[Space] Technobabble for my new campaign.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by cvannrederode

With hyperdrive widespread, long in-system travel isn't as big a deal. Even with a minimum time in hyperspace of 10 seconds, that's 23 AU and change. Longer trips can be done by using the star drive to go out about 100 AU or so, let if reset, and shunt back to where you want to be. (Military ships carry multiple star drive systems to quicken turn around to just the plotting time...)

So it comes down to how long it takes a ship to get to "flat space"...100 planetary radii is 400,000 miles for the earth...not too long even at 0.1 g if you don't worry about slowing down when you get there.

You may want to consider things other than radii for space flatness. A simplistic thing would be the locally-felt real gravity.

Also, do consider the troubles of lifting off with a mere 0.1g drive. Works with winged launch, but not with wingless. And you can't meaningfully use wings for planets with a trace atmosphere, and your runway requirements will be huge with low thrust/low air density in general.