roll one die (1d6) and subtract your Spacecraft’s net thrust H3. Add 2 if the Sunspot is in season red. Compare the result to the rad-hardness of each card in the Spacecraft’s Stack B2j. Any card with a rad-hardness less than the result is involuntarily decommissioned.

Bernal. A large orbital habitat, boosted from Earth and delivered as an empty shell to its destination, where its atmosphere and radiation shielding, constituting the vast majority of its mass, are added using local materials. Each player can have up to two. Its purpose is to maintain an Earth normal environment, either in a Home Orbit to service Earth, or at a distant world so workers can tele-operate mining activities from orbit. It is represented by a Token in your player color which designates the location of your Bernal and your Bernal Stack.

a. As a Spacecraft, if Operational it can activate its thrust triangle and use the gray Fuel Strip with its own Wet and Dry Mass Chits. It can also be carried by a Rocket.

b. Once Anchored by the anchoring operation 2A5, a Bernal becomes immobile, Human, and converts all Adjacent Factories into Dirtsides. You instantly gain a Colonist by exomigration 2A6. Dirtside factory fuel 2A7d, and ET products 2A7e can be delivered there. Place a Colony dome on top of the Bernal Figure to indicate that it is Anchored.

c. If Anchored In Any Home Orbit, your faction privilege B6a is unlocked, you gain 1 Aqua per Turn profit, all your Aquas are stored there, cards stored there are immune to events, and you may boost cards from Earth directly to the Bernal, at double the normal boost costs 2B3e. Home Orbits are indicated by 7-pointed stars.

d. If Anchored At Its Promotion Colony 1A5a, a Bernal card can be promoted to its Purple-Side, which activates its Abilities 2B4 and makes it into a Lab 1A5b.

Black-Side Card. A patent card B2 built in space, see B2a. It cannot ever be boosted I4a.

Blink Telescope. With this faction privilege B6a, for each prospecting attempt using a raygun platform, you are allowed a single re-roll for the first Site prospected in the Operation if you fail its size roll I6.3.

Bonus Burn is a Burn which a Spacecraft can use without spending fuel and without counting towards the Spacecraft’s burn limit H5c. A Spacecraft gains them during flybys H8. A bonus burn can be used anytime a Spacecraft would normally require a Burn other than afterburning H3a and lander burns H5e. If you have both bonus burns and non-bonus burns remaining, you may choose the order you use them in. They cannot be saved for the next Turn, however.

Bonus Pivot is indicated by the ballerina icon. Each ballerina on an activated thruster or other card indicates an extra Pivot a Spacecraft can make in a single move without spending fuel and without counting towards its burn limit H5c. Bonus pivots are listed on Sails, some promoted thrusters, and on certain Freighters 1B4a and one bonus pivot is conferred to pushable Spacecraft by the collimator Bernal, a Bernal Ability 2B4d.

Burn is spending a number of fuel steps on the Fuel Strip, following the black line, equal to a Spacecraft’s fuel consumption B2d. This can occur either by entering a Burn Space on the map or by making a Pivot.

Burn Space is a magenta-colored Space, either Lagrange burn or lander burn H5. Normally, entering counts against your burn limit H5c, and expends a number of fuel steps equal to Spacecraft’s fuel consumption B2d. You may not halt on a lander burn H5e.

Busted. A Site covered by a translucent red disk, to indicate that there is no chance of placing Claims or Factories there. It still may be used for ISRU refueling I5a. Busting can occur during a failed size roll I6.5.

Cargo. Cards, FTs, Freighter cubes, Mobile Factories, and Bernals carried in a Spacecraft Stack. Their combined Mass is called Dry Mass. If Operational, their Abilities are active.

Claim. A disk of a player’s color on a Site showing that they have successfully prospected and mined it. Each claim is worth 1 VP.

Claim Jump. See G4, 1B9b, 1D1c.

Cme Roll. Abbreviation of “coronal mass ejection”. This is a single 1d6 roll made if a flare event occurs K2d. This roll can’t be avoided by FINAO, and indicates the flare’s severity which is compared to the rad-hardness of every unshielded Stack Card on the map. This severity, ranging from 1 (a meek L1 flare) to 6 (Carrington X95 flare), is modified according to the Heliocentric Zone modifier each Stack Card is in. Any card with a rad-hardness B2j less than the result suffers involuntarily decommission unless shielded:

a. Van Allen Shielding. Cards located in the LEO or Cycler Spaces are immune to this event.

b. Magnetic Field Shielding. Cards located on a Radiation Belt H10, with the exception of the 14 belts surrounding Sol, are immune to this event.

c. Bunker Shielding. Cards on Sites and Anchored Bernals are immune to this event.

Colocated. Occupying the same Space. A Space, all Figures/outpost chits on that Space, and cards in stacks represented by those Figures/outpost chits are all colocated.

Colonist is a type of non-patent card 2C introduced to the game via exomigration 2A6. It can either be Human or Robot. You normally have as many colonists as you have Anchored Bernals. If carried to a Site, a colonist does work for you according to its Profession 2C1.

Colony is an industrialized Claim or Bernal with its cube topped with a dome, with a maximum of one dome per Factory or Bernal. In the core game, the dome is added as a free action by Decommissioning a Human at a Factory G3. A colony dome can also be added to an industrialized claim by homesteading 2A4. In either case, a non-Bernal colony is permanent G6b, always contains Humans, and is worth endgame VP M2c. Colonies can be Promotion Colonies 1A5a, Submarines, or Dirtsides.

Component Limits. See G4a (disks), I7f (cubes).

Core. Refers to these rules, and the components that come in the box, which form the basis for tutorials, Modules, and grand campaigns.

Crash Hazard. A Space marked with the white skull icon. When entering a crash hazard, make a Hazard Roll unless using FINAO H7e.

Crew. This card has Mass, ISRU platform, rad-hardness, and usually a thrust triangle. It is Human, and so is useful to defend against Felonies and fix Glitches. It cannot be traded, sold, or Discarded, and always occupies a Stack, never going into your Hand. Except during Anarchy K2e (or your Home Bernal if using Module 2), its listed faction privileges B6a are active, regardless of the crew’s location. If Decommissioned, crew goes into LEO (or your Bank if using Module 2).

Decommission returns a card to your Hand E7, Crew to LEO/Bank B6a, FTs to the Pool, and Colonists to the bottom of the queue 2C2, but see Murder/Suicide for an exception. If a decommissioned Human was carrying a glory chit, move it to your playmat with the lowest VP side up. Decommissions can either be voluntary: Murder/ Suicide, jettison G1g, Phileas Fogg G2c*, build colony* G3*, and industrialize* I7, or involuntary: Glitch Rolls, Hazard Rolls H7, Belt Rolls, Cme Rolls, or pad explosions K2c. Decommission is special for heavy radiators (see Orientation). Crew or Colonists can only be voluntarily decommissioned in the following instances:

a. Founding Settlement. To build a Colony G3 or 2A4b, 2A7b.

b. Crew Only. If you have the Felonious faction privilege allowing Murder/Suicide.

c. Colonist Only. See homesteading 2A4, unanchoring 2B6, and Murder/Suicide 2C2a.

Dharma Refuel. With this faction privilege B6a, your Crew enjoys double yield from site refuel when carrying a glory chit.

Dirtside 2Ba is a Factory Adjacent to an Anchored Bernal (see Adjacent in the glossary). The Hydration of its Site counts towards your dirtside hydration 2B5 for endgame scoring. Your Factory Adjacent to an opponent’s Bernal counts towards their dirtside hydration. You may specify dirt refuel G1c, factory-refueled FTs I5b, 2A7e or ET factory products I8, 2A7f built at a Dirtside to appear at the Bernal instead.

Discard. Return a patent card B2 from your Hand to the bottom of its corresponding patent deck, or return a token to the Pool or Reserves.

a. Cards can be discarded as a free action G6, free market operation I3b, or the budget cuts event K2f.

b. Loyalty. Your Crew or non-robotic Colonists may never be discarded. Discard Robots to the colonist deck.

c. Tokens can be discarded when a Stack is disbanded E2e, or glitch repair G7.

d. Discarding a Card (goes to the bottom of its patent deck) is distinct from Decommissioning a card (goes to your Hand, or into your Bank if Crew).

Tip: To a normal person, “decommission” means fill-ing out some forms. In a Phil Eklund game, this means watching your 3 hours of meticulous gameplay planning vaporize in an instant with no more consolation than having the new crater named after you. —Phirax

Dry Mass is your Spacecraft Mass assuming its fuel tanks are “dry” (empty). Thus it includes just the mass of its FTs, cards, and Mobile Factories. It is indicated on the Fuel Strip with a Dry Mass Chit.

Dry Mass Chit. The token on the Fuel Strip indicating the mass of a Spacecraft, not counting its fuel. Find the Dry Mass by adding the masses of all the Cargo (i.e. cards, FT, and cubes) in the Rocket or Bernal Stack. You have 2 Dry Mass Chits, one for your Rocket and one for your Bernal. If it changes, see F2.

a. Min & Max. The minimum Dry Mass of a Spacecraft is one. If the mass of the cards is less than one, treat it as one. The maximum Dry Mass allowed is 23.

Epic Hazard Roll 1A6a. When building a Space Elevator 1B9 or attempting a Future 1D1, either pay FINAO or roll 1d6. If a “1” is rolled, the attempt fails and the Freighter or Human involved suffers involuntary Decommission.

ET. Short for extraterrestrial, meaning “not from the Earth”.

Event Roll (1d6) occurs each time the Sunspot Cube is moved across a threshold labeled “event”: 1 or 2 = inspiration, 3 = Glitch, 4 = pad explosion/space debris, 5 or 6 = a season-dependent event K2.

Exoglobalization. The elimination of government-enforced restrictions on exchanges across the Earth and extended to extraterrestrial resources and facilities, creating an interglobal marketplace.

