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Scifi Spaceships Are Bombs


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Scifi Spaceships Are Bombs


Yep, conservation of energy and thermodynamics, if even remotely in play will turn several popular scifi spaceships. into potential high yield bombs. In fact I would say a basic understanding of conservation of energy and thermodynamics is key to scifi spaceship design, since it means limitations are no longer totally arbitrary, since you KNOW how much energy a ship is packing, and you have to decide just how that would be regulated.

In scifi we can view a SSTO fly into space and warp/hyperdrive somewhere , then fly to land and take off again without refueling at all.

Star Wars is a prime example.

You know how much energy that would cost? I am not even considering the hyperdrive as that is total make-believe, but the energy to reach outer space is well known...we do it often. The energy to stay in space (orbit) is a somewhat more, but we know that too.

And it looks like massive tanks of propellant.

Obviously SW does not use massive tanks of propellant. Leading to not one but two conclusions if conservation of energy and thermodynamics are even remotely applied.

1. Most of the thrust must come from some exotic reaction propulsive force, not the propellant. Since if the engine were shooting out an exhaust plume at the requisite exhaust velocities required for such high efficiencies the Millenium Falcon would glass every stretch of land behind it every time it takes off. It clearly does not. Also, no matter if the propulsion is an exotic force or super high efficiency rockets, the energy requirements remain ludicrously high. We are talking a spaceship that has enough stored energy to casually burn through the energy equivalent of a two stage orbital rocket on a whim and twice on Sundays! Without refueling! That's conservation of energy talking. This ship would explode like a tactical nuke or perhaps a full scale one if it crashed. TIES trying to dogfight it would be be incinerated if they actually blew it up.

2. Either the ship's engine innards are resistant to the high waste heat energies such ludicrous performance requires or they are not. If they are resistant, that raises a whole can of worms, like why not armor the outer hull with it? Blaster bolts surely don't have near as much energy based on what we see TIES threaten with.

If the ship's engine is not able to take high heat loads on par with it's performance that thermodynamics would require, then there is only one conclusion. The ship's engine is 100% efficient or very,  very nearly so, so that the waste heat actually produced is miniscule in comparision and radiator fins are not required. So perhaps that breaks both conservation of energy and thermodynamics as we know them, but that does not change the fact that the ship is a potential bomb.

Any spaceship that can do a lot without even refueling is a high yield potential bomb.

Now how safe do you even feel in such a scifi setting LOL?

 

EDIT: The safest way to regulate this is a number of ways. 

1.  Limiting the energy levels so not every John Doe has access to a tactical nuke of a spaceship.

2. Spreading out enough refueling/recharging stations that Space John or Jane Doe can still have a Space life.

 

That's all I can think of at this moment.

Edited by Spacescifi
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(Twin Ion Engine) TIE-fighters, not TIES - if you please.

Also:

Sci-fi writers have no sense of scale.

They don't do math.

Rule of Cool always trumps reality.

Madness.

It still lies there, waiting for the unwary.

Look for the truth elsewhere.

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8 minutes ago, Scotius said:

(Twin Ion Engine) TIE-fighters, not TIES - if you please.

Also:

Sci-fi writers have no sense of scale.

They don't do math.

Rule of Cool always trumps reality.

Madness.

It still lies there, waiting for the unwary.

Look for the truth elsewhere.

 

I know the truth.

It has influenced how I will create my scifi once and for all.

Turns out that conservation of energy and thermodynamics are seemingly...at least to me, the very most important things any scifi spaceship designer should know.

Because being arbritrary without a sort of guide leads can often lead to inconsistency after inconsistency in a scifi setting.

That's what I want to avoid.

Edited by Spacescifi
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1 minute ago, Jurassic kerbal said:

I guess but cool does trump reality

 

Hmmm...it is my opinion that reality somewhat applied to scifi leads to surprising conclusions, and have had fun realizing that with great power comes the methods the author must invent to manage it.

And even that does not have to be totally arbitrary.

Everything can be based upon something real if one searches.

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Excessive realism is not always the best road to take in a setting meant to be entertaining.

