History Website / AtomicRockets

* SolarSail: Several ship designs utilize these, snd there are several companies who provide laser beams for a quick boost as well.

* FasterThanLightTravel: Discouraged, as are many [[MohsScaleOfScienceFictionHardness soft-SF]] tropes, but Chung's advice if you have to have it is to [[MagicAIsMagicA follow consistent rules]].

* PillarOfLight: Downplayed in the "Laser Launch" portion of "Surface-to-Orbit." Laser beams can be used to provide rocketless spacecraft launch by vaporizing a block of solid fuel or igniting a gas, either a hydrogen/dust mix[[note]] hydrogen is transparent to most laser frequencies, so it needs something to catch the light, as it were-preferrably not the rocket nozzle, though[[/note]], or, with a top-shaped mirror and cowling vents, regular-ass air. This being on the rock-hard end of the Mohs Scale, the beam would be invisible until it hit something (ie, the solid-fuel brick) or passed through a cloud of something (like the aforesaid dust), but Artist's Impressions show a reddish beam.

* LittleGreenMen: Tremlins (Techno-[[GripingAboutGremlins gremlins]]), who look an awful lot like [[VideoGame/KerbalSpaceProgram Kerbals]]. A nicer product of the same genetic engineering program that created Riggers. They come in Tame and Feral varieties. Most of the tame variety are employed by [[SelfInsertFic Wincell Chung's Atomic Rockets Inc]] (a shipbuilding company with an endearingly eccentric CEO in "[=RocketCat=]'s Universe"). Feral Tremlins stow away on commercial ships and pay their way by helping with the ship's upkeep. Tremlins officially don't exist, because if they did, then they'd all have to be killed because there's no transhumanism allowed.
* LivingShip: Rigger ships. They're noted to be signi
ficantly worse than mechanical ones, with the sole exception of the fact that they can heal from damage (that a normal ship wouldn't have gotten at all).

* LittleGreenMen: Tremlins (Techno-[[GripingAboutGremlins gremlins]]), who look an awful lot like [[VideoGame/KerbalSpaceProgram Kerbals]]. A nicer product of the same genetic engineering program that created Riggers. They come in Tame and Feral varieties. Most of the tame variety are employed by [[SelfInsertFic Wincell Chung's Atomic Rockets Inc]] (a shipbuilding company with an endearingly eccentric CEO in "[=RocketCat=]'s Universe"). Feral Tremlins stow away on commercial ships and pay their way by helping with the ship's upkeep. Tremlins officially don't exist, because if they did, then they'd all have to be killed because there's

* ReactionlessDrive: Strongly discouraged, but for less obvious reasons: according to Chung, even a weak reactionless drive is more than capable of [[EarthShatteringKaboom shattering planets]].

* ShoutOut: Atomic Rockets Inc is set up like the [[Literature/CharlieAndTheChocolateFactory Willy Wonka's Chocolate Company]], complete with MadArtist CEO and Oompa-Loompas.

* BeastMan: Rocket Cats are {{Uplifted Animal}}s based on cats, employed to track down Riggers.

* LittleGreenMen: Tremlins (Techno-gremlins), who look an awful lot like Kerbals. A nicer product of the same genetic engineering program that created Riggers.

* BeastMan: Rocket Cats are {{Uplifted Animals}} based on cats, employed to track down Riggers.

** The [[http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacegunconvent.php#id--Laser_Cannon--Non-Bomb-Pumped_Lasers Non-bomb Pumped X-Ray Laser]]. A design for a laser ''1-kilometer'' in diameter that can irradiate an unarmed ship out past Jupiter.

** KineticWeaponsAreJustBetter, because you only have to throw something-anything, really, one example given was [[FoodSlap a can of ravioli]]-very very hard to hurt someone (and how hard they get hit is subject to how fast whatever you're shooting at is moving; the example given was an astronaut tossing the cat's litterbox out the airlock at a shipload of space pirates), whereas lasers and particle beams are inefficient (to the point that if you find a power source capable of making them viable, you might as well chuck the power source at the enemy instead) and subject to blooming after a comparatively short distance. Furthermore, energy weapons have other attendant problems. Lasers will cook your ship with their waste heat. , and [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchrotron_radiation particle accelerators emit radiation in the course of normal operation,]] turning the ship into a flying graveyard. Besides which, if thrown hard enough, mass driver bullets create nuclear reactions on impact anyways.

