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1MODULE 1 - TERAWATT | HIGH FRONTIER 4 ALL |
HIGH FRONTIER 4 ALL MODULE 1:
BY PHIL EKLUND & JEFFREY CHAMBERLAIN

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3MODULE 1 - TERAWATT | HIGH FRONTIER 4 ALL |
1A. Module 1
This terawatt module introduces two new patent decks: Freighters (1B) and GW Thrusters (1C). Freighters are
a new type of patent card allowing the transport of valuable factory goods back to LEO. GW thrusters are more
powerful and efficient versions of the MW thrusters of the core game, allowing your Spacecraft to reach the outer
planets more easily. This module also optionally introduces Futures, special game goals to earn victory points.
a. The Cover Painting by Nick Stevens depicts the 2-stage starship Daedalus, designed by the British Interpla-
netary Society. It has a Wet Mass of 1350 and a Dry Mass of 100. First stage power is 40 TW.
1A1. Module 1 Components
1 Drawer Box
1 Rules Booklet
5 Playmat Extensions
5 Big Wooden Cubes (12mm, in 5 player colors) for Freighters
30 Yellow Plastic Beads for Isotope FT
10 Wooden Stars for Futures.
8 Wooden Sticks for Space Elevators
7 GW Thruster Cards
7 Freighter Fleets Cards
4 Ziplock Bags
1A2. Module 1 Setup
Setup is per core setup (C), except during patent decks setup (C4) include Freighter cards and GW thruster cards
as two extra patent decks with Black-Side faceup, and give each player their big wooden cube for their Freighter
Figure.
a. Freighter Cards & GW Thruster Cards are black on one side, and purple on the other. They form their own
patent decks – the freighter deck and the GW thruster deck – and are researched like all patent cards, but
can only enter the map via ET production.

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4| HIGH FRONTIER 4 ALL | MODULE 1 - TERAWATT
b. Choose Game Length & Futures. During Seniority Disk placement (C1), place Seniority Disks according to
desired game length: short (4 disks for a 48-year game, same as core), medium (5 disks for a 60-year game),
or Futures (7 disks for a 84-year game, mandatory if you play with Futures 1D).
c. Choose Quick Start. When playing with the 60-year game or longer, or if playing with more than 3 players,
the Quick Start Variant (V1) is recommended.
d. Extra Wet Mass Chits. Each player adds 1 black/yellow Wet Mass Chit to their Reserve (from the Core game).
1A3. Module 1 Sequence Of Play
This is unchanged from core (D) . However, core allowed only one Spacecraft Stack – the Rocket. In Module 1, you
can have up to two: your Rocket (which can be driven by MW thrusters or the new GW/TW thrusters), and a Freigh-
ter. Additionally, if you Promote your Freighter (1A5), all of your cubes become Spacecraft called Mobile Factories.
You may move each of these Spacecraft once during your turn, in any order, along with your Operation (and any
free actions).
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1A4. Freighter & GW Thruster Card Limits
You may only own one Freighter and one GW thruster card. You may not initiate or participate in a research auc-
tion (I2) for a second Freighter or a second GW thruster, if one exists already either in your Hand or in one of your
Stacks.
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1
TERAWATT is a trillion watts. How much is that? Currently all the electrical power generators in the world combined produce 15 TW, about the
power of a single TW thruster. Rockets are energy hogs.
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TNO TRAVEL. Unlike interplanetary flight in the inner Solar System, dominated by Heliocentric gravity, the influence of Sol is minor for travel
between TNOs (Trans-Neptune Objects). These objects orbit so leisurely that the delta-v between them is less than 1 Burn, and for game
purposes they are locked in place. The TNOs in the game are mainly in the Kuiper Belt at about 40 to 45 AU from Sol, and the game assumes that
these are all in a small sector of this belt 20 AU from each other, in the “shadow” of Neptune. Suppose your journey begins in the Pluto/Charon
barycenter, and your destination is another TNO, say Huya. First you fly through 4 Burns, and the fuel expended represents accelerating to a cruising
speed of 10 km/sec. Then you coast for 9 years, stopping at each Hohmann Pivot. Each of these pivots is 2 AU travelled. The next 4 Burns represent
the deceleration to stop at Huya, ending in LHO (Low Huya Orbit). Suppose you are in a hurry, and stop at only 5 of the Hohmann Pivots, for a 5 year
voyage. The other 4 Pivots you spend fuel to cross, 2 Burns per Pivot, for a total of 16 Burns, twice as much as the 9 year journey. This realistically
simulates a 20 km/sec cruise between Pluto and Huya. Travel beyond the Kuiper Belt and the heliopause is assumed to be 100 km/sec. The final 10
Burns represents either the deceleration to stop at Sedna or the EM Sunlens, or an acceleration to make a Sol Oort Exit of the solar system on an
interstellar voyage.
EXAMPLE [1A3]
It’s your
Turn. You
can in any order perform
your Operation, move your
big cube freighter, perform
free actions, move your
Rocket and move a Mobile
Factory (or Factories).

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5MODULE 1 - TERAWATT | HIGH FRONTIER 4 ALL |
SPECTRAL COLONY [1A5a]
EXAMPLE [1A4]
You have a GW thruster (salt water zubrin), but wish to acquire a new GW thruster that will be able to refuel at your Bernal
at an H Site. So you move the zubrin thruster to your Home Bernal and sell it on the free market. This places it on the
bottom of the GW thruster patent deck, and converts all your isotope beads into water per 1C1c. Now you can bid on a new GW thruster.
1A5. Promotion (new Operation)
This Operation, which flips a stack card to its improved Purple-Side, is common to Modules 1 and 2. Every card
with a Purple-Side has a dome icon to the left of the Thrust triangle which indicates the type of Colony at which it
may promote. To use the promote operation, an unpromoted card (Bernal, Colonist, Freighter, or GW thruster) must
either be at a promotion colony specified by its dome icon, or at a Lab:
a. Promotion Colony is a Colony at a type of Site indicated by a card’s dome icon. There are 5 types:
• Spectral Colony if at the specified Spectral Type (D, H, S, etc.).
• Submarine Colony (waves icon, see glossary).

• Astrobiology Colony (leaf icon, see glossary).
• Atmospheric Colony if at a Site with the cloud icon (see glossary).
• Push Colony marked with the push icon (mainly within the Heliocentric Zones of Earth, Venus, or Mercury,
plus Io).
b. Lab Promotion Site (Module 2). A Promoted and Anchored Bernal is always a valid promotion colony for
Colonist, Freighter, and GW thruster cards (2A3c).
c. Negotiation. To promote, the Colony must either be your color or be an opponent’s color as a negotiated
on-site operation (N6).
d. Promotion Is Permanent. Purple-Side cards cannot be sold on the free market (I3b). They can only be lost
by Decommission.
EASILY MISSED: The Pur-
ple-Side contains Futures,
which are ignored unless
you are using 1D (1A5d).
EXAMPLE [1A5a]
You build a push colony on Mercury north pole. This is a promotion colony for your Freighter (HIIPER beam rider), so you
use it to fly your Crew to Mercury, use your Crew’s thrusters to bring the Freighter to the surface, and perform the promote
operation to flip the freighter card to its Purple-Side (magnetic mirror beam rider).

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6| HIGH FRONTIER 4 ALL | MODULE 1 - TERAWATT
1A6. Epic Hazard (new Operation)
In order to build a Space Elevator (1B9) or accomplish any Future to gain a future star token (1D2a), a special unit
needs to perform an epic hazard operation. In the case of a Space Elevator, the unit is a Factory, Freighter or
Mobile Factory cube. In the case of a Future, the unit is a Crew or Colonist card.
a. Epic Hazard Roll. This operation requires a Hazard Roll. You can avoid this roll by paying FINAO. If you fail
the roll by rolling a “1”, the Space Elevator is not built or the orange star is not attained and the unit used to
perform the Epic Hazard suffers involuntary Decommission.
b. Successful Effects. See 1B9 (Space Elevator) or 1D2 (Futures).
1A7. Nanofacture (new Operation, needs Module 2)
Your Anchored Bernal can produce its own Mobile Factory. If you have a promoted Freighter, you may create
this Mobile Factory (s‚mall cube) by performing a nanofacture operation at an Anchored Bernal (but not a Home
Bernal). This Decommissions an operational robonaut, refinery, and their supports (including radiators), and places
a Mobile Factory cube at the Bernal.

1A8. Core Rule Addendums
The delivery operation (I9), which abstracts freighter operations,
cannot be used with this Module.
1A9. Freighter & GW Thruster Card Data
For technical details on Freighters and Gigawatt/Terawatt thrusters,
see section 1Z in this rulebook..
EASILY MISSED: If attemp-
ting a Future, a failed Epic
Hazard Roll kills the Human
who attempted it, but does
not destroy the Purple-Side
Futures card which is also in
attendance. [1A6a]
GW THRUSTER AND FREIGHTER CARD EXAMPLE [1A9]
EXAMPLE [1A7]
You have promoted your poodle freighter into a D-nanotube freighter, and moved a refinery and a robonaut, plus their
supports (generator, reactor, and radiator), to your Bernal anchored in LMO (low mars orbit). You decommission all these
cards, creating a small cube in LMO.

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7MODULE 1 - TERAWATT | HIGH FRONTIER 4 ALL |
1B. Freighters
A Freighter is a Spacecraft represented on the map by a Freighter Figure (big cube). Freighter cards form their own
patent deck, and can be researched into your Hand by a research auction (I2). From there you can create it on its
Black-Side by an ET production (I8), according to its Spectral Type.
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This can be added to any stack or used to form
a Freighter Stack:
a. Create A Freighter Stack by cargo transfer (G1), ET production (I8), or stack swapping (G1e). Show its
location on the map with your big (12mm) cube. Place the Freighter card into the slot for the Freighter Stack.
b. Freighter Stacks do not track fuel and move 1 burn per Turn (plus flybys, pushes, and coasting).
c. Load Limit is the mass limit of the card(s) the Freighter Stack can carry.
d. Promotion. If you promote (1A5) your Freighter Card, all of your Factory cubes become Freighters, hence -
forth called Mobile Factories, and the Freighter’s Future becomes unlocked (1D).
e. Mobile Factories. Once you Promote your Freighter Card, all your cubes move with the same capacities as
your Promoted Freighter Card. Each becomes a Factory as soon as it lands on one of your Claims. On your
Turn, you may move all of your cubes, in any order.
1B1. Freighter Acquisition & Production
A Freighter can be acquired into your Hand by winning it in a research auction (I2). See 1A4 for card limits.
a. Production. Later, you can ET produce it at a Factory of the appropriate Spectral Type. If the Freighter has
Spectral Type “
ANY”, then it is a low tech Freighter that can be produced at any Factory, but per (I3b) cannot
be sold on the free market.
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STEAM FREIGHTERS. When you have plenty of water, say at an ET factory, how do you use it best? Electrolysis to make a H
2
-O
2
chemical rocket?
The cheapest solution is to use a low performance steam rocket (specific impulse of 0.19 ks). This would use solar- or nuclear-heating to convert
water to 1100 K steam. The payload ratio of a low tech freighter could easily be 100:1, so that it is loaded with 100 mass points of water (beyond the
game’s normal wet mass limit) to deliver 1 mass point of cargo. Such a vessel is slow not because it is low thrust, but because it must drag along
so much propellant for the delta-v to get home. —Anthony Zuppero, Origin Of How Steam Rockets Can Reduce Space Transport Cost By Orders Of
Magnitude, 1998.
EASILY MISSED: Load limit
does not include the Mass of
the Freighter itself. [1Bc]
EASILY MISSED: A Mobile
Factory not on a Claim is
not a Factory, and counts
token VP (M2a) but no stock
VP. [1Be]

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1B2. Big Cube Freighter Figure
One cube of your color is larger (12mm) than the rest. Use this cube to indicate the location of your Freighter Stack
(1Ba), which must contain your Freighter card. This card specifies the cube’s mass, rad-hardness, and Load Limit.
1B3. Freighter Stack Cargo
Freighter Stacks can transfer Cargo as a free action (G1). Note that Wet Mass Fuel, Dry Mass, and Wet Mass are not
tracked in a Freighter. The following rules must be respected in regards to Cargo:
a. Load Limit. This number on the Freighter card indicates how much mass the Freighter Stack can carry, not
counting the mass of the Freighter card itself.
b. Factory Loading Only. A Freighter with text may only add cards to its stack at a Factory or Anchored Bernal.
Removing cards via cargo transfer (G1) is allowed anywhere, as normal.
1B4. Freighter Stack Movement
Fuel is not burned or tracked on a Freighter Stack. Freighter movement doesn’t use a Fuel Strip, and Section H
is not used. Instead, the Stack can move 1 Burn Space, and then coasts. If pushed by a Powersat, it can move 2,
which allows it to make one Pivot or 2 Burn Spaces. It is allowed Bonus Burns, e.g. from flybys (H8). A Freighter card
cannot be used or activated to move anything other than a Freighter Stack, and the following are only applicable
to a Freighter Stack:
a. Bonus Pivots. Some Freighters (i.e. z-pinch, fusion fragment and HIIPER beam-rider) receive a number of
Bonus Pivots, as specified in the number of .
EXAMPLE [1B3b]
EASILY MISSED: Bonus Pivots
cannot be converted into
Burns or Fuel. [1B4a]
EXAMPLE [1B3b]
Your inflatable solar-heated freighter delivers a Black-Side card to LEO, which you sell on the free market. The freighter
itself can’t be sold, because it is Spectral Type “ANY”. Nor can it load up with new Cargo (it can be only loaded at a Factory,
since LEO doesn't have the thousands of tonnes of water it would need to cross a single Burn). You decide to Decommission it.