Are you familiar with BattleTech universe? Earlier this year i've read a fanfic set there, that made one, relatively small change to the setting.

Contrary to original version, militaries in this fanfic started using torch drive spaceships as relativistic kinetic kill impactors.

In effect, two hundred years down the line already Grimdark universe was turned into nightmarish post-apocalyptic setting. Several originally untouched and thriving worlds (including the Earth) were turned into asteroid belts. Interstellar travel almost died out. Crews of few remaining spaceships lived in constant fear of being attacked and killed as potential world-destroyers, while visiting the surfaces of any planet. Advanced technology almost died out too, because industrialized worlds were prime targets of kinetic attacks.

It was realistic... but i stopped reading it, because it was too dark.

Instead of being an enjoyable read, it made me queasy.

Tread carefully there.

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3 hours ago, Scotius said:

Excessive realism is not always the best road to take in a setting meant to be entertaining.

Are you familiar with BattleTech universe? Earlier this year i've read a fanfic set there, that made one, relatively small change to the setting.

Contrary to original version, militaries in this fanfic started using torch drive spaceships as relativistic kinetic kill impactors.

In effect, two hundred years down the line already Grimdark universe was turned into nightmarish post-apocalyptic setting. Several originally untouched and thriving worlds (including the Earth) were turned into asteroid belts. Interstellar travel almost died out. Crews of few remaining spaceships lived in constant fear of being attacked and killed as potential world-destroyers, while visiting the surfaces of any planet. Advanced technology almost died out too, because industrialized worlds were prime targets of kinetic attacks.

It was realistic... but i stopped reading it, because it was too dark.

Instead of being an enjoyable read, it made me queasy.

Tread carefully there.

 

Oh yes...I am well aware of the dangers of constant acceleration.

Want an easy fix...sort of?

Jump drive: To jump you must reach the escape velocity of whatever gravity well you are closest to. Wherever you jump to, your speed and trajectory switches to match the nearest gravity well 7 LY of your vessel.

If you made the mistake of jumping into interstellar space where the nearest gravity well is farther than 7 LY...then the escape velocity you need to jump is our galaxy's! About 550 kilometer per second. Unfortunately most ships don't have the energy for that so likely that would strand them.

In other words, all ships have limited energy reserves, they cannot accelerate forever.  And they use up energy everytime before they go to warp, so sooner or later they will need to refuel/recharge.

So one could attempt high speed ramming,  but that will be difficult if such a place has defenses, as they would gradually have to build that speed. Cannot drop out of warp and ram at near lightspeed, as if any ship has those kind of energy reserves anyway LOL.

Edited by Spacescifi
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Spoiler

  

2 hours ago, Scotius said:

Several originally untouched and thriving worlds (including the Earth) were turned into asteroid belts.

 

2 hours ago, Scotius said:

it was too dark.

Dark? The world where everyone may have his own piece of Earth is dark?..

Well...

***

TIE-fighters. I was sure, it's for the pilots' dress-code... And it reveals that was wrong.

Now you made me thinking how do the X-Wings and Y-Wings reproduce....

A suggestion.

StarWars ships have evil twins in a mirror universe, so the conservation laws are happy when both do same maneuvers.

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14 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

I know the truth.

It has influenced how I will create my scifi once and for all.

Turns out that conservation of energy and thermodynamics are seemingly...at least to me, the very most important things any scifi spaceship designer should know.

Because being arbritrary without a sort of guide leads can often lead to inconsistency after inconsistency in a scifi setting.

That's what I want to avoid.

I  disagree.

In my opinion the single most useful thing for a sci-fi spaceship designer to know is the rocket equation.

It’s derivation is based on conservation of momentum rather than conservation of energy and it ties together spacecraft mass, propellant fraction, drive efficiency (specific impulse) and available velocity change in one nice neat package. All of which parameters are very helpful for keeping things consistent and sanity checking spacecraft designs.

Combine it with a bit of internet searching to get an idea of the kind of specific impulse and thrust to weight ratio ranges available from different rocket types - because working that sort of stuff out from scratch is more maths than I care to get embroiled with - and you can figure out most of what you need to know about your ship design.

