Posts tagged science-fiction
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 have been working on a post-apocalyptic fiction story and there is one thing I have been wondering about, could (in theory) a mammoth make a good pet and transportation system in this story? Fo...
I'm thinking of a world where the earth's moon is densely crowded with dark materials. Solar power plants, dark buildings covered with radiation shielding, large dark open pit mines etc. Imagine th...
I'm curious what might need to be considered if a group were exploring the vicinity if a neutron star. Gravitational waves and radiation could be dangers, but what else? Is it possible that habit...
About 200 years from now, a human scientific expedition, lead by a international coalition of Earth nations, is sent to an alien moon around a habitable planet, light years from earth. Like it's pa...
I am trying to build a hard science-fiction world where the interstellar travel might work like this: Travellers bodies are scanned and all relevant information regarding body structure, neural c...
What would be the major changes that could happen if Earth experienced a solar eclipse caused by a fictional planet for a minimum of 10 days? Mainly what would happen to the oceans and flora in suc...
So my main character was genetically engineered to be biologically immortal. By this I mean her DNA is a lot better than ours. The telomeres do not degrade over time same as genetic information. C...
A planet in one of my solar systems has 100% of its surface covered in deep water, many hundreds of kilometers deep. Some criteria relating to the planet. It's fairly close to its host, a sunlike...
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...
I'm working on this new story in which many people have developed "special qualities" or gifts - call it extreme DNA mutations, if you will. There's this character who has several rows of teeth (ma...
My story involves a groups of colonists from a near post-apocalyptic Earth settling on a nearby, newly discovered habitable world, each colony separated and unknown to the others initially. Through...
Similar to other suggested dynamic structures using kinetic energy to provide structural support, I am considering options for resisting external pressure in a vessel (e.g. a diving bell) by incorp...
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...
Following up on my Martian canals theme from this question and assuming the canals can be constructed, I would now like to ask what level of technology is required to do that. The basic problem Th...
"Glassing" a planet is a common ultimate tactic in Science Fiction, basically it consists in using high power energy weapons to destroy all life on the planet and reducing the soil and rock of the ...
In a far-distant future Pascal enters the bridge of his intelligent space ship. He's a lazy bloke who can't be bothered to sit or stand, so he flicks his fingers and in a moment of Clarkian...
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...
A large igneous province is a very large area that has been covered in igneous stone due to some catastrophically large volcanic even or something similar. In my story, a large, futuristic, city h...
Its a very wip idea: I have a star that's not very hot, and the planet is very close to it. Can the planet be so close to the star to be livable on the surface, but flying at cruise height(10 km) w...
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...
I'm imagining a universe where interplanetary, but intrasystem, space travel is common (e.g. at a similar level to The Expanse books/TV show) - but not necessarily our local solar system. Perhaps w...
I need to create a world with some very high plateaus and some very deep depressions. The sides of these structures should be very steep and unclimbable. They need to provide an obstacle sufficient...
The "Light-Year City" Questions "” What would be the gravitational implications of a city in the far, far distant future, with an area spanning one square light year (3.456 × 10^25 mi² area)? Th...
Could a structure similar to that shown in the image below inspired by Roger Dean's "Close to the edge" actually exist in nature? If not could it be constructed artificially and if so how? Assume t...
In my project, which portrays a modern take on the classic Asimovian "human empire among the stars", I have a society connected by stable wormholes which are as instantaneous as the portals in the ...
I have an idea for a Sci-Fi story that involves a planet with a third moon made entirely of antimatter, before I delve further into this concept, I would appreciate input on how to make this sci...
This is my first post, I apologize in advance if my English is not accurate, it is not my first language. My question is: in a world where very advanced civilizations have achieved intergalactic t...
Could a world similar to that envisioned in the Mars of Edgar Rice Burroughs / H G exist? And if so would canals be a practical way to make the planet habitable over the long term? For current pu...
I have the below snippet describing a planet in a (hard) sci-fi setting. This harsh planet has some human settlers, who can survive the climate in light weight environmental suits. The planet i...
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...
In the future the technology to reverse one's age exists. We can make people younger but not older. One day there is an accident, and someone is reverted to a ten year old, instead of reverting t...
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...
I'm looking for flaws in my reasoning. My world is set in the near future, and AI technology is progressing rapidly. There are strict rules and regulations about AI development and the threat it p...
Would this type of orbit be possible to achieve without external forces being applied? Is it possible at all? I have little to no background in the sciences so please explain like I'm stupid. Thank...
So lots of Sci-fi works use mono-crystalline diamond as a wonder material used to build all sorts of impressive and in some cases seemingly impossible structures, I'd like to ask about the science ...
YA fantasy novel set 350 years in the future under a corporate dictatorship which reanimates dead people to use as disposable slave soldiers. So the setup is a medical/research station orbiting a ...
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...
In my world the characters find themselves in a new land. They do not understand the locals nor do the locals understand them. How could these characters learn to understand the locals withing a mo...
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...
This excludes metal stakes, knives etc. to the heart, it's not the bleeding out that's the issue. Just for some reason, a wooden stake to the heart ends a vampire. Why? Assume the type of vampire ...
Given ample access to uranium and a race that is naturally resistant to radiation poisoning, how soon could a civilization invent nuclear reactors?
I'm trying to build a setting in which humankind would have no other choice than to live underwater to survive. Suppose there was a nuclear war in which a huge part of the human population died, ...
I'm working on a sci-fi game about conquering little asteroids (about 1 km diameter). You can go into one of them and make it Earth-like so other humans, animals or plants can live there. To do th...
TL,DR: Kinetic weapons are great at taking down shields, but can't take out the hull. I need an explosive that works in a vacuum to take out the hull. Nukes are out, since they'll hit the atmosphe...
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...
Far Future. Almost every household has a 'fabber'. You put raw materials in it (can be almost anything) and it does what you program it to do. It transmutes the raw materials into what is needed. T...
I was wondering about feasibility of small 'shell' world build around something very dense, like black hole or some 'artificial mini star' that could also be source of energy, and of course gave us...
I've been spending a lot of time developing aliens for a comic I'm working on, in the skeletal structure department I've run into a bit of a roadblock, how to design a spine for a species that is k...
