Posts tagged spaceships
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...
Follow up question to: How long time would it take for a space hulk to lose orbit? Let's assume that the spaceship crashes into the planet, I used the Impact Calculator to get some result of the c...
Let's not debate whether is there any friction while traveling inside vacuum space and assume all ships can brave a perfect storm brewing inside the giant molecular cloud. OK let's get down to busi...
Your large spaceship is damaged beyond repair. You manage to get it close enough to a planet so that you can release emergency shuttle craft. You have very little control over the ship and won't be...
I'm no rocket scientist, but I've been reading up on some basic concepts of rocket science (including some great talks here). As far as I've gleaned, there's two extremes of rocket thrusts: high sp...
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...
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...
In my universe, spaceships use a device that can generate a bubble of gravity that is homogeneous and unidirectional. You can manipulate the direction and intensity of gravity in any way you want. ...
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...
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...
In the relatively realistic (hopefully), near future, scifi book I am writing I am at a point where I am describing the observation deck of a large ship belonging to a wealthy "business man" (see s...
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...
What is surface to weight ratio needed to help slow the decent onto Mars? Assembled and inflated in space could a blimp be big enough to include everything needed to jump start a colony and land...
So in my story, a spaceship populated with about 250 people has reached its destination, an Earth-like planet. It's uninhabited, and consider the weather is just typical, sunny-day with a slight br...
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 question stems from watching a scene from ID2 and seeing the massive alien mothership landing/crashing on the North Atlantic. What mass would a starship, or any other artificial object constru...
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...
Okay, so our society has starting harnessing significant amounts of energy from its sun, and has started mass producing micro-black holes (although there have been experiments with gathering energy...
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...
My question on refueling around stars got me thinking about the transit method of detecting planets and how it could be used to detect a ship whilst it is refueling (either by accident or on purpos...
Suppose that there is an alien spacecraft travelling towards the Sun. This spacecraft is similar in design, size and power output to Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 as they were immediately after launch fr...
I would like to better understand intragalactic ship design (aka, "spaceships"). It's travelling at a barely tolerable 0.05c (86 years to Alpha Centauri). It happens to impact with a baseball (14...
This is the premise: the occupants of a spaceship die hundreds of millions of years in the past orbiting above a Earth-sized planet. It has a supercomputer that allows the ship to still fire its ro...
The starship 'Exciting Undertaking' has set off on a brand new five and a bit year expedition to explore the galaxy. To make such a starship possible, an artificial gravity generator had to be inve...
Spaceships are a peculiar thing; as are the Humies - the hardy folks working and living inside these hunks of metal for weeks or months at a time. Ironically in space living-space is at a premium. ...
I'm writing a Colonization story, and I'm trying to determine which propulsion system would be the best option. The destination is Kapteyn b, 12.76Ly from Earth, and our 40K colonists will be in Cr...
What would be a good way to explain dangerous winds on a rocky planet like mars? I'm looking to create a dangerous situation for atmospheric pilots trying to land, specifically for sudden changes i...
I need a way for a NASA spaceship to be able to dock with the hatch of an alien spacecraft. The alien ship is automated so there's no communication, and being alien, the hatches on both ships shoul...
For a book under construction, I need a starship to make a 180 degree turn rather quickly. Give him sub-light speed in a star system (no relativistic effects) and on a path to the system primary. ...
Exactly what the question says. What if a spaceship the size and mass of a space shuttle with a full fuel, that has an Alcubierre Drive on it crashed into the Earth at 8 km/s? ( And no, I'm not tal...
Say we have a large cargo spaceship and a small pirate spaceship. The pirate ship is the only one with any sort of weaponry (lasers, missiles etc.), but for the pirates to safely retrieve the cargo...
I've noticed in recent scifi shows/movies such as the Expanse or Star Trek that the lighting inside spaceships have two characteristics: Punishingly blue lighting Dark/dimmed miscellaneous lighti...
The NASA Vehicle Assembly Building and the proposed Nazi Volkshalle are cited to be "big enough for weather systems to form inside them". The building has at least 10,000 tons of air conditioni...
I'm making a fairly hard Sci-Fi story, and I was wondering what the most scientifically plausible 'energy shield' (for ships and stations) would be. My world tries to remain true to basic physics, ...
So, out in Kansas, in the DEC Oil Refinery, a group of people, called simply the Disciples, have set up a community. From the outside, it seems like a utopia, one where man and mutant get along pea...
Eskimos in space! Let's say, just for contextual concerns, that a band of water-rich comet miners want to use water-ice found in the outer Solar System as the main structural and functional compone...
I'm looking for a weapon a ship can carry that can disable a ship without any permanent damage to its subsystems or significant hull breaches. This will mostly be used by pirate factions (capturing...
Imagine we have a faster-than-light drive which costs ~$250,000 USD per drive and can propel an ISS-sized craft at 1000 times the speed of light. It is reliable and has safeguards that stop it from...
This is, for the record, the same universe as in Is space piracy orbitally practical? and How can I prevent Kessler Syndrome among space stations?. In my world, circa 2100, space stations orbiting...
Solid Core Nuclear Thermal rocketry has existed for a while and I was thinking about using it as the primary propulsion in my setting. Now most Solid Core rockets still have fairly long transit tim...
User Interface Customization for Spaceship Controls; "In theory, practice and theory are the same. In practice, they're totally different." We often find that what we plan for isn't what actuall...
This question relates to an attack on a biological space vessel. My vessel is a space station made from wood, with an oxygen-rich atmosphere inside it. It is under attack and the attackers have de...
When flying a big spacecraft, one needs to keep several things in mind when designing the "user interface" used to control the spacecraft's flight path, or ultimately, the output of the thrusters/e...
This is not a very hard-science-fiction tale, but more about human relations and adaptability, but I still want it to sound plausible. A space faring civilisation that descend from humans uses bio...
Space is filled with all kinds of things that are unkind to cloth, such as dust and radiation, and they are the reason why sticking a nylon national flag on the moon isn't permanent. In my world I...
The ships would be permanently extra planetary and manned by 4-5 crew. All life support water, food, oxygen and propulsion being produced by bacterial cultures (not necessarily the same). With all...
I've never been satisfied with how this has been handled in any sci-fi story I've read, watched, etc. It always seems to get handwaved away with "we have sensor packages of various powers" and "the...
The title says it all. How would one go about creating a planet with aliens that have medieval grade technology (windmills and carts and stuff.) No high level technology. However, I want the aliens...
OK, here's the problem: I want to have a spaceship that is built for transporting large machines (in particular, heavy mining equipment). It does not and is not designed to leave space; transport d...