Or, at the least, it tells you how far you can get with hard sci-fi and where you might need to start taking liberties with reality to make things work the way you want.

 

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1 hour ago, KSK said:

I  disagree.

In my opinion the single most useful thing for a sci-fi spaceship designer to know is the rocket equation.

It’s derivation is based on conservation of momentum rather than conservation of energy and it ties together spacecraft mass, propellant fraction, drive efficiency (specific impulse) and available velocity change in one nice neat package. All of which parameters are very helpful for keeping things consistent and sanity checking spacecraft designs.

Combine it with a bit of internet searching to get an idea of the kind of specific impulse and thrust to weight ratio ranges available from different rocket types - because working that sort of stuff out from scratch is more maths than I care to get embroiled with - and you can figure out most of what you need to know about your ship design.

Or, at the least, it tells you how far you can get with hard sci-fi and where you might need to start taking liberties with reality to make things work the way you want.

 

You may disagree. That is fine.

Doing calculations is fine if you want to, and it does set hard limits.

Yet for doing SW stuff, clearly all those calculations are thrown out the window.

Since a literal space program is required with calculations otherwise, not some lone rogue on a fictional spaceship.

There is no way one can get much payload with a reusuable SSTO to do anything like what we see in SW.

I mean there are so many variables that make it untenable. Radiation, crashing since propellant is finite etc.

A scifi setting needs tech to be good enough to justify the setting.

Modern physics cannot do that...not for ST and definitely not SW.

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6 hours ago, KSK said:

useful thing for a sci-fi spaceship designer to know is the rocket equation.

It kills any interstellar sci-fi in the bud and ,akes to invent non-rocket drives which are even less realistic.

Or the only realsitic sci-fi is Orphans of the Sky with a two-headed mutant ruling a generation ship.

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Although scifi spaceships are bombs basically, they do not have to be overpowered.

Don't want to rely on exotic (fictional) forces or don't want to glass everything behind you on takeoff?

Too bad. You have to cheat...a bit.

1. Neutral g  Hull: Neutralizes the pull of gravity on the spaceship. Which is useful for going oh...just about anywhere with gravity because now you don't have to fight it.

2. Gravity drive: Your hull may be neutral to gravity from planets, but it is not to the gravity drive attached to it. Make gravity work for you! Fall the way you want. Obvious limitations are that you lose thrust with distance, and the planet you are near decides however much max thrust you can utilize. So it's great for leaving or visiting planets or moons. Not good at all for deep space battles...you would be a sitting duck with no nearby gravity fields to convert to thrust.

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8 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

You may disagree. That is fine.

Doing calculations is fine if you want to, and it does set hard limits.

Precisely my point. It sets limits on how far modern physics will get you and shows you where you need to stretch those physics, or outright ignore them to make your setting work. Besides without doing some calculations, even if they're very simplistic ones, then conservation of energy and especially thermodynamics won't help you at all when you're designing a sci-fi spaceship. And even then, they're not that much use unless you really want to put a lot of work into designing your craft from first principles. 

Especially thermodynamics - that's pretty esoteric stuff for a science-fiction story, unless you're really digging into the details of how your technology works. I mean, knowing that an isolated system will evolve so as to maximize its entropy (one statement of the second law of thermodynamics) is laudable but probably irrelevant to almost all science-fiction stories.

As for Star Wars and Star Trek - they're both terrible examples for anyone concerned about vaguely plausible spacecraft because plausible spacecraft aren't the point of either setting.  They're both set in space so they need spaceships but the stories told in both settings aren't stories about space travel.  Even in Star Trek, the stories are all about what you find when you boldly go where nobody has gone before, rather than the details of how you get there.

Edit:  The realistic details of how you get there I should say. :) Overcharging the electroplasma conduits with a phased particle-of-the-week beam to re-polarize the dilithium matrix and get the warp drive working again in the nick of time, doesn't really count.

