Posts tagged ships
Radiating heat into a vacuum is a no-go, so a spaceship that generates any kind of heat is going to be in trouble. I had an idea for a potential solution - dumping your heat into a disposable heat ...
How do force field work in many sci fi fictional universes? I remembered the last time I checked the strength of the electromagnetic field a.k.a force field is proportional to the power output from...
The readership of science fiction gets smarter over time, so making your SF "smart" (even if it's not hard SF) is an ever-moving target. This earlier question makes me think about Conservation of ...
Scenario On Earth in the latter half of the 21st century: the increasing ravages of climate change (e.g. droughts and a rising sea level) are creating more conflict between nations over the batt...
Obviously, it's not a good idea. The premise: An advanced species has a plot to remove everything in our airspace and place it 1.5 million kilometers away from Earth. Their purpose is a misguide...
Spaceships are a peculiar thing. We've got them in all forms, sizes & colours. They have vast computers needed to do all the real-time calculations required for astrogation. Assuming our compu...
Context if you're interested In the very near future, a planet teeming with alien life is discovered several light years away from our Solar System - and with a few precautions, it may be habi...
I'd like a gravity room on my space vessel for long space stays to avoid osteoporosis. They would spend a few hours each day in this room, reading or doing paper work, to maintain bone-mass. I'm ...
I plan to write a story about a large number of space probes that are equipped with artificial intelligence and told to explore star systems and travel between them. These probes are not equipped w...
Venus is being paraterraformed with floating cities. Mechanical machines collect material from the surface and send it floating at an altitude of about 50 Km where conditions are more Earth-like. H...
In my high fantasy medieval world, the ocean is populated by underwater fish people and land dominated by your good old human. Different type of fish people (shark, whale, turtle, shellfish, etc.) ...
Consider a hard-SF (slower than light) starship. Boosting it up to speed takes enormous energy. There are good reasons to want to not take all the fuel with you, but to collect energy on the run....
I want to put 10,000 humans in a space ship and send them into space. They don't have a set destination - they're having to flee their homeworld, and they don't know what planet will take them in, ...
What would happen if two spaceships with Alcubierre warp bubbles were colliding? Would the space bubble collapse? Would they reject or push each other? Would they survive it without problems?
I was wondering if it would make sense to hollow out an asteroid to use for a generation ship? Also, might it be a good idea to use hollow asteroids for any kind of long distance space ship? I'm th...
Hear me out before you downvote; It's not as simple as it seems. On Earth, nuclear reactions produce heat energy. This is used to heat water, creating steam, powering turbines connected to generat...
In an Earth-like world with a moon as large as this: Would the larger tides discourage oceanic shipping?
The energy source both in terms of fuel and electricity on my ship is nuclear fusion. Very precise nuclear fusion: there is no helium fusion until there is absolutely 100% helium in the main fusion...
Scenario: A generation ship travels to a star system that has at least one planet that's believed to be potentially habitable and, therefore, a possible location for a colony. After sending some p...
Technology: Comparable to early XXIst century, except self-driving vehicles are already available. On a tidally locked planet most of the models that I can found (ex. http://www.meteo.mcgill.ca/~t...
I've always liked living spaceships, but it seems to me that the animal kingdom would make far inferior spaceships to the plant kingdom. With that in mind, what does this tree-ship have to be made ...
Could you power a starship by feeding matter into a black hole and collecting the plasma produced by the tidal forces ripping apart whatever you fed it, or is this impossible/impractical? I keep re...
Imagine a starship with a tonnage of 600,000Â metric tons that must maintain an average speed of 10km/s to remain in Near Earth Orbit, that's probably going to consume much more energy than simply ...
An O'Neill cylinder for those not in the know is basically a space habitat consisting of a rotating cylinder 32km long and 8km in diameter. I want to turn one into an actual spacecraft rather than ...
What would it look like for a ship with an Alcubierre drive to drop out of FTL both for the passengers, and to an observer (assuming they aren't obliterated)?
