Posts tagged spaceships
In my story, I have a slower-than-light starship (traveling at 0.6 $c$) going to Alpha Centauri A. There are several planets around the star. The target planet is a terrestrial, habitable world orb...
How could you feasibly extract hydrogen from a star to power a plasma fusion reactor, with as little handwavium as possible? This takes place in a sci-fi setting, but isn't necessarily hard science...
Inspired by this question, and this article, activating self-destruct mechanism disengage coolant system for the ship's main reactor, which then increases the core temperature and triggers explosio...
In this scenario, light-bending camouflage is already in use to prevent civilians from seeing any spacecraft as they enter the atmosphere. The question is whether it is realistic to visualize this...
In space-trading games like Escape Velocity, Elite: Dangerous & others, cheap FTL exists, but lags in other advancements results in a playable environment that is politically fractured and not ...
Is there any real technology, experimental or conceptual, that can prolong a person's survivability in outer space in case of sudden life support failure? Something that is also easy to wear or imp...
Realistically, if we are ever going to mine asteroids, it would be drones and robots that do it, not humans, because of safety and cost reasons. What reason could justify the participation of human...
I have always wondered if a kind of blimp-like spacecraft would not be our answer for some kind of futuristic spacecraft design. Imagine this: a blimp-like spacecraft is loaded with cargo on the g...
I'm looking for some reasons that could force a spaceship to land at the nearest planet and cut all connections with the homeland planet, so all the crew will be force to settle at the planet for a...
Enter Iaeptus - A million man mission born on a fleet of ten thousand ship to the outer solar system. Their commander : Minevera, a brain-in-a-vat super computer. With a weight of 5 tons, a neuron ...
In a world where torch ships sometimes will accelerate over 10Gs for hours, maybe sometimes days on end. Is there any way to keep the crew alive and preferably fully functional in during such hars...
take me out to the black, tell 'em I ain't comin' back DaaaahWhoosh - 2min ago Merfolk live in the deep, plenty deep exactly, around 800m below sea-level. At these depths we talk about litt...
While trying to figure out a way that individuals could own spacecraft in my sci-fi setting without having access to things that could double as weapons of mass destruction, I settled on the widesp...
What other ways are there to save a human for a very long time. I know only about cryostasis. Let's say we have a spaceship traveling several hundred light years to a distant galaxy.
In my world ... Actually, in every hard sci-fi world with casual interplanetary travel, the G-force involved in acceleration would becomes so high that no unmodified human being could realistically...
Would it be possible for a spaceship of some sort to descend from space and through the atmosphere of an Earth-like planet, not land, then turn around and head back into space? In other words, coul...
I may not have been paying as much attention as perhaps I could but I have the impression that, in fiction and reality, most civilian space habitats, whether ships or stations use a relatively thic...
This question is really about best possible travel times between celestial bodies. In my current sci-fi setting, the Human race is spaceborne, but incapable of FTL travel. Their thrusters are exc...
Project Orion was a project to construct a spacecraft that rode the shockwaves of nuclear blasts as a form of propulsion, but the project was abandoned because of budget cuts, environmental concern...
A group of ships I've made are supposed to be modular in design with each modular hull segment being self sustainable both in terms of power needs and crew upkeep (oxygen, food, water, etc.) I've ...
Spaceships are a peculiar thing; as are the things inside them. Humans... Humids... Humies - the colloquial term for those crazy enough to make a living by crewing these hulks of metal. A special b...
I want to use a handwavium gravity field generator on my spaceships, but this has several problems. Generating gravitational fields of peculiar shapes is not a difficult thing to do in this settin...
My source of inspiration and imagination... StarGate Atlantis Tv-Series: Wraith hive-ships were mainly biological. Genesis Rising Pc-game: The game itself, storyline, human technology, etc based ar...
Say you have an interstellar spacecraft packed full of advanced technology, such as: Fusion generators Androids A sublight drive capable of ~0.5C Various robots, holograms, and other automated sy...