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9MODULE 1 - TERAWATT | HIGH FRONTIER 4 ALL |
b. Landing/Liftoff. A Freighter can land or liftoff from Size 1 Sites inherently. It can also use factory-assist (H6c)
to land or liftoff from larger sites (but not through lander burns). It is also allowed aerobrake landings (H6b)
and acetylene rocketplane liftoffs (H6c).
c. Net Thrust. A Freighter Stack has a net thrust of 1. If pushed by a Powersat, it has a net thrust of 2. This is rele-
vant in Radiation Belts and solar oberth (using base thrust = 1). Freighters are not affected by movement-mo -
difying supports (J5d).
d. No Double Move. See H1b.
e. Entering Radiation Belts. See 1B6e.
f. Entering Hazards. Freighters are affected by Hazards (H7).
1B5. On-Board Nuclear Supports
Certain Freighter and Colonist Cards contain nuclear reactors and/or generators and thus may be used as part
of a support chain (J1c) according to the icon of their subtype icon (J1a). They can also be Decommissioned to
support industrialization (I7).
EXAMPLE [1B4a]
The magnetic beam mirror freighter is
allowed +3 Bonus Pivots. Its Freighter Stack
is at the termination shock point en route
to Sedna. It moves through the next 3 Hoh-
manns for free (also past the heliopause and
the Voyager Easter Egg) to stop at the fourth
Pivot just beyond.

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10| HIGH FRONTIER 4 ALL | MODULE 1 - TERAWATT
1B6. Freighter Promotion & Mobile Factories
To flip a built Freighter Card to its Purple-Side, perform a promote operation (1A5). Promotion is permanent. Once
Promoted, your Freighter Card becomes a “freighter fleet” that then ’converts’ all of your map cubes (big and small)
into Mobile Factories. As Mobile Factories, all your Factories (big & small cubes) can now move like your Freighter
and create a Factory by landing on one of your Claims. This change occurs the instant the Freighter card is promo-
ted.
a. Capacities. Your small cubes now have all the characteristics listed in the movement circle and the red field
in the upper left corner of the Freighter card, including Mass (relevant if the cube is being carried as Cargo),
rad-hard, Bonus Pivots, and On-board Nuclear Supports. Your small cubes may not carry Cargo (load limit
does not apply) or use your Freighter’s Future .
b. Mobile Factory Landing & Lift-Off. To land or lift off a Claim without a Factory, a Mobile Factory cube may
use factory-assist (H6c), using itself as the Factory. The Claim can be either yours or an opponent’s, and must
be on a Site of Size 5 or less (rocketplane exception below).
• Landing On Unindustrialized Claim, place Mobile Factory cube on top of the Claim disk.
• Landing On Industrialized Claim (or a foreign Claim), place Mobile Factory cube next to the Claim disk to
indicate that it is not part of the current Claim, and can’t be used for ET production, colony establishment, or
factory stock prices.
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CLAIMS are much more than a flag and footprints, and include considerable mining infrastructure, plus landing and launch facilities capable of
accommodating Mobile Factories. Thus landing a Mobile Factory on a site without a Claim is not allowed.
EXAMPLE 1 [1B5]
Your lunar factory produces a rotary dirt launcher freighter, which provides an electric "e" generator. Luna is too big for
the Freighter to liftoff from, so you also produce a GW thruster (spheromak
3
He-D magnetic fusion). The generator required
by the GW thruster is provided by the Freighter. The GW thruster, carrying its supports (radiators and the Freighter), plus one tank of H
isotope fuel, blasts-off and flies to LEO in one Turn.
EXAMPLE 2 [1B5]
In the previous example, the Freighter was used exclusively as an on-board nuclear support. But suppose the example
had been at a distant H Site, say the Uranus aerostat. The GW thruster would be used just to get the Freighter and
supports boosted through the three lander burns. Then it could be Decommissioned for use elsewhere, leaving the Freighter to bring a
Black-Side support back to Earth to sell.
EASILY MISSED: If you
promote your Freighter,
each of your factory cubes
can move just like your big
cube. [1B6a]

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11MODULE 1 - TERAWATT | HIGH FRONTIER 4 ALL |
• Acetylene Rocketplane. A Freighter or Mobile Factory on an Atmospheric Site may use acetylene rocket-
plane liftoff (H6c) by spending the water cost indicated from FTs stored at the Site.
c. Factory Establish or Abandon. Your Mobile Factory is a Factory only if it sits on top of your Claim disk.
Moving a cube on or off of your own Claim immediately establishes or abandons a Factory, adjusting the
relevant Exploitation Track (I7d).
• If there are no Factories of a Spectral Type, the stock price is 10.
d. Colonies. Because Colonies are permanent (G6b), Mobile Factories may not liftoff or abandon a Claim or be
voluntarily decommissioned if they are on a Claim disk that has a Colony.
e. Flares & Radiation Belts. Each Mobile Factory cube has a rad-hardness equal to your Freighter Card
rad-hardness, making it vulnerable to flares (K2d) and Belt Rolls (H10). If a small cube fails the roll, it is discar -
ded. If a big cube fails, see Freighter Decommission (1B7). If a card carried in a Freighter Stack fails, the entire
stack suffers a Glitch instead of Decommission, and suffers nothing if it is already glitched.
f. Pad Explosion. A Mobile Factory is immune to pad explosions/space debris (K2c).
g. Mobile Factory Creation is by the industrialize or nanofacture operations (1A7).
1B7. Freighter Decommission
If your Promoted Freighter gets Decommissioned (1B6e), Discard its Figure (big cube). Decommission any Cargo
or convert it into an Outpost Stack (E6). Then follow these procedures:
a. Promoted Decommission. If your Promoted Freighter Card gets Decommissioned, you may replace one of
your small cubes on the map with the big cube. This becomes the new location of your Freighter Stack, and
the Promoted Freighter card remains in the freighter slot on your Playmat.
• If this new location is a Factory, the exploitation track remains unchanged.
• If this new location is a Colony, your Freighter may not liftoff, since Colonies are permanent.
• Futures. Decomission of a Freighter does not forfeit its futures star (1D2a) if earned.
EXAMPLE [1B6c]
You produce a C product at a Factory on eichsfeldia, and use a big cube swap (1B8) to convert that Factory into a
Freighter. The asteroid is size 4, so you use factory-assist to launch the Freighter card and its Cargo, which flies past the
Burn Space next to Vesta. The Exploitation Track for C is reduced by one, since the Factory abandoned the C Claim. A lot happened in just
one Turn!

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12| HIGH FRONTIER 4 ALL | MODULE 1 - TERAWATT
b. Unpromoted Decommission. If your Freighter is not yet Promoted, your Freighter Figure remains in your
reserves and return the Freighter Card to your Hand.
1B8. Freighter Big Cube Swap (new free action)
As a free action (G) , when your Promoted Freighter is not carrying any cards you can swap its big cube with any
small cube. This does not use up your Freighter’s movement opportunity for the Turn.
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1B9. Space Elevators
A Space Elevator
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is a cable which can be built between two map Spaces, as indicated on the map by the space
elevator icon. 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.
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BIG CUBE SWAP represents using a 3D printer to reconfigure a Mobile Factory into a cargo-carrying freighter. Essentially its hull is reconfigured
into a cargo bay, using existing material (since no mass is transferred in the swap). At the end of the “swap”, one should be left with two freigh-
ters with cargo-bays. But because of logistics limits, you can only have one freighter so the old one reverts to a Mobile Factory.
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SPACE ELEVATOR is a tether held vertical by centrifugal force, from the equator of a world into deep space. It is tapered so as to support its own
weight over its length. A variant is the spaceline, a tether dropped from a convenient tidally-locked moon, where the moon itself is a source of
building materials and acts as a counterweight. A spaceline simply hangs into both gravity wells from the Lagrange L2 point, and sees much redu-
ced tensions which means it need not be massive or superstrong. Because the moon orbits at a somewhat different speed than the surface, the
dirtside end is a hook or scoop that travels through the atmosphere of the larger world, with appreciable drag and thermal load. The drag lowers
the altitude of the moon by an insignificant amount. Robonautic climbers bring mined material from either world, after which it can be electromag-
netically catapulted further. —Penoyre & Sandford, The Spaceline, a practical space elevator alternative Achievable with Current Technology, (draft
version).
EASILY MISSED: A big cube
swap is a free action that
mimics what happens during
a Freighter Decommission.
[1B8]
EXAMPLE [1B7b]
Your Freighter Stack moves to your Home Bernal and does a free market of its Cargo card. It is Spectral Type “ANY”, so the
Freighter is not worth anything on the free market, so you Decommission it. It is unpromoted, so it goes into your Hand.
EXAMPLE [1B8]
Your Promoted Freighter has just delivered product to LEO. You swap the big cube in LEO with your small cube on Ceres. This
magic was performed with the power of 3D printing.