Exploitation Tracks record the factory stock price M2b of each Spectral Type, considering how many Factories of each type exist. The more of a particular type, the lower its stock price. Update this as Factories (totaling all players) are created (through industrialization or moving a Mobile Factory onto a Claim) or destroyed (through Decommission or moving a Mobile Factory off of a Claim). The maximum stock price is 10 and the minimum stock price is 4. Stock prices are used during a free market operation I3b and endgame scoring M2b.

Faction. One of the 5 player colors. Each represents a “basal societal unit” (Bsu): global regulation (yellow), national government (white), socialist regime (purple), worker union (green), or private entrepreneur (red). Each faction has a faction privilege B6a.

Factory is a cube sitting on a Claim. This indicates the Site is industrialized, with the factory cube created by the industrialize operation I7. Factories provide VP and many other benefits. If you Promote a Freighter 1Bc, all your Factory cubes become Mobile Factories. A Factory Adjacent to an Anchored Bernal is called a Dirtside 2Ba. A Factory on a Site with the push icon grants the Powersat Ability H3d.

Factory-Assist Hazard. Using factory-assist H6c incurs a Hazard Roll unless it is colonized or you have Powersat.

Factory Hijack. A Felony allowing you to use an opponent’s Factory to perform a factory-assisted landing/ liftoff H6c, factory-refuel operation I5b, ET production operation N6a, or promotion 2A3 without the owner’s permission. Hijacking cannot be performed if an enemy Human is Colocated.

Factory Loading Only. A Freighter labeled as such may only receive Cargo when located at a Factory or your non-Home Anchored Bernal.

a. Cargo Load/Unload, It may never receive Cargo in LEO or at your Home Bernal. It may give Cargo anywhere.

Felonious. As free actions during your Turn, this faction privilege B6a allows you to perform Felonies: Claim Jumping G4, Murder/Suicide, and Factory Hijacking.

Felony is an activity which is prohibited except in season blue after an anarchy event K2e or for those with the Felonious faction privilege. Your Human must be Colocated to commit a felony. Felonies include Murder, Suicide, Claim Jump (including prospecting Luna without permission), and Factory Hijack.

Figure. Any component placed onto a Space on the map. In the core game these include Figures that represent a stack’s location (Rocket tokens or outpost chits) as well as your Claims I6, Factories I7, and Colonies G3.

FINAO (Failure Is Not An Option). Before making a Hazard Roll, you may pay 4 Aquas before rolling to automatically succeed. This represents paying programmers for a fail-safe fix.

a. You may not use “FINAO” when making any other type of roll, such as Glitch, Cme, or Belt Rolls.

Freighter. A stack of cards on your playmat extension, with a location indicated on the map with your big cube. You may only have one freighter at a time. See 1B1a for production, and 1B4 for movement.

FT (Fuel Tank). 1 mass unit’s worth of fuel, represented by a bead on the map or in a stack. Each FT has a mass of 1. In the core game, only water FTs are used.

a. Creation. FTs are created by the internal tankage free action G2, income operation I1, or factory-refuel operation I5b. Water FTs are also considered Aquas if residing in LEO/Bank.

b. Colors. FTs come in 2 colors: blue (water grade) and gold (isotope grade). Your gold FTs are always your domestic Spectral Type 1C1c. These fuel grades are important in mixing fuel F4d, internal tankage G2b, and in site refuel operations I5.

Fuel. See Wet Mass Fuel. This technically represents, not fuel (which stores energy), but propellant (which stores reaction mass). In the core game, fuel can be either dirt or water.

Fuel Strip. The upper part of your playmat, which uses Wet and Dry Mass Chits to track Spacecraft and fuel mass.

Futures 1D are optional quests 1A2b that are available when you Promote a card to its Purple-Side. If you fulfill the listed requirements, you get extra VP as listed. You need a longer game if playing with futures, so place 7 Seniority Disks for an 84-year game.

Glitch is a red disk placed on a Stack if it suffers the glitch event K2b. As a result of this event, each player must glitch his stack with the most cards, not counting those with Humans (including LEO) or those already glitched. If a glitched stack performs a Glitch Trigger, then make a Glitch Roll.

a. Glitch Removal. A Glitch can be removed only through a glitch repair free action G7, or if the stack is Decommissioned or removed.

Glitch Roll. Roll one dice (1d6). All cards in your Stacks, which are colocated with your Glitch and which have a rad-hardness B2j exactly equal to the dice roll (if any), suffer involuntary decommission. If a heavy radiator is glitched, instead of Decommission rotate it to its light Orientation. Whatever the result, the Glitch is retained.

Glitch Triggers. Make a Glitch Roll immediately before a glitched stack performs any of the following. For c to g below, this still counts as your Turn’s Operation even if you fail to complete it because of the Glitch:

a. Enters A Flyby (H8).

b. Cargo Transfer Free Action (G1).

c. Site Refuel Operation (I5).

d. Prospect Operation (I6).

e. Industrialize Operation (I7).

f. Delivery Operation (I9).

g. Anchoring Operation (2A5).

GW. Short for “gigawatt”, or a billion watts. Thrusters are rated to approximately how many watts of power they are rated for. The core game uses megawatt thrusters, and Module 1 introduces gigawatt thrusters, which become starship-class terawatt (trillion watt) thrusters if Promoted.

What if a glitch disables your rocket?: You can create an Outpost Stack there and cargo transfer the cards into it (so you can make a new Rocket Stack to rescue them). You can voluntarily Decommission some or all of the cards to start over (but you can’t do this to Crew unless you are allowed Felonies).

Hand. A set of patent cards set to the right of your playmat. They are added during research auctions I2, when cards (except Crew) are Decommissioned, and when Robot Colonists are exomigrated or Decommissioned. Cards are taken out of your Hand during the operations free market I3a or boost I4. There is no hand limit, however see E1a.

Hazard. A Space that forces a Hazard Roll when entered. See Aerobrake Hazard, Crash Hazard, Epic Hazard Op, and Factory-Assist Hazard.

Hazard Roll. Roll one dice (1d6) for the Spacecraft. If you roll a ‘1’, each card, FT, and cube in its Stack is involuntarily decommissioned. You can avoid the risk if, before rolling, you pay for FINAO.

Heliocentric Zone is one of a series of concentric zones on the map centered on Sol identified by the astronomical symbols Mercury (), Venus (), Earth (), Mars (), Ceres (), Jupiter (), Saturn (), Uranus (), and Neptune (). Each has a positive or negative number that affects stacks within that zone, affecting both the thrust of activated thrust triangles that use Solar-Power J5b and the severity of solar flares K2d. In the Neptune heliocentric zone, which is furthest out from Sol, Solar-Powered cards become non-operational J3a unless pushed by a Powersat.

Hohmann. A Space where two routes either intersect or make a corner, unmarked by a circle or other icon B7b. Changing direction mid-move in a Hohmann requires a Pivot H4c. If routes cross without touching, this is not a Space and Pivots are not allowed.

Home Orbits are Spaces near Earth marked with a 7-pointed star, see 2Bb.

Home Bernal is a Bernal anchored in a Home Orbit 2B3, 2B4.

Human. Cards that contain humans (or conscious transhumans), as signified by the orange “humans on board” triangle (e.g. Crew & Colonist cards). Colonies (domes), cards in LEO, Anchored Bernal Figures are also human. If the uplift future 1D5n is completed by anybody, Robots become Human. Humans can prevent or cause Felonies, and can repair Glitches G7.

Hydration. Water availability on a Site, as denoted by the number of waterdrops listed (between zero and four, see B7a). If the number of waterdrops is less than the ISRU rating of a robonaut or Human card, then ISRU refueling I5a and prospecting I6.2 operations are impossible. Dirtside hydration is used for victory points in Module 2 2B5.

Ideology. One of the 7 regions in the assembly (Module 0). Six of them are associated with player colors.

Isotope Fuel. GW Thrusters require special fuel, as represented by either gold FTs or a gold Wet Mass Chit. During factory-refueling I5b, the refueling rate for isotope fuel is limited to 1 isotope tank (gold bead) per site refuel operation. The Spectral Type of the Site where the fuel is obtained must match the Spectral Type of your GW thruster. Spectral Type D is boron-11 fusion fuel, H is helium-3 fusion fuel, M is curium-245 fission fuel, S is uranium-235 fission fuel, and V is lithium-6 fusion fuel.

ISRU. Cards able to prospect or dig for water have an “In Situ Resource Utilization” rating B2c, ranging from zero (the best) to four (the worst). In order for a unit to be able to ISRU refuel I5a or prospect I6 at a Site, it must have an ISRU number less than, or equal to, the Hydration of the Site.

Jettison. As a free action G1g, you may Decommission unwanted stack cards to your Hand and or Discard unwanted FTs to the Pool. Make a dry and wet mass adjustment F2, F3 on the Fuel Strip. If Wet Mass Fuel F1 is jettisoned G1f, move its Wet Mass Chit to the left along the black line.

Lab is a Promoted and Anchored Bernal, where Colonist, Freighter, and GW thruster cards can be promoted 2A3 to their Purple-Side , regardless of their promotion colony type.

Lagrange Point. Any intersection marked with a circle, either filled (Lagrange Burn) or unfilled (Lagrange intersection), is a junction where you can turn for no movement or fuel cost. (In a Lagrange Point, the gravity gradient is flat due to the canceling gravitational effects of 2 massive bodies such as Sol or planets. This allows for effortless course corrections. Note however that many of the “Lagrange Points” in the game are not true Lagranges.)

Launch Fees. This faction privilege B6a gives you a 1 Aqua bonus from the Pool after any player (including yourself) boosts one or more cards.

Laws. See O5.

