Plausible 19th Century Spacecraft?

Sometimes, the more you read into science, the more you discover the meaninglessness of all the earthly fights among nations.:)

I know it's not helpful, but just some thoughts:

Scientific advances in one discipline is linked to another, and a society's ability to carry out scientific researches depends on the entire industrial capacity of a country.

So, this entire question can be re-phrased into:

With a PoD as early as you want, can you advance the entire Scientific and Industrial capacity of humanity by one century?
 
Assuming that steampunk tech could actually chuck a brick into orbit, how could anyone prove that the brick really got there? Short of better radio technology, which would also assume.... yadayada as posts above.
 
Assuming that steampunk tech could actually chuck a brick into orbit, how could anyone prove that the brick really got there? Short of better radio technology, which would also assume.... yadayada as posts above.

Coat the brick with something reflective, point a really big telescope at it and take pictures.
 
I thing gyroscopes would be a limiting factor.

This. Propulsion and structures were far less problematic than command & control. The A4 (V2) used non-integral aluminium tanks and a fuel turbopump that was derived from a fire-fighting unit. But I can't really think of a control system that could be produced with (even late-) 19th century technology. The tolerances for a purely mechanical gyroscopic system are far beyond the state of the art of the time. An electronic system based on accelerometers is even further out.

Even if somebody comes up with a brillant idea to get around this problem, Polish Eagle quite rightly pointed out the next: materials of the time aren't up to achieving the necessary mass fraction and specific impulse! You can't make your rocket/spacecraft light enough given the limits of your propulsion systems. Even staging gives rapidly diminishing returns ...

The simplest launch system I know of is OTRAG, even that is somewhat beyond 19th century manufacturing technology structurally. Not to mention the CPUs and electromechanical valves to control the thing. ;)
 
The biggest problem is materials science. If you've regressed to 19th century technology, then you don't have the infrastructure base to produce the materials you need to build a spacecraft. Titanium and aluminum are 20th-century metals, to use the most obvious example. You also need to alloy those metals, and develop plastics for things like insulation. And you want at least a rudimentary guidance system. You also want either ceramics or some sort of ablative heat shield for reentry.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who first thought about "how on Earth are those people back then suppose to get aluminum?"
 
I'm glad I'm not the only one who first thought about "how on Earth are those people back then suppose to get aluminum?"

If the rocket is very huge it:
1. could be built from steel in a sea-ship-building factory.
2. could be SSTO reusable.

Examples:
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Bono's designs ( look in http://www.astronautix.com/ )
2. Sea Dragon: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Dragon_(rocket)

In XIXth century they did not built such not because they lacked materials, fuels, physics or finances, BUT because they could see no use of it, neither where to go with it. Ballistic missiles are useless without guidance systems and really powerful bombs.
 
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