Posts tagged space-travel
As stated in the topic: I would like to have Project Olympus-style space stations served by Apollo-like spacecraft in a world where neither nuclear power (and weapons) nor transistors were develope...
With our current technology we're able to travel through our Solar System (and beyond) during at least a human lifetime. Is it physically possible that a star system has more intelligent lifeforms...
Scientists have just released details on their discovery of inter-galactic baryon material - "Dark Matter" that turns out to be regular matter, except that it is 'dark' - dispersed throughout the i...
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...
You are on a generation ship in interstellar space, between star systems. We know that there are rocks whizzing around out there - escaped asteroids, bashed planets, we have even put a few artifici...
Soft sci-fi uses inertial dampeners. Harder sci-fi uses stuff like advanced crash couches, robotic exoskeletons, or (my personal favorite) drug cocktails filled with stimulants and other medication...
I was reading an article that said pulsars could be used in the far future, by travelers, by acting as "lighthouses" in space and aiding in interstellar travel. In a galaxy wide civilization, would...
I'm working on a universe where FTL exists but arrival times can be unpredictable to say the least. On average FTL trips are conducted at 4C but ships can take much longer to arrive than that speed...
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...
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 ...
Humans have achieved FTL and have colonized several planets in our greater stellar neighborhood. While we have discovered several planets that harbor life as we know it, we have not yet discovered ...
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...
I'm from an impatient, short lived, and cheap species known as human and while I've developed the means to travel the galaxy, I'm pissed at it. It knows what it did. So I've had enough. I'm lookin...
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...
I am writing a Sci-fi/detective story and I'm wondering if Quantum Entanglement is a feasible means of FTL travel. (I know very little on the subject so if no is the answer please suggest a possibl...
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...
I am currently trying to make a world that has casual interplanetary commutes with near future technology (within one century); so, to find a reasonable top speed for crafts in my interplanetary wo...
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...
I'm interested in the viability of the following scheme for (relatively) fast space commerce within the Solar System: have a fleet of space stations essentially built around a long linear acceler...
Average Joe was an amateur astronomer. While he was out in the wilds one day with his telescope he was kidnapped by aliens, carried off and kept as a slave on a world somewhere in the Milky Way. Ha...
I want to know whether or not my starship's cordinate system is efficient or not. Soon after my race flew into the stars, we realised we needed to be able to tell where we were. We need coordinate ...
I'm looking to use water as a radiation shielding device, but do not want to waste space on my ship with waste and other water byproducts. Rather than just storing waste, I plan to use it as part o...
Suppose that our random heroic brave interstellar expedition is returning to Earth from Alpha Centauri at 60% of the speed of light, but there was an accident in the nuclear reactor, forcing the ca...
3-D printers, replicators, nanofabricators etc. are all technologies that, when pushed to their logical limit, seem to make the transport of finished goods obsolete when all you need to do to obtai...
I have heard of gravitational slingshots being used to theoretically accelerate a spacecraft using a planet's gravity and momentum in orbit. But how about decelerating a ship? If it is at all possi...
QUESTION So recently I was doing research on Magnetic Coil based weaponry in the Halo universe, and while reading about how the "Super Mac" worked, I noticed that the theoretical speeds at which t...
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...
What I am imagining is some sort of gargantuan beast that encloses a star with its monstrous jaws and then feeds off the rays released by the sun to power itself. I am curious what kind of creatur...
I am interested in finding out if a black hole or mass on the verge of forming a black hole with enough spin could generate enough centrifugal force to change shape into a torus? Specifically I am...
So humanity has finally overcome the economic problems with asteroid mining, not to mention setting up colonies elsewhere in the solar system. Some are dragging the low-hanging fruit into near-Eart...
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...
So, normal humans can tolerate up to 4g of acceleration. If I had the tech to freeze and thaw people, would being frozen aid in tolerating high-g forces, or would the brittleness of your froz...
Recently, a planet around Proxima Centauri has been found. It is in the habitable zone, in the sense that if the planet was a black body, it would have a surface temperature of −39° Celsius. The p...
We have escaped the galactic government, and now our greatest endeavour yet, life in space. How shall these gargantuan space entities move and travel through space? The whale or other in question...
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...
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...
After reading this question by Nick M (now closed) and exchanging some comments with him, I have some ideas related to the scenario. I realized that the comprehensive design covers several distinc...
Every time a rocket is launched into space, debris accumulates. Every time an old satellite runs out of juice, it goes derelict and turns into more junk. Over the years, paint-chips, broken off sol...
You don't need to be traveling faster than the speed of light to encounter some pretty major problems. At just 30% the speed of light (90 Mm/s) a spaceship of mass 4 x 10^5 kg (about the mass of t...
Congratulations, you've finally earned your space pilot's license! The only problem is, you can't afford a large enough ship to house more than one person (considering food, breathable air, refuse ...
My understanding of special relativity is that a clock that flies one lap around the earth then returns to its starting position measures less time than a clock that "stayed put" relative to the ea...
For space travel: would you need to recreate earths air composition? Or could you just get by with the top 2 or 3 main components, i.e. either 78% nitrogen and 22% oxygen, or 78% nitrogen, 21% oxyg...
I am working on a world (see this question) which I currently plan to have FTL via Alcubierre warp drive. I want to avoid the possibility of FTL sneak attacks so I plan on having something that pr...
Many SF stories feature faster-than-light travel as essentially a trope: Roddenberry has stated☡ that the Enterprise travels at the speed of plot. As an allegory of the south seas, or some throw...
OK, so I'm writing a Star-Wars-esque science fiction book set some centuries in the future. Rather than break the laws of physics and say that faster-than-light travel is possible, I've chosen to g...
Is it easier to build colonies within the solar system than to send colonies to other stars? Logically, wouldn't we have cities on Pluto sooner than we will have travelled to an exoplanet?
