[Spaceships] getting into orbit without superscience?

[ericbsmith]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

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.

Both of these still require huge infrastructure. Which means highly populated worlds. Which tends to edge out the tramp freighter for large megahaulers, whether they're corporate owned or government run or even independently run is rather beside the point - it removes the plausibility of a small ship owned/run by PCs from being able to hop from system to system.

Beanstalks or the use of orbital transfer stations also reduces the ability of PCs to have planetside adventures, which is a primary trope of the sci-fi genre.

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

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.

NTR's have their own set of problems, namely radiation - both from the reactors contaminating the atmosphere in normal use and from contamination from crashed spacecraft reactor's. Any fission reactor is also going to have limited use by non-governmental agencies, since the risks are too high of them being used as a weapon of some sort.