Posts tagged spaceships
There are 2 planet sized structures that are artificially made with no means of propulsion. Each structure has the approximate mass of Earth but are hollow inside. The inside area is where the peop...
So, I was recently watching Stargate: Atlantis, and I saw a very interesting concept. In one episode, the villainous Replicators use the stargate network to fire what is essentially a high-powered ...
Imagine a spaceship capable of achieving faster than light travel uses several transporters to allow crew members to move around its interior at the constant speed of light. What happens to the cre...
I like to have a concept of an engine that spaceships can use to lift off (and land) from/on a planet (regardless of it having an atmosphere or not) with the following constraints: It should be s...
In my story, I need a spaceplane, that is, a shuttle which can fly in an atmosphere as well as in space. It needs to be able to land from space, and then take off and go to space without refuelling...
Goal: Just imaging a Star Wars X-Wing fight, and you've got the idea. However, I want to know whether something like that is possible without tons of metaphysical hand-waiving and 'just because'. ...
I'm trying to not delve too into the sciences so as to keep things fairly suitable for a space opera setting, but I'm trying to figure a few things to a reasonable degree of detail. My question he...
I'm working on a version of wormhole-based FTL travel, and one of the side effects of passing through the wormhole is going to be instantaneous heating of every molecule of the thing passing throug...
A large railgun mounted on the spine of a mega-scale starship (20-32km) or an antimatter-powered missile launched outside the ship? For clarification's sake, when I say "safer" I'm referring to "sa...
And I'm not talking about the wimpy 32"‰MJ kind we have in the real world, I'm talking about the superweapon kind. Anyone familiar with Knights of Sidonia and their flagship's Heavy Mass Cannons wi...
Spacecraft in my Scifi setting use strong magnetic fields for many purposes. Fusion containment, magnetic nozzles, gauss guns, magnetic fields as pusher-plates for nuclear pulsed propulsion and def...
What would be the approximate gravity, atmosphere etc. of a planet for a species to never make or use launch vehicles with rounded shapes like tapering cylinders, because they make use of the incre...
Consider an interstellar spaceship. It is a rather classical design, somewhat similar to the ISS Venture Star from Avatar: http://james-camerons-avatar.wikia.com/wiki/Interstellar_Vehicle_Venture...
In FTL-free universes, interstellar travel is often done by vessels capable of continuous acceleration (the drives themselves are often magitech), which can use the effects of relativistic time dil...
In my story, a ship is built in orbit around Earth, designed for a 20-person scientific expedition to a planet 11.4 ly away. It will accelerate at 1g for half the distance, then flip around and acc...
I've had a fairly complex world built up in my head for several years and finally writing a story in it. One thing I'm struggling with is explaining the galaxy's faster-than-light traveling. It's n...
At a constant 1G acceleration it takes a little less than a year to reach near light speed speeds. Time would dilate locally on the ship slowing time for them. Could the time dilation be pushed t...
Lets say you have a space ship. This ship will do a lot of maneuvers causing a lot of G forces to go in different directions through the ship. During straight acceleration it pushes the people insi...
I understand that in order to compress and expand spacetime, an Alcubierre drive would require some sort of "exotic matter" with a negative energy density. Is that sort of exotic matter purely hyp...
The goal is to get from Earth to the Outer Solar System, preferably the Kuiper Belt, as quickly as practical, with a crew of about 12, and a not-set-in-stone dry mass around 30 tons. The character...
I previously asked how best to use wormholes for spaceflight, focusing mainly on propulsion in space. I'm now wondering if there's a good way to get off Earth with this ship. The ship needs to be ...
I have the tables explaining time dilation for a single ship at different relativistic speeds, but am unsure how to modify that to work out for two ships at different velocities, and the two differ...
Animals on planets are so 20th century - let's herd us some space animals! In this story I have the need to move a herd of pesky space animals. They like Suns for their juicy solar energy and hydr...
Set in the near future, the interior of the spaceship is coated with thin layers of Teflon approximately 10mm average thickness on top of titanium alloy which in case you are wondering it is weakly...
