[Space] Steampunk Firefly Idea

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

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.

Well, you only need 1 man and 1 woman to start a colony. Apollo sent 24 people to lunar orbit in a span of 4 years, for exploration and political gain, so this setting could maybe up that by an order of magnitude for colonisation purposes, multiplied by the number of countries involved in the space race.

And there's no reason a return flight has to be necessary, which makes it easier than Apollo was. Furthermore, as the moons have atmospheres, landing is just a matter of deploying parachutes, which saves on the delta-V needed. If refuelling is necessary, using local fuel sources might be sufficient depending on the tech. I'm guessing these habitable moons may have trees, crops, coal and oil available.

Another thing to consider is 3 moons around a gas giant is a different set of orbital mechanics than Earth-Moon. First is escaping your moon's gravity, but that puts you in the gas giant's orbit at a certain orbital speed. Transferring to the orbit of another moon is then a matter of gaining or losing orbital velocity, as well as transferring to its orbital plane. I tried to look at moving from Io to Europa as a comparison, but the outer moon has a slower orbital speed so I'm not sure what that means. The difference is about 3 km/s though, compared to Apollo's delta-V budget of 16 km/s, so my feeling is that it's easier in this setting to get around than looking at what the Saturn V could do. Transfers might also be assisted with slingshots from intermediate moons, making interlunar travel even more efficient. A concerted colonisation drive might also set up a low-orbit slingshot tether launcher, similar to what Stephenson describes in Seveneves.

So, I don't see big problems with colonisation in this setting at TL 7 or so, especially with a few dabs of steampunk superscience.