Posts tagged space
A planet orbiting an Red m-dwarf is tidally locked to its sun. Can it have a satellite which is not tidally locked to the sun? Also can the satellite be tidally locked to the planet ?
I had a dream last night where I was coordinating a space program for an Earth-like planet, with a Moon much like our own. The Moon in the dream had an annoying quirk... The space program kept se...
So this planet enters our solar system from the 'south' pole at 30 kilometers per second. A bit faster than the first Interstellar asteroid ever discovered. Of course, it plunges into the Sun's ph...
In the year 2340 on the planet Ionia, a small colony of about 20,000 people was founded. They were camped out near a small lake between two canyons. The colonist all came from advanced planets like...
What would have to happen for a giant tidal wave to wash its way around an entire planet? The planet can be like earth, with the same size, mass, and everything else. However the wave must start wi...
I'm trying to develop a planet which has somehow developed sentience. By sentience I mean more of an animal intelligence than being a person. So far I've got a couple of ideas: It's actually a sp...
Let's say that at an asteroid mining site, the workers live in a rotating wheel space station that can produce 1g. They use Earth's 24 hour day, and for 8 hours a day, people go to the asteroid to ...
My story is set in the future where space travel is cheap and humanity has colonized Mars and some parts of the asteroid belt. Asteroid colonies can grow their own staple food, but crops that requi...
In the question Wind turbines in space The user asks about using solar wind to rotate turbine like things in order to get energy. Most answers say that using them to get energy would not work beca...
I am writing a hard science fiction story and I want to avoid violating known physics, while still enabling some of the classic mainstays of science fiction under the auspice of sufficiently advanc...
Solar wind density is very low even at Venus it is only 10 or so H+ ions per cm$^3$ but it is moving at a brisk clip of 400 km/s for the slow wind and 750 or so for the fast wind. So (feel free to ...
While once living in Texas, my family and I had the privilege of watching a shuttle re-entry. It was breath-taking. I kid you not, it was like watching the finger of god drawing a line of fire th...
The development of microgravity cuisine is an interesting topic, especially when it comes to transferring simple processes like the successful thermochemical processing of muscle tissues (e.g. barb...
A rare opportunity to send a colony ship off-Earth arose. The target is a somewhat Earth-like planet, with the exception that it was apparently conceived by George Lucas, as it only has one climat...
I've seen many sci-fi scenes that feature a ship underway on a deep space journey. As the ship passes the vantage point we can see engines burning during sub-FTL speeds (The Expanse most recently)....
So I was thinking of using the asteroid Vesta as one of the many asteroid colonies in my future solar system. Is it a viable candidate or is there any "problems" with it. The colony would be made o...
So, I'm writing about the siege of an asteroid base. This asteroid is near the outer edge an asteroid belt at the solar radiation equivalent of Saturn's orbit from its star (although the raw distan...
I'm doing research for a space opera with some hard sci-fi elements. One faction does use radiators (dusty plasma particles held in magnetic fields- which would create the effect of glowing wings o...
The basis of my story revolves around a single survivor escaping a massive colony ship gone critical above the skies of an alien world. After his escape via escape pod, the ship crashes halfway acr...
This is the sister topic to this question: What are the military pros and cons of colonizing a low gravity world vs a high gravity one? The specific question being asked here is, what specific eco...
I've seen this question raised in several different bits of sci fi media. In games its often that low gravity = lower construction cost or some such. But I've begun to wonder, is it really that cut...
I'm creating an Alien race based on Silica-Quartz crystals. While their planet is inhospitable to humans, the tectonically and volcanically active surface has created an abundance of crystalline fo...
I'm trying to figure out a concept for some sort of super-advanced space propulsion system that works by bending spacetime. As I understand it, planets' orbits are actually straight paths, but the...
I have been wracking my brain with this one. I'm writing a story where a number of alien races who are unable to leave their homeworld for one reason or another send probes into space out of sheer ...
One of the worlds I'm creating has a planet-wide communal sentient Biosphere (similar to Avatar). They have evolved the ability to bio-engineer whatever they need, and they have decided to send a p...
The question popped into my mind when I read this. Since we know our scientists are searching for planets which might be capable of supporting life; most of them many light-years away, could the...
Not an astronomer (obviously), but had a curious question. Is it possible to have a planet such that: Its star is right on the edge of a nebula The planet happen to be in the goldilocks zone and ...
The context: There is a population of people surviving on a lunar-analogue's surface, descended from the crew of a crashed spaceship. The rest of their society is not relevant to the question, but...
Let's imagine that people, if they'd want could freely leave Earth to pursue their own destiny on other planets etc. How far could we get assuming following: Assumption No. 1: It's trivial to get ...
Suppose you had a device with the ability to temporarily give your ship tachyonic properties. Would this allow for FTL? How would it affect warfare in a sci fi universe? The reason I am asking thi...
A disclaimer: There is a lot of real Science involved. Imagine a world which is exactly a copy of Earth (at least in terms of power as a species and technology). There is a company that aims to m...
After a long forgotten apocalypse, humanity struggled to rebuild itself, so of course, no one has been in outer space for over half a Millenia. In the early days after the cataclysm, newly formed f...
Can two objects solar powered, equal in weight, traveling on the same orbital path in the opposite directions propel each other to intersect on the opposite side of the Earth in alignment to propel...
I want to build a world where one planet could be visible from the sky, day and night with the naked eye periodically (like Earth's moon behavior) and not everywhere at the same time (since my worl...
So let's say you have a typical Space Whale: 27 km from stem to stern, an ecosystem for many creatures in and of itself. I feel that I don't need to explain this part... just picture an average spa...
I'm trying to figure out whether spacecraft could see explosions occurring on the surface of a planet, or under what conditions they could. To be specific: Given a spacecraft equipped with a dupl...
Premise In the movie Gravity, gravity embodies the persona of the film by virtue of its absence. It purportedly leaves the audience with a sense of fear of the chaotic zero-G environment and likew...
Humans with a level of technology roughly equal to the present day, not more than a decade or two more advanced (e.g. they might have slightly more efficient rockets, or a more miniaturized comm sy...
I've been trying to create a water planet with certain aspects. I wanted it to have a breathable atmosphere and to be a microgravity environment. I'm developing humanoid characters that can breathe...
I have a binary star system and have come up with some stats for it. My primary star is an F-type, with a mass of 1.3 sols and a luminosity of 2.197 sols. My secondary star is a K-type, with a mas...
Explorers are in a spacecraft located 9 AU from a planet. Is it possible to detect fairly small objects (i.e. space stations, artificial satellites, etc., both powered and unpowered) using some sor...
I read somewhere that the lowest depth for a sustainable underwater habitat is estimated to be three-hundred meters. Any lower and the pressure becomes too great for structures that are currently w...
Suppose NASA, SpaceX or any other aerospace company has managed to build a technology that allows them to fire a rocket to the moon, from "space". Basically, they have created a huge weather balloo...
So I'm working on a story that at its groundwork has a lot of sciency things, and then has a lot of unsciency things attached to it. The story has an FTL drive which is the good old "fold space, pu...
I'm writing a game script at the moment that involves the protagonist exploring various planets in several solar systems. The character starts the game with nothing to their name, but I want them t...
Assume that you are in an alien star system. Your ship is currently being hit by a phenomenon called solar overflow, which messes up your electronics and can kill you without good shielding. It is ...
[![enter image description here][5]][5] Model Lightcraft under laser power While sadly the funding for this research has not been forthcoming, there have been proof of principle flights and ope...
Basis We are in the universe we call our own, on the planet we call Earth, in the physics-set and known reality we assume. There is no flat-out "magic" or other things along those lines, so far a...
It is a somewhat common limitation of spaceships in some universes, that they cannot go underwater. They can land on the planet, take off into orbit, hyperdrive into the next star system, but they ...
