[Spaceships] getting into orbit without superscience?

[RogerBW]

Originally Posted by ericbsmith

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.

And anything which changes that (like being able to drop a "rocket seed" nanotech package which builds a booster from local materials) will probably not support tramp freighters either.