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Considering the rather hostile radiation environment on Europa, what communication and navigation systems might be used with near-future manned spacecraft? What would the ranges and features of th...
How much wattage would you need to accelerate a four petaton spaceship by 1g for a year? This should be about enough to reach near light speed, which is perfect for interstellar cruising, but I'm w...
After watching this brilliant video by Shoddycast about Stimpaks in the Fallout universe: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CLY-FMxsb2U I started to wonder. Just how many of science fiction's most me...
I'm trying to design a realistic genetically engineered nanotech super-soldier with a full set of redundant organs. How much more interior volume and thus height/weight/muscle mass would a human bo...
For the purpose of this questions, let's assume my crew has solved all those nasty problems of survivability inside the field, not unleashing a devastating blast of particles at their destination, ...
So for my story I want to have a binary planetary system, where both planets are about the size of earth and are habitable by human people. I'm also thinking that they will be tidally locked to eac...
Considering our topic challenge, and the fantastic eclipse last Sunday a question came to me. Could there be a stable (relatively speaking) planetary system where a(n) eclipse/alignment would actu...
I've seen a couple questions before (like this one and this one) that ask about the habitability of a planet, with a key part of that being if the atmosphere is survivable. It seems like we should ...
In his Robot Series, Isaac Asimov mentions "yeast substitutes" as a way of creating enough food to feed everybody in the Cities. It's also mentioned in Prelude to Foundation. Here's a few quotes fr...
Scenario: I have a generation ship moving between two star systems. Given that such a ship needs to have a completely self sufficient life cycle system to make it viable, ejecting mass continuously...
In a world similar to ours, a mad scientist is bent on preventing the ascendance of one certain individual over the rest of the people inhabiting the northern part of the continental America, also ...
Suppose a starship is being powered by a lasers beamed first from the departure star, and then from the destination which is a moving base. The ship is moving in the regime of 10"“30% of light spee...
This is a rather nasty, if rare, brain-eating thermophilic amoeba which lives in warm waters in North America (and elsewhere?). It kills by infecting the brain via the olfactory nerve after it ente...
I was wondering if a small black hole would make a feasible/possible propulsion source, and if so, how. Pros Black holes release Hawking radiation, would should be easy to direct in a certain ...
Vertebrate tooth enamel is made from Hydroxylapatite, however this need not be the only material available that an alien species could use to make teeth or tooth-like structures. Given that an ide...
Anyone who has a well-versed background in geology will know that the rock of the continents is granite. It forms as lava cools down very slowly, creating large minerals and crystals that shield...
If so, what's the equation (or series of equations) for this, and what variables do I need to take into account? EDIT: the planet in my setting is rather "chilly" (around 9.35 Celsius average) wit...
It's becoming obvious from how could humans recognize another species as sentient / intelligent that recognizing another species' intelligence is very complicated. There are no universal tests, no ...
In the event that MOST of the world population were wiped out in a plague / apocalypse that did not directly destroy infrastructure, just killed the people, how long would infrastructure like the p...
Consider a civilization with the industrial age technologies. Oil and coal are rare (probably used up). All products produced by oil and coal are also nonexistent. The civilization has invented ele...
Guests of this large space station enjoy Earth-like gravity (80-90% minimum). How? Well the space station is so massive it has its own gravity. The disk shaped "core" is made with ultradense mater...
Lets say you have an average-ish magnetar "” about 3 solar masses, with a magnetic field of 108 teslas (it's decayed a bit since it was born). Now lets say we have a solar system with a small-ish ...
In our universe infinite energy is not possible, at least given the known laws of physics. But in another universe what would allow for energy to be in the same amount as space? But how large i...
It is 2057 and a manned mission to Europa has been comissioned in the prospect of further exploring the ecosystem and energy signatures of Europa. Unlike the implied unnmanned probe, this mission ...
To start with, i know You measure the Kardashev scale from stellar success, but lets say we have a civilization that are vastly advanced compared to us, so they are equivalent to a type 2 civilizat...