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13MODULE 1 - TERAWATT | HIGH FRONTIER 4 ALL |
a. Locations are as indicated on the map at Luna (aristarchus plateau/ lagrange L1),
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Mars (arsia mons caves/
phobos), Saturn (aerostat/prometheus), Uranus (aerostat/cordelia),
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Neptune (aerostat/despina), Pluto/bary-
center, Charon/barycenter, and Haumea/barycenter.
9
b. Claims. Building a Space Elevator automatically Claims any unclaimed Site it connects to, even if it is Busted
(replace the red disk with one of your own). If a connected Site has a foreign Claim, that Claim remains unless
Claim Jumping (G4) is possible.
c. Benefits. As a free action, any player owning a connected Factory can move Humans and Cargo between
either of its connected Spaces. They can negotiate this privilege for others.
d. Endgame Victory Points. If a Factory is connected by a Space Elevator, its factory stock price (M2b) is
doubled, regardless of who built the Space Elevator. Building Space Elevators gives extra VP in the beanstalk
future (1D4d, 1D5l).
e. GEO Space Elevator. The Space Elevator at Earth can only be built by anchoring the GEO Elevator Bernal
(Module 2, 2B4i) in the GEO Home Orbit.
f. Destruction. A Space Elevator is destroyed if ever neither of its ends are industrialized, with the exception
that the GEO Elevator persists (if e.g. its Bernal is unanchored).
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LUNAR BEANSTALK combines lunar space elevators with solar-powered robonaut climbers, a system for lunar resource recovery. The space
elevator ribbon, made of existing high-strength composites, is balanced about the Earth-Luna L1 Lagrangian point on the near side of Luna, and
connected dirtside with surface tramways linked to lunar mining sites. Estimated capacity is 584 tonnes (15 Mass) or lunar regolith into GEO per
year. —Pearson, Levin, Oldson, Wykes, Lunar Space Elevators for Cislunar Space Development, 2005.
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RINGED PLANET BEANSTALK. Ring material is a significant hazard to space elevators on planets such as Saturn or Uranus, where the most suita-
ble moons lie just outside several ring systems. By building a truss tower on the north pole of prometheus (on Saturn) or cordelia (on Uranus),
the elevator can hopefully avoid destructive impacts. A ribbon made of “colossal carbon tubes” would be 440 tonnes, or Mass 10. Delivery of the
clean fusion fuel helium-3 to Earth is estimated at 20 tonnes per year. —A.M. Hein, Project Icarus: Architecture Development of Atmospheric Helium
3 Mining of the Outer Solar System Gas Planets for Space Exploration and Power Generation, 2010.
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HAUMEA’S ROTATION is so rapid (3.9 hours) that a space elevator attached to its equator has little need for a counterweight. Its spin distorts its
shape into a triaxial ellipsoid. This spin seems to be a legacy of an impact which created the Haumea collisional family, as well as Haumea’s rings
and moons.
EXAMPLE [1B9c]
You have industrialized the arsia mons caves of Mars, and moved a Mobile Factory to phobos. By performing the epic hazard
operation, and paying the programmers FINAO there is no risk, you build the Mars Space Elevator. Place an elevator stick.
SPACE ELEVATOR [1B9]

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14| HIGH FRONTIER 4 ALL | MODULE 1 - TERAWATT
1C. GW Thrusters
A Gigawatt (GW) thruster cannot fuel using Aquas or dirt; it may only factory refuel at a Site with a Spectral Type
matching its fuel isotope or with your isotope FTs (yellow beads) obtained from such a Site. If used to afterburn,
spend one fuel step to gain one Therm of cooling plus the thrust addition listed in the GW afterburn icon (1C2).
Otherwise, they create Rocket Stacks, move, and burn fuel as the MW thrusters in the core game.
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a. Movement-Modifying Supports. If a GW thruster is activated, movement is not affected by move -
ment-modifying supports (J5d).
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b. Consigned Isotope. Once you have researched a GW Thruster, all isotope FTs you produce are considered
to be of that Spectral Type, and can only be produced at the appropriate Factory Site.. You may not research
a GW Thruster if you already have one. You may not produce isotope FTs without a GW thruster that specifies
the Spectral Type.
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10
NUCLEAR ENERGY is unleashed either by fission (splitting huge “high Z” atoms) or fusion (lumping together small “low Z” atoms). Fission
atoms include uranium, thorium, and plutonium, while fusion atoms include isotopes of hydrogen, helium, lithium, and boron. The specific
energy of nuclear fuels used in the game are:
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Li-H and H-B fusion = 73 TJ/kg, uranium fission = 82 TJ/kg, D-T,
3
He-D, and D-D fusion = 345 TJ/kg.
The chemical fuels used in the game are a million-fold lower: metastable He = 477 MJ/kg and H2-O2 = 14 MJ/kg. The positive charge on fusion fuel
nuclei creates an electrical repulsion that must be overcome by temperature and confinement time in order for them to fuse together. Therefore,
input energy is required to obtain output energy, and the ratio of the thermal energy obtained from fusion/energy injected to sustain the reaction
is called a reactor’s Q factor. At ignition, Q goes to infinity.
11
GIGAWATT REACTOR SUPPORTS. The reactors in the game produce a few hundred MW of thermal power, enough to power a MW thruster.
But not enough to power a GW thruster. In fact, the reactor supports for GW thrusters in the game are not used as power sources, but rather
as initiators for the primary nuclear power chain. For instance, it could represent a MW laser that initiates a GW fusion reaction. The ratio of fusion
power produced to initiator power is called the Q factor.
12
GIGAWATT THRUSTERS burn pure nuclear fuel with no added propellant or open-cycle coolant. Thus, the burned fuel becomes the
propellant (in this they are like chemical rockets). The fusion or fission fuels are rare isotopes, which must be purified by isotope separation.
The game makes the following (speculative) assumptions on where to find these rare isotopes: The fusion fuel boron-11 on D worlds, fusion fuels
tritium and helium-3 on H worlds, fission fuel curium-245 and lead (useful as antimatter thermalizer) on M worlds, fission fuel uranium-235 on S
worlds, and the fusion fuel lithium-6 on V worlds.
JON’S LAW: “Any interesting
interstellar drive is a wea-
pon of mass destruction.”

---

15MODULE 1 - TERAWATT | HIGH FRONTIER 4 ALL |
1C1. GW Thruster Fuel
A Gigawatt thruster can only fuel by cargo transfer (G1b) using your isotope FTs, or using factory refueling (I5b).
However the Spectral Type of the Factory must match that of the GW thruster. Factory refueling can also take place
at your Bernal, if it has a Dirtside Factory of yours that is the proper Spectral Type.
a. Isotope Fuel Site Refueling. During factory-refueling (I5b), the refueling rate for isotope fuel is limited to
1 isotope tank (yellow bead) per factory refuel operation unless otherwise stated (Futures, Colonist Abilities,
etc.).
b. Wet Mass Chit. A GW thruster uses a yellow Wet Mass Chit to show it runs on pure fuel isotopes. A Spa-
cecraft using Isotope Fuel cannot use lower grade fuels, such as water (F4b), or isotope fuel that does not
match the Spectral Type of its GW thruster.
c. Specifying Isotope Fuel Spectral Type. You may have only one GW thruster either in your Hand or in a
stack at a time, and the Spectral Type of this card specifies the Spectral Type of all the isotope fuel you can
produce, carry, and warehouse as isotope FTs (I5b).
13
You may not store more than one type of isotope fuel.
• Free Market of GW Thruster. If your GW/TW thruster returns to the patent deck, all of your isotope FTs
(yellow beads) remain. They convert into your new Spectral Type if you obtain a new GW/TW thruster.
13
FUSION FUELS are a balance between how many neutrons they produce (bad) and how low is their ignition temperature (good).
•The fusion of deuterium and tritium (D-T) has the lowest ignition temperature of 5.2 keV (40 million degrees K). However, 80% of its energy
output is in highly energetic neutral particles (neutrons) that cannot be contained by magnetic fields or directed for thrust.
• The
3
He-D fusion reaction (ignition temperature = 30 keV) generates 77% of its energy in charged particles, resulting in substantial reduction of
shielding and radiator mass. However, troublesome neutrons comprise a small part of its energy (4% at ion temperatures = 50 keV, due to a D-D
side reaction), and moreover the energy density is 10 times less than D-T. Another disadvantage is that
3
He is so rare that 240,000 tonnes of regolith
scavenging would be needed to obtain a kilogram of it. Alternatively, helium-3 can be scooped from the atmospheres of Saturn or Uranus. Deuteri-
um, in contrast, is abundant and cheap.
• The fusion of deuterium to itself (D-D) occurs at too high a temperature (45 keV) and has too many neutrons (60%) to be of interest. However, the
neutron energy output can be reduced to 40% by catalyzing this reaction to affect a 100% burn-up of its tritium and
3
He byproducts with D.
• The fusion of 10% hydrogen to 90% boron (using
11
B, the most common isotope of boron, obtained by processing seawater or borax) has an even
higher ignition temperature (200 keV) than
3
He-D, and the energy density is smaller. Its advantage is that suffers no side reactions and emits no
neutrons, and hence the reactor components do not become radioactive. The
6
Li-H reaction is similarly clean.
EXAMPLE 1 [1C1c]
A GW dense plasma focus rocket sits on a Factory at hydra, a D spectra moonlet of Pluto. A factory refuel op yields one tank
of D isotope fuel.

---

16| HIGH FRONTIER 4 ALL | MODULE 1 - TERAWATT

1C2. GW Afterburning
As indicated by the afterburn icon, certain GW/TW Thrusters can GW afterburn during activation (H2). This ex -
pends one step of fuel and increases the net thrust by the value shown in the flame icon. This provides one Therm
of cooling.
14 15
a. MW vs. GW Afterburning. The afterburn icon on a GW/TW thruster contains a “+X”, where X is the increase
in net thrust, always by expending one step of isotope fuel. Note this is much different than afterburning
using MW thrusters (H3a), which is limited to +1 net thrust.
b. Open-Cycle Cooling. A GW/TW afterburn provides one Therm of cooling, exactly like MW afterburn (H3a).
16

14
INCANDESCENT TISSUE PAPER. “The only known method of long-term, high-power dissipation in space is thermal radiation. ..The dramatic
sixth-power decrease of mass with radiator temperature is a strong motivation to run at very high temperatures. The crew and cargo spaces...
will have to be refrigerated, but the rest of the ship will run hot. At the low acceleration values we will be using, the ship can be of extremely flimsy
construction-for highest performance, we want a ship made of ‘incandescent tissue paper’.” John Trenholme, 2003.
15
GW RADIATORS. When used to cool GW thrusters, radiators are assumed to reject heat at 1427 K and 240 MWth/Therm. This compares to
1200 K and 120 MW
th/Therm for MW thrusters. TW thrusters operate hotter still at 2000 K and 960 MWth/Therm. The entire rocket glows
white hot.
16
OPEN-CYCLE COOLING. Things get hot in rockets, especially nozzles and reactor first walls. They can be cooled with liquid hydrogen, but
what to do with the hot coolant? You can reuse it in a closed-cycle by cooling it through acres of radiators. Or you can dump it into the
supersonic region of your nozzle, to join the reaction mass. Open-cycle cooling doubles thrust at the expense of fuel consumption. (Game note:
Each thrust point added doubles the actual thrust, in real units.) Jet power is half the product of thrust and propellant exit velocity, so doubling the
thrust halves the exit velocity for a given power level. The heat power absorbed in watts is equal to the mass flow rate of the coolant in kg/sec times
the specific heat of the coolant (14800 J/kg-°K for H
2
), times the temperature (3200 K, the melting point of a tungsten first wall). Heat fluxes in the
first wall can reach 12 MW/m
2
. For fission reactors, the isotope
184
W must be used, which is 10X less poisonous to thermal neutrons than normal
tungsten. To reject 120 MW of heat (one “Therm” in this game) requires 2.5 kg/sec of hydrogen. More exotic technologies bubble the hydrogen
coolant through a vortex of liquid tungsten, allowing temperatures up to 5930 K (boiling point of tungsten). A 10 cm-layer of molten tungsten at
the vortex would stop essentially all the radiation from even the nastiest nuclear reactions (antimatter or D-T). For a first wall 1.6 meters in diameter,
the tungsten alone would mass 20 tonnes!
Player Green builds a spheromak GW thruster on the Uranus aerostat, an H spectra gas giant. He builds a Rocket with Dry
Mass 6 (including its supports), and during 3 turns of factory refueling loads it with 3 tanks of H isotope fuel (helium-3).
The Rocket is now transport class, so even with +6 afterburning, the net thrust (12 - 1 = 11) is insufficient to lift-off Uranus (size 11). The
Rocket cannot use Factory-assist to lift-off to enter a lander burn (G3b). Therefore it must take one less tank of fuel, for a Wet Mass of 8,
enough to bring it into scout class and a net thrust of 12.
EXAMPLE 2 [1C1c]

