This seems to be ready, so please have a look:
Space Technology Part I: Launch Vehicles & Space Capsules
"It was going well until it exploded."
-- Scott Manley
Space technology on this Earth is broadly TL6^, with TL(6+1)^ or other Superscience enhancements. The space launch systems of the various nations would be familiar to most people from Homeline: multi-stage, cylindrical or elongated-conical rocket stacks, occasionally with two or more outboard boosters. Internally, they mostly use liquid-fuel rockets with a few that are solid-fueled, mostly in the boosters; the first few BIS launches used clusters of solid-fuel rockets, though, and a few groups still do this, mostly for the first stage only. The Soviets and Italians are known to have more launch failures than average (though the Soviets do a better job of hiding how many than the Italians do). There are a few
very superscience single-stage-to-orbit vehicles, like Dr. Zarkov's rocket, or some flying saucers, but the mad scientists making them are often
quite mad. Flying saucers as the end-stage of a rocket stack are another matter.
The manned space capsules of the various space programmes differ a bit more widely: The BIS rapidly settled on a design with a spherical pressure-vessel for the astronauts to be contained in, with an equipment module on 'top' (and sometimes a second such module on the 'bottom'), containing everything that does not need to be in the re-entry capsule - engines (in a puller configuration), fuel, sensors, weapons, and so forth. The module is often conical for aerodynamic reasons, but may be cylindrical or blocky, with a fairing added for take-off; a smaller module containing the parachutes is often hidden under the main EM. The docking/escape hatch is normally on the side of the capsule; if the equipment module is pressurised, an additional hatch may open into the module, with a docking hatch for the space station on the EM. The BIS has more recently made some use of ovoid or elipsoid crew capsules, and has tended to make the capsules of any shape larger, with some models on the drawing board (planned for the Moon or Mars missions) being big enough to have separate rooms, or being made up of several pressure modules docked together, along with large fuel/propulsion modules. Before re-entry, the outer equipment modules are normally ejected to burn up in the atmosphere, and parachutes are deployed from the small inner EM once the capsule reaches the right altitude, after which the capsule splashes down in the ocean, generally near a RN vessel.
The SS-Raumabschnitt makes use of various designs of cone-shaped capsules with a docking hatch in the nose for those large enough to have one, and a separate escape hatch on the side. Like the British, they have tended toward larger capsules over time. The French use a form of 'flying saucer' (really a flattened cone, mainly intended for better reentries and more internal area) that isn't all that supersciencey, and uses large fairings at launch; one design they have on the drawing boards and artists' conceptions is more lenicular, and would be launched turned on its side to reduce drag. American manned capsules are spaceplanes, the currently-largest being the 30 ft (SM+4) Boeing S-19 Bumblebee. Brazil, the IJN, and Italy use roughly British style spherical capsules for manned missions; the IJA, on the other hand, uses spaceplanes, due to not wanting to be at the IJN's mercy. The Soviets started out using suspiciously-accurate copies of German designs, but in 1937 brought out a likewise-direct copy of an American design, the Consolidated SP6Y Comet (26 ft at the long axis).
The only Martian spacecraft known to Earthfolk are long cylinders with a cone on one end, which serve as both space capsules and landing craft. The conical structure at the 'bottom/front' is equipped with rockets designed to both slow down the craft somewhat, and to bury much of the main body in the ground without damaging the vessel. The crew appear to remain in liquid-filled capsules that seem to provide suspended animation during the journey, as well as further cushioning them from adverse G-forces; it appears that the crew are only awakened after landing, with the vehicle's electronic brain serving as the pilot. The cylinder also contains samples of other Martian life like the Red Weed, stores of Black Smoke (since reverse engineered, and registered as a war crime by the Hague Convention), prefabricated mining equipment and other devices,
advanced portable factories of some sort (many of the vehicles and other equipment used in the invasion appear to have been partially or totally built on Earth), and an atomic matter pile for power. In several cylinders, the pile was forced to melt down by the operators before they died (which has resulted in a number of environmental hazards that are still being studied), but in others, it was shut down by built-in safety systems when the operators died or were captured before they could activate the self-destruct. Many items found within are poorly understood or not understood at all, and quite a few were destroyed in the Martians' death throes, or by vengeful and ignorant Earthmen in the immediate aftermath. The work to understand them goes on, however.
Thoughts?