Would You Want A Scifi Spaceship If It Only Had Manual Controls?

[Spacescifi]

 

What I mean is that you literally have to hard stick the controls.

There is no computer aided thruster assist. If you turn left, you must tap the right thruster enough if you want to go straight instead of keep turning. Every thrust turns you a little, so you will have to correct any unwanted rotatations yourself. The computer won't help with that. All the ships fly newtonian in space, and if they can fly in the atmosphere, aerodynamics will come into play while you hardstick it.

So would you? And what scifi ship would choose? Can be any scifi ship from any TV show or book you have seen or read about.

Edited May 25, 2020 by Spacescifi

[Superfluous J]

1 hour ago, Spacescifi said:

If you turn left, you must tap the right thruster enough if you want to go straight instead of keep turning.

Having flown in KSP without SAS, I'll hard pass on that.

The rest sounds fine, so long as I am (or as the captain and owner I have hired) a crack pilot with nerves of steel and an uncanny ability to pilot perfectly in all situations.

You said it was a sci-fi ship, after all.

[Spacescifi]

7 minutes ago, Superfluous J said:

Having flown in KSP without SAS, I'll hard pass on that.

The rest sounds fine, so long as I am (or as the captain and owner I have hired) a crack pilot with nerves of steel and an uncanny ability to pilot perfectly in all situations.

You said it was a sci-fi ship, after all.

 

Nope. You are just you.

Any nerves of steel will be your own.

Personally I have played a newtonian 3-D space game without any flight assist whatsover.

I got past training mode, but not the first level.

Space travel is more work tham fun if you have to do it all manually with no flight assist.

My guess is landing will require more than eyeballing it. Likely would require you to at least ask the computer your meters per second so you know how much you need to slow down for landing.

Computer will do that. Even will tell you how close to impact you are.

It just won't help with thrust control..

[Shpaget]

Why? Did the civilization suddenly forget about computers?

[Spacescifi]

20 minutes ago, Shpaget said:

Why? Did the civilization suddenly forget about computers?

 

This is NOT one of my story ideas.

I just wanted to know how wiling people here are to have a scifi spaceship, knowing full well the controls are manual only.

Turns out we think alike.

Thought perhaps their would be some either macho, masochistic, or both kinds who would welcome manual controls.

But not even then apparently... it's that hard lol.

[Shpaget]

Even the cheap electric scooter I rode the other day was fly by wire.

Probably for the best, since otherwise it likely would have offloaded me as soon as I cranked the throttle.

[Superfluous J]

2 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

Space travel is more work tham fun if you have to do it all manually with no flight assist.

To be fair most of life is more work than fun, so if my job was to fly a space ship manually it wouldn't change the amount of work I do, just the type. And I'd be in a space ship.

Last time I was in one of your threads you hadn't played KSP yet, and I don't know if you've changed that so I'll explain what SAS is. it's not a flight computer. It just allows you to hold a heading so you can turn a direction and then let SAS hold you there. There are advanced features connected to pilot skill and probe core level that allow you to hold prograde, maneuver nodes, aim at target and the like (which are nice) but in its raw form all it does is stops you from having to do the back-and-forth wobble dance of never being able to actually stop your ship's rotation by hand. THAT is what I don't want to fly a space ship without.

With proper training and safety systems in place to make flying a space ship the equivalent of driving a truck... sure why not? Gotta put food on the table and at least in the space ship I get to see other places.

[kerbiloid]

If it was my work, I would especially want it to be automated

Edited May 25, 2020 by kerbiloid

[cubinator]

It would be easy enough to cheese this by building a robot that sits in the pilot seat and operates the controls based on input from a flight computer I bolt to the dash...In the meantime, if the ship is not an unstable wreck to maneuver I'd fly it all over the solar system.

[Lewie]

heck...I will fly the Enterprise. Cus why not?

[Nuke]

16 hours ago, Shpaget said:

Why? Did the civilization suddenly forget about computers?

in dune computers were just flat out illegal. that thing with the butlerian jihad. 

of course a computer is completely different from a control system. use the joystick to set the rate of gyro slew. but that too might be construed as a thinking machine in the duniverse.

frankly idk how they managed to make their ornithopters work without an elaborate fly by wire control system. i guess so long as a human has their hand on the joystick its not a thinking machine. 

Edited May 25, 2020 by Nuke

[Exploro]

11 minutes ago, Nuke said:

in dune computers were just flat out illegal. that thing with the butlerian jihad. 

To an extent. A post by WolfOdrade on Stack Exchange's Science Fiction and Fantasy entitled "In the Dune series, why are they not using computers and programming related technologies?" states that in the original Dune, basic computer systems would be legal so long as they do not emulate the human mind.

[Nuke]

1 hour ago, Exploro said:

To an extent. A post by WolfOdrade on Stack Exchange's Science Fiction and Fantasy entitled "In the Dune series, why are they not using computers and programming related technologies?" states that in the original Dune, basic computer systems would be legal so long as they do not emulate the human mind.

in the duniverse, some people do get away with breaking the rules, the ixians for example. one good example of this (from the 80s move actually, i dont think its actually in the books) was when paul trains on the fighting drone (which according to the expanded novels is ixian). before this takes place thufer orders the room be cleared and locked, presumably because they dont want even their own people to know of the existence of the drone. its never made clear in the movie, but i always thought this was a clever and subtle way to underline how dangerous it is to own computer systems of any kind. in the expanded universe you have cases where people are getting killed for something as petty as owning what is effectively a pocket calculator. 

however you might be able to justify analog or mechanical computers which could be very advanced such as the ones used in ww2 (for things like stabilizing battleship guns or the norden bomb sight). it might presumably possible to do apollo with analog computers provided you put in the time to miniaturize them and use lightweight materials. the imu for the most part was analog. and it wouldn't be hard to tie that into an analog pid controller to stabilize the spacecraft. any math you needed could be phoned in to mission control and handed off to a team of solvers (or a mentat). slide rules and things like the mechanical fuel calculators that pilots use might be totally legit. as these are just tables of information computed by humans, turn the dial to your input and the arrow points to your output result. 

its also interesting to note that pid controllers were developed by watching the way a helmsman maintains a ship's course. make small adjustments periodically and compensate for the previous error. so it certainly is something you can train a human to do. you just now need 3 of them to maintain stability on all axes. 

 

Edited May 26, 2020 by Nuke

[Spacescifi]

4 hours ago, Lewie said:

heck...I will fly the Enterprise. Cus why not?

 

Newtonian maneuvers. Center of mass vs center of thrust.

Maneuvering will be a nighmare for you.

 

[Lewie]

9 minutes ago, Spacescifi said:

Maneuvering will be a nightmare for you.

ehh. I'll just have Mr. Sulu do it.