The probe in my mind is unmanned, with a super-reflective surface to deflect most of the energy from the Sun on all wave length, only absorb enough to power its operation. Please also elaborate i...
For some reason, all the nations in the world have banded together. Their goal? Go to the Moon. Their budget? As much as the planet and humans can throw at it. How fast could we build a reliable a...
A moon-sized asteroid approaches Earth in the near future, where space tourism has become normal. The Earth has a few satellite structures above Mars conducting research, as well as successful terr...
The Question about the blockade of en entire star system makes me wonder: How would, if possible, a space "radar" work? Or how would you scan for Ships further away than your Optical sensors can ...
With all the interest in VASIMR and the idea of getting to Mars in 39 days, the biggest challenge I can see is having a power source that is strong and light enough to make that possible. So I was ...
In the climactic final battle Faction A engages Faction B on Faction B's planetary base, both in orbital and ground combat. Realizing they can't win, Faction A activates a device that transports an...
Taking into account all of the developments in the alcubierre warp drive theory including the new calculations by Harold White. Are their any plausible/theoretical ways to generate a warp bubble wi...
This has been considered other places on the net, but I thought it would be good for the hard-science challenge, since it is often an example of the subtle difference between soft and hard science....
I'm writing a story and I was thinking about the ending in advance. I posted a question about how the population would be wiped out. I have developed from that and thought about the virus having no...
I'm designing a small two-person spaceship for use in battles in space. It is set around the year 2100. It would be around the size of a tank (approx. 50 tons). It would need to be fast and easy ...
What sort of force would a railgun need to produce to have a measurable affect on the trajectory of a large spacecraft? In the scifi book I am working on the primary craft of the story is a milita...
I understand the Apollo 13 CM got down to 39°F after it was powered down following the explosion in the oxygen tank. Could the interior of the ISS be cooled (for more than 12 hours) to below 32°...
A space ship travels (almost) at the speed of light. When it nearly reaches its destination it starts decreasing the speed. What would be the most appropriate deceleration for human body in such co...
Any story about an independent, self-owned tramp spaceship crew tends to implicitly or explicitly raise the question of how the crew got a spaceship, how it afforded it, and why it doesn't just sel...
I've been looking at the altitude boosted SSTO designs from the 90s that were designed to be lifted to launch altitude by modified jetliners and thinking about bumblebees and wondering if bioships ...
I have a spaceship that can get to speeds very close to the speed of light. How can this ship measure how fast it is going near the speed of light? I would think one would measure how fast other ...
In a near future setting I am working on, humans have built space-habitats and have established colonies on celestial objects such as Luna. Their spaceships cannot go faster-than-light and have the...
I've been puzzling over the logistics of orbital spaceports, and this has been the one sticking point I keep coming to: radiation control between docked, or even neighboring, ships. Mass limitation...
During a space cold war, a ship from the ideological enemy is not allowed remain in orbit while some of their investigators visit a crash site. The reason why is narrative "“ to separate the char...
I'm writing a soft scifi novel that has its fair share "fi" but every now and then I feel it important to acknowledge some "sci." In this scenario, a spaceship is in orbit and about to land on E...
Space is two things: empty and (mostly) dark. This makes it really, really hard to hide in it, because to do anything in it, chances are, you'll be shining a big bright light through it. Even if ...
Assume there's a spaceship in earth orbit that its crew of 24 want to get to Mars, the crew are all humans and possess all of modern day knowledge and equipment, is it possible for said ship to mak...
My question stems from What would a space fighter look like? After reading through @dsollen's question can a human fighter pilot fully grasp 3 dimensional frictionless movement in space? I started...
I've created a fairly fleshed out, detailed FTL concept. Basically, you have a circular starship, with a ring of tungsten encircling that, held in place by an antigravity ring beneath it. The rim o...
In the world I'm building, a nuclear war and subsequent repressive chaos have led all satellites to be destroyed by the powers that be, around 10 years from now. A few years later, a small spacecra...
In my military scifi novel the military is, obviously, very concerned with security aboard its spaceships. They don't want other people to be able to receive any information about what happens on t...