Opening the High Frontier: Our Future in Space, is a 2016 book by Eagle Sarmont that describes a multi-path road map for the building of a launch system that will make Earth to orbit, and Earth orbit to escape velocity spaceflight as affordable as commercial aviation. It starts with a combination launch system that consists of up to four different launch technologies that can be built using existing materials and technology. Working together, these launch technologies reduce the propellant fraction and increase the payload fraction of the launch vehicle to such a degree that airliner like operations to orbit and beyond become possible. It also describes how this combination launch system can be combined with outpost space stations and deep space spacecraft to make interplanetary spaceflight affordable on a commercial basis. According to the author, it is a transportation system that will make possible an affordable and sustained program of manned space exploration as well as space tourism, orbital industries, commercial interplanetary flights to the Moon, Mars, and asteroids, and the building of large-scale space settlement. Original artwork and a short video of one of the launch technologies that has been proposed for use in the combination launch system are by space artist Nick Stevens. Other publications by the author on this subject: