Posts tagged space
Set 200 years into the future, humanity's footprints can be seen as far as Planet Nine in the Solar system. The most common propulsion engine is still ion drive and regrettably no one solves FTL. S...
Specifically, could new planets form around a previously destroyed star? (Think of it like a phoenix.) If so, could the potential sentient life detect that their star previously exploded?
The story situation is that a generation ship is headed to another solar system where there are several planets in the star's habitable zone and once the ship arrives, it will approach these planet...
Due to an unforeseen malfunction your intergalactic spaceship suddenly drops out of hyperspace and comes to a near full stop. The ship is damaged, and will need to be evacuated soon...very soon. Y...
The idea of a collective consciousness (or anthill) species is pretty simple; instead of cells tissues and organs you have ant-like creatures, all making up a larger creature. This is different fro...
Asking for what pseudoscience might explain a storytelling need: Given parallel dimensions (worlds), we discover that through a portal device, a person equipped with a special spacesuit-like outfi...
Earth is overpopulated and needs somewhere to create a settlement. If they decided to settle on Saturn's asteroid ring and If the people who are making the settlement have the technology we current...
Could life originate on planets outside the circumstellar habitable zone (CHZ) where there is very little exposure to sun (like Uranus). If so what kind of energy source would they depend on. Coul...
So I had an idea earlier today and was wondering. Most sources you consult about the supposed "vacuum metastability event" say that the bubble would begin expanding at NEARLY the speed of light, no...
As Luke says in an answer to this question, a species may never attempt space travel if they cannot see that there is something out there. My question is just this; is that possible? Could a plane...
Given the approximate technology level of us Humans today. Is there enough of each material needed by our modern civilization in Asteroids to make this economic? And would the materials be used fo...
Any ideas how an advanced alien race could speed up time in a specific region of space? I'm working on a storyline in which an alien race uses a time bubble to accelerate time so the construction ...
I'll have a limited space like $1 km^3$ that have (through handwaving) more then three dimensions. But anyone entering it would perceive it as a three dimensional space. A little bit like this vide...
I'm planning on sending a colony ship on an extended, multi-generational voyage to a distant star. My colony ship is an oblate spheroid, 2km long on its long axis and 1km across on its shortest axi...
First question of many here in my pursuit of grinding out my science fiction story. The problem at hand though involves how a multi-generational ship would survive 500 years hurtling through space,...
Recently LIGO discovered gravitational waves caused by two black holes that were orbiting each other, and then collapsed into one black hole. A few months later, we find out that this actually happ...
There is a planet that is orbiting around not a single star, but the core of a galaxy. It is independent of the other solar systems in the galaxy, but is affected by the center of mass of the core....
My idea was to use 2 stages for an interstellar spacecraft (particularly the Orion Drive) and use it in a way similar to Project: Daedalus. Phase 1 would involve accelerating to cruising speed foll...
So I am proposing a ring-world of approximately 1600 km diameter. The ring spins for earth like gravity. The ring itself would be several kilometers thick with Earth like variations in elevation ...
I have a humanoid individual who for various reasons finds themselves in low orbit with no ship or shuttle or tech to take them down The society they come from is about renaissance era level (b...
So here's my rough idea for how you could basically send one large ship with a crew of a few thousand (at least ten thousand, maybe forty) to establish a colony on an Earth-like world: First step ...
Since the Sun is the only star we know to have life in its planetary system, I came to wonder about if it was replaced by, say, VY Canis Majoris How far would we have to be so that we would still b...
Ignoring, for the sake of this question, how exactly the gravitational fields required for this to work are generated: The question Our stalwart adventurers have a spaceship, perhaps a gateship, ...
Would scientists on the other side of blast survive in a bunker? I got an alien using telekinesis abilities to move Moon with the speed of " 1 hour till collide from the moment Moon left the orbit"...
When we talk about orbits we often imagine a ship or station orbiting a planet outside its atmosphere. Is it possible a ship could go into orbit inside its atmosphere (perhaps to hide from other c...
