Lead Adventure Forum
Miniatures Adventure => VSF Adventures => Topic started by: OSHIROmodels on August 22, 2018, 10:25:26 AM
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Open discussion gents.
What are people’s preferred/perceived methods of propulsion in the Victorian aether.
Contemporary accounts would be valued as well.
Personally I like the style of the boilers with the reflective mirrors and some sort of shallow dish shape for the engine bit but would be interested to hear other people’s versions (with pictures :D).
cheers
James
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I don't mind boilers - and propellers too - but something a tiny bit different which I like aesthetically (even if it's at the borders of Steampunk, and is more atmospheric than aetheric) are the engines of the Vanships in Last Exile and its successor anime series, with Claudia ore propulsion. Pic below:
(https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/lastexile/images/1/16/Vanship01.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/1000?cb=20110319051952)
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They look interesting. I keep meaning to get The Last Exile but always forget ::)
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Rather like the idea of something that looks like (but obviously isn't actually isn't) a Jacob's Ladder for the visible bits of the engine. Maybe as an array of them like a sailing ship's masts, but with a 360 degree layout, or maybe just a at the stern of the ship.
The Spelljammer fan in me also likes weird hybrid creature/sailing ship designs, but you need some outright magical stuff going on for that to work. Nothing wrong with that, mind you - Victorians had some nutty beliefs about the supernatural and it isn't hard to imagine an alt-past where Tesla and Edison were techno-mages from two violently opposed arcanotech traditions.
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As you know I'm quite partial to the boiler and reflector set . To represent the propultion systems of larger vessels ( regardless of the scale ) But on smaller craft I find it sits less comfortably and looses it plausibility, and starts to feel more 40k Ork than Victorian.
This is model is getting near the lower end of plausible looking boilers for me.
Jim, it's a question that bugged me when I started building this white Elephant,as I wanted to build some sort shuttle craft/ tug. To go with it but a boiler just didn't work(for me.)
As for sources of inspiration I'd recommend. Looking at vintage issues of Popular science magazine started around the mid 1870's (ish),and Popular mechanics circa 1902. Personally I think there's usable ideas for VSF in these right up to the 1940's issues.
The high pressure diving suit is 1910 . For me its ideal for VSF.
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It’s the smaller craft that prompted the question really. Maybe electric motors would be the way for the smaller craft and have them with aetheric propellers :?
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Just stick on some gubbins or some fancy paint and just say it works :D
Remember though if you put on the fancy paint you need railway buffers to help you stop at the other end lol
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Call me old fashioned, but nothing beats the internal combustion engine, the older (and brassier - no pun intended) the better. My "unobtainium" usually revolves around how they managed to find efficient enough helium/whatever else to make their airships remain in the air with impossibly large weights underneath.
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Being Earth based and old fashion all my VSF human avionic technology is airbags, clockwork mechanisms, boilers, steam engines and propellers.
Of course there are some weird elements like Randominium too...but more for storyline and weapons than soaring aloft...
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I wrote a whole thing on solar lanes and system transport if you remember. You should have a copy...
All based on bigger ships though, smaller craft would struggle outside an atmosphere due to the boiler sizes needed. Better with “handvavium” technology.
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You should have a copy...
Should I o_o
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Should I o_o
Yep, it was part of the Sun King set up. I’ll attempt to look for it later.
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Perhaps it's technology that creates an aether field and charges magnetrons up and then fires them through an EMDrive to create reactionless thrust? The EMDrive aether thrusters would be suitably Victorian looking too, big copper thrusters.
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For aether travel I see it more along the lines of cyclers in the form of huge tenders carrying non-aether capable riders attached to them a la Traveller battleriders or like Dune Spacing Guild heighliner transports. The cyclers have the fragile vane-spike handwavium aether field propulsion thingys, extra supplies, cargo, and shared/luxury facilities for the long journey with berths for the non-aether riders. There are a few national ones, many multinational cyclers which run more frequently/regularly and used by everyone, and some commercial (private) ones with only a few dedicated aether warships or exploration vessels. Being neutral ground for the multinational and commercial cyclers, opposing factions riding on the same cycler would make for some intrigue on the voyage but limited by the risk of being blacklisted or sanctioned.
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EM Drive thruster
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Some interesting ideas chaps. Keep 'em coming 8)
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Am enjoying this thread.
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I always thought they should be sails using the solar wind with some type of steam-driven propeller for adjusting direction/decelerating into "port"
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I do like sails on flyers 8)
Always good to have different options as well. Maybe sails would be better for the smaller craft (no need for overly sized boilers etc).
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Sails do give an exotic look, it's a balancing act between visually plausible, and the Victorian feel . Too far one way and you end up with the Cutty Sark bobbing through space.The other way and it ends up looking like a 60's NASA mock up.
I quite like the HG Wells way. Totally ignore plausible science looking bits. Liftwood and paint. No need for engine just blinds.
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Cavorite. You know it makes sense :)
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My Martian Sky Ships are equipped with Ninth Ray Conversion drives for propulsion and liftwood hulls for athmospheric lift capability.
My British Skyship utilizes liftwood and a steam-driven propellor. My German airship uses Zeppelin hydrogen or helium gasbags and steam-drive propellors as they have so far failed to break the British liftwood monopoly.
My still-on-the-drawingboard French Skyship will one day use steam driven helicoptere lifting devices and a steam-driven propellor for propulsion.
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Pijlie, just to be clear, when talking about aether travel, we're usually talking interplanetary.
Aether was the Victorian science 'material' that was in space, and allowed the passage of light waves.
Space 1899, for instance, had something called an aether propeller.
Doug
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Ah. My bad :)
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Frank Reade flyers.
Yes, I know they're properly airships but the look is so iconic. Besides you need those propeller lifters to get into space!
http://timetunnel.bigredhair.com/frankreade/FRposter1web.jpg (http://timetunnel.bigredhair.com/frankreade/FRposter1web.jpg)
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lol
I gave up trying to write "Cavorite" (predictive text wouldn't die on my old phone no matter how many times I screamed at it)
Zebcook.
Sorely tempted to build one.
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Ah. My bad :)
Hardly, more 'your unbounded enthusiasm.' ;)
I dare say, I did not make the original post, and this may have been a worthy case of serendipity. Only James can so declare...
Doug
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I think I would go for gossamer sails.
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"Edison's Conquest of Mars", Garrett P. Serviss's 1898 "sequel" to The War of the Worlds" has a spacecraft ("The Ship of Space") with an electrical "generator" which somehow counters gravity and allows the craft to be propelled, presumably by the solar wind (although this phrase is not used), in the manner of a particle of a comet's tail.