It is 1900, and the great powers of Europe - England, France, Germany, Italy, Austria, Russia, and Turkey - are about to go to war. You control one of them, and now must conquer or be conquered. You need allies, for their assistance now, and to have someone who won't expect a whack over the back of the head later. You need territory, since the size of your military is controlled by the size of your empire. And did I mention that you need allies? As the name suggests, Diplomacy is not a war game. Diplomacy is a people game that happens to be set in a war. Like Chess, there is no element of chance. Unlike Chess, you do not take turns: everyone writes their orders in secret, and all orders are resolved simultaneously. You will have 15 minutes to discuss each move, in public or private, during which time you can say anything you want to. What you say and what orders you write can be exact opposites if you like. In this class, I will go over the rules quickly (they're not too terribly complicated), and then we will start playing as soon as possible. Diplomacy is long. We will probably complete one game in a hectic 5 hour period. It is possible that you will be eliminated before the end. If this happens, I will have some form of alternative entertainment for you, such as a deck of cards, or you can watch the rest of the game, or drop in on some other class. Players of all skill levels are welcome. Ideally we will have one or two people besides myself who have played before. Unfortunately, I can't run more than one game at the same time, so there is a strict limit of 7 students.

With as little math as reasonably possible, I'll start with Newton's laws and then teach as much as I can about rockets of all types (solid fuel, liquid fuel, ion drives, nuclear rockets, photon drives, etc.), space elevators, orbits, interplanetary navigation, reentry, landing, and much more, both real and futuristic. I'll also demonstrate a free space flight simulator that you can use to play with some of these concepts on your computer if you don't just happen to have 100 million dollars sitting around to build a real spaceship with.