This is a spin off from this question here. I want a spaceship or several spaceships to be able to move a planet out of its orbit around another planet. How big could the planet realistically be...
I've created a new question and worded differently to help me get the answer I want. Click here to view A planet is in orbit around a larger planet, and I want to push it out of orbit. The plane...
Human have begun colonizing the solar system using the ablative laser microwave drive, our next target is Proxima Centauri and inbetween there is basically nothing except dust and occasional astero...
In the background for my book, I'm looking for an alternative way for space travel. What I'm currently considering: A starship travels to the center of a star by using the natural downwards flows t...
One thing that necessarily happens on a generation ship is that people die of old age. Now that poses a tension: On one hand, you need to handle the dead with dignity. On the other hand, you probab...
Imagine a space battle between two warships without inertial dampeners. Obviously the ships would be limited to perhaps 4 gravities of prolonged acceleration, and could only perform short bursts o...
Imagine a landship that can travel on a mostly frozen icy world. How big can it be while being capable of traveling and being self sustaining? It should be able to; travel great distances be s...
Suppose there was a race of aliens who had created engines for there spaceships that could operate at any speed under light, and Hulls strong enough to withstand the crushing pressure of earths cor...
What if in a massive display of power, in the future a human military would build a massive spaceship with huge rocket engines and decided to land the craft vertically onto a desert in a magnificen...
As a high mass star which have already burnt through all of the lighter elements and is now building up iron, the fusion reaction will no longer produce sufficient energy to counter its own weight....
I am facing a great difficulty to come up with a working principle for a permanent force field on my spaceship which will only permits guest while simultaneously deny strangers or foe. The followin...
Let's suppose anti-gravity/gravity-manipulation/telekinetic technology is found in the near future. It allows to move large ships (thousands tons) into space from the surface of the Earth with re...
If force fields haven't been invented and ships must be able to deploy and return too fast for doors, how might a capital ship be able to protect its hangar from space debris and opposing fighters
I'm working on a sci-fi/fantasy world set in a solar system with a few habital, currently-being-colonized planets. Most of the action will be taking place on the surface of one of them, but I want ...
In my world there exists a planet called Solara Prime. The planet orbits a large yellow star, healthy and capable of sustaining the system. There is one planet and 4 moons whose orbits are roughl...
Superconductors will be a revolutionary enabling technology for many aspects of space construction. One such use is a magnetic field to protect a craft from solar activity, in the same manner that...
In this world FTL travel is accomplished by entering an alternate dimension, let's call Aqua. Aqua is a very simple, albeit strange dimension. A great expanse of water as far as civilization has ma...
So humanity has decided to reach for the stars, they can't get anywhere near light speed but that hasn't stopped them. The plan is to create a self sustaining ship and attach it to a large sungraz...
Coronal Mass Ejection and solar flare produced on the surface of the Sun often can cause disruption to our electronic equipments especially the communication service if it was directed towards Eart...
I'm trying do design a feasible passenger/cargo spacecraft stationed on a space station. It's a far future setting, but I'd like to stay as close to real physics as possible, specifically, anti-g...
If on a water covered planet, an aquatic species such as the merfolk evolved sapience and now wishes to go into space, how would their spaceship take into account the lack of land? How would a spac...
Like this question I'm wondering about design considerations for an intelligent aquatic species that wants to travel into space. Would they have to try and create special body suits to keep moistur...
I'm planning on sending a colony ship on an extended, multi-generational voyage to a distant star. My colony ship is an oblate spheroid, 2km long on its long axis and 1km across on its shortest axi...
So here's my rough idea for how you could basically send one large ship with a crew of a few thousand (at least ten thousand, maybe forty) to establish a colony on an Earth-like world: First step ...
Ignoring, for the sake of this question, how exactly the gravitational fields required for this to work are generated: The question Our stalwart adventurers have a spaceship, perhaps a gateship, ...