---

17MODULE 1 - TERAWATT | HIGH FRONTIER 4 ALL |
1C3. Terawatt Thruster
To flip a GW Thruster Card in a stack to its Purple-Side, bring it to a location capable of promoting cards and per-
form a promote operation (1A5).
a. Colliding FRC Fusion Thruster. This TW thruster requires a generator, plus two reactors as supports (becau-
se its Q is low and its initiator energy requirements
17
are high).
18
17
INITIATORS are used to set off a nuclear reaction in the same way that the primer in the base of a pistol cartridge is used to ignite the
gunpowder. Initiators can be lasers, high energy particle beams or pellets, or antimatter. From a modular design viewpoint, it is fortunate that
the reactors in the game designed to power a MW rocket are of the right power (a few hundred MW thermal) to initiate the fusion reaction of a GW
rocket a thousand times more powerful than a MW rocket. The ratio of nuclear power to initiator power is called the Q factor.
18
FUSION PLASMA GEOMETRY. There are five general methods for confining fusion plasmas long enough and hot enough for achieving a
positive Q:
• closed-field magnetic confinement (see D-T Fusion Tokamak),
• open-field magnetic confinement (see
3
He-D mirror),
• inertial confinement (see D-D inertial fusion),
• electrostatic inertial confinement (see
6
Li-H fusor),
• cold fusion (see H-B cat fusion).
EXAMPLE [1C2b]
A spheromak GW thruster has a 6 •1/10 thrust triangle. It is transport class, so the Wet Mass modifier is -1 with a net thrust
of 5. By expending one step of fuel for the +6 afterburner the net thrust is raised to 11, allowing to land on sites up to
(and including) size 10. By expending one step of fuel, the Spacecraft can move through up to 10 Burn Spaces (or 5 Pivots), and by expending
a second step of fuel for afterburning, it could land on a world the size of Luna or Ganymede.
EXAMPLE [1C3]
A Rocket Stack contains an 8•0 thruster, with a “thrust +5” afterburn. If the net thrust is 8, this TW thruster can expend
zero fuel and move 8 burns or one step and move 13 burns.
EASILY MISSED: A TW
thruster must use the same
isotope fuel as its GW thrus-
ter did (flip the card over if
you forgot which Spectral
Type this is). [1C3]

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18| HIGH FRONTIER 4 ALL | MODULE 1 - TERAWATT
b. Synodic Comets. Exceptionally, a Rocket with an activated TW thruster can enter or exit a Synodic Comet
during any season.
19
1D. Futures (needs modules 0, 1, 2)
Futures are epic achievements by humankind represented by in-game quests (1A2b) that you are given when
you Promote a Colonist, GW thruster, or Freighter. These quests can only be completed once per game per quest.
The Purple-Side of these cards describes the requirements and (if successfully completed) the effects, including
endgame VP. If you lose a Purple-Side card, its Future is no longer available to be earned until the card is rebuilt and
re-promoted.
a. Modules. Futures are only available if you play with Modules 0 (politics), 1 (terawatt), and 2 (colonization)
simultaneously.
b. Private Quest. Futures are only available to be completed by the player who owns the card. Each player
may only complete a named Future once (e.g. uplift).
c. Hazardous. All attempts require a Crew or Colonist to risk their lives (via an epic hazard operation 1A6).
19
STARSHIP FUSION FUELS release energy as their light atoms (usually hydrogen and helium) are fused together. Here are the most commonly
considered starship fusion fuels:
• The fusion of deuterium and tritium (D-T), has the lowest ignition temperature (40 million degrees K, or 5.2 keV). However, 80% of its energy out-
put is in highly energetic neutral particles (neutrons) that cannot be contained by magnetic fields or directed for thrust. The resulting waste heat
means prohibitively large radiators.
• The fusion of helium-3 and deuterium (
3
He-D) is the preferred starship fuel. It has a higher ignition temperature (30 keV), but generates 77% of its
energy in charged particles, resulting in a substantial reduction of shielding and radiator mass. Due to a troublesome D-D side reaction however,
neutrons comprise a small part of its energy (4% at ion temperatures = 50 keV), and moreover the energy density is 10 times less than D-T. Another
disadvantage is that, although deuterium is abundant and cheap, helium-3 is so rare that 240,000 tonnes of SWIV regolith scavenging would be
needed to obtain a kilogram of it. Alternatively, helium-3 can be scooped from the atmospheres of Saturn or Uranus.
• The fusion of deuterium to itself (D-D) occurs at too high a temperature (45 keV) and has too many neutrons (60%) to be of interest. However, the
neutron energy output can be reduced to 40% by catalyzing this reaction to affect a 100% burn-up of its tritium and
3
He by-products with D. In
this fashion, a huge iceball can yield enough deuterium to power a beehive starship.
• The fusion of 10% hydrogen to 90% boron-11 (H-
11
B) has an even higher ignition temperature (200 keV) than
3
He-D, and its energy density is even
smaller. Its advantage is that is suffers no side reactions and emits no neutrons, and hence the reactor components do not become radioactive.
Boron-11 is the most common isotope of boron, obtained by processing seawater or borax.
• The fusion of lithium-6 to hydrogen (
6
Li-H) is similarly aneutronic. However, both the H-B and
6
Li-H reactions run hot, and thus ion-electron collisi-
ons in the plasma cause high bremsstrahlung x-ray losses to the reactor first wall. This can negate their low waste heat advantages.

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19MODULE 1 - TERAWATT | HIGH FRONTIER 4 ALL |
d. Long Game. Playing with Futures lengthens the game to 7 Solar Cycles.
1D1. Futures Requirements
Each Future has a set of requirements (“Req”) that, once satisfied, allow you to perform an epic hazard operation
(1A6), which must be successful to complete the Future and get the orange star. These requirements include:
a. Futures Card In Attendance. In all Futures, both a Human (either Crew or Human Colonist) and the card lis-
ting the Future must be operational and Colocated at a specified Site (if any). In the case of Colonist Futures,
this can be the same card.
b. Ad Astra Futures. These Futures require a Spacecraft with the ad astra future to exit the map on an interstel-
lar mission. It must take one of these 3 exits, labeled Jupiter-Sol-Jupiter exit, Sol Exit Neptune, or Sol Exit Oort,
then Decommission the entire operational Stack.
20

• Brave New World. This is neither Murder nor Felony because the humans are travelling to a new star sys-
tem and will surely survive and prosper! Exporting Colonists triggers exomigration (2A6).
c. Manifest Destiny. If a Future you own specifies a specific Site (e.g. Triton, Mercury, sedna, a Site named as a
centaur, a Site in a trojan area) that an opponent has claimed, you may Claim Jump (G4) a foreign Claim even
if you are not allowed Felonies.
1D2. Futures Effects
Each Future has a set of effects that are enabled for you once you succeed in its Epic Hazard Roll (1A6a). These
effects are permanent, even if the card with the Future is later Decommissioned/ Discarded.
a. Future Star. If you succeed, you gain an orange star! In the endgame, each star scores the amount of VP
listed on the Future (M2b). The VP for your star is permanent, with one exception in the next bullet.
20
STARSHIP FUEL will likely take 10X longer to produce than the starship itself for a trip to Alpha Centauri.
EXAMPLE [1D1C]
You promote the mini-mag orion thruster. In order to generate the required the M isotope fuel for its lithiated ammonia
starship future, you establish a Factory on enceladus and spend 10 turns producing fuel.

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20| HIGH FRONTIER 4 ALL | MODULE 1 - TERAWATT
b. Endgame. Any effect labeled as ’Endgame’ must have their requirements checked before scoring (M2). If
these requirements are no longer fulfilled (e.g. by exit of a Mobile Factory or a Claim Jump), the Endgame
effect is canceled, and the future star returned to the supply.
c. Casus Belli Futures. If successful, this sparks a War of Independence (see glossary) between Earth and her
rebellious space colonies. The player claiming the Future’s star leads the rebellion of Independents, and the
other players (unless they also become an Independent by claiming a Casus Belli, or unless playing Module 3)
must be Loyalists.
1D3. List of TW Thruster Futures
a. Spacefaring Future: Req = Bernal with 8+ dirtside hydration. Effects = Allowed 1 extra Colonist, 7 VP.
b. Mini-black Hole Future: Req = Industrialized centaur with 10 isotope FTs. Effects = double all isotope refuel,
10 VP. Centaurs labeled on the map include comet schwassman-wachmann 1(
F 9:00), chiron (F 12:00), elatus
(
F 1:00), echeclus (G 10:30), okyrhoe & pholus (G 11:00), chariko (H 9:00), and asbolus & hylonome (H 10:00).
21
c. Mass Beam Future: Req = Promoted Bernal with Io or Triton Dirtside. Effects = Your Powersat adds +2 thrust,
7 VP.
22
21
RED & BLUE CENTAURS are comet-like asteroids in the outer solar system with orbits destabilized by a recent close encounter with a gas
giant. Their orbital velocity is slow, about three Burns, and if decelerated further with TW mass drivers would plummet toward Sol or Jupiter,
with a gain in kinetic energy in the order of 1000 MJ/kg. An orchestrated collision would be useful to study black hole conditions.
22
MASS BEAM uses a column of neutral sodium atoms for propulsion, which gives far more “oomph” than a beam of energy.
EXAMPLE [1D2b]
You have industrialized encke’s comet, for the purpose of crashing it into Earth to fulfill the footfall future as an act of
terrorism, causing war and mass destruction. Assuming Module 3, a commando team lands on encke’s and destroys the
factory before the last turn, thus aborting the Future and saving the Earth

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21MODULE 1 - TERAWATT | HIGH FRONTIER 4 ALL |
d. Fusion Candle Future: Req = Triton Colony & Promoted Bernal with Neptune Aerostat Dirtside. Effects =
double all isotope refuel, 14 VP.
23

e. Protium Fusion Future: Req = Promoted Bernal with H Dirtside. Effects = double all isotope refuel, 10 VP.
24

f. Enzmann Starship Future: Req = Ad astra exit with 2 promoted Colonists and a Mobile Factory, Effect = 12
V P.
g. Lithiated Ammonia Ice Starship Future: Req = Ad astra exit with 10 isotope fuel, Effect = 14 VP.
1D4. List of Freighter Futures
a. Terraform Future: Req = Promoted Bernal at a non-martian Atmospheric Dirtside. Effect = 8 VP.
25
b. Beehive Ark Future: Req = Promoted Bernal anchored at a Synodic Comet. Effect = 7 VP.
26
c. Exoplanet Hunt Future: Req = Claim Sedna. Effect = (Endgame): 14 VP.
27

d. Beanstalk Future: Have 3+ Space Elevators built by any player. Effect (Endgame) = +3 VP for each Factory
connected to a Space Elevator.
23
FUSION CANDLE uses a gigantic TW “candle” thruster to push the gas giant itself out of the solar system, carrying its colonized moon Triton
as an arkship. The candle burns continuously on both ends using the gas giant’s own atmosphere as a giant fuel repository. The lower end of
the candle, deep in Neptune’s atmosphere, burns for thrust to keep the candle aloft. The upper end burns for thrust to move Neptune to the stars.
This will take centuries to approach the heliosphere, so within the game’s timeframe it does not move perceptibly.
24
PROTIUM FUSION is the fusion of hydrogen atoms, such as that believed to be occurring in Sol. In a game of celestial billiards, two asteroids
can be bashed together at relativistic speeds, in hopes of creating protium fusion and possibly a mini-black hole.
25
CLIMATIC TERRAFORM can be accomplished with a swarm of robotic mirrors in a planet’s L1 lagrange point, which lies between the planet
and Sol. By changing the albedo by directing sunlight on or away from the planet, climate change is accomplished. However, an Earth or
Venus sunshade a micron thick would have a High Frontier Mass of 2.5 million. For the planet to lie in the umbra rather than the penumbra of the
shadow cast, the mass is 100X more.
26
BEEHIVE is a small hollowed world, which becomes rocket-powered by using the bulk of its mass as rocket propellant for its mass drivers.
Since they accelerate so very slowly, the colonies within become a generation ship, in which the ultimate interstellar destination will not be
attained for many generations.
27
SEDNA is a minor planet positioned to provide mass for construction of an EM (electromagnetic) sunlens telescope at a distance of 550 AU
from Earth. This exoplanet-hunting telescope is distant enough to use Sol itself as a gravitational lens, able to survey distant systems with an
optical gain of 113 dB. This is enough to zoom in on a landing site as far out as Epsilon Indi.