Would it be possible to move Ganymede into Mars' orbit causing them to fuse together like the two proto moons of earth? The new planet "Marmede" would have a mass equal to 13.2 % of Earth. Ho...
The Eternal Emperor wants to throw a party the likes of which the galaxy has never seen. The billionth anniversary of his reign is fast approaching (a mere hundred thousand years away!). He has bro...
Recently I have become obsessed with the idea of twin sapient species developing on separate planets of the same horseshoe orbit. As I was considering the technological advancement of this planet, ...
Can asteroid fields ever exist locally in a system, or do they tend to form belts exclusively? And by asteroid field, I mean clusters of asteroids scattered around a planetary system.
Imagine a human colony with the concept of an Earth day being transported somehow into the deep, deep space between galaxies. As we know, gravity wells affect the relative passage of time. So, in...
Let's say that after decades of development there are now cities on Mars. Most of their facilities are located underground in order to protect them from radiation and small meteorites, as well as p...
While I do know that there is no possible explanation for how we might wake someone up from such a long sleep, I was wondering what food would be edible after one million or so years where the huma...
Setting: Western world nation, Earth as we know it, May 2016, Gregorian calendar. Eccentric billionaire, large multinational corporation or similar; lots of money, and ability to enlist the help of...
In my story where thousands of humans are transported to the planet with dinosaurs that is 400 light years away, there are bound to be lots of warnings on the generation ship. Friendly aliens are t...
In Mercury's orbit around the Sun (Solar orbit, not Mercurial orbit), what are the conditions like? What shielding or heat management would be required for a manned spacecraft? Could a spacesuited ...
I was thinking of an organism that lives its entire life in outer space. It would be shaped like a rocket and have skin to pressurize its insides so that its internal organs are pressurized even w...
I am wondering if alien race detecting our signal could actually understand such broadcast. But for my story, I need the aliens being unable to understand what we are broadcasting. How can I achie...
I'm making a small game about travelling deep space on limited resources. One thing I'm interested in having is the idea that the craft is scavenging what it can from planets as it travels through ...
I am already aware of the concept of the fusion torch. But I would like to consider other solutions for separation of raw materials that can be automated but are less "extreme" and closer to curr...
Earth, present time or very near future. Astronomers have just announced that it is believed that almost 9 billion habitable Earth-like planets exist in the Milky Way alone (this is true, but there...
In a setting I've been working with, I sought a method of sublight travel that wasn't crazy engines or magic. I've already got FTL using a different method than the Alcubierre drive, so it wouldn't...
A spaceship of several kilometers length is accelerating to a very high fraction of $c$ (basically as close as they can possibly get). Which problems can the machinery and the crew encounter? And...
Assuming that we have a universe with four spatial dimensions plus time, within which atoms exist that can form solids, liquids, gases and plasmas, the compounds that can be formed having physical ...
The following post is copy-pasted from a similar question on Reddit: Apparently, I already started work on the story and it turns out, that I have Ganymede speaking a fictional Russian dialect ca...
The Wikipedia article on Klemperer Rosettes states that hexagonal rosettes are slightly more stable than other, non-hexagonal rosettes, due to the position of the orbital objects in the Lagrange po...
I have an exomoon that orbits close enough to its planet that it has notable geological activity. I would like to limit active volcanoes/geysers/lava lakes/etc. to at most, a couple dozen areas on ...
My advanced human society understands how to search & find data on other dimensions; as well, we can travel if they're compatible. For years all we've found was data indicating dimensions wi...
Split out from this question since it was too large. I'm designing an exoplanetary system that was the victim of a drive-by super-Jupiter ejected from a nearby supernova that crashed into the syst...
I am currently focusing my worldbuilding efforts in designing a story (or, perhaps, if all goes well, a series of stories) that take place in space. In my constructed reality, there exists a mater...
I have a planet in a solar system that is for all intents and purposes identical to ours that I want to play like a bongo drum with asteroids or other extra terrestrial rocks to destroy most of the...