* JustifiedTrope: Using particle beams allows the author to use other tropes that make sci-fi "fun," like DeflectorShields and radiation-absorbing armor plating.

** KineticWeaponsAreJustBetter, because you only have to throw something-anything, really, one example given was [[FoodSlap a can of ravioli]]-very very hard to hurt someone (and how hard they get hit is subject to how fast whatever you're shooting at is moving; the example given was an astronaut tossing the cat's litterbox out the airlock at a shipload of space pirates), whereas lasers and particle beams are inefficient (to the point that if you find a power source capable of making them viable, you might as well chuck the power source at the enemy instead) and subject to blooming after a comparatively short distance. Furthermore, energy weapons have other attendant problems. Lasers will cook your ship with their waste heat. Besides which, if thrown hard enough, mass driver bullets create nuclear reactions on impact anyways.

** KineticWeaponsAreJustBetter, because you only have to throw something-anything, really, one example given was [[FoodSlap a can of ravioli]]-very very hard to hurt someone (and how hard they get hit is subject to how fast whatever you're shooting at is moving; the example given was an astronaut tossing the cat's litterbox out the airlock at a shipload of space pirates), whereas lasers and particle beams are inefficient (to the point that if you find a power source capable of making them viable, you might as well chuck the power source at the enemy instead) and subject to blooming after a comparatively short distance. Furthermore, energy weapons have other attendant problems. Lasers will cook your ship with their waste heat, and [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchrotron_radiation particle accelerators emit radiation in the course of normal operation,]] turning the ship into a flying graveyard. Besides which, if thrown hard enough, mass driver bullets create nuclear reactions on impact anyways.

** KineticWeaponsAreJustBetter, because you only have to throw something-anything, really, one example given was [[FoodSlap a can of ravioli]]-very very hard to hurt someone (and how hard they get hit is subject to how fast whatever you're shooting at is moving; the example given was an astronaut tossing the cat's litterbox out the airlock at a shipload of space pirates), whereas lasers and particle beams are inefficient (to the point that if you find a power source capable of making them viable, you might as well chuck the power source at the enemy instead) and subject to blooming after a comparatively short distance. Furthermore, energy weapons have other attendant problems. Lasers will cook your ship with their waste heat, and particle beams emit radiation in the course of normal operation, turning the ship into a flying graveyard. Besides which, if thrown hard enough, mass driver bullets create nuclear reactions on impact anyways.

** KineticWeaponsAreJustBetter, because you only have to throw something-anything, really, one example given was [[FoodSlap a can of ravioli]]-very very hard to hurt someone (and how hard they get hit is subject to how fast whatever you're shooting at is moving; the example given was an astronaut tossing the cat's litterbox out the airlock at a shipload of space pirates), whereas lasers and particle beams are inefficient (to the point that if you find a power source capable of making them viable, you might as well chuck the power source at the enemy instead) and subject to blooming after a comparatively short distance. Furthermore, energy weapons have other attendant problems. Lasers will cook your ship with their waste heat. Besides which, if thrown hard enough, mass driver bullets create nuclear reactions on impact anyways.

* JustifiedTrope: Using particle beams (never mind what we said below about turning your ship into space-chernobyl) allows the author to use other tropes that make sci-fi "fun," like DeflectorShields and radiation-absorbing armor plating.

** KineticWeaponsAreJustBetter, because you only have to throw something-anything, really, one example given was [[FoodSlap a can of ravioli]]-very very hard to hurt someone (and how hard they get hit is subject to how fast whatever you're shooting at is moving; the example given was an astronaut tossing the cat's litterbox out the airlock at a shipload of space pirates), whereas lasers and particle beams are inefficient (to the point that if you find a power source capable of making them viable, you might as well chuck the power source at the enemy instead) and subject to blooming after a comparatively short distance. Furthermore, energy weapons have other attendant problems. Lasers will cook your ship with their waste heat, and particle rays will make it [[SicklyGreenGlow glow in the dark]] from bremelsstrung radiation. Besides which, if thrown hard enough, mass driver bullets create nuclear reactions on impact anyways.