[Spaceships] getting into orbit without superscience?

[weby]

Originally Posted by ericbsmith

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.

Well, current ports are huge infrastructure and the population desnities in say europe are high and yet we have a lot of tramp freighters around. Most freight by far is transported by large containerships, but yet the tramp freight exists. I do not see why this would have to be different in the given scenario.