---

22| HIGH FRONTIER 4 ALL | MODULE 1 - TERAWATT
e. Golden Apples Future: Req = Industrialize kreutz sungrazer. Effects = Ignore solar flares, 14 VP. Note that the
Mobile Factory on kreutz can fly away before it becomes vaporized at the end of the yellow season. Before it
leaves, it is assumed to have produced instrumentation to measure Sol during its close pass.
f. Antimatter Future: Req = Promoted Bernal with S Dirtside. Effects = double isotope refuel, 10 VP.
g. Star Wisp Future: Req = A Mobile Factory (Endgame) at either neutrino sunlens (6 VP) or EM sunlens (9 VP).
28

1D5. List of Colonist Futures
a. New Venus Future: Req = Decommission an operational thruster with net thrust 7+ on an Industrialized
Synodic Comet of yours. Effects (Endgame) = 12 VP + all tokens on Venus & comet eliminated. Note that no
Tokens (e.g. the Factory) needs to remain on Venus or comet to attain this Future. For thematic effect (it has
no game effect unless you want to continue playing beyond the endgame), place the Venus overlay card
(V8b).
29
b. Supreme Cult Future: Req = Active Law in authority. (Module 0) Effects = May lobby without removing the
delegate used. All Seniority Disks (past and future) migrate to authority. (Endgame): 10 VP.
c. Artificial Consciousness Future: Req = 2 promoted Colonists at an Astrobiology Dirtside. Effects = May
free market any number of cards, 10 VP.
d. Seti Future: Req = Industrialize 2 jovian trojans, 1 each in the greek & trojan camps. Effects = As a free action
perform 1 inspiration + 1 homestead, 10 VP.
28
STAR WISPS are tiny robotic interstellar probes riding on microwave energy beamed from a huge powersat. A giant collimator in the outer
solar system, here represented by a Factory, focuses the beam. There are 2 sunlens points in the game: EM (electromagnetic) and neutrino.
These are at a distance from Sol where either light or neutrinos respectively are focussed by Sol’s gravitational field, as if it were a gigantic lens.
Neutrino focusing is better than photon focusing, since neutrinos zip straight through Sol.
29
PLANETARY ENGINEERING OF VENUS begins with installing mass drivers on a convenient comet to deorbit it. The collision should avoid
blowing away more material than delivered. The cometary water condenses to somewhat below its critical point, greatly accelerating the
weathering sequester of its CO
2
atmosphere. Sunshades made of material from Mercury restrains the steam atmosphere from reaching runaway
greenhouse conditions. —P. Birch, Terraforming Venus Quickly, 1991.
EXAMPLE [1D4g]
You promote your HIIPER freighter, move a mobile factory cube to the neutrino sunlens point, and finally perform the epic
hazard op to get an orange star for the Star Wisp Future, worth 6 VP in the endgame if any cube is still in position.

---

23MODULE 1 - TERAWATT | HIGH FRONTIER 4 ALL |
e. Secession Future: Req = 2 Promoted Human Colonists at a promoted Anchored Bernal. Effects = Casus belli
for War (1D2c), 7 VP.
f. Footfall Future: Req = Decommission an operational thruster with net thrust 7+ on an Industrialized
Synodic Comet of yours. Effects = 10 VP + Casus belli for War (1D2c). (Endgame): All tokens on the comet
eliminated.
30

g. ET Life Future: Req = Have 2 or more Astrobiological Colonies. Effects (Endgame) = +2 VP per Astrobiologi-
cal Colony.
h. Aerostat Future: Req = Promoted Bernal with Aerostat Dirtside. Effects = Can homestead as a free action, 14
VP.
31
i. Pan Sapiens Future: Req = Have 3 Factories connected to Space Elevators. Effects = Casus belli for War
(1D2c). (Endgame): +2 VP for each glory chit owned.
j. Dyson Bubble Future: Req = Both Sites of Mercury industrialized by any player. Effect = 5 VP per Factory
owned on Mercury.
32
k. Submariner Future: Req = Build 3 Submarines. Effect = Doubles your dirtside hydration (not cumulative
with other modifiers).
30
FOOTFALL. In the SF classic by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, Earth is threatened by “footfall”, an dinosaur-killer class asteroid with an orbit
altered by surface mass drivers.      
31
AEROSTAT. A factory floating in an atmosphere can liquefy valuable gases for propellants and fusion fuels. For instance, a hydrogen-balloon
factory floating just beneath the clouds on Venus (see the Venus Site illustration on the map) extracts hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen,
sulfur, and possibly phosphorous from the “air de Venus”. Contrasted with the hellish surface, temperatures and pressures at such altitudes (50 km)
are about Earth normal. Humans working outside the gondola won’t need spacesuits, only an oxygen tank and protection from the acid rain. On
Saturn, a hot air balloon some 212 meters across would extract the rare isotope Helium 3 for use in clean fusion reactors back on Earth. Liquefaction
of 2200 ton/yr of
3
He-D fusion fuel, plus 4800 ton/yr of H
2
propellant, requires 10 MWe, plus another 400 MWe for separation processes. These sites
use windmills to take advantage of abundant winds (350 kph on Venus, 1440 kph on Saturn). They lie deep in the gravity wells, the escape delta-v is
10 km/sec on Venus and 15 km/sec on Saturn. —Courtesy Peter Kokh, Moon Miners Manifesto, 2009.
32
DYSON BUBBLE is a swarm of sails that surround Sol in order to capture part of its power output. The sails are not in orbit but are instead
statites—satellites suspended by radiation pressure to prevent them from falling into Sol. Construction of this megastructure uses material
mined from Mercury, and would be an initial step towards a Kardashev Type II civilization that captures much of the power of the solar system.

---

24| HIGH FRONTIER 4 ALL | MODULE 1 - TERAWATT
l. Beanstalk Future: Req = 3+ Space Elevators built by any player. Effect (Endgame) = +3 VP for each Factory
connected to a Space Elevator.
33
m. TNO Future: Req = Industrialize 2 Sites in the Neptune Zone. Effects = Can homestead as a free action, 12
V P.
34

n. Uplift Future: Req = Robots not emancipated (2A6b), Human at a promoted Bernal & spend 20 Aqua.
Effects = Every Robot becomes emancipated, Casus belli for War (1D2c), 12 VP.
1E. Module 1 Endgame
1E1. Module 1 Endgame
The Game Ends when the final Seniority Disk is taken (D2b). This is after 48 yrs (short game), 60 yrs (medium
game) or 84 yrs if playing with Futures (1D).
1E2. Module 1 Endgame Scoring
Score per M2, for all Modules used. Note that Mobile Factories (including Freighter Figure) count as Factory Cubes
for scoring (1 VP each), even if not on a Claim.
a. Module 2. See 2D2.
b. Futures. Add futures scores (1D2a) for each orange star.
33
MARTIAN SPACE ELEVATOR. Phobos is a favorable terminus for a space elevator for vessels bound for the martian surface, or outward for
insertions to other planets or asteroids.
34
TNO stands for “Trans-Neptunian Object", referring to worlds beyond the orbit of Neptune, particularly in the Kuiper belt, an asteroid belt
lying 30 to 50 AU from Sol. Given the rather leisurely orbital velocities, around 4 km/sec, this is a “point and shoot” environment of vast
distances and almost intuitive orbital mechanics. I have elected to model it with 4 burns to get up to speed (10 km/sec), and another 4 burns at the
destination to decelerate for capture. Hohmanns in between represent the time to target. For the outermost part of the map, I allowed 10 burns to
get up to 25 km/sec, then another 10 burns which could either be to accelerate to 50 km/sec for Solar System exit, or decelerate for capture at the
EM sunlens.

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25MODULE 1 - TERAWATT | HIGH FRONTIER 4 ALL |
1F. Module 1 Solitaire: Werner’s Star (by Phil Eklund)
Little Werner dreams of becoming an astronaut (or cosmonaut, taikonaut, etc.) and traveling to another star. Can
this dream come true? Werner is represented by your Crew card, and he wins if he attains a TW thruster future
before he dies of old age. The game should take 2 hours. Use the entirety of Modules 1 & 2, including Futures. You
may also add Module 0.
a. Setup. Play with 6 Seniority Disks for a 72-year game.
b. Research. Instead of the research auction (I2), take the top card of a patent deck for your Operation, inclu-
ding bonus supports (I2g). This costs a number of Aquas equal to the number of cards taken.
c. Tragedy. You lose the game if your Crew is involuntarily Decommissioned (Werner dies heroically).
d. Werner’s Star Victory. Win if you attain a TW thruster future (1D3) before Werner becomes 84 years old. If
playing with Politics (Module 0), the Active Law must end in freedom.
e. Interstellar Victory. If you have the Interstellar Module, send Werner off as a passenger in a starship. You
win if his son reaches a habitable or living planet. You may integrate this into a continuing Interstellar game.
For compatibility with the 3rd edition Interstellar, see Appendix V7.
1W. Futures Planning (by Ulrik Bøe)
a. Adapt, Then Plan! Your first factory is often the deciding factor for which strategies you can pursue. It
decides what black cards you can build, and also dictates what you need to do to start promoting cards. So
first of all, get a mission together, build your first factory, and remember to start collecting the black cards you
want as early as you can afford - you may have to grab a valuable thruster when it’s on top of the deck even
though you had other plans, or risk seeing it go to the bottom on an Inspiration event, or worse, bought by
another player!
EXAMPLE [1Fb]
You buy an electric rocket that comes with a generator support. This costs 2 Aqua. Next Turn you sell the thruster, which
gains you 3 Aqua.

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26| HIGH FRONTIER 4 ALL | MODULE 1 - TERAWATT
b. Get Purple. When you have your first factory, start working on promoting cards. Can you anchor a Bernal
there? It’s expensive, but gives you enormous flexibility when promoting. If not, what type of colony do you
need to promote the cards that you’re building? Make that your second mission.
c. Look To The Future. As soon as you’ve gotten the cards you want to promote, check their Futures. They will
most likely require you to build factories in specific places - try to claim those early, and pay attention to what
the other players are doing. If they claim a site you needed, you are allowed to Claim Jump for the sake of the
Future.
d. Keep On Building. Don’t forget to continue to build factories! They will be a large chunk of your points.
Don’t worry too much about stock prices, in a Future’s game nobody should expect to get 8 points for having
the only factory of a type (with a possible exception for H class). Just try to ensure that none of your oppo -
nents get the bonus, they will most likely return the favor! The winner will be one of the players that built the
most factories, after that the deciding factor will be dirtside hydration, colonies - and Futures. Make sure you
keep all those in mind when planning your moves.
e. Don't Forget Your Toothbrush. Remember to bring the cards you need to complete the Future. If you
want to complete the Dyson Bubble Future, remember to bring the colonist from Lloyd’s Insurance Company
along (and pay the 4 Aqua to avoid the epic hazard roll if at all possible).
1Y. About Futures (essay by Erich Schneider)
Futures are megascale engineering accomplishments so cool, that you will find yourself pursuing it just for the fun
of it, even if it is not a winning strategy!
Mini-Black Hole creation (amat-initiated H-B magnetic inertial TW thruster) involves celestial billiards. If the orbital
velocity of a Centaur in the Uranus zone was canceled with mass drivers, it would fall towards Sol, and if aimed pro-
perly would hit Mercury at 50 km/sec. The resulting energy, 5x10
27
J, would be enough to power a 10 TJ civilization
like our current one for 150 million years.
Protium Fusion (crossfire H-B focus fusion TW thruster) represents an attempt to achieve nuclear fusion the same
way stars do it, fusing the protons from ordinary hydrogen to form ordinary helium (with the emission of neutrinos