LEO. Low Earth Orbit, and the closest Space to Earth. Cards in your LEO Stack and your Aquas are located in LEO. Cards at LEO, including in your Rocket Stack and your LEO Stack, are vulnerable to pad explosions/space debris K2c. LEO always contains Humans. Cards can be added to the LEO stack by the boost operation I4, and Black-Side Cards in LEO can be sold by the free market operation I3.

Orbits in Cislunar Space, including LEO, GEO, and Lagrange points L1, L2, L3, L4, and L5.

Load Limit is a number listed on a Freighter card indicating how much Mass a Freighter can carry, adding together the Mass of all the cards, FTs, and cubes in the Freighter Stack other than the Freighter card itself 1B3a.

Marketeer. With this faction privilege B6a, you always win auction ties I2e, even if you are not the initiator.

Mass. A number indicating how heavy cards and fuel are, where each mass is 40 tonnes. This number is found in the upper left corner of cards, and also is the number indicated on the Fuel Strip.

Mishap Insurance O5g. During a pad explosion/space debris event K2c, gain Aquas equal to the mass of your decommissioned card, if you have a centrist delegate.

Mobile Factory 1B6. Once you Promote your Freighter Card, all your Factory cubes become mobile factories, able to move with the same capacities as your promoted Freighter Card. This allows them to uproot and fly to new Claims. They are only considered a Factory while on a Claim, however.

Module. A set of rules that reference the core rules. You can add or subtract a module to tailor your High Frontier experience.

Mooncable. With this faction privilege B6a, as a once-per-turn free action you may refuel an activated dirt thruster at LEO/Home Orbit with 7 tanks (non-crew thruster) or 1 tank (Crew thruster).

Murder/Suicide. A Felony allowing you to voluntarily decommission Humans under your control, limited to once per Turn. Suicide is the same as murder except another Human does not need to be present. Build colony G3, and industrialize I7 Decommission your Crew without being considered murder/suicide. If a Colonist is murdered/suicided, its card goes into LEO or your Bank (without generating exomigration 2A6, in a similar manner to Decommissioned Crew).

MW. Short for “megawatt”, or a million watts of power. The core game thrusters are in the MW range, while Module 1 introduces thrusters in the gigawatt range (see “GW” for comparison).

On-Board Nuclear Support. Certain Freighter and Colonist cards contain an “On-board Nuclear” icon, either reactor or generator 1B5, 2C4. If reactor, it can act as a reactor support with a subtype J1a of stationary , burst plasma , or exoticx, as specified. If generator, it can act as a generator support, either pulsed or electric , as specified.

On-Site Operation is any operation that is conducted on a Site, and includes site refuel I5, prospect I6, industrialize I7, ET production I8, promotion 2A3, and anchoring 2A5. This is important in negotiation N6 and War.

Open Source FINAO. With this faction privilege B6a, FINAO only costs 3 Aqua.

Operation. A game process. In the core game, you are allowed one operation per Turn, chosen from the 9 kinds I. Additional operation choices are introduced in Modules 0, 1, and 2: fundraise, promotion, homesteading, anchoring, and epic hazard operations.

Operational. A patent card B2 is optionally Operational if it is in the same stack as all of its required support cards (if any), which themselves are Operational. Solar-Powered Cards () are non-operational in the Neptune Heliocentric Zone or farther. You may declare an operational card to be non-operational.

Orientation. Radiator cards have two orientations: heavy or light as listed on the top and bottom half of the card. You must decide on the orientation when it enters a stack due to a boost or ET production operation. It may change orientation in 3 ways:

a. Ablation. If a heavy radiator is Decommissioned by a Hazard Roll, Glitch Trigger or bad Belt Roll, instead of Discarding it, reorient it into its light orientation. Other involuntary Decommissions discard the radiator entirely.

b. Jettison. You can convert a heavy radiator into its light orientation by using the jettison free action G1g or Phileas Fogg refueling G2c. This involves a dry and wet mass adjustment F2b, F3b equal to the difference in mass between the heavy and light orientation.

c. Heatsink Fountain Radiators. Both the White-Side and Black-Side of this radiator starts on its heavy orientation, but is reoriented to its light orientation the first time it provides a Therm of cooling (as it uses up its cooling salts). Thus the heavy side is not useful for thrusters or Bernals that need cooling for multiple Turns.

Outpost Stack. A Stack of cards located on the map where one of your two outpost chits (#1 or #2) is placed. It can be created by the cargo transfer free action G1d, the factory-refuel operation I5b, or the ET production operation I8.

a. Limit. You may only have two outpost stacks at the end of your Turn.

b. Actions. An outpost cannot move but it can be converted into a Spacecraft stack as a free action G1d, G1e or transfer any number of their cards to a Colocated Stack G1.

c. Creation Methods & Locations. See E6.

Phileas Fogg Refuel. Inspired by “Around the World in 80 Days” by Jules Verne. See G2c.

Pivot is a change in direction during a move at a Hohmann B7b. If a Spacecraft performs a pivot, it must make two Burns. A Pivot is a measure of distance, and each is 2 AU (16.7 light minutes).

Pool is the pile of Aqua, red disks, and other tokens not belonging to any player (i.e., the general supply).

Powersat is a faction privilege B6a or Ability used when calculating a Spacecraft’s net thrust H3d. It only works on Spacecraft with the push icon . It gives its “+1 push” at any range.

a. Single Push. It has no effect if the Spacecraft is already being pushed H3d.

b. Negotiation. A push can be negotiated outside of your Turn N4a.

c. Push Factory. A Factory on a Site with the push icon yields the Powersat Ability.

d. Ability. Some cards (e.g. ionosphere lasing refinery) allow you to permanently gain the Powersat Ability.

e. Safe Factory-Assist. Allows factory-assist (H6c) without a Hazard Roll.

f. Freighters (Module 1) can move 2 if pushed with a powersat.

g. Bernals (Module 2). When anchoring a Bernal, Solar-Powered supports do not work in the Jupiter zone or beyond unless you get a push from a powersat.

h. Anarchy/War cancels the Powersat faction privilege, but not the Powersat Ability conferred by cards or Pus3h Factories/Colonies.

Profession. One of 4 jobs that each Colonist specializes in: miner, prospector, industrialist, or engineer. Each profession has a specialty 2C1, that makes on-site refueling, prospecting/promoting, industrializing/ anchoring/nanofacturing, or ET production much faster.

Promote. This Operation is part of Module 1 1A5 and Module 2 2A3. It permanently flips a card to its Purple-Side when the card is at its promotion colony 1A5a, unlocking Abilities and optionally Futures.

Purple-Side Card. The Promoted side of certain patent B2 and Colonist cards. The promote operation is part of Module 1 1A5 and Module 2 2A3.

Purge Roll. K2e.

Push Colony 1A5a is a dome at a Site marked with the push icon (Io, plus most Sites within the Heliocentric Zones of Mercury (), Venus (), or Earth ().

Radiation Belt H10. A Space marked with the radiation icon. A Spacecraft that enters it must immediately make a Belt Roll for damage.

Reserves are the tokens of a player currently not in play, placed next to his playmat. The number of components in the reserve during setup is specified in C3. Token limits are as specified in B8.

Robot is a type of Colonist 2C2a. It is not Human (and thus cannot repair Glitches, etc.) unless emancipated 2A6b. If in your Hand, it is treated as a patent card 2C2b.

Rocket. A stack of cards on your playmat, with a location indicated on the map with your rocket figure. You may only have one Rocket at a time. See E5 for creation, and H for movement.

Sails are thruster cards representing huge gossamer films propelled by Sol (solar photons, solar wind, or solar magnetic field). Although technically not rockets, they act as rocket thrust triangles with a fuel consumption of zero. Sails include: photon kite sail, mag sail, photon heliogyro, and electric sail. Certain Colonists are also sails: calypso-2 seed sail, and wet-nano seed sail.

a. Aerobrake Burnup. Sails are Decommissioned immediately upon entering an aerobrake hazard, regardless if activated or not.

b. Bonus Pivot. Sails enjoy one Bonus Pivot, as indicated by the ballerina icon.

c. Mag Sail Bonus. If activated, the Mag Sail H8f receives one Bonus Burn in the same manner as a flyby H8b for each Radiation Belt entered. However, each Radiation Belt can boost a Sail only once per Turn, in the case where a Sail circles and re-enters the same point.

Scale.

a. Every Round of player Turns is one Earth year. Each year is half movement, half operations.

b. Each Mass is a quadecaton (40 tonnes, or 40,000 kg). A tonne is roughly equal to the US or UK ton.

c. Each Human Mass is a six-man crew with life-support.

d. Fuel Consumption is inversely proportional to a rocket’s specific impulse (Isp) in seconds, as follows: 8 = 4.6 km/sec (0.46 ks Isp, where “ks” = 1000 seconds), 4 = 10 km/sec (1 ks Isp), 2 = 20 km/sec (2 ks Isp), 1 = 40 km/sec (4 ks Isp), ½ = 80 km/sec (8 ks Isp), ¼ = 160 km/sec (16 ks Isp), 0 ≥ 0.4% lightspeed (121,000 km/sec).

e. A Thrust of one is 0.75 kN (750 Newtons, or 169 lbs, the weight of the game designer on Earth!). Each additional point doubles this. For instance, a 100 kN thrust is a thrust of 8.

f. A Net Thrust (more accurately called acceleration) of 0 is 0.3 milligees or 0.3 cm/sec² , and each step more than doubles this. A net thrust of 0 can, in 6 months of continuous thrusting, move 2.4 AU, about 1 Pivot.

g. Size One Worlds have a surface gravity of 0.75 milligees, and each additional step doubles this. Size 1 worlds have the following diameters based upon density: comet nucleus 52 km (only Centaur comets approach this size), S-type asteroid 22 km, M-type asteroid 14 km.