And you certainly don't need to invoke any fancy arguments based on conservation of energy or thermodynamics to tell that the spacecraft in both settings are entirely implausible. As you pointed out yourself, all you need to do is compare them to modern day rockets.

3 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

It kills any interstellar sci-fi in the bud and ,akes to invent non-rocket drives which are even less realistic.

Or the only realsitic sci-fi is Orphans of the Sky with a two-headed mutant ruling a generation ship.

Well you've sold me on Orphans of the Sky already. :) 

As for the rocket equation killing interstellar sci-fi in the bud - yeah it does unless you have some kind of FTL drive as well. There are stories out there (as I think you know from your comment :) ) where slow interstellar travel leads to isolation of planets or communities - and where exploring that isolation is the point of the story, but I agree that those stories aren't really interstellar sci-fi as such.

The rocket equation can still be useful though if you want a reasonably hard, interstellar sci-fi.  The BattleTech setting that @Scotiusmentioned is a good example. Interstellar travel is handled by a jump drive that needs to be out of a gravity well to work. In practice that means you make your interstellar jumps either from the zenith point or the nadir point of a given system (minimum distances above or below the system ecliptic where the local star's gravity field becomes negligible), or use a very risky 'pirate point' where the local gravitational fields add up to zero. In BattleTech, getting to and from those jump points relies on spacecraft propelled by overpowered fusion engines that are essentially torch drives but there's no reason why you couldn't take that basic notion of interstellar travel only being possible from certain points in a star system and then use hard sci-fi spaceships limited by the rocket equation to get to those points.

 

 

Edited by KSK
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Yeah. Space travel is one of things ( sadly few :P ) BattleTech developers got mostly right. Aside from fusion drives being overpowered as all heck, and hilariously low fuel requirements of in-system vessels it's pretty hard Sci-fi (Just... for the love of your sanity, don't try to calculate density of starships from their dimensions-to-mass ratio :D ). FTL is annoyingly slow and limited in range, JumpShips have rotating modules providing gravity for passengers and crew, DropShips have maximum safe acceleration levels and do proper flip-and-brake maneuvers on approach to the planet.

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Asteroids and Comets are also pretty good Kinetic impactors, and even with electric propulsion and fission power (Basically today's technology if we hadn't abandoned the latter due to various issues) you could easily get them to a planet in a decent amount of time and with much, much more velocity than naturally possible.

Again, i actually liked Mass Effect's solution to this. Their lore basically has a treaty that outlawed the use of FTL ships as KE impactors or the use of asteroids, comets or space stations as KE impactors. And before you go "Why would anyone in their right mind do that?!?"

We have similar treaties IRL, for chemical, biological and similar weapons. Sure they're not always followed, but they at least make anyone who does breach them either become a rogue state or have to be extremely diligent with it. This allows you to have your FTL propulsion, without making any weird restrictions on the actual technology. The restriction is still arbitrary, but it's part of the lore and world instead of just being "X cannot do Y because i said so".

Plus it sets up conflict, and potentially future issues. Does such a restriction still hold against a species that is essentially parasitic? Is it enforceable in reality?  Even if you are allowed, how the heck do you deal with knowing that once that rock hits you've essentially destroyed the habitability of that planet for hundreds of years (This does depend largely on mass mind you).

Another solution is basically to just take the alternate approach, which is FTL ships are far too expensive and valuable to use as blunt mallets. Or if we're going for less-hard science-fiction, Star Wars (Legends at least) solved the issue with planetary shields. Remember, something going that fast is also going to have anything in front of it become a massive liability. And since the explosion will actually expend the majority of it's energy in a cone away from the shield (Or sphere in space, since we'd need an atmosphere for conical) along with the fact that the amount of energy received by the target decreases massively with the distance. This means you can actually get away with pretty flimsy shielding at a decent distance from your world.

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37 minutes ago, Scotius said:

Yeah. Space travel is one of things ( sadly few :P ) BattleTech developers got mostly right. Aside from fusion drives being overpowered as all heck, and hilariously low fuel requirements of in-system vessels it's pretty hard Sci-fi (Just... for the love of your sanity, don't try to calculate density of starships from their dimensions-to-mass ratio :D ). FTL is annoyingly slow and limited in range, JumpShips have rotating modules providing gravity for passengers and crew, DropShips have maximum safe acceleration levels and do proper flip-and-brake maneuvers on approach to the planet.