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27MODULE 1 - TERAWATT | HIGH FRONTIER 4 ALL |
changing protons into neutrons). This requires temperatures much greater than what we can presently achieve,
but does not require special isotopes like deuterium or tritium.
A Fusion Candle (zubrin-GDM TW thruster) turns a gas giant into a colony ark by building a giant chimney with
a fusion reactor at either end and intake in the middle - the surface end keeps the whole structure aloft and the
spaceward end is a thruster using the gas giant’s atmosphere as wet mass.
The Mass Beam Future (dusty plasma TW thruster) is the next-generation version of the Powersat power beaming
technology. Accelerators, powered by the electricity generated between a gas giant and its moon, fire a stream
of sulfur at a distant starship. The starship vaporizes the material with a laser, and the resulting plasma pushes the
starship via a magnetic field “mirror”. The advantage of the mass beam over a laser beam is that much more of the
energy used to accelerate the beam elements is transferred to the starship as momentum.
The famous Daedalus (daedalus
3
He-D inertial fusion TW thruster) design was the result of a project by the British
Interplanetary Society in the mid-1970s. 50,000 tons of deuterium and helium-3 fuel plus a fusion rocket would be
used in a two-stage rocket design to accelerate a 500 ton scientific payload to 12% of the speed of light over the
course of about four years. This original design had Barnard’s Star as its target, but its modular design allows it to be
adapted to other destinations.
The liquid with the lowest known density at room temperature is a solution of lithium in anhydrous ammonia.
Lithium can be combined with hydrogen nuclei (bare protons) in a fusion reaction to produce energy plus two
helium atoms (
3
He and
4
He if the more common
6
Li isotope is used, two
4
He atoms if the rarer
7
Li isotope is used).
35

It is thus theoretically possible to freeze large quantities of lithium dissolved in ammonia and build a starship hull
out of the resulting ice, the lithiated ammonia starship (solem medusa tugged orion TW thruster). The hull is then
35
HELIUM-3 is the preferred starship fuel because it burns clean, but this extremely rare isotope of helium is only found in significant con-
centrations in the atmospheres of gas giants or on SWIV (solar wind implanted volatiles) sites. Worlds that make close solar passes such as
comets may have helium-3 formed by solar wind impingement. Mercury may not have much, both because it has an intrinsic magnetic field that
is tiny but enough to deflect impingement except during CMEs, and because its surface temperatures are hot enough to reflect rather than absorb
wind particles. Project Icarus identifies aerostats on Uranus as the easiest place in the solar system to obtain helium-3. —Shukla, Majumdar, Maiti,
Kumar, New Insights into SWIV for lunar regolith characterization, 2018.

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28| HIGH FRONTIER 4 ALL | MODULE 1 - TERAWATT
used as fuel - the ammonia (NH
3
) is separated into nitrogen and hydrogen, the hydrogen and lithium would be
used to generate energy, and the resulting helium and leftover nitrogen would be used for reaction mass.
A similar “hull of frozen fuel” concept is used in the enzmann starship (colliding FRC
3
He-D fusion TW thruster). In
this case the hull is a multi-million ton ball of frozen deuterium with an attached fusion engine and crew/cargo
module. The resulting starship would be longer than most Earth skyscrapers.
Synodic comets are interesting for futurists because their high eccentricity allows them to travel between the inner
and outer reaches of the Solar System. High thrust burns at perihelion use the Oberth thrust multiplier effect to
reach ever more distant, even interstellar distances. Such a starship would be a very slow generational beehive,
however.
1Z. Module 1 Patent Card Descriptions
1Z1. Freighter Cards
The thruster cards are designed for rockets embarking from LEO, where water is fantastically expensive. Therefore,
they use engines that are sparing in water, in other words, high tech engines that run hot with a high specific
impulse. Freighters are rockets in the opposite situation, embarking from industrialized sites with plenty of water
but low manpower and only crude home-spun technology. Therefore they are very low tech, with poor specific
impulses. A typical freighter may have a dry mass of only a few tonnes, perhaps nothing more than an inflated bal-
loon heated by sunlight, and yet it may need so much ice propellant that it appears as a giant iceberg, an iceberg
that will have been almost totally exhausted as reaction mass by the time it reaches its destination.
Antiproton Sail and Harvester – Antiprotons formed from the collision of cosmic rays and the solar wind ac-
cumulate in the planetary radiation belts. A positively-charged harvester sail scoops and directs them into a series
of nested spherical decelerators, where they finally are trapped or reflected to the sail for propulsion. The antipro-
tons explode on contact with the sail material, a mixture of graphite, carbon-carbon fiber, and tiny amounts of
uranium. Depositing the antiprotons deep into the uranium (to improve the number of fissions) increases thrust at

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29MODULE 1 - TERAWATT | HIGH FRONTIER 4 ALL |
the expense of specific impulse. Rim-superconductors reduce translational losses of the reactants. The high speci-
fic energy of the two fission products (approx Pd-111 at 1 MeV/amu) unfortunately means half the energy must be
rejected as waste heat. Unlike a fission-fragment sail, this design can tack, stop, vary the acceleration and specific
impulse, and does not need a gossamer sail. The sail parameters are 2 MW/kg and 1 kg/m
2
. A 75m diameter sail
generates 9 GW
th at a thrust of 0.27 kN and an exhaust velocity of 10%c. The starship version rides on an antimatter
mass beam.
–Stephen Howe, 2013.

Archimedes Palmer-lens Freighter –An advanced version of the solar-heated rocket replaces the inflatable lens
with a swarm of reflecting photon sails held in formation by two Palmer lasers (see Palmer LSP aerosol lens gene-
rator). These sails are spun and deployed from regolith by photon sail-propelled Neumann devices. The swarm has
a diameter of 275m. In place of rhenium foam, the solar absorber uses space-built reticulate vitreous carbon foam,
allowing temperatures up to 3778 K and hydrogen specific impulses up to 1.2 ks. The carbon foam structure is
protected against carbon/hydrogen reactions by means of a refractory carbide coating applied by zero-g chemical
vapor infiltration (CVI).
–A.J. Palmer, Hughes Research Laboratories, 1980.

D Nanotube Dirt Launcher Freighter – Carbon nanotubes have a tensile strength of 8300 kg/mm
2
(81 kN/mm
2
)
and a density of 1800 kg/m
3
. A cable car system shaped like the letter “D” can operate of 6.8 km/sec and store 23
MW of energy for every kilogram of cable. The design shown has a 2 km cable, 2mm in diameter and 12 kg in mass.
Its radius is 402m. It is driven directly by 500 MW
th nuclear turbines, without using electricity. –Alexander Bolonkin.
Fission GCR Freighter –The open-cycle gas core reactor (GCR) contains a critical fissile core in the form of a gase-
ous plasma. This radiatively heats seeded hydrogen propellant at triple the specific impulse of solid core versions.
A 1.5 GW
th reactor attains 74 kN thrust at a specific impulse of 3 ks. The 150 MWth of waste heat can be removed
by doubling the mass flow rate of open-cycle cooling (to 5 kg/sec), or by radiators. The fuel is
242m
Am, formed from
Amercium-141, which not only has the highest known thermal fission cross section, but also has a low capture
cross section, high number of neutrons per thermal fission, and long half life. This permits smaller engines than
with uranium fuel, with a 1.5m diameter core, moderator thickness of 0.5m, 500 atm pressure, 65,000 K core tem-
perature, fuel-to-cavity volume ratio of 25%. To prevent fuel loss, the americium fuel core is magnetically-confined
with a slightly-asymmetric magnetic mirror. Gas core reactors are difficult to start, so a small pulse of antiprotons

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30| HIGH FRONTIER 4 ALL | MODULE 1 - TERAWATT
are injected to produce the 10
22
neutrons needed for startup. –R. G. Ragsdale, Nuclear Thermal Propulsion, NASA/Lewis
Research Center, 1990; Kammash and Jan,1992.

Fission-heated Steam Freighter – A nuclear-heated steam rocket engine (NSR) uses a nuclear reactor to convert
water propellant to superheated steam. A Calhoun pump raises the pressure of the water to 23 MPa, which acts
as the moderator/reflector. Although it requires a massive pump (power ≈ pressure X area X velocity), operation
above the critical pressure avoids a propellant phase change and allows operation at a higher power density and
specific impulse. A de Laval nozzle attached directly to the reactor converts the steam expansion pressure into
thrust. A mixed mean outlet temperature of 1100 K obtains a specific impulse of 0.2 ks. The reactor is a 10 tonne
particle bed yielding 1 GW
th at 3 MW/liter. The water tank is Kevlar composite with 0.044mm thick walls. Alterna-
tively, the propellant can be carried as water ice. At the maximum thrust of 380 kN, the water flow is 170 kg/sec.
The energy required to melt ice into H
2
O (0.48 MJ/kg) and H
2
O into steam (2.2 MJ/kg) means that almost half the
thermal power is lost to water phase change.
–Anthony Zuppero et. al, Nuclear-heated steam rocket using Lunar Ice, 1997.
Fusion Fragment Sail –Imagine radioactive dust embedded in an absorber layer film. The impulses of the fission
fragments impart a feeble thrust to this “sail”. The thrust is enhanced with an axial magnetic field too weak to affect
the motions of the dust but strong enough to direct the ionized fragments into a beam at 22% efficiency. Unlike a
photon sail, which can be steered by tilting in the sunlight, a fission fragment sail receives its energy equally over
the entire sail surface, and thus can't be steered. The illustrated design thrusts and steers using A-LIFT (Aneutronic
Laser Induced Fusion Thruster) steering patches. The thrust is initiated by a picosecond laser pulse which has been
chirp-pulse amplified and directed to the first layer of a steering patch. Pulsed at 75 MHz, the laser beam delivers
20,000 TW/mm
2
at wavelengths between 1 and 10 μm. This explodes the first layer of the patch, a 5 μm thick sheet
of metal foil. The teravolt per meter electric field ejects protons, which initiate H-B fusion in the second layer, a film
of CH
2
-boron-11 composite. The fusion products are a hundred thousand 8.7 MeV alpha particles, directed by mag-
nets for steering thrust. A 1 km diameter sail has an initial mass of 60 tonnes, but it loses a tonne per year at a 1.9
kw/m
2
fusion rate. With a specific impulse of 500 ks but only 140 newtons of thrust, this sail does not perform well
in the moderate g-fields around planets. If starting in Earth-Luna L3, it takes a month for the spiral-out from Earth,
only 4 years on the long leg to Jupiter, and over a year for a spiral-in to Callisto.
–V.P. Krainov, Lisitsa, Roussetski, Ignatyev,
Andrainov, Observation of neutronless fusion reactions in picosecond laser plasma, 2005.

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31MODULE 1 - TERAWATT | HIGH FRONTIER 4 ALL |
HIIPER Beam-Rider Freighter –The Helicon Injected Inertial Plasma Electrostatic Rocket (HIIPER) employs one
of the highest density plasma sources (Helicon) for plasma production and one of the most erosion-resistant
accelerators (Inertial Electrostatic Confinement) for plasma acceleration. This decoupling of the ionization from the
acceleration stage allows HIIPER (like VASIMR) to exhibit improved variable specific impulses and thrust to power
ratios. The propellant can be a variety of gases, e.g. nitrogen, argon, or xenon. Electricity is provided by a 500 MW
remote laser beam, intercepted by a gossamer laser sail of 312m diameter. Operating at 600 K with an emissivity
of 0.06 and an absorbance of 0.135, 250 MW
e is generated. Assuming 0.100 g/m
2
, the sail mass is 7.5 tonnes. The
pencil-thin multi-kV plasma exhaust generates just 530 newtons of thrust, about the weight of 2 airport suitcases.
But the exhaust velocity, unsurpassed for an electric engine, is 0.45% the speed of light.
–Akshata Krishnamurthy,
HIIPER Space Propulsion Lab, 2012.

Inflatable Solar-heated Freighter –A rocket running on solar power needs a large lightweight collecting surfa-
ce with a sun-tracking system. An inflated plastic balloon of parabolic architecture focusing laser or sunlight into a
“blackbody” cavity is the preferred structure. A secondary concentrator made of single-crystal zirconia, sapphire, or
yttrium-aluminum-garnet (YAG) acts as a window to the chamber. The long cylindrical construction of the cavity
allows most of the radiation that enters the engine to be used for heating the working fluid, i.e. the propellant. The
latter enters the engine, flows through a foam-filled annulus around the receiver cavity, is heated to a high tem-
perature, and expands through the nozzle. The high temperature metal rhenium is used throughout, which limits
the temperature to 2800 K and the specific impulse to about 1 ks with hydrogen or 0.19 ks with water. The vessel of
rhenium tubes is held by a carbon shell which is further encased in a reradiation shield to prevent heat loss.
–NASA
Ames, 2012.