Assuming a civilization has the technology and capability to build a worldship, a planet that doubles as a spacecraft, installs an FTL drive on it and has the energy to power it, what would the eff...
In Sci-fi, space fighters often look like exotic versions of fighter jets: wing shape is often different but the general shape is most of the time kept. However this seems unrealistic: the shape o...
In a series I remember that a group of people were trying to make a colonization ship and they had a big problem: the air. Ships (like every object) aren't perfect and they have micro fissures in t...
In my setting, military innovation spurred by the American Civil War (1861-1865) prompts the design and construction of counterweight-driven skyhooks for the delivery of suborbital long-range munit...
I'm making an alien race that's kinda like the Tyranids. My problem right now is that they're starting out on a planet. How would they actually leave this planet using only their biological abiliti...
I'm working on a science fiction story involving starships travelling about 95% of the speed of light. I wanted to have a reason for the starships to need to shield themselves against time dilation...
I'm working on a space story in which an astronaut is travelling to Neptune to validate our CurrentEarth™ corporation's findings regarding our Solar System. The setting is a moving ship similar to ...
Linked What would the flora on a methane world be like? What would animal life on a methane world look like and how would it evolve? What would the conditions on a methane world be like? How wo...
There have been more than a few questions covering Alcubiere warp drives, many about what happens with one at FTL and a few about using them at sub-light speeds. I'm curious about what happens at ...
In most sci-fi (graphic) novels and films, they often depict the design of the cockpit or captain's bridge in a rather unusual way. A smaller ship such as a fighter or a transport ship usually come...
While the colonization of the Solar system is underway, a new sport emerges: Spatial Rowing. The rules are the following: Each spacecraft has one driver (the contestant) The loaded mass of each ...
I'm not talking about a single alien civilization that is stranded on earth, I'm talking about multiple civilizations that will cause major overpopulation on earth. So this means that the civiliza...
I'm working on a science fiction story which includes the following premise: Tony Stark invents an unobtainium reactionless engine, and the protagonists want to build a spaceship around it, big eno...
It is a known concept that if ships were to be constructed in space, it would save a lot of fuel and allow for larger ships. My question is, what would be the best location for an orbital "dockyard...
Here is the basic outline for the drive: The drive, at its most basic, is a device that converts any matter into pure energy, and the operator can choose exactly what kind of energy is produced, ...
My setting is more Space Opera than science based, but I am attempting to keep a consistent set of rules for space travel. I'll try to narrow down my question to a "lowest denominator" for the bene...
In the setting I'm building up, there are starships ranging from several meters in length to 1.6 kilometers. I'm trying to devise a means to determine what sort of manpower each ship would likely n...
I watched Independence Day: Resurgence the other day. In it, Earth's first line of defense is a lunar base (that gets blown up), followed by an orbital satellite network (that gets blown up). Now...
I'm creating a universe where ftl space travel is possible by folding space. You can only travel point to point with direct line of sight. The example I plan to give in the book, to clarify, is th...
If a rocket ship with limited fuel has fallen into a decades-long elliptical orbit around the Sun, where in the orbit should it fire its engines in order to achieve escape velocity with a minimum o...
In many sci-fi settings magnetic boots are used to help astronauts walk in microgravity. However, not all materials are ferromagnetic. Titanium, aluminum, the most form of carbon and silica can not...
Scenario for a novel: Earth mass planet (say between 0.8 and 1.4 Earth masses) captured as moon by migrating gas-giant (say 5 Jupiter masses) (not wedded to this setting, moon can be bigger or s...
In science fiction a common plot device is for a planet to be surrounded by electromagnetic interference that prevents an orbiting ship from scanning it with sensors or communicating with people on...
Alright, this is an edit of my previous question, in response to a number of urges to clarify it. I'll do my best to be clear and concise. How long would it take a spaceship, locked in geostationa...
For a while now I've been building a science fiction world and I've been thinking what would be a feasible way to power a large ship capable of interstellar travel. I've always disliked the idea on...
I was rereading The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, the sequel to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and I came across an interesting passage: Flare riding is one of the most exotic a...
