The Sun blazes as King, a female Artemis astronaut rules as Queen, and an Apollo astronaut is Jack. Number cards showcase objects from Mercury to Neptune, plus asteroid and Kuiper belts— with the Earth and life itself as the Ace!
This is a work-in-progress… see the update for all the number cards.
SUITS
We wanted to share the design of the suits. Traditionalist card players insist on not messing with the essentials. But as a designer I DO NOT want to just design the backs and the face cards.
So we adapted the suits to look like something existing and we think these are pretty fun while maintaining an “at a glance” recognition of clubs, diamonds, spades, and hearts.
CLUBS
The round balls of the club were an easy link to Soviet era lander and orbiters. Many Soviet craft had round features from Vostok to Venera. Then the bottom looks to us exactly like a thruster!
DIAMONDS
With just a slight skew and some vertical and horizontal spines, a diamond makes a great Light Sail (hat tip to Carl Sagan and The Planetary Society).
SPADES
Looking a bit to me like the Apollo LEM, spades are great match for this historic spacecraft. As with the clubs, the bottom makes for a great thruster.
HEARTS
This one was a challenge. We didn’t want the whole set to be just landers and exotics—so for a flyby/orbiter, New Horizons made the cut. It felt right: a mission with heart (literally), and with the antennae on the reverse side, kind of sells it.