KESTS Hoop Dirt Launcher Freighter –Kinetic Energy Supported Transportation Structures (KESTS) are a type of
electric rocket able to propel a small “rubble-pile” asteroid by anchoring two quasi-elliptical accelerator-hoops on
its equator. The hoops are supported by internally-generated centrifugal forces instead of by strength of materials
(unlike tether space elevators). They are analogous to the stator of a synchronous electric motor, supported by
electrodynamic coupling to mass stream armatures whirling at 10 km/sec. Two counter-rotating mass streams are
used to avoid forces due to angular momentum. Humans and cargo travel in vehicles magnetically linked to one
of the mass streams, arriving at an upper space station in synchronous orbit with the asteroid’s rotation. A chain of

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32| HIGH FRONTIER 4 ALL | MODULE 1 - TERAWATT
dirt buckets at much higher acceleration releases regolith at the hoop apex at 10 km/sec. Two symmetrical hoops
on opposite sides of the asteroid provide 56 kN total thrust at 500 MW
e. –JED Cline, 2013.

Magnetic Mirror Beam-rider Freighter –This beam-rider employs a magnetic mirror with two coils to reflect an
incoming mass beam. The larger stern coil is 100m across and shielded weighs 120 tonnes not including radiators.
The mass beam originates from the inner solar system, perhaps from a solar-powered accelerator in one of the Sol-
Venus Lagrange points. The accelerator can be linear (lineac) or circular (cyclotron). It aims the mass beam using
flywheels with superconducting electric motors. The beam is focused by a string of field lenses and lasers. The
lasers are tuned just below a significant absorption frequency of the beam particles, so that those that stay on the
beam won’t absorb a photon, while the Doppler shift of those that drift toward a laser brings them into resonance
with the laser, pushing them back into the line. The beam, composed of atoms, molecules, clusters, or pellets, must
be electrically neutral while flying through space (to prevent spreading), yet must be charged to be accelerated by
the accelerator and decelerated by the spacecraft. Stern lasers in the spacecraft ionize the stream so that it can be
decelerated and reflected by the mirror. Unreflected portions of the beam pass through the toroidal geometry, for-
ming a bow "guard plume" that helps shield the high-speed vehicle against space dust. A cell of water guards the
spacecraft against wayward beam particles. A 1.2 GW mass beam, moving at 1700 km/sec (0.56%c) and reflected
at 81% efficiency, provides 1.2 kN thrust.
–G. David Nordley.
Poodle Steam Freighter – A product of late 1960s nuclear boldness and naivety, this thruster heats its working
fluid through the natural decay of radioactive isotopes. A very simple design, with no moving parts, the reactor
uses the expensive and short lived
210
Po to generate heat and thrust which limits the length of the mission.
However, since decay cannot be “turned off,” heat must either be used as thrust or radiated. On a personal note, it is
really fun reading declassified 1960s era documents!
–E. Nezgoda, Radioisotope Propulsion Technology Program (Poodle) –
Final Report, 1967; J. Whiton, Status Report – Radioisotopic propulsion systems, 1965.

Rotary Dirt Launcher Freighter –The rotary pellet launcher (RPL) is a tapered tube rapidly rotating so as to
accelerate small (10g) pellets of compressed regolith. Near the tip the imposed acceleration is some 100,000 gees.
The pellet presses on the side of the tube with a force of approximately 8.9 kN, and exits at 4 km/sec. The rate is
230 pellets/sec. The material is Kevlar, at 60% of yield strength, lined with TiNi alloy for wear resistance. The liner is
subject to considerable abrasion and wear and is replaceable. A double turret has a mass of 17 tonnes. Two such

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33MODULE 1 - TERAWATT | HIGH FRONTIER 4 ALL |
turrets are needed, counter-rotating, for the spacecraft or asteroid to maintain zero net angular momentum. –Space
Settlements: A Design Study, NASA Ames, 1975.

Z-pinch
3
He-D Target Fusion Freighter –A Target Fusion engine has two stages: a plasma injector that produces
extremely hot plasma and moves it to the second stage, a liner implosion system that magnetically compresses
the hot plasma to fusion conditions. Compression is via wire-array Z-pinch and the Ulam ablation implosion
effect (i.e. the lorentz force from high current in a lithium metal liner supplied by movable helical-flux generators).
The imploded liner becomes part of the propellant. Target Fusion therefore combines the heating at low density
approach of magnetically-confined fusion with the rapid heating of inertial-confined fusion. Because the plasma
has to stay in the magnetic confinement only for fractions of a second, the requirements for the confinement are
correspondingly low and less costly. Because the target is already a superheated plasma, the requirements for the
pressure levels are not as stringent as in inertial fusion.
–G.A. Wurden, http://www.lanl.gov/physics. 2013.

Z-pinch D-T/
6
Li Fusion Freighter –A Z-pinch fusion engine runs very large currents (Megampere scale) through
plasma over short timescales (10
-6
sec). The magnetic field resulting from the large current then compresses the
plasma to fusion conditions. A Z-pinch rocket engine running on both D-T and n-
6
Li uses an annular nozzle with
D-T fuel injected through the innermost nozzle and
6
Li introduced through a cylindrical outer nozzle like a “shower
curtain.” The
6
Li propellant injection is focused in a conical manner, so that the D-T fuel and
6
Li mixture meet at a
specific point that acts as a cathode.
6
Li serves as both a current return path to complete the circuit and as a neut-
ron absorber. The n-
6
Li reaction produces additional Tritium fuel and energetic byproducts that boost the energy
output. At the optimal mixture of D-T fuel and
6
Li propellant, the Z-Pinch engine produces 3.8 kN thrust at a speci-
fic impulse of 19.4 ks. Neutrons and gammas that escape the
6
Li liner are captured by FLiBe coolant and the waste
heat is passed on to He and NaK radiators operating at 1250 K. During each 1 GJ fusion pulse, the current induced
in the thrust coils is used to recharge capacitor banks for the next shot, with a Q = 3. Because a large amount of
energy (333 MJ) must be discharged to the D-T bolus within brief time (100 ns), Marx capacitors are used, at a
frequency of 10 Hz.
– J. Miernik et al, Fusion Propulsion Z-Pinch Engine Concept, Marshall Space Flight Center, 2012.

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34| HIGH FRONTIER 4 ALL | MODULE 1 - TERAWATT
1Z2. GW Thruster Cards
These thrusters are in the gigawatt (billion watt) or even terawatt (trillion watt) power class. Those that have a
specific impulse greater than 80 ks enjoy a fuel consumption of zero in the game. 80 ks is equivalent to an exit
velocity fast enough to be measured as a percentage of the speed of light: 0.27%. This does not mean that they do
not need propellant; all rockets need reaction mass to maneuver in space. Reactionless drives such as Dean drives,
Em drives, warp drives, RF cavity thrusters, etc. violate Newton’s 3rd Law and there is no evidence that they can be
made to work at any scale. This limitation applies not just to rockets, every vehicle ever made needs mass-based
action-reaction to accelerate or turn. Which is to say: energy is not enough, you need mass as well as energy for
space maneuvering.
Amat-catalyzed Fission-fusion GW Thruster
36
–This spacecraft burns fuel pellets of Deuterium, Tritium, and
Uranium-238 (nine parts D-T for every one part
238
U). These are injected into the reaction chamber, compressed
with ion beams, then irradiated with a 2 nsec burst of antiprotons. Although this antimatter does not “catalyze”
the reaction, it does initiate uranium fission which in turn generates D-T fusion. The high energy radiation is
thermalized (to 1 keV) by a 200 g WLS lead coating around the target. Even so, only a third of the reaction energy
and target fragments are intercepted by the thrust shell (an 8m diameter ablative nozzle made of silicon carbide).
About 20% of the energy is lost as high-energy neutrons, and a 1.2m neutron shield made of LiH is needed to
protect the fuel rings. A heat engine in this shield powers the 10 MW initiator. Each 40 tonne tank of SiC propellant
ejected uses 7 ng of antiprotons. At 1 Hz and an ejected mass per shot of approx 2 kg, 302 GW
th is generated. At an
overall efficiency of 6%, thrust is 275 kN at an exhaust velocity of 0.04%c.
–Lewis, Meyer, Smith, and Howe of Penn State
University, 2000.

36
AMAT, short for “antimatter”, is the most concentrated energy storage media possible, converting 200% of its mass into energy upon contact
with an equivalent mass of ordinary matter. Something the size of a grain of salt gives off as much energy as 2 tonnes of the best chemical
rocket fuel. It is not a solution for an energy crisis, as it is a synthetic fuel, not found in nature, that will always require at least 10,000X as much
energy to produce as obtained from its annihilation. Although amat has some utility as a catalyst for nuclear reactions, as theorized here, it is almost
worthless as a rocket fuel. The problem is that the energy of an amat reaction is not “pure energy”, but rather in the form of pions, both charged and
neutral, that almost instantly decay into hard gamma rays. Unlike neutral particles like neutrons, which have a definite absorsion depth in a given
material, gammas penetrate exponentially, which is saying they can’t be totally stopped, even in a high Z thermalizer such as lead or tungsten. This
means that a huge percentage of energy in an amat rocket or starship will end up as waste heat, requiring radiators to reject.

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35MODULE 1 - TERAWATT | HIGH FRONTIER 4 ALL |
Amat-initiated H-B Magnetic Inertial TW Thruster –Conventional inertial confinement fusion compresses a
fuel pellet to many times solid state densities while simultaneously delivering energy to the core to initiate the
burn. Magnetic inertial fusion circumvents this by creating fusion plasma by wall ablation inside a pellet. The abla-
tion is initiated by a high energy beam entering through a hole in the pellet wall. The thermoelectric effect of the
impact generates a strong magnetic field (12,500 T) that thermally insulates the hot dense plasma from the metal
wall of the pellet. This ignites the core and allows it to burn a long time, combining the advantages of magnetic
and inertial confinement. The design uses a 9 nsec pulse of a hundred billion antiprotons as the high-energy beam
and hydrogen and boron in a ratio of 5 to 1 as the fuel. The H-
11
B fusion fuel has the advantage of producing only
charged particles in the form of three alphas, and no neutrons. Each lead-shelled pellet is 50 mm in diameter and
masses half a kilogram. The igniter particle cascade has 140 GJ of kinetic energy plus 30 joules of annihilation
energy. At a Q = fusion energy/igniter energy = 2, each shot produces 280 GJ of fusion energy. One shot every 2
seconds generates 83 kN thrust and 0.4%c exhaust velocity.
–Kammash, Martin, Godfroy, Antimatter Driven P-B
11
Fusion
Propulsion System, 2003.

Colliding FRC
3
He-D Fusion TW Thruster –A field-reversed configuration (FRC) is an ellipsoid plasma cell with
an azimuthal current reversing the direction of the externally applied magnetic field. The resultant field provides
for toroidal plasma confinement without requiring a toroidal vacuum vessel or coil set. In a colliding plasma mirror,
two FRCs generated by theta pinches at opposite ends of a long magnetic mirror are accelerated magnetically to
a million miles per hour and slammed into each other. The fusion products escape out both ends of the machine;
one end is MHD-tapped for electricity, and the other expanded in a magnetic nozzle for thrust. Fuel can be
3
He-D
or H-
11
B. A 220 GWth reactor generates 5 kN thrust at Q = 2 and an exhaust velocity of 11%c. –Helion Energy, 2010.

Crossfire H-B Focus Fusion TW Thruster –The six arms of the Crossfire Reactor fire positive 600 keV ions into
a negatively-charged central magnetic cusp. The ions, confined radially by magnetic fields and longitudinally by
electric fields, are reflected back and forth by an electrostatic lens at the distal end of each ion gun. Pulses in the
magnet currents oscillate the magnetic flux, transferring energy radially to the plasma. This pinch effect increa-
ses the fusion rate. The magnet walls are coated with a bremsstrahlung mirror to reflect the x-rays back into the
plasma. The preferred fuel is hydrogen-boron. This reaction produces only charged reactants, which overcome the
electric field and exit longitudinally, to be directed by magnetic and electric fields for thrust. At a power of 28 GW
th,
the thrust is 2.5 kN at an exhaust velocity of 5%c.
–Moacir Ferreira Jr.

