adventures in steampunk space-faring

[marycatelli]

So, if steampunk spaceship are faring from planet to planet -- if the planets are settled (with some world-building assistance of implausible climate by modern science 0:) --

Is everything known?

The 19th century was the era in which the globe was being definitively mapped, but still in the time when large stretches could still be marked terra incognita even if you didn't write "here there be dragons." For these planets to still be unknown stretches --

Well, there are going to have to serious limits in their ability to survey the planets from space. And still more serious ones in their ability to land. Large flat open spaces without severe winds, perhaps. That way everything has to radiate outwards.

Comments

Re: Is everything known

[nodrog]

No, because consider the 800 lb gorilla of space exploration:  Ionizing radiation.  Solar wind, cosmic rays.  If the example of cholera is any guide, an occupational hazard on steamships of the aether will be somewhat like “caisson disease” - people get sick from it, die of it, but no one knows why.  (It doesn't appear contagious.  That's a good thing.)

Plus, go ahead, try to map Venus from orbit with any 19th-century means.

Plus, don't be too sure photography from orbit is any kind of panacea.  The Hồ Chí Minh trail was designed specifically to evade notice by aerial observation, and vast swathes of Central America still show nothing but “bunched broccoli” forest canopy.

Certainly much can be done - finding the source of the Nile would be the work of a quiet afternoon, and as it happens old irrigation canals, roads &c. can be discerned by changes in that bunched broccoli.

But sooner or later, you gotta put boots on the ground.


Update:  Re:  Ability to land - remember the old saying, “You don't need a parachute to skydive - you only need it if you want to do so again.”  You can always land, anywhere!

Re: Is everything known

[marycatelli]

Much depends on how much the steampunk can do that real 19-th century stuff could not. After all -- interplanetary travel!

Re: Is everything known

[nodrog]

Yes, but much is contained in those two words, from Space:1889’s “luminiferous aether” and liftwood, the marvelous Martian tree with antigravitic properties…  all the way up to the real-world “Project Orion,” where a battleship-sized spacecraft is lofted into orbit and propelled thereafter with a succession of kiloton-yield atomic bombs!

The basic assumption of steampunk is steam, that is, 19th-century technology being otherwise unchanged.  No lasers, no HAL 9000 computers.  (And no radio.  Space:1889 posits a solar heliograph in Earth orbit winking Morse code to Mars.)  Ditto no radar.  But wet- and dry-plate photography were well established and would work fine in free-fall, that is looking down from space.

Re: Is everything known

[marycatelli]

the first steampunk had computers. there's a lot of variation

Vacuum Riots!

[nodrog]

Found it found it found it found it


http://literary.erictmarin.com/archives/Issue%2017/rocket.htm

Re: Vacuum Riots!

[marycatelli]

Interesting stuff

Re: Vacuum Riots!

[nodrog]

The two problems I had with that story were 1)  I cannot quite figure out how a “vacuum cannon” would work.  (As to that, if you have materials engineering to handle pressure differences on that scale, compressed air would seem more sensible - and indeed, in India there's a model of car whose engine runs on compressed air!)

2)  Newtonian physics plainly tells you that to take advantage of Earth's rotation you should be as close to the equator as possible and launch eastward, as your launch site is already moving that way at a good clip!  (This is why Cape Canaveral, on Florida's East coast, was chosen.)  To launch westward, towards Belfast and then America, is, like, the worst.  It would be a different story, perhaps, but having the unfortunate pork smack down in Copenhagen and Grimes be headed for Moscow would make more sense.

But it was definitely a ripping yarn!

Re: Vacuum Riots!

[marycatelli]

Happens. Rule of Drama rules.