In addition to being a great game, High Frontier is the most detailed and accurate space colony simulator ever made. It’s so detailed, in fact, that work on it has already led to a couple of novel results.

Stability Benefit of Inverted Endcaps
A cylinder tends to tumble end-over-end if it’s made too long. Previous studies on space colonies didn’t study the idea of cylinder endcaps that bulge inward, like the bottom of a soda can. So we tried it out in High Frontier, and found that such inverted endcaps are better. We don’t mean just a little better; they’re a lot better. So much so, that when real space settlements get built someday, we can pretty much guarantee you’ll see inverted endcaps.

Advantages of Low-Earth Orbit
The classic space settlement studies always assumed they would be built in freespace, such as the L4 and L5 orbits. But in researching the radiation environment of various orbits, we found that the environment in low-Earth orbit (LEO) is much, much more benign than higher orbits. Incidentally, we also found that those classic studies underestimated the amount of shielding needed by 2x.

• Uncategorized