[TML] Low tech space travel

[Richard Aiken]

On 8/24/07, Tod Glenn <webmaster at travellercentral.com> wrote:
>
> How would you provide power to the drive shafts for the jump drive?
> I am leaning towards electric motors, but it feels like cheating.
>
> Assuming a Victorian/Edwardian tech level, how would you process
> atmosphere for the week or more to get to the next star?


Have you read the Space: 1889 rules?  Spaceships in that game used a solar
boiler - a big mirror focusing sunlight on a steel water tank - to provide
steam for the steam engine powering it's ether drive.  Of course, it also
wasn't an incredibly realistic setting (liftwood, anyone?) so I'm not sure
if this would actually work.

Note that the game also allowed the invention of nuclear power, a la the
Nautilus of Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea.  For a more realistic
version of this, I don't see any reason why you couldn't use an NPU to
generate heat for your steam engine or electric power directly, though you
might have to let the elements needed get discovered a bit earlier.

Do you have GURPS Steampunk, perchance?  Lots of interesting things in that
book for what you are aiming at.

-- 
Richard Aiken

"Never insult anyone by accident."  Robert A. Heinlein