h. Hydration 4 Sites are icy or permafrost bodies. Hydration 3 has small amounts of surface or subsurface ice. The Sahara Desert is Hydration 3. At Hydration 2, trace amounts of water can be extracted from kilotons of regolith. At Hydration 1, concrete would be considered a good source of water. At Hydration 0, oxides and hydrides are the only alternatives.

i. Reactors produce 650–2000 MW of thermal power, either in heat, neutrons, pions, or plasma jets. Assumth ing +0 net thrust, a generator converts this into 60 MW of electricity (Subscript e = electricity, th = thermal). e

j. Beamed Power from a GEO solar-power satellite emits a laser beam of 60 MW or more. A push factory on Mercury, Venus, or Io emits a 450 MW laser or mass beam with a 500m filled aperture beaming optics.

k. Each Radiator Therm rejects 120 MW of heat at 1200 K when used to cool MW rockets, 240 MW at 1427 thth K when used to cool GW rockets, and 960 MW at 2000 K for TW rockets. These increases simulate the higher-th temperature alloys and higher operating temperatures available to the higher-powered rockets.

l. Each Lagrange Burn or Lander Burn requires a delta-v (velocity change) of 2.5 km/sec. A half lander burn (found on worlds with a surface gravity around 24 milligees) is 1.25 km/sec. Each Pivot (brachistochrone maneuver) is 5 km/sec and a distance of about 2 AU (16.7 light minutes).

m. A Solar Flare Event with a die roll of 1 is an L1 flare with an X-ray power density of 10-5 Watts/m² . Each point more is 4 times this amount. Thus, a die roll of 6 is a X95 (Carrington-class) flare with a power density of 10-2 Watts/m² .

n. Equipment with a Rad-Hardness of 1 can withstand a total ionizing dose of 4 X 10-7 rad Si without failing. Each additional point is 1000 times this amount. For example, equipment with a rad-hardness of 6 can survive 400 Mrad of dosage. This is the scale used by the industry. Note that 100 rad = 1 Gy.

o. Solar Insolation is 1.38 kW/m² at 1 AU (1 AU = Earth-Sol average distance). Maximum sailing thrust is 12.2 N/km² from photon pressure at 1 AU, or 0.002 N/km² (2 nPa) from solar wind dynamic pressure. These values are in the Earth zone. Each zone closer to Sol doubles them.

p. Each Fuel Tank (FT) of water is a 40-tonne bag with a diameter of 4.25 meters. For rockets that use hydrogen as propellant, 40-tonnes of LH or slush hydrogen is held in a cryotank cylinder 7.5 meters in² diameter and 16 meters long, including active refrigeration for zero boil-off (Zbo).

q. The Boost Cost to LEO is 2 million Usd/tonne to LEO using the Falcon Heavy by SpaceX, or about $80 million Usd/Mass.

Scrum Troubleshooters. With this faction privilege B6a, repair any Glitch anywhere. This is negotiable N4d.

Secretary-General. With this faction privilege B6a, start the game with two extra Aqua.

Seniority Disks C1. Translucent red disks in the center of the Sunspot Cycle (over the Sol icon) count the game’s Solar Cycles. One disk is removed each time the Sunspot Cube crosses the indicated seniority threshold, indicating the completion of one 12-year cycle. If there are no more disks to take, the game ends per M1.

Skunkworks. This faction privilege B6a allows you to ignore the academia hand limit I2a, so that you can participate in a research auction operation I2 regardless of your hand size. It applies to both starting and bidding in auctions.

Site. These hexagonal Spaces are worlds where a Spacecraft can land. Sites have a Size (the number), a Spectral Type (the letter), an amount of Hydration (0-4 water droplets), and sometimes other icons, see B7a.

Size. The first number on a Site represents the magnitude of its surface gravity. It is used for a size roll I6.3 during prospecting and during powered landing/liftoff H6a.

Sol is the name of our star. Its gravity dominates the Heliocentric Zones, and most of the Spaces on the map are in a solar orbit. Its radiation provides energy for Solar-Powered cards and Sails (as well as terrestrial life). It has a 12- year Sunspot Cycle, and during season red it can give off dangerous flares.

Solar-Powered Card is one with the solar icon B2e. If a thruster or thruster support is solar-powered, the thrust is modified per H3c. Solar-powered cards are non-operational in the Neptune Heliocentric Zone (labeled “No solar power”) unless getting a push from a Powersat (-6 thrust). Solar-powered cards cannot be used in the Jupiter zone or beyond when anchoring a Bernal 2A5, unless getting a push from a Powersat. 1

Space. A position on the map accessible along route lines, sometimes referred to as “location”. Spaces include Hohmanns (both intersections and corners), Site hexes, Burn Spaces, Hazards of any sort, and any open circle with a symbol inside it. Some intersections are “bridged” as indicated by a gap in the route, and these are not Spaces.

Spacecraft. The Rocket, Freighter, Mobile Factory, and Bernal Figures, as defined by the cards, FTs, and cubes in their associated Stacks. They are capable of movement, and each can be moved once per Turn. Rockets and Bernals track fuel during movement, and thus use the Fuel Strip.

Space Elevator 1B9. A structure connecting 2 Spaces on the map as indicated by a special icon, allowing connected Factory owners to move Cargo or Humans. To build a space elevator, one of the Spaces must be industrialized, and you must have a cube (Factory, Freighter or Mobile Factory) at the other. Then you must perform an epic hazard operation 1A6, and if its roll is successful place a wooden elevator stick over the map icon. The Space Elevator at Earth is exceptional, and is automatically built by anchoring the GEO Elevator Home Bernal (Module 2, 2B4i).

Spectral Type. Each Site has a letter indicating its resource type: C = carbon, S = stone, M = metal, V = vestoid, D = dark, and H = helium-3. Factories on a Site may only ET produce Black-Side Cards of the Site’s Spectral Type.

Stack. A collection of cards and/or FTs that are tied to a particular location on the map. Normally this location is determined by a Figure, but for the LEO stack there is no Figure and the location is always the LEO Space on the map. With exceptions, cards can be moved between Colocated Stacks and even new stacks can be created using various free actions: LEO E4, Rocket E5, and Outpost E6.

Submarine is a Colony on a waves icon B7a. This indicates an underwater military and science base worth extra VP M2b.

Sunspot Cube. A cube in the color of the 1st player that tracks the Sunspot Cycle. It is advanced just before the 1st player starts his Turn D2.

Sunspot Cycle. This diagram tracks the years, where each spot is one year, and the entire cycle is twelve years (about the solar sunspot cycle length). The Sunspot Cycle is divided into three seasons: red, blue, and yellow. Each time the Sunspot Cube crosses an indicated event threshold, roll for an event per K2. If it passes the indicated seniority threshold, remove a Seniority Disk from the center D2b.

Synodic Comet Site. A Site with a red, blue, or yellow border represents a comet whose extreme orbit causes it to become inaccessible during certain portions of the Sunspot Cycle. These Sites are subject to the following:

a. Landing/Liftoff. Both the site and Adjacent colored space(s) cannot be entered or exited H6 by a Spacecraft unless the Sunspot Cube is in the matching-colored season K1. Exception for Rockets with activated TW thrusters 1C3b, which can enter or exit in any season. Travel between a Synodic Comet and a similarly-colored Adjacent colored space or between colored spaces is allowed.

b. Kreutz Sungrazer. This is a special synodic comet in the Saturn Heliocentric Zone. Prospecting is automatically successful, however Decommission all cards, cubes, and FTs on this Site when the Sunspot Cube leaves season yellow K1 of the Sunspot Cycle. It is a Felony to establish a Colony on this Site.

Taxes. This faction privilege B6a gives you a 1 Aqua bonus from the Pool for each Claim or Factory established by any player (including yourself). No tax bonus for Claim Jumping.

Therm. A unit of cooling, either supply J4a or demand J4b, as denoted by the Thermometer icon.

Token VP. Victory points obtained for having wood or plastic tokens of your color at the endgame. On the map, this includes disks, cubes, domes, Rockets, Freighters, Bernals M2a. Note that domes may be worth additional VP M2b. (Module 0) Token VP is also awarded for each delegate M2a in the assembly.

Turn. Each player takes a turn during the player turn phase D1. On your turn, you may perform one Operation, any number of free actions, and move each of your Spacecraft. Then go to the next player clockwise. Turns last one earth-year for that player.

War of Independence can occur as a result of certain Futures (Module 1) or during Module 3 (Conflict). This war is between the Independents, the space factions who want independence from Earth, and the Loyalists, those who want to remain national colonies dependent on Earth. Unless playing Module 3, players completing a casus belli future 1D2c are automatically Independents and the other players are Loyalists. Unless playing with Module 3, War creates the following effects for all players:

a. Home Bernals. For the Independents, Home Bernals must unanchor at their first opportunity for the duration of the War. For the loyalists, Bernal profits 2B3d are canceled.

b. No Earth Operations. Income/fundraising, research auctions, free market, boost, and delivery operations are not allowed. Exomigration 2A6 is allowed. Lobbying O4 is allowed for Loyalists only. Homesteading 2A4 is allowed for Independents only.

c. Research Auctions are replaced by a new operation called war grants, in which a player takes the top card of any patent deck without bonus supports. Since it can’t be boosted, only the Black-Side is useful. On-Site Operations are allowed.

d. Glory. Ticker tape parades La are not allowed, although pre-war glory stored on your playmat still counts.

e. Felonies. All players lose their listed faction privileges B6a, but gain the Felonious faction privilege (similar to Anarchy K2e.

f. End Of War. Unless playing Module 3, war ends when the Sunspot Cube exits the current season (similar to Anarchy K2e). War can only happen once.

g. FINAO. Paying for FINAO is not allowed.

h. Scoring. Unless playing solo, if the game ends in War, Factory stock prices M2b are reduced to 2 each and Politics VP M2c doesn’t score.

