How real astronomy shapes Elite’s galaxy

PC Gamer talks to Elite Dangerous creator David Braben about the way Frontier’s simulated galaxy reflects our own

In February 2017, NASA announced that the TRAPPIST-1 system—located a mere 229 trillion miles from Earth—contains seven terrestrial planets, three of which are in the so-called Goldilocks zone. Almost 4,000 exoplanets have been detected by astronomers to date, but the large number of Earth-sized planets in this particular system makes the discovery special. When I heard about it, my immediate thought was: I want to go there in Elite Dangerous. Frontier has reacted to real-world astronomy discoveries before in its realistic simulation—including updating Pluto to reflect the images taken by the New Horizons probe—and I wondered if TRAPPIST-1 would receive similar treatment. I was delighted to discover that it would.

The system is now in the game waiting to be visited. The perfect excuse to take my Cobra for a spin and do some space tourism, and also to talk to Elite creator and Frontier founder David Braben about the system and its inclusion in the game’s simulated galaxy.

“The tool we use to generate our Milky Way is called Stellar Forge, and it’s evolved from what was in Frontier long ago in terms of predicting how the galaxy works,” he says. “Beyond about 40-45 light years, even Hubble can’t see M-class red dwarf stars. They’re tiny and quite faint, and that’s what TRAPPIST-1 is. It’s right on the edge of what can be seen, even with the best telescopes.”

To create an accurate night sky, Frontier added around 160,000 stars from catalogues, then estimated the rest. “We know the mass is there, even if we can’t see them,” says Braben. “Stellar Forge populates the uncharted space with stars that will fit the available mass. So in the area where TRAPPIST-1 is, which is just on the edge of where we can’t see these fainter stars, the system filled it with a brown dwarf star.”

Brown dwarfs are planets just on the edge of becoming a star. They’re uncommon, but NASA has discovered around 200 of them. Frontier, the 1993 sequel to Elite, even featured them at a time when some people doubted their existence. “Brown dwarfs are where the bottom end of the M-class stars, the M8s and M9s, are,” says Braben, “An M8 star is just bright enough to be seen, and that’s what the star in the TRAPPIST-1 system is.”

close call

I ask Braben if the Stellar Forge was developed in collaboration with scientists. It seems incredible that it managed to predict, with some degree of accuracy, the