Posts tagged spaceships
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)....
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...
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 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...
I have a spaceship that's powered by an efficient hydrogen fusion drive, but the drive outputs a large amount of dangerous neutron radiation as a side effect, and those neutrons are not captured an...
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...
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...
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 ...
When in space, the amount of force required to move goes down drastically, due to the virtual lack of drag. In this environment, would be feasible for engines in space (more specifically belonging ...
I am writing a Sci-Fi story that involves space ships shooting each other, as is the custom. I'm using a lot of handwavium, e.g. reactionless drives, FTL, gravity plating, etc., but I'd like the ac...
In my universe, there exist molecular level machines that can behave as a single entity. The humans use them for many purposes, including faster than light travel. The concept is as it follows: T...
This question is partially a spinoff of some points that came up in another recent question at Worldbuilding about interstellar space travel. Runaway Truck Ramps I live in Colorado, and on the do...
I had in mind a sci-fi setting where humans have begun terraforming nearby planets without the benefit of faster-than-light travel. For example, Wikipedia lists a handful of terrestrial planets wit...
Crude Oil, is a term used to describe petroleum products harvested from geological formations beneath the Earth's surface. As a fuel they maybe called hydrocarbons, hydrocarbons can be found/creat...
I'm in the middle of creating a RPG one-shot for some friends, and I'm thinking of doing an Aliens meets Space Hulk style "Big-Gribbly Aliens VS Humans" game. Is there an upper limit to the size ...
Spaceships are a peculiar thing. We've got them in all forms, sizes & colours. They are everywhere and go everywhere else. carrying with them anything from music, over tractors, to foodstuffs a...
Current Settings Humanity could no longer access earth for some reason (it could be anything from alien invasion, third world war, ecological disaster, etc) starting at 2028, and they know about t...
So I'm writing a story about a crew of scientists that explore the universe searching for a hidden knowledge in embed in the fabric of the space itself. More like to the Destiny's crew from Stargat...
I am working on an alternate history where the USSR won the Moon Race (by upgrading the NK-15, starting development of the N1 earlier, and making cybernetics/computer science not a "bourgeois pseud...
Based on The Expanse TV series I wonder how people should build their ships to avoid spreading of highly contagious lifeform. Protomolecule's features: infectious agent with extra-terrestri...
I am creating a history for my galactic civilization, and was thinking that the first colonization ship might be launched around the year 2200. World War Three Just a few years from now, a third ...
Question If a ship went through an asteroid belt where the asteroids are mostly ice, could the ice in any way transfer onto the ship and give it coatings of ice in various places, or would there b...
In the science fiction setting I'm working on, I had a thought on how to reduce the detection ranges in space. On a previous question, I suggested the idea of capital ships and other support ships ...
I was trying to think of a way to land a spaceship. The best I could think of was a ridiculously long airstrip for landing, and lots of catapults for takeoff, but then there was the problem of havi...
Established rules for the universe: FTL travel exists with special drives, special artificial generated wormhole like tunnels where space ships can break the laws of physics. Engines runs hot, bu...
An interstellar spaceship carrying a thousand personnel was attacked by a group of space pirates while crossing the nebula. The nearest habitable planet is several light-hours away. Help will onl...
I'm an aspiring author, aiming to determine the physical realism of certain fictional concepts within a constructed universe identical to our own. There are many contingent ideas which I must expla...
As a source of food, would it be possible to have fish and/or plants living inside a water tank situated between the fusion or fission power plant and the crew quarters of a ship? The ship in ques...
I recently came across Could pulsars really act as "lighthouses" to help in interstellar travel?, asked a week ago. The author was trying to figure out if pulsars could be useful for interstellar F...
Background I was pondering my answer to this question. I asked myself, "Why would I only do a 45-minute burn and then float for 3 months to get to Mars?". Then I answered, "Because you only have ...
I'm trying to come up with a the most economical design for artificial gravity. The simplest design for a space ship is to have a spinning ring structure around a central body. People living in the...
(This question is not about getting scrap metal out of orbit and recycling it: please see the second and third sections of the question text.) Consider an object which was not designed for, or ha...
So, if Humanity wants to conquer the galaxy one star at a time, it is going to need a massive fleet. This fleet will require massive resources to build. If I want to build a fleet to take over the ...
Let's just take antimatter off the table right now. As I've learned recently, it's hard to make, expensive as hell and even more volatile, and you can never get more energy out of it than you put i...
The setting I'm thinking of is in the not-so-distant future where humanity has become an interplanetary species using conventional propulsion. The solar system is largely colonized with human settl...
Would a starship that was propelled by magnetic monopoles fly faster and longer than ion engines (assuming magnetic monopoles exist) of course.
Is there any way for a large civilization to get objects into space without using rockets or explosions? I'm considering a planet roughly equivalent to Earth, where (for whatever reason) rockets ...
Inspired by this question on putting massive capacitor-banks on spaceships I have been wondering about alternative ways to store excess energy from ever-running reactors. In this question I would ...
I've hit a wall in my tale of humans attempting to escape the Singularity or a fate worse than death by running off into the depths of space. And I only have myself and my accursed hard sci-fi lean...
How do you check if a room behind a door aboard a spaceship has an atmosphere and pressure? This is so that you would not accidentally open a door to a room which is open to space. I imagine ther...
A civilization is very good at bio-engineering, and I was wondering if there was any kind of chemical an organism could produce which would produce viable rocket fuel. It has to do a of couple of ...
I was wondering if it is plausible for a civilization to go from the end of the stone age to the space age from 6,000 years to 10,000 years. I was thinking this planet's star was starting to die, a...
The Humern Empire is a vast, well established empire that spans the galaxy. Despite having no FTL travel they have kept their empire together with a series of subluminal transport methods. Heavy c...
I'm really in doubt if a fusion thruster could be used inside a planet (populated places). As i saw in the TV show "The Expanse", their fusion engines are really, really hot, hotter than the surfac...
Imagine a spaceship constructed for merfolk and it is completely filled with oxygenated water instead of air. Since they can swim around effortlessly in the water, do they even need artificial gr...
Our Heroes are a small group of people around the level of the heroes of The Skylark Of Space. Operating on a budget of maybe ten million dollars, they've built a spacecraft with a mass somewhere a...
Spaceships are a peculiar thing. We've got them in all forms, sizes & colours. They run on nuclear fusion, creating loads of power driving all sorts of shenanigans... but they still generate lo...
In my Sci-Fi universe, I want humans to, initially, have two traits to their spaceship building: Really good drive systems, at least compared to other races. Complete and utter lack of any sci-fi...