Wet Mass is your Spacecraft’s total Mass, including its Dry Mass plus the mass of the fuel onboard F1a.

Wet Mass Chit is the token indicating the total mass of a Spacecraft including its fuel. The Wet Mass is the Dry Mass plus one for each fuel tank carried. The number of steps between the Wet Mass Chit position and the Dry Mass Chit position is the number of steps of fuel you have. The game provides 3 double-sided chits per player: blue/gray, blue/gray, and blue/gold, with the color indicating its grade F4b.

Wet Mass Fuel is tracked on your Fuel Strip using a Wet Mass Chit F1a. This chit is placed during rocket stack creation E5d, and adjusted via cargo transfer G1b, internal tankage G2, or site refuel operations I5. The chit’s color indicates its grade: dirt (gray), water (blue), or isotope (gold).

White-Side Card. A patent card built on Earth, see B2a.

The High Frontier 4 All Team Lead Game Design: Phil Eklund

Production Lead, Fulfillment & Sales: Besime Uyanik

Development, Manufacturing & Licensing/Legal: Pål Keller Carlquist Art Direction: Anna H LindbergIllustration Attributions

Saturn from the Cassini spacecraft. Picture NASA.

Jupiter with shadow of Io. Picture NASA.

Magellan synthetic aperture radar mosaics from the first cycle of Magellan mapping are mapped onto a computer-simulated globe to create this image of Venus. Picture Jpl/NASA.

[1] Water, the Key to the Solar System. No place in space has resource value without a local supply of water, primarily for rocket propellant and “exofuels”, but also for chemical and mineralogical processing, dust control, crops, and life support. Water is a storable and convenient source of hydrogen, the superior propellant for thermodynamic rockets. Water is a natural shield against energetic protons, kilo for kilo better than regolith or even metals. Finally, without recycling, each man-year requires 10 tonnes of water. (Although it is worth noting that human metabolisms convert carbohydrates plus oxygen into carbon dioxide and water, thus we are stoichiometrically net producers rather than consumers of water.) — Glenn MacPherson, Oxygen in the Solar System, Lunar & Planetary Institute, 2008.

[2] Water availability is greatest on worlds with icy cores, where simply injecting steam into a wellhole produces water. On drier worlds, where water only occurs as tiny ice crystals or hydrated silicates, the regolith would need to be crushed, sealed in a vessel at 1 atm, and cooked to 700 K to extract water as vapor. The vapor is then liquified by cooling to 280 K and separating solids and gases. The liquid water (some of which is recycled to the first step) is degassed briefly in a vacuum to remove dissolved gasses, and placed in storage. Assuming 4% water content in 70% of the top 2 meters of regolith, four tonnes of regolith must be scavenged to obtain 120 kg/day of water. In one year, one game FT is extracted from an excavated area of about 1100 m[2] (about 24 X 24 meters). —Lewis et al., Resources of Near-Earth Space, 1993.

[3] Spectral type is the asteroidal composition as measured by spectral reflectivity. The game’s spectral types are: C = “carbonaceous chondrite”. The most common asteroid type in the inner solar system, marked by coal black deposits of fluffy graphite and tarlike organics. Up to 20% water as hydrides. Some may have ice cores. D = “dark kerogens”. The most common asteroid type in the outer solar system, presumed dormant comets with reddish-black organics and pyroxene. H = “helium-3”. A rare isotope of helium found in gas giants and Swiv (solar wind implanted volatiles), essential for clean aneutronic fusion. M = “metalliferous iron”. These are presumed to be the iron-nickel core of an unresolved planet. The Fe-Ni kamacites are very tough at daytime temperatures, but at night undergo a ductile-to-brittle transition that makes them easy to crush. Little carbon. Included with type M is the rare type E (enstatite, a titanium alloy) and type W (“wet metalliferous”, with hydrated silicates). An example on the map of type E is Nysa, and of type W is Hertha, both in the Nysa family. S = “stony chondrite”. Silicates, sulfides, metals, and possible uranium and thorium fission fuels. However, little carbon or water. Most NEAs (Near Earth Asteroids) are of this type. V = “vestoid”. These bright worlds contain howardites, eucrites, diogenites, and metals, but little carbon or hydrogen.

[4] Rad-hardness is rated on the accumulated dosage of environmental radiation a piece of equipment can survive, as measured in krad Si. 1 krad Si = 10 J/kg of silicon. The chief radiation hazards are high energy protons from CMEs (Coronal Mass Ejections) and radiation belts (electrons & gammas are more easily shielded). Both sources of protons increase 1000X after a major solar event. Electronics and photovoltaic cells are particularly affected. Because shielding beyond a centimeter of aluminum has little effect, the rad-hardness of electronics is improved by using circuits that do not readily latch-up or upset, and guarded by error-correcting and watchdog timers. Such circuits include Radiation Hard Cmos and AsGa circuits, with rad-hardness 5 (about a Mrad).

[5] Aquas are 40 tonne tanks of water propellant orbiting in LEO. Boosting out of Earth’s 9.5 km/sec gravity well puts orbital water at the same price per kilo as gold! The Russian Proton boosts at $4000/kg, and the Shuttle boosted at $10,000/kg. For half the delta-v (required change in spacecraft velocity), a rocket tanker can haul ISRU water to LEO from the martian moons or NEAs (Near Earth Asteroids). Water is valuable in LEO, which is drier than the Sahara. People get thirsty, but at least human water needs can be recycled. A rocket is far more thirsty than 100 people, and the water it consumes is lost forever.

[6] Rocket science mainly concerns getting propellant to intercept fuel energy efficiently. This energy is usually radiation and energetic particles from chemical or nuclear reactions. Lines and windows characterize the opacity of a propellant across a radiation spectrum; lines are where the radiation is absorbed and windows are where the radiation gets through. Dirty reactions are those that generate products that are not easily absorbed by water or hydrogen propellant. This deals a double whammy: not only is escaping radiation wasted, but it also creates waste heat that must be rejected by radiators (other than radiation passing directly into space; for instance, half of proton-antiproton energy escapes via neutrinos). Examples of dirty reactions are high neutron fission, D-T fusion, and antimatter reactions. Clean reactions include chemical rockets and aneutronic fusion like [3] He-D and H-B.

[7] The high frontier map divides space into two topographies: circumplanetary lander burns (steep gravity wells around planets), and interplanetary Hohmanns (shallow heliocentric gravity fields). It scales to energy, not distance! Note that each Space represents a stable orbit, so rockets do not “drift”. To change orbits, you must achieve a “velocity increment” that costs mass and energy.

[8] Hydration. For worlds in the Jupiter zone and beyond, surface ice is common since it won’t sublimate if shielded from solar heat. Some of the larger outer worlds, like Ceres, Ganymede, and Europa, have polar ice caps and may have subterranean oceans. The D-type asteroids, common in the Trojans and other outer reaches, have never been hot enough to chemically bind their water to minerals, and their water may be still be sequestered as primal icy cores. Closer in, solar heat has bound the water of C- and W-types into hydrated silicates and clays. (Hertha and Lutetia are actually W-type, and not M-type as stated on the map.) A few main-belt “asteroids” are active comets like 133P/Elst-Pizarro. These must have lost their surface volatiles long ago, but were “revived” by recent collisions that exposed buried ices. M-, S-, and V-types are drier, but the larger ones may have primeval water protected by a permafrost layer. The moons of Earth and Mars, while anhydrous on the surface, may have buried ice crystals in the polar regions, or in places impacted by aqueous comets or asteroids. Missions such as the 2009 Lcross impactor suggest water ice lies in the south lunar pole. One can find ice even on Mercury, in permanent shadows on the north pole.

[9] Subsurface Oceans. Some icy worlds may have liquid water underneath the ice, heated by radioactivity or tidal kneading. Pockets of volcanic gases floating in the water under the ice may be suitable places to establish submarine bases.

[10] Hohmann Transfer. If a rocket in a circular orbit makes an impulsive thrust in any direction, it flies into an elliptical orbit. By thrusting again at the extreme limit (periapsis or apoapsis) of this ellipse, it can enter a destination orbit either higher (superior) or lower (inferior) than its starting one. This elliptical route, requiring a high thrust at each end and a lot of coasting in-between, is called a Hohmann transfer. The Hohmann is usually the trajectory requiring the lowest delta-v to reach a destination orbit. The routes on the map are modeled on Hohmann ellipses. The Hohmann requires that the destination and embarkation bodies be close to opposition (at opposite sides of Sol). Therefore, the launch windows for a Hohmann can be considerable, varying from 3.5 months for Earth-Mercury, to just under 6 years for Earth-Saturn. The Hohmann transfer is illustrated in the Appendix W3.Q5.

[11] Lagrange Points. In any two-world orbital system (like the Earth-Luna system shown), there are five points where very little or no energy is required for a spacecraft to maintain formation with both worlds. These points, called Lagrange Points, are denoted L1 through L5. They are analogous to GEO in that they allow a satellite to be in a “fixed” position, with no “launch windows” within the system. Even more significant, Lagrange Points are embarkation spots for the Interplanetary Transit Network. Of the five points, L4 and L5 are the only stable ones.

[12] Burn spaces show the velocity increment required to travel between orbits, often called delta-v. Each game Burn is 2.5 km/sec of delta-v. The delta-v of a rocket is defined by the rocket equation: Delta-v = Ve ln (Wet Mass/Dry Mass), where Ve is the exit velocity of the propellant in km/sec. Assuming a minimum energy (Hohmann) transfer, the delta-v to fly from LEO to some nearby destinations is: Nereus = 4.5 km/sec, Venus capture = 5.5 km/sec (neglecting aerobrake), Phobos/Deimos = 5.6 km/sec, lunar base = 5.7 km/sec, Earth’s surface = 9.5 km/sec, and Mars base = 10.2 km/sec (again assuming no aerobraking). Notice that the martian moons are closer to us than our own moon, in terms of fuel and energy.

