Posts tagged space
Let's say we have a society that for some reason (a MacGuffin, Unobtanium, Handwavium, whatever) have found a way to travel off the earth without having to fight gravity along the way. They can tra...
The setting: Very distant future, Earth is long gone/forgotten/just not around anymore. Humanity, whatever it may consist of (people, AI, something in-between) inhabits a single vast generation shi...
Hypothetical: Hundreds of years into the future. Humanity needs to travel to exoplanets quickly. I'm aiming for hard sci-fi. What kind of propulsion can travel people at 0.1 - 0.9 lightspeed? Is i...
If all of the crew and passengers of an interstellar craft were in suspended animation except prior to Earth departure and just before destination arrival, would they need artificial gravity (throu...
This is the first part of a series of questions I'll ask about a self-sustaining colonization ship. I'll keep editing this post as things unfold. Part II - Landing Edit 1: Added two movie referen...
Much of the struggle with terrestrial fusion power seems to be with keeping the ultra-hot plasma contained. In a classic Tokamak configuration, magnets using massive amounts of power, suspend the p...
Inspired by this question, what would the pressure stabilize at over tens of thousands of years (at the moon's centre, surface, and any other interesting points) if you created a structurally stabl...
I've just bought myself a shiny new spaceship equipped with the latest in FTL warp technology, the only catch is the fuel bill, this thing drinks the stuff like it's going out of fashion (still, it...
I'm writing a colony story, and I want my ship to colonise Ross128b, which is 11 light years away from Earth. I need the characters to be alive when they get there, but it's okay if they've aged tw...
Let's say that suddenly NASA needs my characters, a party of scientists without prior experience, to go to space with a Space Shuttle-like spacecraft for a seven days mission. They only need to do...
My protagonist is in a sticky situation: floating in space (fortunately in a spacesuit) and about to be attacked by an alien avatar made from smart matter; tiny specks of dust which share a distrib...
I have an idea that the seas of a world are red, not blue. However, the world should also be the birthplace of an intelligent alien species. Would it be scientifically possible to have a world with...
Is it possible for a planet in our part of the galaxy to have a night without stars? I'm looking for some kind of natural phenomena that would hide the stars, but allow the sun to rise and fall as...
Let's assume we have a working FTL drive and thus interstellar travel is possible, either by traveling at very high speeds or by instant teleportation (the two main subtypes of FTL drives in sci-fi...
I'm writing a story in which a civilization previously capable of (firmly technobabble-based) FTL travel has become stranded, orbiting an isolated star with no rocky planets. (There was a planet, b...
I am writing a theory for a game that is in an apocalypse. An asteroid is heading for earth and will crash into the earth regardless in this theory. It is 1km in size but due to the YORP effect it ...
Assuming a sci-fi style nebula, like the thick clouds seen in Star Trek, extending several light years and hosting star systems inside, one of which gave rise to intelligent life up to current huma...
This is the second part of a series of questions I'll ask about a self-sustaining colonization ship. I'll keep editing this post as things unfold. If you can, check out the other questions of this...
So one of the ideas I've come up with for system to system travel, in the early colony stage of my world, is using fuel boosters to start the journey and then to reach the required speed for the co...
In the South Galaxy, the overwhelming majority of life lives on planets, breathes air, and is carbon-based. All sentient life is carbon-based. However, in the vast reaches of space, there are some ...
I've been thinking of a planet where the day/night cycle is way off to where there 30-35 hour long night period, while there are only near 8-4 hours of daylight. The local biological environment is...
So I am building a world but need help with its day/night cycle and the science to make it work. The planet has a 32 hours day cycle, however there is only 10 hours of light a day. This planet is...
This is a follow up to a previous question that I thought should be a new question instead of just discussing in the comments of that one. This is an idea for a space station on the surface of ...
With the Kuiper Belt being composed of well over 100 million objects - some grand, some insignificant - is it possible to hide an asteroid base from enemy sensors within its confines, combined with...
I've already considered that they may file their horns down, but keeping in mind that their horns gradually regrow, it is an inconvenient solution. This is what their horns typically look like: ...