I wrote a novel based on a human civilization that lives floating cities and dirigibles on a small, atmosphere-abundant super-Earth with a liquid water core (there's a smaller solid core under that...
This question discusses what you'd look at from space, but mostly focuses on how you could identify the weather. This question discusses what resources a colony would need, but doesn't discuss ho...
I have two planets that are the exact same size and mass of Earth. They orbit each other, and have an orbital period of one day. How far apart are they? The planets both orbit a star the same as t...
I ask because I have a problem trying to find an appropriate launch window around that time or any point in the mid-1980s, and I need to reach Jupiter via Hohmann transfer so I can then use a serie...
In the world I'm building, the day lasts 9 of their years. This means that they are almost always on the move, living in blimp-like cities and houses. I've been designing these and I am having trou...
I'd like to justify a lightning man in my world, and I have a theory that by some sort of magic, his cells in the dermis (middle layer of the skin - okay, for simplicity, don't count hair) are able...
This is an edit of a previous question. It has been edited so I can be more specific in my asking, as I'm still confused after looking at the answers to a similar question to my original. I have a...
I'm looking for various factors; Atmosphere Composition, Type of Sun, etc, whatever would work. That is, of course, if this is even likely/possible. I believe that yellow is generally not an ideal ...
Positive mass moves in the same direction as its momentum and if negative energy exists then it would move in the opposite direction from its momentum. I was thinking of a type of mass, known as "...
Recently LIGO discovered gravitational waves caused by two black holes that were orbiting each other, and then collapsed into one black hole. A few months later, we find out that this actually happ...
In my fictional world I have selected all parameters to maximize the Hills Sphere of my planet. The planet has three times Earth's mass and it is located in 2 AU from its star that's 1.4 times more...
Could one (and how much) generate electricity by building a wall connecting: South Africa to Antarctica South America to Antarctica Northern Canada to Northern Greenland Northern Greenland to Rus...
I have been looking at various animals that have evolved some level of aerial capability, and I came across Kuehneosauridae. Reptiles which evolved gliding struts, attached down their sides, which ...
Following on from this question: Can Cloud Nine be built? Let us assume we have constructed a Cloud Nine tensegrity sphere with a 2 kilometer diameter out of a durable material for use in Earth's ...
Okay, so the heat death of the universe is approaching. You can't stop it. You can't dodge it. What do you do? You wait it out. According to wikipedia, about $10^{{10}^{56}}$ years after the heat ...
Earth, present time or very near future. Astronomers have just announced that it is believed that almost 9 billion habitable Earth-like planets exist in the Milky Way alone (this is true, but there...
How dark would it be living in an impact winter? Where would an asteroid have to hit earth to cause an impact winter? gives a great breakdown of the effects of an impact winter, but I'd like to k...
Basically, in the event of a blotting out of the sun á la an impact winter, what sort of food source (if any) could be used to sustain humanity? In my universe, underground/makeshift greenhouses ...
For those unfamiliar, An impact winter is a hypothesized period of prolonged cold weather due to the impact of a large asteroid or comet on the Earth's surface. (Wikipedia) In my world I want...
In this world a secret society "farms" people with desired features (personality appearances etc.). They have ectogenesis of course; but they can't afford personnel to take care of the "products" u...
It seems that my ability to create interesting creatures is limited by the need for sexual reproduction, which is absurdly useful, but also rather limiting, method of sharing genetics. I acknowled...
A simple enough question, but one that Grimmsdottir and I agonized over. Basically, what would enable close-ranged fighting between space fleets/ships? We both agreed that having gargantuan ships ...
Could an unmanned solar plane go not only above the clouds, but also so fast that it always is in the day-side of the planet? A solar plane flying above the clouds receives sunlight $12$ hours per...
When I was observing the Moon yesterday, I asked myself: What would happen if a meteoroid impacted the Moon on the more clear part of the Moon which we can see, leaving a crater of the size like t...
So, after going through a some rough calculations, I figured my earlier question ran into a few problems regarding the final velocity of the asteroid. I pulled the mathematics a bit incorrect, so I...