[13] Aerobrake. A spacecraft can lose approach velocity and enter a capture Heo by making a close aerobrake pass through the atmosphere. Repeated atmospheric passes at the low (periapsis) point circularizes the Heo into a low circular orbit. Any solar panels and radiators will need thermal protection, possibly using foamed ceramic heat shields fabricated from asteroidal rocks.

[14] Synodic comet is a world with a high inclination (>10°), which brings it well out of the plane in which most of the solar system orbits. It also has a much higher eccentricity (>0.5), contrasting its oblong orbit with the mostly circular orbits of the other sites. The capture delta-v of a synodic comet is sensitive to the point in the orbit that you attempt to enter it (i.e. short entry window). The delta-v for exit must be installed as a small fraction of the orbital period, implying high accelerations (and short exit windows as well). In game terms, synodic comets are accessible but once every dozen years or so, and have additional Burns for orbit matching (calculated using Edelbaum’s Equation and Shoemaker Tables). Except for Halley’s (and beyond), all worlds are shown at their proportional semi-major axis from Sol.

[15] Seniority. Each player represents a genius visionary, and the seniority disks measure his/her lifespan. To get your age in Earth years, add 10. For example, on Turn 46 you are 56 years old. The plot of the game is to accomplish as much as possible before you die on the final seniority threshold.

[16] The solar cycle of our sun ranges from minimal sunspots and storm activity to maximum in about 11-years. Solar storms often emit flares, a burst of radiation across the spectrum, that triggers radio blackouts and storms in the magnetospheres of planets throughout the solar system. The power density in the x-ray region determines the flare category: B, C, M, or X. The X-class flares are the biggest, endangering space electronics, solar cells, and astronauts (who have about 15 minutes to get into their storm shelters). Solar storms also emit expanding blobs of particles called Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs). Being particles rather than radiation, CMEs are rather localized, and propagate slower (1 to 4 days to reach 1 AU), but they can pack more punch when they hit.

[17] Water-based Currency. The discovery of the California goldfields in 1848 led to gold being abundant relative to local commodities. For instance, a single egg could cost 1 gold dollar, containing one-twentieth of an ounce of gold. Thus it was cheaper to buy almost everything outside of California, leading to gold rapidly finding its way to other states and other lands. The same would happen in a water-based currency if water was discovered on Luna. In an exchange market in LEO, where water is in extreme demand for outgoing rockets, lunar water would need only two Burns to import (delta-v = 5 km/sec), half that of water boosted from Earth (10 km/sec).

[18] LEO (Low Earth Orbit) is from 350 to 1400 km above Earth’s surface. It is normally below the protective shield of the Van Allen Belts. However, during solar storms the belt can impinge on this orbit creating higher radiation than in GEO.

[19] Rocket is a vehicle that expels reaction mass, also called propellant, to make itself change its velocity by the law of action/ reaction. The faster the propellant is expelled, the smaller its propellant consumption. Two common types of rockets are thermodynamic and electric: (a) Thermodynamic rockets accelerate propellant by heating it and allowing it to acquire its velocity and direction in a nozzle. The fuel consumption varies inversely with the square root of the temperature of the hot gases divided by the propellant molecular weight. Thus light elements such as hydrogen are favored as propellants in thermodynamic rockets. (b) Electric rockets use electricity to accelerate propellant. Because they are limited by the electrical power available (assumed to be 60 MWe in this game), they have very low (milligravity) accelerations.

[20] Wet mass “Fuel” in this game is often not actually fuel at all, but rather propellant: the stuff expelled in one direction to make the rocket go the other direction. Fuel is not reaction mass, but rather the stuff that contains the rocket’s energy. A nuclear rocket might use uranium as fuel, but water as propellant (and needs far more propellant than fuel). My rules are sloppy in this terminology. In this game, only chemical and isotope rockets track fuel, all other rockets track, not fuel, but propellant. A rocket that runs out of fuel is crippled, but not dead: space is suffused with energy. A rocket that runs out of propellant is dead: space is notably lacking in mass.

[21] Fluidized Regolith. A few Crew cards are dirt rockets, and these represent solid fuel thrusters which can be refueled by regolith. If the regolith fines are small enough, the reaction surface area for the alkaline metals and oxidizing compounds found in the dust is high enough for it to become combustible or even explosive in oxygen. The Isp is poor, perhaps 0.15 ks. A more refined regolith rocket would use aluminum and oxygen refined from lunar anorthite for an Al-O hybrid booster at 0.27 ks. A non-crew dirt thruster such as a mass driver provides the grinders required to create infinite solid fuel given an infinite amount of regolith. The grinders are necessary to support dust explosion combustion.

[22] Luna Territoriality. The Communist Party of China (Cpc) under President Xi has worked to build alliance structures, signed memoranda of understanding (MoUs), and offered to collaborate on lunar missions with other countries. This is part of Xi’s vision of creating a world order where China not only has capacity but also legitimacy as the country that champions a peaceful and harmonious world order. Using Sun Tzu dictums to claim a moral legitimacy of power, President Xi declared himself president for life while arranging for dissidents to disappear and threatening to smash protesters in Hong Kong with the military. —Namrata Goswami, China’s grand strategy in outer space: to establish compelling standards of behavior, 2019.

[23] Open-cycle cooling is dumping water coolant into your nozzle. It has three advantages: (1) It increases thermal efficiency, which increases the percentage of power available for thrust. This is because the coolant captures power that would have been lost as waste heat. (2) Not only is thrust power increased, but the additional Mass flow also increases the thrust. Doubling the kg/sec out the nozzle doubles the thrust (+1 thrust in High Frontier scale). (3) Less waste heat means fewer radiators are needed to cool the rocket. The downside is that your specific impulse goes way down, a fancy way of saying that instead of expelling a white-hot trickle, you are shoveling out a lukewarm waterfall. Since Mass is often far more precious to a rocket than energy, you don’t want to do this often. Furthermore, water coolant just can’t intercept the types of energy emitted by some reactions. For a matter-antimatter reaction for instance, you need tungsten coolant instead of water.

[24] Powersat on Io obtains its energy from Jupiter (using an electrodynamic tether) rather than from Sol.

[25] Powersat range is the distance that its 60 MW laser beam can be focused. A good quality diffraction-limited Gaussian beam has a range of (πwD)/2λ, where w is the beam waist diameter (narrowest diameter at the focal point), D is the diameter of the beaming optics, and λ is the laser wavelength. This assumes a filled aperture (i.e. beaming optic is effectively a single lens or mirror), or a phased array of orbiting mirrors with the same total area. Suppose the beaming optic is a 500m diameter mirror, using an exotic UV laser with λ = 50 nm. Suppose also the waist diameter is 50 meters, equal to the receiving filled-aperture optic on the target spacecraft. Transmission efficiency is over 50% out to about 5AU (maximum distance to where a 500m optic can focus to a 50m spot), and beyond 5AU, power drops as the square of the distance. The orbital radius of Jupiter is 5.2 AU. Longer ranges are possible by using heliocentric midway collimators, or using mass beams instead of laser beams. —Ruslan Belikov, NASA Ames, personal communication, 2020.

[26] An electric rocket enjoys a high fuel economy but suffers from a low acceleration especially if loaded with a massive powerplant and generator. If it instead receives its energy from a laser beam, it is much more nimble. Such a beamed-power system would need: (a) the high efficiency production of megawatt laser beams, (b) adaptive optics with handshake feedback over light-minutes of range, © a receiving Fresnel lens (actually a series of thin lenses, as a normal lens would be far too heavy), and finally (d) a blackbody cavity or photovoltaics to convert the beam energy into useful electricity or thrust. High Frontier assumes a 60 MW beam; currently only gas lasers provide such powers. The output wavelength for a CO laser is 10.6 μm (infrared), which is not great because the longer the wavelength, the wider the beam spread due to diffraction and the less energy carried per photon. What is needed is a solid state or disk laser with blue or green light output, however so far solid media cannot withstand the high fluences for a continuous cw or pulsed run. —Dr. Andrew V. Pakhomov and Dr. Leik Myrabo, personal communications, 2010.

[27] Pivots. If Hohmanns were always the minimum energy route, the map would be pure spirals. But this ignores the effects of gravity at the embarkation and destination planets. Lower energy routes wind between the Lagrange Points, which are unstable gateways to highly perturbative, chaotic trajectories to all other Lagrange Points in the solar system. These routes, called the Interplanetary Transport Network, require almost no Fuel, but they are glacially slow. Additionally, launch windows are sometimes decades or even centuries apart.

[28] Burn space is 2.5 km/sec of delta-v. It takes 9.5 km/sec to get to LEO, and another 3.4 km/sec to get to any of the Earth-Luna Lagrange Points. The solar system escape velocity is 42 km/sec, but since you are already going 30 km/sec (the Earth’s orbital speed), this leaves just 12 km/sec more to travel to the stars (neglecting Oberth Effect). The first half of your trip to anywhere is in a steep gravity field, where you need high thrust engines, launch loops, or space elevators to get your Bernals built. The second half will be with high specific impulse interplanetary engines. “Once you are in Low Earth Orbit, you’re halfway to anywhere.” —Bob Heinlein.

[29] Fuel modifying reactors employ the science of thermodynamics to convert energy from one form to another. The reactor converts nuclear energy into radiation, either neutral charged plasma, or exotic, whereupon a generator may further convert this radiation into electricity, either impulsive or DC. An electric thruster converts electricity into thrust. The Second Law of Thermodynamics tells how much energy is available for useful thrust or electricity, and how much must be rejected as waste heat. Thermal efficiency is far more important in space than on Earth. In space, things are easy to heat up, but can only be cooled down by radiation. (Space has no convenient river or atmosphere with which to reject heat by conduction convection). The heat engines applicable in space, along with their thermal efficiencies, are: Thermionic 15%, Brayton 19%, Stirling 20%, Rankine 41%, Amtec 45%, Jtec 66%, & MHD (open-cycle) 90%.

