A key feature of the Roselight universe is that the compactness of the planetary system makes interplanetary travel relatively trivial. Although conventional spaceflight technologies are generally still required, the travel times are greatly reduced, making it far more practical for ordinary people to make the journey between worlds.
This ease of access leads naturally (or so I feel) to the construction of sustained (sustainable is another matter!) interworld infrastructure. The keystone of space travel in Roselight is a series of large space stations orbiting Rosa continuously amongst her children. These are cyclers - for the unfamiliar, a type of vehicle which follows an orbit that is resonant with the worlds it intends to connect. An Earth-Mars cycler, for example, follows a relatively quick arc between the two planets, then spends the rest of its orbit coasting while the planets come back into alignment to repeat the process. Although spacecraft visiting the cycler must expend similar ΔV to match its trajectory, the cycler must only be boosted up to speed once. Thus, the visiting spacecraft can be lightweight and spartan, while the cycler itself may grow arbitrarily large and luxurious - they are sometimes called "castles" for this reason.
For continuous service, you might operate many such vehicles on staggered routes such that windows are more frequently available. This is the case in the Rosa system, in which many of these vehicles operate like ocean liners, offering vast accommodations for thousands of passengers at a time, in a variety of comfort levels (depending, of course, on the passenger's socioeconomic class).
We see a lot of immigration happening between worlds - primarily poorer citizens seeking economic opportunities beyond their homeworld, or the more well-to-do seeking an idyllic life far from the lands they've known. Additionally people do, of course, just engage in interworld travel frequently to visit relatives, take vacations, and attend events; we first meet Noira when she is on leave from Arcturus Meridian to visit her family on pr'Sefone.
Noira can usually only afford to travel labor class, and even then pretty infrequently - the shipping lines continue to make enormous profits, justified by a rather dated notion of spaceflight as a luxury in itself. These conditions are densely-packed and poorly-furnished, with few amenities - though the voyages are only a few days long, which mitigates the unpleasant conditions somewhat. By comparison, cabin class is considerably more plush: fewer, larger cabins, with access to grand internal promenades and galleries - as well as casino-like amenities carefully tuned to maximize the financial value extracted from their patrons. Though ASMC won't pay for her travel independently (it comes out of her own pocket!), Noira earns considerably more in the engineering division, and so she's able to save up for a shared cabin for herself and her friends to visit the Worlds Fair.
The ultimate luxury offered by these liners is one yet unseen even in modern spaceflight: gravity. The liners themselves resemble the large Earth ocean liners of old, suspended from a network of kilometers-long cables tethered to heavy slag counterweights. By rotating the entire system end-over-end like a bolas, centrifugal forces simulate acceleration towards the floor of the inhabited section.
(Hmm, I may need to start using Imgur or something to host images, since blogger is pretty bad at it.)Embarking & disembarking, meanwhile, is quite an adventure in itself. Reaching the cyclers, as mentioned, requires equivalent ΔV to making the interplanetary transfer alone. The most frequent architecture involves air-launched SSTO tenders that power their way up to escape velocity, running down the liners as they go sailing by. This is a relatively high-g maneuver, lasting somewhat longer than the usual uphill push into orbit, and culminating in a rendezvous of just a few hours at most. The nature of launch windows with available means several tenders will launch within a few seconds of each other, a hypersonic procession trailing the liners.
Since the stations can't afford a de-spin for boarding, the tenders approach along a tangent line, seeking to instantaneously match the velocity of the hull and interface with a long dynamic trapeze, like an exaggerated version of those used by airships to deploy and retrieve parasite fighters in the 1930s. These long mechanical arms hook onto dorsal load points and swing the tenders around, drawing them up into bays in the underside of the liners' hulls. Once berthed, crew and passengers alike transfer aboard the liner for their voyage.
Disembarkment is largely the reverse process. Since the tenders are designed for aerodynamic capture at their destinations, they need only to depart their host liners and adjust their trajectories to intercept the atmosphere. This act uniquely leverages the rotation of the liners: with their tangent lines aligned with the impulse required, the same trapeze can act to slingshot tenders towards their destination. The ΔV imparted in this way is relatively constant, so the departure time is the key parameter to adjust - though tenders by this point will retain residual propellant for fine-tuning their approach.
I have naught but a few sketches demonstrating this most recent iteration of the cycler design, though they offer a pleasant resemblance to classic Gilded Age ocean liners already. I do have some artwork of an older concept that lacked artificial gravity, giving it a more traditional spaceship appearance. Though function dictates the new design, I will strive to incorporate these aesthetics as I move forward!
We can see here that the trapeze for carrying tenders underneath was already present in an earlier design, as were another form of the large golden solar sails. The stepped decks and sloping walls are features I will seek definitely include, alongside the overall color scheme. It's honestly one of the best examples of the weird blend of steampunk, art deco, and sci/fantasy look I'm going for in this setting. Perhaps I'll redo that dramatic painting sometime!
