Posts tagged space
Aka: What I am asking is: what are the basic elements a society capable of space travel needs? What key factors determine a species'capacity to become spacefaring and what cultural and societal asp...
My space colonists have found a home in the ring system of a (maybe chthonian) gas giant. The rings are based on Saturn's in terms of appearance, but can they be made of gases or liquid (maybe drop...
It makes sense to believe life is more likely to evolve on the surface of large objects like planets, moons, and asteroids. However, a common fantasy trope is the massive space creature: some kind ...
Consider a very conveniently placed asteroid in orbit around the earth, and we hang the space elevator off of that. It doesn't have to be at the geostationary altitude but it would probably help if...
Some days ago I had a discussion with a friend about possible alien life forms. He was stating that there anywhere could be lifeforms that do interplanetary or even interstellar travel by jumping ...
A few days ago, I was roaming around Wikipedia and came across something, this comet came extremely close to Mars for astronomical standards recently. I'm also working on a science fiction univer...
For as long as recorded history, the Earth has had two moons - religions were based around the interactions of these two bodies in the heavens, they were worshipped, feared and romanticised. Then ...
So, after going through a some rough calculations, I figured my earlier question ran into a few problems regarding the final velocity of the asteroid. I pulled the mathematics a bit incorrect, so I...
Do we have the technology to go to the Moon now, and stay this time? I'm not talking about the political will or economic rationale for doing so, I just want to know if there are any unsolved (and...
A Russian billionaire wants to send postage stamp-sized probes off to Alpha Centauri using meter-square light sails. Regardless of the practicality of such an attempt, is there a lot to be gained ...
Assume there is a point in time when every planet in our Solar System consists of colonies. Each colony is inhabited with civilians that primarily serve the purpose of its colony. Some colonies m...
Suppose a planetary system works in such a way that there is a rotating planet in the direct centre of a binary star (the star system's centre of gravity, also known as barycenter), such that the t...
Building from this and this, given an aquatic civilization somehow manages to forge tools and build computers, could it build space-faring devices? Also another development that would come earlier...
In this answer to another question, solar system-scale rail gun acceleration (and deceleration) was brought up as an alternative, and I found this intriguing. It's worth another question at least....
I remember a cartoon about some spy guy. In that cartoon they did mass media by projecting from the surface of the earth to the moon in the night sky. Would that technique be possible? Could an e...
I'm continuing questions rooted in the same idea: a manned mission to a planet around 61 Virginis. The first set of related questions was asked here. We're sending a crew of twelve. They'll be i...
One day in the year 1980 humans receive a message from an alien race. It reads a little something like this: Hey guys, real sorry, but a weapon we launched in an excercise malfunctioned and is ...
I am a survivor of the United Nations Space Corp's 2nd Exploration Fleet. On our travel to the distant Epsilon Canares system, our scouts encountered a strange lifeform. We call them 'shapeshifter...
I've just read this article and watched the accompanying video. Heady stuff, for sure. I'm particularly intrigued by the concept of a "solar gravitational lens telescope" somewhere out near the h...
In my world spaceships are guided by lighthouses floating in space instead of electronic navigational systems. A lighthouse in space has the shape of a huge sphere emitting intense red light. Like ...
I've been designing a world and wanted to base it on a rather interesting cosmology proposed by the ancient Greek philosopher Philolaus. He was a very early opponent of geocentrism, believing that ...
George is supervillian, and he has a evil plan but he needs a distraction to pull it off. Earlier today he was reading supervillian weekly and he saw an article on faking the Apocalypse and he wan...
I'd like to remove the speed of light limit from my world. However I don't want to just hand-wave the consequences. How should my universe look if: light travels at infinite speed, and so do grav...
Let's consider DCR-97, HMSS Liberty, 300 kilotonnes (or 300 Gg) of dreadnought-carrier ship. It's a big one. Let's say it can move forward. Let's say it could potentially move backward, or at the ...