[30] Factory-assist liftoffs use a fast monorail car as the launch vehicle. The rail provides traction as the car reaches orbital velocity and releases its payload into space. This follows the aerospace principle that if you have a choice to use a rocket or something else, always use something else.

[31] Acetylene Rocketplanes. Atmospheres rich in CO are found on Mars and Venus, and provide a fail-safe source of chemical booster fuel, for instance methane (CH), acetylene (CH), or carbon monoxide (CO). Each of these can be burned in oxygen to provide both energy and propellant. Acetylene is assumed in this game for two reasons: in a water-based economy, the use of hydrogen is to be minimized (ruling out methane or H-O chemical boosters), and the exit velocity must be economical (if carbon monoxide boosters are used, fuel expenditure would be 5X the payload instead of 2X). Acetylene can be derived by a combination of the Sabatier and Sachsse processes, with hydrogen recycling. It can attain an Isp of 0.42 ks, but is dangerously explosive to store and has a higher flame temperature than most nozzles can handle. —Hepp, Landis, Kubiak, Carbon Dioxide Utilization on Mars, 1993.

[32] Crash hazard is greater on some asteroids due to rapid spin, instability, and chaotic rotation. An elongated asteroid that spins rapidly (with a day < 5.5 hr) has a rotational velocity that varies from spot to spot, and gravity is also deviated from the surface normal vector. Some asteroids are unstable ”rubble piles”: originally monolithic bodies that have been shattered and coalesced under the influence of gravity. Others are dumbbell-shaped contact binaries, formed when two smaller bodies come into gentle (but unstable) contact.

[33] Flyby. Suppose your rocket, bound for Mars from Earth, goes the opposite direction to Venus. If you fly past the “trailing” side of Venus (as it orbits Sol), its gravity will accelerate you (in both direction and magnitude) with respect to Sol. This “flyby slingshot” can be used to decrease the delta-v (by up to 10 km/sec) for the trip to Mars (or to other places in orbits superior to Earth’s orbit). Conversely, passing in “front” of Venus will slow you down (again with respect to Sol). Consider a ship returning to Earth. A grazing (180 km altitude) flyby in front of Luna can slow the rocket (with respect to Earth) by up to 1.85 km/sec, allowing it to be captured by Earth. However, a flyby of Luna cannot speed you up or slow you down with respect to Luna (or places in lunar orbit). Likewise, a solar flyby cannot help you reach anything in solar orbit (ignoring the Oberth Effect).

[34] Venus Flyby. The Hohmann route to Mars is possible when Mars and Earth are in opposition, which is when the two planets are at their farthest distance from each other (400 million kilometers) (Counterintuitively, the cheapest route to Mars is exactly when it’s the farthest away from us.) This semi-ellipse is shown in the Appendix (W3.Q5). This trip lasts 8 months, and is represented on the map by the red route. An alternative route to Mars is the conjunction route, which debarks when Earth and Mars are near their closest point. This trajectory uses a gravitational flyby of Venus, which is a year longer than the Hohmann, but costs less fuel (both in the game, and in reality). Once at Mars, robonaut landers are used for dirtside operations, while humans remain in orbit. This avoids the 10-40 min. lag needed for robonautic teleoperation from Earth. Teleoperation takes place from Phobos in the NASA plan, and from the Sol-Mars L1 point in the Zubrin Athena plan. A typical nuclear-electric manned mission to Mars (Boeing Stcaem NEP 1991 opposition study) has a dry mass of 8 (for reactor, generator, radiator, crew, lander, & electric thrusters), plus 4 tanks of fuel. It takes 14 months for a round trip, including a month on the surface. Flybys at Luna and Mars are used.

[35] Glitch Flyby. In 2007, the ESA Rosetta Spacecraft was well underway to a mission to land on Comet Churyumov–Gerasimenko, when mission control discovered that a course correction was required. An unscheduled Mars Flyby was decided. This was risky, passing in the martian shadow would shut down its solar panels for 15 minutes, causing a dangerous shortage of power. The craft was therefore put into standby mode, with no possibility to communicate, flying on batteries that were originally not designed for this task. This flyby maneuver, ultimately successful, was therefore nicknamed ”The Billion Euro Gamble”.

[36] Radiation belt is a torus of charged particles trapped in a magnetic field. Such magnetospheres provide protection against solar storms.

[37] Auroral brightness is a good measure of the intensity of radiation flowing along field lines of a planetary radiation belt, and is strongly driven by the solar wind interaction with the magnetosphere. In planets such as Earth, Jupiter, and Saturn, the auroras are brighter in solar active years.

[38] Free Market. There are no unique raw materials waiting for us in space (possible exW ceh pen tip oa nte ont fc 3a Hrd es )a .r Te hpu et re are a lot of hydrocFu ae rl bT oan nk ss i on nLEO are called Titan, but because of delta-v costs, it will always be cheaper to derive them from main rt go inth ais l s lolo ct, ap tl ia oce na s R oo nck Ee at rth, like oil shales orA bqu ioas f. uA eq lu sa .s Ef vu en nction as if a platinum-rich asteroid were found, platinum would be obtained cheaper by re-opening a depleted low grade mine on Earth. If extraterrestrial raw imports will never be economical, is there anything left to drive exoglobalization? Increasingly, processes rather than raw materiL aE lO s i an rd ee msig on sa tted areas. important for industry. Space processes can control the gravity, vacuum, radiation, temperature, and energy density to degrees impossible on Earth. These characteristics, the forgotten resources of space, can produce high-strength membranes using surface tension effects, long whiskers and gigantic laser crystals grown in microgravity, nano-engineering using ultrapure vapor deposition, strong glassy materials produced by exploiting a steep temperature gradient, and alloys mixed by diffusion alone. Relatively small machinofactured and nano-produced objects, including pharmaceuticals and bio-tech, will be the first space imports to Earth.

[39] Factory Water Production. The martian soil is perhaps 1% water by weight. To extract this, a caterpillar-tracked robonaut on Mars periodically scoops soil and fills a dump tank, which is cooked by an oven to 500 C. The dry soil is dumped as waste by a conveyor belt. 37 MJ of energy per kilo of dirt is required for the ovens, and less than 1 MJ to run the belts and robonaut. About a MW of power would be required to collect 7 tanks of water in a year. Alternatively, although the martian atmosphere is only 0.03% water by volume, by adiabatic expansion or isothermal compression a Factory could produce a kilogram of water per million cubic meters of atmosphere processed.

[40] Atmospheric Scooping. A spacecraft in a highly elliptical orbit around an atmospheric planet periodically dips into its atmosphere if its periapsis is low enough. Some of the propellant liquified must be expended for thrust in order to overcome drag as it scoops the air. If the exhaust velocity of the rocket engine is less than the orbital velocity of the air being scooped, the rocket will need to expend more propellant than it collects. But if the exhaust velocity is greater, then it could collect many tonnes per year. The break-even exhaust velocity is around 10 km/sec, corresponding to a game fuel consumption of 4.

[41] Air Liquefaction. Most of the “scoop” cards are generators, because a few kW electrical power is needed to liquify the gases scooped. The scoop itself is a lightweight membrane since the drag forces are in the mN/m[2] range.

[42] Prospecting. As it was in the development of the New World in the 16th century, manpower is the biggest limiting asset in space. Hazardous or high radiation work will be done by robonauts, remotely controlled by humans. However, the speed of light time delay limits how distant the humans can teleoperate these machines. Hohmanns on the map are 500 light-seconds distant from each other. Assessing a body for mineral or volatile resources may be done three ways: (a) Raygun robonauts fire an energy beam at the surface from orbit. Of special interest is the 3μm spectrophotometric signature that indicates water. (b) Buggy rovers scavenge and beneficiate regolith which has been enriched by solar wind “space weathering”. © Missile robonauts assay metals and silicates by melting them with thruster plasmas. Metals must be cut or melted at high temperature, or reacted at low temperature using gaseous carbonyls (see the Cvd Molding - Carbonyl Volatilization card). Silicates from the inner belt are completely hydrated, having marinated in contact with liquid water for millions of years. These ices are released by vaporization. In the outer belt, the silicates of icy asteroids remain anhydrous, because the asteroid has never thawed.

[43] Asteroid Families. The formation of the asteroid belt left shattered clusters in similar orbits. Such clusters are called Hirayama Families, the most important of which are depicted on the map. Another type of asteroid family is the trojans: worlds that accumulate at planetary Lagrange Points. The most numerous are the jovian trojans, which precede and trail Jupiter by about 60°. They may outnumber the main belt asteroids. The “Greek camp” of Trojans corresponds to the preceding Sol-Jupiter L4 point, and the “trojan camp” corresponds to the trailing Sol-Jupiter L5 point. Asteroids in both camps are likely captured centaurs, and are mainly spectral type C or D. Also on the map is the martian trojan Eureka, and the pseudo-terrestrial trojan Cruithne (Earth’s second moon).

[44] Buggy Regolith Scavenging. The stream of solar wind causes space weathering, a deposition of wind particles directly into the veneer of rock dust, called regolith, common on asteroids and moons. The atoms are implanted at a shallow depth (<100 μm) and the finest material is the richest in solar wind gases. Wind-enriched particles contain traces of hydrogen, helium, carbon, nitrogen, and other low Z elements rare in space. These volatiles can be recovered by scavenging: scooping regolith over wide areas with robonautic buggies, processing it to recover the volatiles, and dumping the remains overboard. The concentrations of volatiles in lunar maria regolith is a few hundred ppm of each type. Other valuable materials, magnetically or electrophoretically separable from maria regolith, include iron fines, uranium (2-6 ppm), and ice crystals (in permanently shadowed regions). The helium fraction includes 5 to 100 parts per billion of the rare isotope 3He, valued because it is rare on Earth, and can be used as a fusion fuel, using the 3He-D “clean” (aneutronic) fusion reaction.

