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hey, all. ive been thinking about this a bit lately because of a sci-fi book that i plan to write, which takes place about a thousand years from now and takes place in a kind of interstellar economic community of which humans become a part and interact with alien races

anyway, to try to come up with ideas for what some other ways that humans or aliens could reach space on a regular basis, what do you all think would be some interesting ways for vessels to leave a planet's atmosphere? human plausibility doesnt necessarily have to be taken into account, but it would be appreciated ;) this discussion is both for alternative methods of entering space which could have been in history and what could be possible in the future; i just though that the post-1900 forum would be the best fit for this

anyway, some ideas that i personally had would be that personal spacecraft based on the concept of VTOLs become relatively commonplace, at least for humans, as well as the traditional rocket-powered departures from planets that we all know about. for completely alternative and not-necessarily-plausible-in-any-way-shape-or-form methods, a couple other ideas i had were:

  • gigantic elevators which simply lift skyscraper-sized "vessels" out of the atmosphere, at which point smaller craft take people and goods on and off the elevator before it descends again to drop them off on the surface of the planet. the basic concept of space elevators has been explored before, but one problem i always imagined with it was debris in orbit around a planet, as well as out-of-control vehicles and asteroids. a solution that i thought up to this is that were could be round-the-clock turrets, automated or otherwise, which detect objects that are coming dangerously close to the elevator and destroy them
  • based on an old concept i heard of which was originally from the victorian era, gigantic cannons which, in essence, just fire a vessel (in the original victorian concept, it was very steam-punkish and involved airships) out of the atmosphere, which would then right itself in space and move on to its destination. the only problem that i can imagine with this is re-entry. in this case, i imagine that the vessels would be sphere-shaped much like cannonballs
anyone else have any thoughts and ideas?
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