Imagine a world in which technology we would probably call "technological singularity" is possible and already happened on few places of the galaxy. By the singularity I do not mean that anything i...
In many Science Fiction books and games, there are worlds or planet-like objects that are rings that orbit (or float around in space) (some examples being the Halo (from Halo) or the Ringworld (fro...
There it is. The elusive Ersa 772. Filled with an estimated $15 trillion in precious metals, mining that asteroid could make you the richest man on this side of the galaxy. You have all of the fund...
In a backstory for a potential videogame I'll likely never realize I've got the situation that a Deimos-like object... let's drop the facade here, the object is indeed Deimos, one of Mars' satellit...
There is an emergency on board the ISS. Astronauts can´t evacuate and they will die within five days if critical repairs are not made. Fortunately an automated cargo spacecraft, like Cygnuss or P...
How could a helicopter enter and function in space? Could it enter the atmosphere and function, and if not what could be a suitable solution?
I need a meteor to deliver an extraterrestrial algae-like cellular life form to an urban environment/city. The meteor needs to be far enough that it will not impact the Earth and will not cause ...
One property of life is communication. In particular sound is very useful due to it's non-directional nature. An alarm call is heard by every member of the pack and warns them immediately of the da...
Setting: Modern Earth; technology no more advanced that what's reasonable within the next thirty years. Premise: A prehistoric (and broken) alien device is discovered on Earth, and researchers det...
I've been thinking about the use of Dyson Spheres as a long range communication device. The sphere would effectively have an and open and closed state for a collection of panels which could be swap...
Say a large, stray Kuiper Belt object manages to enter the inner solar system and hits the moon, causing the moon to fracture. Say the impact wasn't devastating and left most of the moon intact whi...
I've been trying to come up with a scenario in which space stations and lunar bases are established but are considered controversial. I sort of figure that if corporations started mining the moon t...
On Earth, photosynthetic organisms require additional nutrients to survive; in addition to "feeding" off of sunlight, plants respire and absorb water from the ground in order to grow. However, th...
Another question on this site deals with the question of interstellar trade without faster than light travel. I'd like inspiration for a related but more generic question. Why would people choose t...
Is there any software tool for quickly prototyping a planetary system? Ideally this should: Allow for placement of planets of different sizes and masses around a star. Allow for examination of th...
Earth is destroyed in explosive fashion by an unknown force. How does this affect the rest of the Solar System? Does sudden absence of that mass affect the orbits of the other planets at all? Let's...
Most natural satellites in our Solar System are expected to contain fission furnaces at their cores, and some of these moons do have a striking resemblance to an asteroid. I'm wondering if we could...
Basically, it's a question about creating maps or diagrams. In particular, we on Earth are used to maps showing variation over distance & location. The problem with space that is everything is...
I have developed a 2D space trading game, yet in the final stage of the development of the game engine, I am struggling to find the optimal size of my planetary system(s) and the maximum velocity o...
I have an idea for a planet that orbits two stars. These starsslowly orbit each other, have equivalent masses/sizes, and while one is slightly red, the other is slightly blue. When I talk about the...
Stars and constellations have been for many civilizations,sources of wonder and mystery. We look at the stars so much, that we found patterns and shapes in the stars, and used them as guidance duri...
Following the answer from this link and assuming this is the best choice from the lot, if we had leave Earth right now and inhabit another world in a different planetary system, how would we humans...
I make no assumptions to the nature of this planet. There are high chances it does not have an atmosphere or a lithosphere. But in a planet that shows a high level of radioactive activity, would it...
Introduction I have a vague notion of building some sort of strategic space game. Similar to other strategic games, locations are assigned value based upon some abstract evaluation. Following in...
Inspired by this article about the recent discovery of a subsurface ocean. So now we know it has a liquid water ocean and a magnetic field. The subsurface ocean is also protected from radiation by...
It's just another average day in the life of modern day earth. Suddenly a transmission from orbit washes over the planet! Oh no! An alien race, calling themselves the "Thull", has suddenly arrived ...
