Author Topic: I need YOUR insight and expertise: I'm designing a game to popularize space  (Read 2537 times)

Offline NavalryGames

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I need a list of 30 historic "milestones" in spaceflight...

The list is split up into 10 Milestones each for LEO, Moon, and Mars.

The first five milestones in each category must be things we have already accomplished as of 2012.

The second five can be goals we've already reached or things that lie in our future, culminating in the first human footprint on Mars.

This is the list I've come up with:

LEO
1. Artificial Satellite (Sputnik 1)
2. A Man In Space (Yuri Gagarin, Vostok 1)
3. Successful Splashdown (Freedom 7)
4. Space Walk (Alexei Leonov, Voshkod 7)
5. Docking Rendezvous (Gemini 8 )
6. Telecom Satellite Network
7. Space Laboratory (Skylab/Mir/ISS)
8. Reusable Shuttle Craft (Space Shuttle)
9. Space Telescope (Hubble)
10. Orbital Space-Dock

MOON
1. Lunar Impact (Luna 2)
2. Surveying The Surface (Ranger 7)
3. Robot Landing (Luna 9)
4. Around The Moon (Apollo 8 )
5. One Small Step For Man (Apollo 11)
6. Robotized Outpost
7. Bio-Dome Colony         
8. Helium Mining   
9. Lunar Spaceport
10. ?

MARS
1. Interplanetary Probes (Mariner Program)
2. Pictures From The Surface (Viking 1)
3. Solar System Tour (Voyager Program)
4. Mapping Mars (Surveyor)
5. Martian Rovers (Sojourner & Opportunity)
6. Precision Landing (Mars Science Lander)
7. Mars Analogue Life-Science Program
8. Manned Interplanetary Orbiter
9. ?
10. Touchdown On The Red Planet

Is there anything you would add or take away? Is there anything huge that's missing as you look to the future of spaceflight?

Thanks in advance for your insights.

Offline Proponent

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A few thoughts....

LEO
3-axis stablized satellite (Discoverer)
Recovery of a satellite (Discoverer)
Maneuvering (Gemini 3 for manned, don't know about unmanned)
Automated docking (Polyot)
Use of hydrogen as a fuel (Centaur, Saturn I)

Quote
MOON
Lunar orbit (Luna 10)
« Last Edit: 03/02/2012 08:03 am by Proponent »

Offline mtakala24

5. Martian Rovers (Sojourner & Opportunity)
should perhaps be Spirit & Opportunity

and
6. Precision Landing (Mars Science Lander)
should be Mars Science Laboratory.


It maybe too limiting to only have LEO, Moon and Mars. Where is the Russian Venera-program, as an example.

Offline Airlock

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Are we talking about a board game or a computer game? I am a software developer and have built a couple of concept game layouts with the same idea you have: getting people excited about space.  Here's a sample, don't know if it's really compatible with your ideas but it might help. As you can see in the picture, there are tiles for each region of interest such as LEO and the Lagrange Points, with a delta v cost to travel between each location in space.  This is about as far as I have gotten with the concept but would imagine that there are a lot of interesting possibilities with this concept if given enough thought into the design.  If you are planning on making this a computerized-type game, what languages/technologies were you looking into for it?
« Last Edit: 03/02/2012 11:29 am by Airlock »

Offline NavalryGames

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Thanks for the replies and suggestions so far!

This might help:

@ Airlock: It's a boardgame. Your perspective is as an administrator of a nation's space program (like James E. Webb) juggling the different priorities of space exploration while trying to be the first to attain these milestones. It has a bit of an alternative history feel, as if the Cold War space race had continued beyond Apollo/Salyut to the present day and a planned Mars landing.

@ mtakala24: The ultimate goal of the game is a manned landing on Mars. It is ok if some other interplanetary milestones like Voyager and Venera are placed in the Mars "tier" since they represent exploring beyond the lunar vicinity.

My main problem right now is coming up with accurate milestones that represent our future on the Moon and Mars/interplanetary space.

wrt the Moon, I know a Lunar base was part of the Bush VSE. What other things will we be achieving in LEO and the Moon in the future that are not just scifi? Space elevators? Robotic mining? Orbital factories?

wrt Mars, what further steps will we be taking to prepare for a manned landing beyond the planned MSL and near-future sample return? Will we land an earth return vehicle before the mission? Will we skip developing the Moon like Buzz Aldrin suggests? etc.

I realize these are big and fuzzy questions  ;D

Offline LegendCJS

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Thanks for the replies and suggestions so far!

This might help:

@ Airlock: It's a boardgame. Your perspective is as an administrator of a nation's space program (like James E. Webb) juggling the different priorities of space exploration while trying to be the first to attain these milestones. It has a bit of an alternative history feel, as if the Cold War space race had continued beyond Apollo/Salyut to the present day and a planned Mars landing.

@ mtakala24: The ultimate goal of the game is a manned landing on Mars. It is ok if some other interplanetary milestones like Voyager and Venera are placed in the Mars "tier" since they represent exploring beyond the lunar vicinity.

My main problem right now is coming up with accurate milestones that represent our future on the Moon and Mars/interplanetary space.

wrt the Moon, I know a Lunar base was part of the Bush VSE. What other things will we be achieving in LEO and the Moon in the future that are not just scifi? Space elevators? Robotic mining? Orbital factories?

wrt Mars, what further steps will we be taking to prepare for a manned landing beyond the planned MSL and near-future sample return? Will we land an earth return vehicle before the mission? Will we skip developing the Moon like Buzz Aldrin suggests? etc.

