[Space] Steampunk Firefly Idea

[Gold & Appel Inc]

More importantly, if we're doing some variation on Firefly here, Chinese stuff is everywhere in the series (except the ethnicities of the main cast), while Japanese stuff is nowhere to be seen.

If this is supposed to be steampunkish, I'd personally dispense with TL7 trappings entirely, use some kind of TL 6+2 handwavium to achieve escape velocity, and then just use steam-based propulsion for maneuvering in vacuum. Whichever PC is the "Big Guy" can have the official job title of Coal Shoveler on a spaceship.

[Propjock]

Originally Posted by Gold & Appel Inc

If this is supposed to be steampunkish, I'd personally dispense with TL7 trappings entirely, use some kind of TL 6+2 handwavium to achieve escape velocity, and then just use steam-based propulsion for maneuvering in vacuum. Whichever PC is the "Big Guy" can have the official job title of Coal Shoveler on a spaceship.

Agree. GURPS Steampunk also mentions space travel in the form of ether/reactionless drives.

[CeeDub]

Don't forget Russia! Armored Bears!

[scc]

The comparison to Firefly is more to do with the nature of the 'Verse then anything. As for China, they weren't a Great Power

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Propjock

Agree. GURPS Steampunk also mentions space travel in the form of ether/reactionless drives.

Also, the apes of TL7 space travel is the Saturn 5 rocket. That's just 3 men and a minimal amount of supplies. hardly colonization stuff.

Lower gravity on the world launching the thing will only go so far. That probably has less effect on the Delta-V required than you might hope for.

One the other end, a breathable atmosphere and higher than lunar gravity does seriously mess with the design of what you're replacing the Lunar module with.

I'd say almost be definition technology that enabled colonization in this scenario would have to be TL9 if there's no superscience involved.

So you want superscience. The Skylark of Space is probably the most accessible source of in-period technobabble but there were other stories of Emergent Superscience from the TL6. Verne might just miss the right dates but H.G. Wells is in the first third of it. Edgar Rice Burroughs was just a little later.

[scc]

I've built surface to orbit spaceplane, 23.2 tons cargo, 64.5 tons Hydrogran-Oxygen fuel, $51,600 to refuel, interface rates of $2,224.137931 per ton, or under $1.20 per pound, or $2.40 after putting in a generous allowance for other costs, very cheap. Trans-Lunar shipping costs are probably about the same, so a shipper being charged $5 per pound and charging $10 per pound is probably the prices for moving goods

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by scc

I've built surface to orbit spaceplane, 23.2 tons cargo, 64.5 tons Hydrogran-Oxygen fuel, $51,600 to refuel, interface rates of $2,224.137931 per ton, or under $1.20 per pound, or $2.40 after putting in a generous allowance for other costs, very cheap. Trans-Lunar shipping costs are probably about the same, so a shipper being charged $5 per pound and charging $10 per pound is probably the prices for moving goods

How do the astronauts get _back_ from the new moon they visit?. There is very unlikely to be a long, smooth runway for any spaceplane you brought up in pieces and attached to a trans-lunar tug.

So no safe landing an no take-off afterwards.

[scc]

Swap out one of the cargo holds for a soft landing system? But the point I'm aiming for will probably be 50 years AFTER the establishment of the first trans-lunar colony, making it a moot issue for the most part

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by scc

Swap out one of the cargo holds for a soft landing system? But the point I'm aiming for will probably be 50 years AFTER the establishment of the first trans-lunar colony, making it a moot issue for the most part

<shrug> Okay, we won't look at the rocket engineer behind the curtain. I just wanted to point out that you didn't really have viable colonization ability at a hard science TL7.

[Daigoro]

I don't know how far you've progressed with history or anything, but this is what I might do with the idea.

I'd have conjunctions, perhaps with the help of an uninhabitable intermediary moon, that make transfer between the inhabited moon and one of the other moons easier, but only occurring every few decades. This allows for the occasional wave of lower tech colonisation events to have happened in the past, by the setting's mad scientists, religious cults, or now-defunct superpowers (think of Portugal today).

The setting's modern tech allows freer transport between the worlds and so they are just coming to grips with the secret settlements and power bases that were established decades or even centuries ago.