[Spaceships] getting into orbit without superscience?

[ericbsmith]

Originally Posted by PTTG

Well, you have a lot of options for orbit without superscience... it's just that few are in Spaceships 1.

The most basic is to make a larger ship that's all fuel tanks and motors with the top third being the actual ship you want to get into space.

Then there's use of aerodynamic shapes, wings, ramjets and so on to provide the inital speed boost and then use rockets for the rest. I think stock SS has all the parts. You'll want the Ram Air Intake option for one of the more powerful drives.

Other options generally require infrastructure. For instance, you're going to want a space gun that can launch you into a suborbital trajectory where you can snag onto a skyhook to get you into space, or some other combination of those.

All of them require infrastructure. Having a booster rocket stage implies a large industrial base on the planet to make and maintain them. While flying into orbit can help, it's basically impossible with a single-stage-to-orbit model, so again you need launch ships to do the initial flying which requires ground support.

And that's the main issue with realistic spaceflight - you can't really have the tramp freighter full of PCs bouncing from backwater planet to backwater planet having fun adventures. Any planet with the industrial base to launch rockets is going to have the rocket industry dominated by large corporations.