What are aspects to your world that would affect how your species approaches spaceflight?
What are aspects to your world that would affect how your species approaches spaceflight?
For instance, a species with little to no navigable oceans or a fully aquatic species may find it difficult to develop the cultural skills necessary to run a ship because there isn't a tradition of operating a ship the same way there is for humans.
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If a species is arboreal (like my yinrih) many may choose to live permanently in microgravity to allow them to use all of those prehensile extremities for prehending instead of walking.
Also consider the reasons why a species pursued spaceflight in the first place. Humans were using it as a show of power. Rockets are just fancy missiles, after all. The yinrih pursued it for religious reasons, meaning that people who died while furthering that goal are venerated as literal martyrs.
Why would the yinrih pursue rocketry for religious reasons? Was there a drive to levitate themselves literally?
Thus said the Uncreated Light:
Consider, little ones, the Tree-dwellers[^1], the very clay from which I sculpted your form. They move about, seek refuge, nourish themselves, and beget young according to the passions which I have kindled within them. Yet do they gain any merit thereby? By no means! For they do so without understanding. They paint the leaves, yet they cannot write a single glyph[^2]. They call out to one another, yet they cannot chant a single syllable. But to you, little ones, to you alone among the myriads of creatures walking upon the land and swimming beneath the waves and soaring upon the wind of this earth, I have granted the light of understanding[^3]. Now gaze, little ones, upon the countless stars bedewing the heavens. Think ye that I have wrought them for no purpose? Nay, each one shines forth my love. Know ye that there are others like yourselves, in whom I have kindled the fire of understanding. Their bone is not of your bone, their flesh is not of your flesh, yet their souls are like unto your own. search among these stars for other minds, that together ye might meditate upon the mysteries of this dear little creation[^4]. Listen to them for other voices, that they might join you in song. Seek among them other hearts, and offer to them your friendship. Go, dearest little ones, spread your light to the stars, and ye shall become brighter yourselves.
[^1]: A nonsapient species of vulpithecin closely related to the yinrih [^2]: Refers to the yinrih's primordial written language, developed from a scent-marking behavior simultaneously with a spoken language. As such, the yinrih have a written history that stretches back to the dawn of sapience in their species, roughly contemporaneous with the advent of behavioral modernity in humans on Earth. [^3]: "The fire of understanding", or the faculties of language and symbolic thought [^4]: to meditate on the mysteries of Creation, or to undertake scientific research, is regarded as an act of worship, and the accrual of knowledge plays an important role in Claravian eschatology.
So when do they make their first hot air balloon?
Pre-space age yinrih history is somewhat messy right now, but current lore has them achieving spaceflight 5 millennia after achieving sapience. Given their much longer lifespans (~723 Earth years) this would be like humans going from crudely knapped flint hand axes to orbital flight in 500 years. So they're in space before humans leave Africa. My (admittedly weak) justification for this is that they start the game with writing unlocked, there's no ice age to impede the invention of agriculture, and religious zeal is one powerful motivator.
I don't have any specific dates for hot air balloons, although it is the first thing they mess around with. I do have them playing with Jules-Verne-esque manned projectiles around the year 1406 AK (about 2000 Earth years after the first evidence of written language). This begins a period marked by high casualty rates among research monks and their lay assistants. These brave souls are known as the Cannonized [sic] Martyrs.