I am currently creating a Spacefaring Race that regularly travels between planetary systems in order to harvest resources, but due to the fact that the conditions required for them to Breed are fai...
Let's say that I've developed a new engine that can accelerate at 1G continuously. Within about a year, I'm nearing the speed of light. Naturally, I recognize the danger of collisions with gas and ...
My main antagonist is an infant Great One that's been imprisoned below the Moon's surface and I want its influence and physical form to have a weakness to direct sunlight which, I think, gives me a...
Is it possible for an artificial satellite (in this case, an unmanned communications platform) to maintain a stable orbit directly around the barycenter of a Binary Star system, as in well inside t...
In my world I would like to create a pit on the Moon filled with air. How deep would the pit need to be to get 1 ATM of pressure Could the pit maintain the air or would it be lost to space? If i...
I have a scenario where a spaceship has been badly damaged and now the normal vibrations of the power supply are becoming amplified through the damaged hull, and threatening to tear the ship apart....
As the title says. I need to have at least 3-5 habitable Earth-gravity worlds (preferably with atmosphere, nitrogen oxygen) as many smaller, lifeless moons as possible, and a planetary ring. (i.e. ...
We know that Gor, or Counter-Earth, is not stable in a long-term sense. Let's handwave that away, or assume that we are dealing with a temporary span of time in which the instability is immaterial....
Im trying to find the equation to the the size of the resulting crater created by meteor strike when I have the mass, volume, diameter, density, velocity and kinetic energy of the meteor Can an...
In the wake of this, my answer to this question about where to put a Dyson Sphere an apparent issue came up. And it needs some good resolution: What are we going to do with all that heat the syste...
Key setting elements and questions: In this scenario, A large majority of the population: Supports spending more money on religion than on the space colonization program. They are middle class:...
If you take all of earth's food and cuisines, which ones would be the mostly logically adapted to be made and eaten in a microgravity-freefall environment within the following constraints. Let's a...
Based on this question about an impossible barbell planet, how hot would the bar be if it extended from halfway in the Earth's mantle to an altitude of 2r of Earth's radius? The diameter of the bar...
In the future, personal Cryonics (in the hope of cure or immortality on re-awakening)) have become enormously popular. However there is a storage problem. There just isn't enough space for all the ...
Some astronauts have just arrived in Mars orbit! They're fixing to set up a small refueling station/outpost on Deimos. One problem, how might they keep their small habitat and associated structures...
We are living on this big lump of rock called the Earth, drifting ever so continuously through space. Now imagine a tiny but immovable object in space, a single atom of 'unexplanium', locked in sp...
Judging by the majority of answers from this question: What would be a logical reason to explain space based families having more children than an earth based one the spacers are going to have lots...
Would it be possible for there to be an almost torchship (essentially a very, very weak one) which could fly almost brachistochrone trajectories? So instead of a full on brachistochrone, where you ...
In the distant future, space-stations use centrifugal force to emulate gravity, effectively being a cylinder (or something similar like a wheel) spinning around a central axis at high speeds. A sp...
So I am writing a Sci-Fi novel where humans are currently spread out over 440 Star systems ( ~ 2000 Light years). There has been several breakthroughs in Automation technology and all manual labor ...
I'm working on a simulator-type game which I want to be at least internally consistent, and which I'd like to work as close to reality as possible. That being said, it's set in space, which means t...
This is something that was just offhandedly mentioned in a Sci-Fi book I read once and as I am now writing one myself I thought I might use it. The scenario is that I have a ship approaching a wa...
I have been working on a sci-fi story for a little while now, and have recently discovered that I made a very big error in assuming the position of Eris. The main issue is that I had forgotten to t...
Premise I envisage a world of would-be navigators with roughly Bronze Age technology, sailing on ships to explore their planet. In contrast to our history of navigation where we "cracked the code"...
There are many questions on WBSE that cover most aspects of building a planetary system. (some examples below): Creating a realistic world(s) map - planetary systems How many planets should I ha...