[45] ET Production. The ancient manufacturing style of engineering handles atoms and molecules in bulk. “Manufactories” have produced everything from flint chips to computer chips. As contrasted to “nanofactories”, which handle individual atoms and molecules in zero-gee. It constructs objects using sequences of chemical reactions directed by nonbiological molecular machinery. The fullerene C[60] nanotubes, nicknamed “Buckytubes”, will be the most important nanofacturing product. The space production of carbon nanotubes doesn’t introduce catalyst impurities and isn’t restricted in length, as it is on Earth. Depending on their structure, diameter, and chirality, nanotubes with diameters in the nanometer range have either metallic or semiconducting properties. Kevlar-coated nanotube composites and nanotube-reinforced plastics exhibit ultrahigh tensile strength and stiffness. Nanotubes can form the backbone structures of molecular machinery, or can be used as fine flexible fibers woven to fifty times the strength of an equivalent mass of aluminum. —Courtesy K. Eric Drexler.

[46] Reactors represented in the core game usually generate a few hundred megawatts of thermal power, enough to power a MW rocket. For GW and TW thrusters (Module 1), these reactors are used not as power sources but as initiators for the primary nuclear power chain (often fusion). The ratio of nuclear power to initiator power is called the Q factor.

[47] Radiators. For any space-based activity, all waste heat must ultimately be directly radiated to space. For a rocket with megawatts of power and closed-cycle cooling, radiator mass dominates total mass. The Stefan-Boltzmann Law states that the watts radiated per square meter of radiator equals (5.7 X 10-8 W/m[2] ) (e) (T[4] ), where e is the emissivity (typically 0.9) and T is the temperature at which the heat is radiated. This temperature, varying as the 4th power, depends on the thermodynamic cycle. In this game, radiators reject heat at around 990 K for earth designs and 1150 K for space designs. Therefore, a 990 K design rejecting one Therm (120 MW) requires a square panel 35 meters on a side, radiating both sides. Each millimeter of aluminum armor on both sides of such a panel would add 6.6 tonnes! Radiators suffer from diseconomies of scale, working fluid evaporation, vulnerability to meteoroids and hostile action, as well as dormancy and restart problems.

[48] Anarchy. If the police, judiciary, and standing army in your city or country were to disband, what would happen in your neighborhood? Would suppressed hate erupt into looting and pogroms? Would foreigners invade? Would new local governments emerge, such as neighborhood gangs or the Mafia? Would anyone with a mining laser or nuclear device find himself empowered? Without lawful regulation on the use of force, only cultural traditions prevail, and it is difficult to predict the outcome.

[49] Mooncable. A stone on Luna has potential energy that can be released if dropped to the Earth. It must first be elevated out of the lunar gravity well, past Earth-Luna L1. If a cable, balanced at L1 so as to be orbiting both Earth and Luna, contains buckets of stones at both ends, the bucket falling towards Earth could lift the bucket on Luna. Then the cycle repeats. The mooncable itself is made of lunar silicon, grown around a “seed filament” brought from Earth. The initial fiberglass-producing plant would be between the size of Surveyor and Apollo. Both net energy, recovered from electromagnetic braking, and lunar dirt are exported to Earth orbit. —Jed Cline, The Mooncable: A Profitable Space Transportation System, 1972.

[50] Politics defines the principles of a proper social system: how people should productively get along. Especially important is the principles regarding the use of physical force.

[51] Ideology is a set of principles establishing a particular social system. It makes fundamental a particular social collective called the Bsu (Base Societal Unit), the independent sovereign entity that the society’s political rights are based upon, to the exclusion of other collectives. In the game’s political spectrum, individuality is based upon individual rights, equality is based upon majority rights, unity is based upon national rights, and centrist is based upon human rights. The game’s ideologies are in three dichotomies: • Freedom-Authority. Political liberties to protest, speak out, or transact as desired, versus heavy government where all these are under bureaucratic regulation. • Honor-Equality. Bsu family, in which meritorious behavior is respected, versus Bsu democratic majority and left wing socialist unions, where members are treated identically, without favoritism or merit. • Individuality-Unity. Bsu libertarian individualism where diverse ideas and beliefs are accommodated, versus Bsu right wing socialism and national-ism, where unity in race, ideas, and creed is sought.

[52] Centrist. If an extremist is one who stoutly defends a principle, a centrist is the opposite, one who holds no principles or scruples, and instead follows the philosophy of pragmatism: do whatever seems to work, without regard to scruples or morals. Most democratic politicians fall into this camp, taking an opinion poll to choose the “stand” they take for the moment.

[53] Productivity in space will likely be bottlenecked by manpower rather than energy or materials. Accordingly, an influx of foreign workers would be a win-win for both parties.

[54] Xity is the name of a bubble settlement that is buoyed by its O2/N2 mixture of breathable terrestrial gases. Xities are possible on Venus, Titan, and the gas giants. Hat tip to Peter Kokh of the Moon Society.

[55] Martian caves may contain considerable ice deposits, retained since the days of martian oceans. In latitudes from the equator to 40°, because daytime temperatures exceed the water frost point, any water down to a depth of 100 meters is expected to have dessicated into the dry thin atmosphere. Closer to the poles than 40°, a vast inventory of permafrost water is assumed on Mars. Ice retrieval would be easiest in sands, gravels, and fractured basalts where the principal energy required is melting the ice. The polar caps, at least in the northern summer, are water ice on the surface and are likely 15 to 30 meters deep. —Baker, Gulick, & Kargel, Water Resources and Hydrogeology of Mars, 1993. Ng, Emeka Ojukwu, Scott Peltz, Maurizio Picanza, Keith Planet-Killer, Ian Relihan, HF4 Core: Phil Eklund, Dom Rougier, Jon Manker Victor van Santen, Jannosch Sachse, David Silverstein, Dan Sirbu, Ben Smyth, Neal Race For Glory: Al Cann, Simon Ng, Jon Manker Sofge, Geoff Speare, Aaron Sturley, Alyson Sturley, Sveinn Svendsen, Ivan Tzunun, Space Diamonds: Jon MankerJavier del Valle, Simon Weinberger, Samuel Williams Read Me First: Jon Manker, Simon Ng Science Advisors: Ruslan Belikov, Jeff Chamberlain, John Douglass, Phil Eklund, Appendix: Victor Caminha (V6), Rus Belikov (2X5), Phil Eklund (V1-10 , 2Y, 1Z, Z), Paweł Garycki, Simon Ng, Neal Sofge, Noah Vale Andy Graham (V3), Paweł Garycki (V7, V8, V9, V11, V12), Justin Grey & Brad Smith (Module 0), Jon Manker (V11), Chad Marlett (W1), Eric Schiedler (W1, W2), Joe Websites Schlimgen (W3), Noah Vale (2X), Phil Eklund & Malik Matterbeam (2Y) This game is indebted to two of the best websites about near Strategy Guides: Ulrik Bøe, Al Cann, Peter Card, Jeff Chamberlain, Andrew Doull, future space exploration: Andy Graham, Chad Marlett, Francisco T. Montero, Eric Schiedler, Joe Schlimgen, http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/ Tarwin, Simon Weinberger, Wulf Corbett by Winchell Chung “Nyrath the nearly wise”. Module 0 – Politics: Justin Grey, Brad Smith “Phil and Winchell are like a superhero and his secret identity, which is why Rules Editors: Chris Clarke, Martina Wolff, Geoff Speare, Paweł Garycki you never see them in the same place.” – Neal Sofge, Project Coordinator. Project Coordination: Jon Manker, Dom Rougier, Neal Sofge http://toughsf.blogspot.com/ by Malik “Matterbeam”, who boldly goes where no mind has been before. Map Design: Phil Eklund, Paweł Garycki https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Golden_Eye_Diamond_USM.jpg Junior Game Design: Robin Spathon Ek, Björn Ekenberg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Diamond-gem7-52a.jpg 3D Artists: Phil Eklund , Jonas Törnros https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Corundum-215333.jpg Cover Artists: Ron Miller, Josefin Strand, Nick Stevens https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Spinel-t08-75c.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Magnesiotaaffeite-2N2S-53105.jpg Production Artist: August Erik Nilssonhttps://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Star-Saphire.jpg Player Aid Cards: Simon Ng, Geoff Spearehttps://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:NatCopper.jpg Vassal Module: Stefano Tinéhttps://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kalium.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MatmorScleractinian.Jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:K-T-boundary.Jpg Playtest Coordination: Neal Sofgehttps://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Venenivibrio.jpg Playtesters: Allbin Amelin, Mikael Amelin, Andrew Anderson, Jake Arduino, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SEM_image_of_Milnesium_tardigradum_in_ Samuel Argento, Rus Belikov, Ulrik Bøe, Bottlesorter, Sverre Brubæk, Nikolaj active_state_-_journal.pone.0045682.g001-2.png Brucker, Al Cann, Pål Keller Carlquist, Jeff Chamberlain, Chris Clarke, Steve https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hypsibiusdujardini.jpg Cook, Ambulatory Cortex, Bill Dickens, Robin Spathon Ek, Björn Ekenberg, Jeff https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:NAMA_Machine_d%27Anticythère_1.jpg Frischkorn, Michael Greason, Justin Grey, Jesse Hamlin-Navias, Hawke, Martin Cover images: Josefin Strand and NASA (https://images.nasa.gov/) Kristoffersen, Magnus Lieng, Morten Lund, Alex Mauer, Jacky of Mercury, Simon Copyright © 2020, Ion Game Design & Sierra Madre Games EAN: 653341041166 Cover image: Josefine Strand and NASA (https://images.nasa.gov/)