AEther

[VonPickles]

So I'm toying with a planet that's steampunkish, that uses AEther, or repulsion for flight and interstellar exploration. Im wondering if anyone has attempted this before or any advice on rules/system

 

[MCEvans]

So I'm toying with a planet that's steampunkish, that uses AEther, or repulsion for flight and interstellar exploration. Im wondering if anyone has attempted this before or any advice on rules/system

Have you looked at "Space 1889"?
If I remember the rules are free from DriveThru or in Challenge 34.

 

[McPerth]

IIRC in challenge 34 there is a good explanation about Eter and Eter propellers, as the basis for Space 1889, but not rules to play with it. Those rules were in the basic game, and in Ironclands an Eter Flyers, again IIRC.

Anyway, it was a great game.

 

[MCEvans]

My bad.
But still worth the look.

 

[Dragoner]

I'd be interested as well, as I have a steampunkish world as well that has a strange mineral named "gravitite" that other worlds are studying.

 

[far-trader]

I recall some SteamTrav discussions... last year? If it wasn't here it might have been on Mongoose Traveller. Too busy to have a good look at the moment, sorry.

 

[leo knight]

Here are a few Space:1889 sites:

Frank Chadwick's site:
http://space1889.blogspot.com/

Heliograph, current publishers:
http://www.heliograph.com/space1889/

Or just Google Space:1889. There are quite a few sites.

A few general steampunk-ish sites:

Victorian Space Age:
http://www.victorianspaceage.com/

Forgotten Futures. This is a Victorian SF RPG. I find this site a bit frustrating to find things on. Here's the main page:
http://www.forgottenfutures.com/

They have the full text of "A Honeymoon in Space", a period novel of aether travel here:
http://www.forgottenfutures.com/game/ff2/honeymn.htm

And a sourcebook of imaginary science and rules for space travel:
http://www.forgottenfutures.com/game/ff2/worldbk2.htm

I hesitate to link to these, since they are for a non-Traveller RPG, but the content is free.

 

[far-trader]

More links

The thread here I was recalling and the one over on Mongoose within it:

http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/showthread.php?t=24198

 

[McPerth]

My bad.
But still worth the look.

Sure worth it. In fact I saw space 1889 with contempt (due to the sight of flying galions seeming me just fantasy) when I bought Challenge 34 for other articles I was interested in (MT stuff). When I read its article about Space 1889 I changed my mind, and came to like the game.

 

[VonPickles]

Thx for those site listings, I'm a big fan of Forgotten Futures and have several in dead tree format I will check out the challenger article if I can find it. I can see ship design the only hurdle - everything else can be fudged

 

[saundby]

I used to like to read crank science literature for fun, but as I've gotten older I've veered more toward non-crank stuff from times before key discoveries, like radiation, the nature of radiant energy, etc. As well as variant theories like tired light and so on.

My favorite physics book on Ether right now is Matter, Ether, and Motion by Professor A. E. Dolbear. It has a great description of Ether in about 20 pages of direct, layman accessible text near the start of the book. It was published in 1899, so it's in the public domain. I expect it can be found somewhere like Google Books.

Ah, here's an earlier edition:
Matter, Ether, and Motion

One key phrase:

...physicists today quite concur in the belief that what was called at first the luminiferous ether, on account of its function in transmitting light, is the same medium that is concerned in the other phenomena of magnetism, electricity, and gravitation.

The time frame from about 1890 to about 1905 is the key time period to find ether information. It's very interesting. They're trying to figure out how much resistance it presents to the planets as they move in their orbits, whether it has any effect of friction on the surface of the Moon, and so on.