Posts tagged travel
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 ...
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...
No, I am not talking about space ships, I am talking about water-based ships sailing the oceans on planet Earth. What would be a plausible cruise speed and maximum speed for what would be the equi...
In a setting with (mostly) near future technology what material would a top end naval spaceships hull be made out of? The hull must follow the following requirements: Able to withstand the strai...
In settings with space travel we often see stories that rely on ships encountering each other, such as space piracy (which means you need to know where to wait in ambush), or distress signals that ...
Would a rocket or Bussard ramjet powered by monopole induced proton decay (Callan-Rubakov mechanism) be a feasible method for near-light interstellar flight? There are such drives in the Orion's Ar...
Assume a universe depressingly like ours, in which special relativity holds. No hyperspace, no warp drive, no wormholes, and even the limited get-out clauses offered by real world physics either do...
What role do satellites, communication towers, GPS, etc, play in the operation, and specifically the landing, of a space shuttle? If those and any other human-made things suddenly disappeared, cou...
I have a bit of a problem. My largest dragons have a flight range of over 1000 miles, but I have another continent that is only reachable by ship significantly closer (just over 750 miles). I can't...
I'm making a hard-ish sci-fi universe where humans colonized nearby star systems and found not one but two civilizations in Alpha Centauri, each at home on a planet orbiting one of the two main sta...
The setting On an Earth-like planet but with completely different flora and fauna there is the Great Plain. It is similar in size to the Serengeti National Park on Earth. The Plain is surrounded b...
An answer to the following question mentions a free online calculator for long-distance space travel. Software to ease my interstellar travel calculations I'm looking for a 3d simulator that accu...
In 1869 a giant space gun was built, with the intent of firing a projectile at the Moon, just to prove that they can do it. Of course, the ludicrous idea to put people inside it was never even take...
A side shot from my series on a computer-less future; see here, here, and here. Project Rho defines a torch-drive as an engine with both high acceleration and high exhaust velocity. A torch-ship i...
We have escaped the galactic government, and now our greatest endeavour yet, life in space. How will these gargantuan space entities eat and survive in space? The whale or other in question is th...
Take-off in a craft with rockets allows a gentle acceleration that doesn't kill the occupants. Given that the Moon has no atmosphere: Is there any current technology that would allow safe takeoff ...
Introduction See background information here. 1000 years after darkness fell on Old Earth, humanity is scattered throughout the solar system. Apart from the Harmonious Republic of Mars, there are...
A large (compared to Earth life) species of creatures live in space. They gain energy from interstellar dust and starlight. How they do this is a separate question so not relevant here. However the...
I am a post-human adapted for permanent life in vacuum and micro-gravity. How might my physiology and biochemistry overcome the following challenges? Please note I have a strong cultural aversion ...
In its heyday Earth was a great interplanetary trading post on account of its low gravity moon which was used as a warehouse for all kinds of goods. The Moon was covered almost entirely in large w...
The question of whether or not humans could reach space without various resources has been exhaustively researched on this site, but one question has not been touched- what about the social and pol...
My first time here, hope this is a useful question. Mostly about orbital mechanics and vacuum. So the crew of a general-purpose interstellar spacecraft have stumbled across a paradise planet. Afte...
I have a world where humans have developed interplanetary space travel that allow them to travel to other planets. There is an issue though- the speed is slow, sublight; as an example it will take ...
In Kim Stanley Robinson's new novel Red Moon the first few pages describe a method of Earth-to-Moon transportation that I had not encountered before. The idea is to use a magnetically levitated and...
Using current technology, what could I do to optimize the odds of being located by time-traveling humans a thousand years from now? The accuracy must be such that they could "transport" me out of ...
Force field technology has come a long way. The latest energy-efficient engines can guarantee stable energy output in any situation, making force fields extremely reliable and very cost effective c...
I am trying to design spacecraft with realistic mass estimates, so that I can "accurately" design fuel requirements and calculate potential speed. Obviously the mass of a ship is going to vary wid...
Setting is 20 minutes into future - everything is as we know it, or as we can reasonably predict, except the zero-tau capsules. Capsule is a thin mesh of Unobtanium connected to a portable Handwav...
Antenna farm as seen on the USS Sulaco from Aliens (1986) We often see menacing sharp communication spikes and clusters on spacecraft in movies, shows, games, and etc. It makes the ship look...
The setting is our Earth of today (2018) with one difference: some Space Agency decided to go back the Moon and built a ship that is ready to depart, using today's technology. For reasons, the cre...
To make it short, time-space shenanigans transported everything in a 60 kilometers circumference around an old space-based particle collider to the year 1855. The particle collider was in geosynch...
Kjør bestillingen 92 umiddelbart. Frøhvelvet skal åpnes, skyttelbussen skal tilberedes. (Execute Order 92 immediately; the seed vault is to be opened, the shuttle prepared) ...
Consider a world in which time travel has been made viable possibility. Initially, many are ecstatic at the new technology and the knowledge it will unlock. However, biologists and other scientists...
Inhabitants of another planet (their biology is yet undefined, and if helpful to solving the problem, suggestions can be included in the answer), have a spaceship in which they plan to accelerate t...
Earth, far future: We built multi generation ship which can get 20 000 people to another solar system in next 20 generations (600 years) For scope of this question assume that ship itself is well ...
In the near future we may find cargo ships fleeing space pirates! Given that... It's a small cargo ship carrying 10 metric tons of wheat (cargo volume, approximately 13 m3). Total volume: 100 m...
How big could a nebula be? If a spaceship were traveling 300,000 times the speed of light (assuming this were possible and had no other effects, such as time travel or time dilation) is it plausibl...
Some Context I'm creating a universe where humanity has reached the stars. They've colonized a few star systems and, obviously, FTL drives are a common thing. The part of the story I'm currently...
I'm taking the example of a rotating wheel space station, in which artificial gravity is created through rotation due to the inertia inside. The idea in the 3D environment is that the wheel (2D) i...
My current ongoing science fiction project has FTL travel that is instantaneous for the ships and their crews, but still, usually, takes years of real-time in the rest of the universe. This is goin...
So I my question is quite simple. With current technology or technology that we are likely to gain this century would it be easier for Lunar colonization programs to develop wheeled vehicles or wal...
In my story there are multiple planets in a solar system. And each of them are inhabited with different species. The main inhabitants of one planet are "bird+human" things. Is it possible for th...
Let's say in the year 2000 we launch a ship to some distant part of the galaxy. If the ship travels with a constant 1 g acceleration for like 28 years (accelerating halfway then decelerating), then...
Assuming humanity was suddenly highly motivated to do it, how long would it take a probe launched from Earth to get into a position to record and broadcast images of the position in the opposite or...
So, this is for a "space drama" that is set in the not too distant future. The world is running out of resources, but has developed an rudimentary interplanetary travel capability. Several planet...
An alien species has been conquering planet after planet around the Milky Way for some time. They detected intelligent life on Earth a while back and now they decided it's time to add us to their c...
My time traveller has a maybe 20-minutes-into-the-future smartphone and laptop. They can store large amounts of data, on the Petabytes level or higher. The time traveller can effectively store the ...
For the obvious reason of weight, our modern space stations and satellites are made out of metal or lightweight compounds to reduce cost. In a quick Google search, about $20,000 per kg is the cost,...
One of the aspects of most sci fi time travel representations that I find most challenging for my suspension of disbelief is this idea of people travelling through time and not travelling through s...
