Imbuemental

A lifelong antagonist of the ghastly US government's compulsory public education system since being forcibly subjected to it at age six, I've been tinkering with better ways for people to learn specific subject matter than being lectured at and then having to regurgitate lecture material during totally wasteful testing sessions. It finally occured to me that human beings don't need any new way to learn, having been born with a most powerful learning machine fully aware from birth of the best way to learn anything: through play. Unregulated, obsession-fueled play sparked by boundless interest in anything and everything going on.

Immersing myself in play as a child to the exclusion of everything else going on in the world within my sensory realm always resulted in deep, cathartic learning experiences no public school's staid, stale curriculum ever came close to competing with. Play is what I now think of as imbuemental learning because when learning through play, I am becoming saturated through experiences of whatever subject matter I am playing at to master, becoming absolutely infused with it all to degrees of both emotional and logical ideation investment in every way my mind desires. And so, I am delving into being imbumentalist at all times in life.

I have always wanted to learn astrophysics but attempts to do so via textbooks and workbooks and lectures and such have bored me to the point of aversion. Then I began to think of it as a computer game and started designing the game as a pastime activity, in play.

Thus, the game SPACECHASE is emerging as conceptualization progresses with the help of AI.

To minimize the "Joule-per-Kilogram" tax on your kidneys, we need to master the art of the Passive Gravity Assist. In SPACECHASE, fuel is life, and your ship's structural integrity is a finite resource that Vesper (your astro-playmate) finds hilarious to watch you squander.

Gametization: The "Slingshot-for-Profit" Circuit

Objective: Depart Lunar Orbit and reach a High-Mars Intercept using less than 0.5 km/s of active ∆v.

Incentive: Every gram of propellant saved is a gram of Refined Bio-Juice you can sell on the Ceres Black Market.

1. The Mechanics: Kinetic Energy Exchange

A gravitational slingshot isn't just "turning" around a planet. You are effectively "stealing" a tiny fraction of the planet's orbital momentum.

The Math: If you approach a planet moving at velocity v with an orbital velocity U, and you swing behind it, your exit velocity Vout can reach: Vout = v+2U

2. The "Wear-and-Tear" Variables

In this exercise, Vesper tracks three specific "Cost Centers" that eat into your profit margin:

• Tidal Stress (Vehicle Wear): If you dip too close to the planet's Roche Limit to get a "sharper" turn, the gravitational gradient (dg/dr) will cause hull micro-fractures.

• G-Load (Pilot Wear): High-speed periapsis passes turn your internal organs into lead. If you pass out, you can't trim the engines for the exit burn.

• Boil-off (Fuel Cost): Using active thrusters during the swing-by is "expensive" math. A pure ballistic trajectory is 100% profit.

  
  

3. Vesper's "Efficiency" Clueage

Vesper: (Flicking a forked tongue, the actinic tips pulsing blue as he leans over your shoulder) "Look at you, clutching that throttle like it's a security blanket. You're addicted to 'pushing.' But the universe is a lazy place, Pilot. Why burn juice when the Earth is willing to throw you toward Mars for free?"

Vesper: "It's like your human concept of 'social climbing.' You find a high-attractor individual, orbit their influence until you've gained enough momentum, and then exit their life before they notice you've stolen their 'kinetic social capital.' It's perfectly natural. It's only 'unethical' if you miss the intercept and end up drifting into the sun–then it's just a bad investment."