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36| HIGH FRONTIER 4 ALL | MODULE 1 - TERAWATT
Daedalus
3
He-D Inertial Fusion TW Thruster –Project Daedalus is the benchmark design for an unmanned
interstellar probe. The card statistics are for the second stage only. (The full 2-stage starship has a Dry Mass of 100
mass points, and needs 1350 tanks of
3
He-D fusion fuel pellets to reach Barnard’s Star.) Injected at 250/sec, these
pellets are ignited by electron beams with driver energies of 2.7 GJ and 400 MJ for the first and second stages
respectively. (A recent study refutes that an e-beam can ignite fusion pellets due to magnetic erosion and charge
repulsion.) The high gain of the system (Q = 35), allows MHD coils in the nozzle to generate the energy needed for
the next cycle. The engine bell, made of molybdenum TZM alloy and glowing orange hot (1500 K), reject the waste
heat. The computed burn-up fraction for the fusion fuels is 0.175 and 0.133 for the first and second stages, pro-
ducing exhaust velocities of 3.5%c and 3%c, and thrusts of 7540 kN and 660 kN respectively.
–A. Bond et al., Project
Daedalus – The Final Report on the BIS Starship Study, 1978.

Dense Plasma H-B Focus Fusion GW Thruster–This vehicle employs clean “aneutronic” dense plasma focus
(DPF) fusion power using hydrogen and boron-11 fuel. The total bremsstrahlung power, found by multiplying by
the pinch volume (~10-6 m
3
) and the repetition rate (10 Hz) is 1 GWth, at a particle number density (electron and
ions) of 2 x 10
22
/cm
3
and an electron temperature of 1.3 MeV. At Q = 3, ignition is provided by a 33 MJ capacitor
bank with a specific energy of 15.0 MJ/tonne and a specific volume of 5.0 MJ/m3. A second capacitor bank is
included as a back-up. Engine parameters are anode radius = 14cm, cathode radius = 38cm, thrust = 1.7 kN , spe-
cific impulse = 64 ks (0.2%c), overall efficiency = 81%. Open-cycle cooling of the reaction chamber and magnetic
nozzle with 2.75 kg/sec of liquid hydrogen boosts the thrust to 55 kN but lowers the specific impulse to 2 ks.
–Sean
D. Knecht et al.

Dusty Plasma TW Thruster–A dusty plasma reactor suspends slightly-critical dust grains in an electric field, and
uses the high-speed fission fragments directly for thrust. Upper and lower paraboloid LiH moderators reflect eno-
ugh neutrons to keep the reacting dust critical. Twin cooled carbon-carbon heat shields reflect the dust infrared
energy away from the moderators. For uranium dust grains, 81% of the energy released is the kinetic energy of the
fission fragments, with the remaining 19% released in the form of beta, gamma, and neutrons, for a total of 207
MeV per fission. The escaping fission fragments are cooled by collision with the Li propellant, for a mean exhaust
velocity of 3.4%c. Superconducting field coils and quadrupole current loops act as a magnetic mirror to direct
the fragments and propellant for thrust. A 14 GW
th dusty plasma generates 1.1 kN thrust with minimal open-cycle
cooling, or 550 kN with enough Li coolant to absorb most of the neutrons. The lithium can be supplied by a Li

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37MODULE 1 - TERAWATT | HIGH FRONTIER 4 ALL |
mass beam. The nanometer-sized dust is radiatively cooled, with a thermal efficiency of 40%. –NASA NAIC Spring
Symposium, 2012.

Levitated Dipole
6
Li-H Fusion GW Thruster –Most magnetic-confinement fusion vehicles use either irrational
flux surfaces (i.e. tokamak, stellarator) or open magnetic field lines (i.e. magnetic mirror). Closed field line systems
such as dipoles have received much less attention; however, they possess several uniquely useful properties
including the confinement of high beta plasmas with low turbulent transport, and high-energy low-particle con-
finement in a steady state configuration created by a small number of non-interlocking coils. Levitating the dipole
magnet offers steady state operation with high stability and efficient ash removal. Moreover it eliminates end
losses, supporting the ignition of advanced fusion fuels with low fusion cross sections such as
6
Li -H or helium-ca-
talyzed D-D. The latter cycle suppresses the production of energetic (14.1 MeV) neutrons by removing the thermal
tritium ash and replacing it with the helium-3 decay product. The chief drawback of the dipole approach is the
need for a levitated superconducting ring internal to the plasma. This “floating ring” unfortunately intercepts 24%
of the fusion photons and neutrons, and yet must be kept cool enough for superconduction. The ring is shielded
by a millimeter thick layer of tungsten followed by a C-C fiber composite shield that constitutes a third of the ring
mass. The outer layer, radiating 1 MW/m
2
at 2700 K, returns 400 MW back to the plasma. The C-C layer attenua-
tes 90% of the neutron flux (60 MW for a D-D reaction). An internal shell, thermally isolated from the tungsten,
provides a temperature difference that drives an internal 10 MW refrigerator to keep the internal superconductor
windings cold. These windings, operating at a coil current density of 330 M A/m
2
, generate a 30 T peak field. The
beta is 3.1 at a confinement time of 5 sec. For a 1.2 GW
th fusion reactor, thrust = 1.4 kN, and exhaust velocity =
0.37%c, assuming an efficiency of 63%.
– J. Kesner, D.T. Garnier, A. Hansen, M. Mauel, L. Bromberg, Helium Catalyzed D-D
Fusion in a Levitated Dipole in a Z-Pinch, 2003.

Mini-mag Orion Z-pinch Fission GW Thruster –The Mini-MagOrion design adds two important aspects to
the family of Orion concepts: first, the use of Z-Pinch magnetic compression of the fissile targets, allowing much
smaller explosions (280 GJ yield vs. 20,000 GJ), and second, replacing the pusher plate with a magnetic nozzle.
Only a small fraction of Cm-245 fission fuel is actually carried with the spacecraft, the remainder of the propellant
(macro-particles of Cm-245 with a D-T core) is beamed to the spacecraft. The hybrid fission-fusion system has a Q
of 3889 at 24% efficiency. Use of 280 GJ bombs at 1 Hz yields 1130 kN thrust with a specific impulse of 12 ks.
–Roger
Lenarda, Dana Andrews, Use of Mini-Mag Orion and superconducting coils for near term interstellar transportation, 2007.

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38| HIGH FRONTIER 4 ALL | MODULE 1 - TERAWATT
Salt-water Zubrin GW Thruster – The illustration shows the vision of Robert Zubrin: a rocket riding on a con-
tinuous controlled nuclear explosion just aft of the nozzle/reaction chamber. The propellant is water, containing
dissolved salts of fissile uranium or plutonium. These fuel-salts are stored in a tank made from capillary tubes of
boron carbonate, a strong structural material that strongly absorbs thermal neutrons, preventing the fission chain
reaction that would otherwise occur. To start the engine, the salt-water is pumped from the fuel tank into an ab-
sorber-free cylindrical nozzle. The salt-water velocity is adjusted as it exits the tank so that the thermal neutron flux
peaks sharply, outside the rocket. At critical mass (around 50 kg of salt water), the continuous nuclear explosion
produces 427 GW
th, obtaining a thrust of 8600 kN and a specific impulse of 8 ksec at a thermal efficiency of 99.8%
(with open-cycle cooling). Overall efficiency is 80%.
–Robert Zubrin, Nuclear Salt Water Rockets: High Thrust at 10,000 sec
ISP, J. British Interplanetary Soc. 44, 1991.

Solem Medusa Tugged Orion TW Thruster –Johndale Solem’s “Medusa” is an Orion-type rocket driven by ther -
monuclear detonation waves behind a lightweight spinnaker canopy. The design uses 15 kiloton yield deuterium
bombs with a fireball radius of 200m. A millimeter-thick spinnaker made of reinforced-Kevlar sized to this fireball is
25 tonnes. The traditional design has been augmented with a 400m magnetic mirror to ensure the fuel is comple-
tely vaporized before it hits the spinnaker. A second enhancement is proton beam fuel ignition, eliminating the
need for fission materials and reducing the density of the expelled reactants (thus improving specific impulse). The
100 MJ beam is formed when a plasma bridge from a hohlraum target contacts a levitated superconducting ring
charged to 1 GeV. Gigavolt multi-megaamperes of current strikes the end of a compressed fuel rod of deuterium
encased in the hohlraum. If the current needed for ignition is below the Alfvén limit for ions, this beam is “stiff” and
well in excess of the critical current to entrap the D-D fusion reaction products, a condition for detonation. The
large currents generated are directed by magnetic field coils to the stern of the spacecraft, where thermionic emit-
ters channel the electrons into space, using a process called inductive charging. This charges the ring for the next
shot. A 12 kg hohlraum bomb (containing solid hydrogen propellant) is exploded every 10 seconds for maximum
thrust (1700 kN), using a servo winch to keep the thrust constant. The collimation factor C
0
= 0.14 with an exhaust
velocity of 0.47% c.
–F. Winterberg, Deuterium Microbomb Rocket Propulsion, 2008.

Spheromak
3
He-D Magnetic Fusion GW Thruster –The Spheromak toroidal magnetic confinement is open
geometry, allowing direct thrust and energy conversion of fusion products (unlike a Tokamak). The central part of
the plasma focus, sustained by inductive helicity injection, cyclically produces pre-fusion plasma. A laminar dyna-

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39MODULE 1 - TERAWATT | HIGH FRONTIER 4 ALL |
mo is used to suppress turbulence. The residual magnetic field of the plasma focus discharge further compresses
the Spheromak plasma to ignition conditions and pushes it out of the reactor into the magnetic nozzle. For a
3
He-D or D-D based thruster, the low temperature plasma flowing in the region surrounding the reacting core
(the so-called scrape-off region) has temperatures in the range of 100eV, corresponding to specific impulse values
of 50 ks (0.16%c). Open-cycle cooling varies the thrust between 14 and 56 kN.
–M. Katsurai and M. Yamada, Studies of
Conceptual Spheromak Fusion Reactors, 1982.

VISTA D-T Inertial Fusion GW Thruster –The deuterium-tritium (D-T) reaction is messy. One-half its energy
is high-energy neutrons, one-fourth is x-rays, and one-fourth is charged plasma debris. The conical shape of the
VISTA spacecraft allows it to avoid most of the neutrons and x-rays, while redirecting the charged component with
a 12 Tesla “warm” magnet. Consequently, VISTA uses only 9% of the fusion output for propulsion, and an equal
amount for power generation. The gain (assuming advanced fast igniter lasers) is 600. Throttling is accomplished
by varying the target firing rate between 0 and 30 Hz. Variable exhaust velocity is also available by varying the
amount of hydrogen propellant enclosed in each hohlraum target pellet. Both the inside and outside of the cone
provides radiator area rejecting 760 MW
th. The magnet shields at 140 tons constitute most of the engine mass.
–C.D. Orth, G. Klein, J. Sercel, N. Hoffman, K. Murray, F. Chang-Diaz, VISTA - A Vehicle for Interplanetary Space Transport Applica-
tions Powered By Inertial Confinement Fusion, 2003.

Zubrin-GDM TW Thruster –A hybrid fusion-fission rocket uses D-T fusion as a neutron source to initiate fission
in a blanket of uranium salt water surrounding the long narrow fusion core. The fusion geometry is a gas dynamic
mirror (GDM), which generates electricity on one end and thrust on the other. The Q for fusion is 2.9, using neutral
beams. The Q for Zubrin-style continuous fission is about 10, which greatly boosts the thrust. The thermal efficien-
cy is 76%.

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40| HIGH FRONTIER 4 ALL | MODULE 1 - TERAWATT
Copyright © 2020,
Ion Game Design & Sierra Madre Games
Authors: Phil Eklund & Jeffrey Chamberlain
Part of High Frontier 4 All – Core: SMG28-4
Product no: SMG28-4.1

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