[Spaceships] getting into orbit without superscience?

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by ericbsmith

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.

Originally Posted by RogerBW

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.

Eh, there's multiple ways around that.

Biggest, of course, is that tramp freighters aren't about the surface-to-orbit market. So long as they can get cargoes it doesn't matter whether they're delivered by a private beanstalk, a government beanstalk, a massive disposable rocket industry, or SSTO ship's boats. A corporate dominated launch industry doesn't threaten them unless the corporate launchers refuse to provide service.

Secondly, of course, there's no reason STO has to be corporate. It probably has to be big if space trade is going to be a thing, but government-owned is certainly an option. Especially for beanstalk, launch loop, and similar systems where the fixed infrastructure is concentrated in a single collossal component.


Tangentially, you don't need superscience to be able to operate SSTOs that require little ground-side support. SS2 p19's NTR Condor Space Plane demonstrates that. It wants an airfield and a supply of hydrogen, which could be managed by a TL6 surface society! Of course it'll take a lot of flights if you're trying to ferry up a full load for an Outlander freighter (p5-6) using those.