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The arrival: two stars touching at the centre, a station on its orbit round them, your ship far out with its dotted course, and the pair's light curve along the bottom The cruise at 0.998 of light speed: the sky crowded ahead, the route map with the NGP cloud behind you, the magsail braking, and the other ship last heard ten light-years behind

RENDEZVOUS
AT 44i BOO

a ramjet race to a real star · in development

Two ships leave Sol for 44 Bootis, a real triple star 40.8 light-years away whose two inner stars orbit so close that they touch. The other one left first. Nothing overtakes near the speed of light, so the race is decided at the end: who gets there and slows to a stop first.

Your drive is a Bussard ramjet, which scoops the gas between the stars for fuel. Dense gas is fuel while you are slow and dust and drag once you are fast, so the clouds on the way are the game. The gas is the real local medium, the stars are the real sky, aberrated and Doppler-shifted as you speed up, and you only ever see the other ship where its light says it was.

// on the way //

Early in the cruise at 0.993 of light speed, gamma 8: the stars bunching toward 44i Boo, the NGP cloud ahead on the route map, and messages from the other ship sent years ago
gamma 8, and the stars crowding ahead
The end of a winning race: you arrived first, two months ahead, after 43.4 years by Earth's clock and 7.95 aboard; they spent 9.91 years aboard
43 years on Earth, 8 aboard, two months ahead

// where to play //

BROWSER
a prototype for now, with the cruise and the docking playable as separate pieces and not yet joined. IN DEVELOPMENT

// built with //

adenosinebrowser · JavaScript

// credits //

game by magmacrunch media

title from the Texas Hold'Em Lava Dome song, on Pompous Fanfare for All Occasions

distance Hipparcos 2007 (van Leeuwen); gas Redfield and Linsky 2008, with the clouds' shapes invented and marked so; sky the Yale Bright Star Catalogue