Title says it all really, I'm creating a future timeline of space travel -inner system travel only for the most part, from now up to a 'Firefly-Serenity/Battlestar Galactica' level of technology.

Running theme here is plausibility. There are a few plot elements -herrings- thrown in to get to where I wanna be with the historical stuff, but the rest I want to flow as logically as possible, and for that I could use everyone's help


currently, it looks something like this:

early 21st century
Space tourism continues to grow, with first a few, and later increasingly more none governmental organizations and companies building, maintaining and flying space planes into low earth orbits (LEO)

Sir Richard Branson (who I think will be a catalyst in all of this) eventually buys up the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Space_Station#End_of_mission after it's run it's course in 2020, puts it in a higher orbit and expands it into the first viable space hotel. This leads the way for more hotels to be built.

A new launch vehicle is designed similar to the shuttle (boosters with a central fuel canister) but the central canister is enlarged, a few more boosters are added, and the central canister once in space isn't discarded but is used in as a module. It would also carry supplies like a standard cargo container.

This works for awhile, but the launches become the bottleneck, so a new delivery system for the canisters is built -a linear accelerated space cannon that can pump ten to fifteen of the same sized container canisters into space in one launch.

Now all cargo goes via the space cannon, drastically lowering the per kilo cost of getting stuff into orbit.

These canisters would be used for everything in space, from static ISS styled station to strung together and looped into a circle for a torus station, with artificial gravity. Or slap an airlock and a few thrusters on it and it becomes an orbiter shuttle (space cabbie)

Real industry (read heavy industry) would evolve around collecting and processing meteors and asteroids for minerals, metals and water. Mainly for the initial production of more modules and interiors, considering that the space cannon would soon become another bottleneck.

Initially space mining would center around collecting from the Terran Lagrangian points -because they'd be the closest and easiest, with a permanent lunar base a result, and later from the asteroid field, making a permanent Martian base a necessity.

up until now ship design was dictated by functionality only. Take some steel struts, stick modules onto it, a few solar panels and a crate sized nuclear reactor all the way on the end of it, and go. You want gravity, spin one of the modules why don't you.

But reactors are expensive and governments get testy when the public has access to weapons grade plutonium so the slower, cheaper method then lays in banks of solar panels that power ion engines, with solar sails complimenting the ion engines. Again, you want gravity, spin something. Slow on the start, but once these things get going, they can go fast.

This would hail the first diaspora into space, fueled by the gold rush of asteroid mining.

'There's gold in them there.. uhh.. heavens? Uhmm, okay. Works for me.'

Now to correlate:
Official government funded ships would be nuclear powered for the most part (faster on the start means over the relative short inner system distances they're just faster) but with their reactors can be spotted millions of miles away. Think the old steam powered ironclads of the 1800's.

Private and corporately owned spaceship would for the most part be ion engine and solar sail powered are nearly undetectable -especially when you cut power to the ion thrusters and rely on sails only. These would be the old nautical sailing ships of the 1700's, a;though I doubt they'd look anything like

http://www.unreel.co.uk/reviews/t/Treasure_Planet/co5.jpg

It would be cool though B)

Can anyone see an age of space pirates flying completely black ships -painted in radar absorbent materials running on sails only it would be an undetectable hole in space, armed with a few twenty millimeter cannons.. you get the picture.

This calls for the formation of an official Terran military space fleet to patrol and secure space lanes. Heavily armed and armored, with big reactors to get them where they have to be in a hurry.



This is where I throw in my first herring.

mid to late 21 century
On Mars the excavate an alien built star gate, ala SG1.

My twist on things: scientist can't get it to work, and if they wanted to reverse engineer it, it would be five miles wide and take thirty six reactors (whatever..) to power because there's no way they could ever reproduce the miniaturization of the components.

Still, it gives vast new insights into graviton physics which is what I need for the next bit.

The first insights move us in the direction of the Serenity/Firefly level of technology, starting with improved fusion reactors that phase out the ion-engine/solar-sail designs, ships start to resemble the Firefly universe designs.

gravity inducers can be built on moons that artificially increase the density of the moons core, increasing gravity on the surface, allowing for moons to trap an atmosphere and also facilitating in creating an artificial Van Allen radiation belt around the moon.

Terraformers away!!

This hails the second diaspora into space as companies seek to create moons for corporate colonization

early 22 century
Around this time some lobbyist gets the go ahead to start the development of star gates built in space for instant travel between the different systems and earth. The first jump gate ala X3 is built between Earth and Mars, with later Earth - Venus and Earth - Mercury being built. All the earth gates are located at the Lagrangian point L1 between Earth and Luna.

Everything inside the Asteroid belt is considered inner-system, aka the core systems. While everything from the Jovian system outward is known as the Outer Rim.

The first inner stellar civil war would ensue with the construction of the Jovian jump gate to earth, which would be seen as an intrusion into the unregulated territories by the overbearing central gov'nmint of the inner systems.

Eventually the Terran space fleet would want to develop a sip based jump gate that allows for single ship jumps ala Battlestar Galactica FTL drives that need to spin up first before discharging.

Well, that's roughly all I have :hehe:

Please feel free to rip it to shreds -nicely though since I'm a delicate.. and dainty. :yes:

I have to go out for a few hours, but I'll be back later to see what you guys think of it. Please remember, even though it's fiction, I'd like it to be plausible fiction.


:thanks:



edit:
wow, I made a thread :blink:

Don't take this the wrong way, but please, please lose the 'space cannon' idea. It just seems to me that if a working accelerator could be made, the stresses along the length of an object in it's fields would make the idea useless as anything but a weapon, designed to throw shapeless junk as projectiles. Just my opinion, no need for you to listen to it.