I realize these are big and fuzzy questions  ;D

I think a maned landing on Mars will come well before commercial helium mining on the Moon, so you might want to go without that one if you want your projected chronology to be realistic.
Remember: if we want this whole space thing to work out we have to optimize for cost!

Offline clongton

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Are we talking about a board game or a computer game? I am a software developer and have built a couple of concept game layouts with the same idea you have: getting people excited about space.  Here's a sample, don't know if it's really compatible with your ideas but it might help. As you can see in the picture, there are tiles for each region of interest such as LEO and the Lagrange Points, with a delta v cost to travel between each location in space.  This is about as far as I have gotten with the concept but would imagine that there are a lot of interesting possibilities with this concept if given enough thought into the design.  If you are planning on making this a computerized-type game, what languages/technologies were you looking into for it?

Please do continue the software-based game. A few suggestions:

1. Avoid at all costs any "shooting". God knows there are enough killing games out there already. Avoid that like the plague or your target audience will not include many adults and the interest won't be in space.

2. Depending on the depth of the game you may want to include hooks for later development that allow the gamer, instead of playing on a pc screen or XBOX or HDTV screen, to wear a VR headset with 360 graphics, tied directly to their head movement. Incorporate Kenect technology to capture body movement. THAT would be an *A-W-E-S-O-M-E* capability for a space game. Can you imagine wearing that and actually seeing the local as if you were there? Think about being a LM pilot for example, trying to come down on the lunar surface. In multi-player role you would be able to "see" your companion players going thru their motions that they execute in the game. Co-pilot for example? Mission Specialist? There could even be a "gang of 6" who "played" together as an ISS crew. There are enough real images of both the station's internal and external visuals to work with as well as every spacecraft that America has flown. Soviet/Russian spacecraft images and instrumentation may also be available. Imagine 6 players in multiplayer mode, 3 on Apollo and 3 on a Soyuz, executing the Apollo-Soyuz linkup! All with everyone wearing a VR headset, totally immersed in the event so deeply that it's easy to forget that you're playing a game.

3. Make the instrumentation in the game "functional". The aim would be that the gamers would be able to control their spacecraft functions based on instrumentation readouts. A good example of this in multiplayer mode would be a lunar landing, or a Gemini learning how to mate up with the Agena target vehicle.

4. Make the game as real as possible - avoid "made up" stuff. You want to stay away from fiction if the aim is to bring people into the REAL world of spaceflight. Stay with Vostok, Voskhod, Soyuz, Shenzhou, Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and Shuttle. As the newer CCDev vehicles and Orion come online issue a game update to include them. Stay with REAL spacecraft, not Sci-Fi. Avoid Sci-Fi and keep it real. That will attract the people you want.

5. Every time a new spacecraft comes on line or manned mission is executed, write it into the game as an update. And don't forget to include ground-based training as preparation for a mission. Dedicated gamers will live in this game if you keep it real.

Best of luck and PLEASE keep me posted. I will buy your game.
Chuck - DIRECT co-founder
I started my career on the Saturn-V F-1A engine

Offline Archer

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First and the most important rule: game must have fun gamepley. Graphic is number two. Content is number 3.

Don't make game too real - that will breake rule number 1.
I would add all canceled projects (Nova rocket for example), X-crafts,  "paper" rockets, even some Heinlein science fiction spacecrafts (since most of them have strong engineering base).

Try to make rules (and controlls) as easy (simple) as possible.

I'am a video game developer myself)
The future is better than the past. Despite the crepehangers, romanticists, and anti-intellectuals, the world steadily grows better because the human mind, applying itself to environment, makes it better. With hands...with tools...with horse sense and science and engineering. (c) R. A. Heinlein

Offline NavalryGames

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Thanks for the replies so far.

What do you think are reasonable things we might do to develop the Moon before we manage a Mars landing? If helium mining and so on are out of the question.

Offline A_M_Swallow

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Thanks for the replies so far.

What do you think are reasonable things we might do to develop the Moon before we manage a Mars landing? If helium mining and so on are out of the question.

The Moon - build landing pads so we can land people, food and water without damaging the moon base.

Next a mining and refining operation can be set up to produce ISRU (In-Situ Resource Utilisation) water, air and later propellant.

Additional buildings can be erected to house the explorers and to act as green houses to grow food.

Offline savuporo

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I think the first teleoperated rover on the moon, the Lunokhod-1 will be viewed as a much more significant milestone in the future, if and once moon gets industrialized.
Orion - the first and only manned not-too-deep-space craft

Offline neilh

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I think this is a really awesome board game idea -- let me know if you need any playtesters. :) If you haven't seen it already, I'd definitely recommend checking out the 2004 "Next Steps in Exploring Deep Space" study, which was a predecessor to what's now known as Flexible Path. It doesn't break things down in exactly the way you're asking for, but it does split up the goals of LEO, Moon, Near-Mars, and Mars surface into several required capabilities and steps.

http://iaaweb.org/iaa/Studies/nextsteps.pdf
Someone is wrong on the Internet.
http://xkcd.com/386/

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