I'll get right on those density calculations once I've rationalised the BattleTech economic system. ;) 

But yes, I'm rather fond of BattleTech space travel. Don't look at the actual numbers too closely but I find that the system as a whole is fairly coherent and hangs together well enough for my suspension of disbelief.

More to the point, those limitations on FTL travel work really, really well for storytelling.  Warfare becomes at least as much about logistics and supply chains as it does about weaponry and shields, which places limits on how effectively a given faction can project force. In turn that gives you all sorts of political shenanigans to play around with, from planets effectively being feudal fiefdoms (because they can't be effectively ruled at distance in real-time) to anarchic frontier systems that are too far away from civilization to be properly policed, to the distinct possibility that the most direct route between two warring factions may well be straight through a third faction's territory.

Even the hilariously overpowered fusion drives are (somewhat) rationalised in-setting, as 'our fusion reactors do weird stuff to spacetime and so are way more powerful than we expected.' In-universe, measuring those discrepancies led to the physics underpinning the Kearney/Fuchida (aka jump) drive and the notion that a standard fusion reactor messes around with spacetime means that using one to charge a KF core (which is designed to do weird things to spacetime to enable FTL jumps) is a risky proposition. Hence drive charging is done slowly via solar panels (and again, don't look at those numbers!) rather than quickly from your reactor. Unless you're in a real mess when a possible death due to catastrophic mis-jump is better than almost certain death by enemy action.

Edited by KSK
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6 minutes ago, KSK said:

Even the hilariously overpowered fusion drives are (somewhat) rationalised in-setting, as 'our fusion reactors do weird stuff to spacetime and so are way more powerful than we expected.' In-universe, measuring those discrepancies led to the physics underpinning the Kearney/Fuchida (aka jump) drive and the notion that a standard fusion reactor messes around with spacetime means that using one to charge a KF core (which is designed to do weird things to spacetime to enable FTL jumps) is a risky proposition. Hence drive charging is done slowly via solar panels (and again, don't look at those numbers!) rather than quickly from your reactor. Unless you're in a real mess when a possible death due to catastrophic mis-jump is better than almost certain death by enemy action.

It works... as long as you deliberately NOT EVEN THINK about active fusion reactors of DropShips carried by the Jumper. And dozens of smaller reactors in 'mechs, fighters and potentially tanks loaded onboard said DropShips. Otherwise some smart... posterior might start imagining running a charging cable from Dropper to Jumper through the docking collar, thus gaming the system. ;)

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2 minutes ago, Scotius said:

It works... as long as you deliberately NOT EVEN THINK about active fusion reactors of DropShips carried by the Jumper. And dozens of smaller reactors in 'mechs, fighters and potentially tanks loaded onboard said DropShips. Otherwise some smart... posterior might start imagining running a charging cable from Dropper to Jumper through the docking collar, thus gaming the system. ;)

*sticks fingers in ears*.  I CAN'T HEAR YOU. :) 

 

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1 hour ago, KSK said:

I'll get right on those density calculations once I've rationalised the BattleTech economic system. ;) 

But yes, I'm rather fond of BattleTech space travel. Don't look at the actual numbers too closely but I find that the system as a whole is fairly coherent and hangs together well enough for my suspension of disbelief.

More to the point, those limitations on FTL travel work really, really well for storytelling.  Warfare becomes at least as much about logistics and supply chains as it does about weaponry and shields, which places limits on how effectively a given faction can project force. In turn that gives you all sorts of political shenanigans to play around with, from planets effectively being feudal fiefdoms (because they can't be effectively ruled at distance in real-time) to anarchic frontier systems that are too far away from civilization to be properly policed, to the distinct possibility that the most direct route between two warring factions may well be straight through a third faction's territory.

Even the hilariously overpowered fusion drives are (somewhat) rationalised in-setting, as 'our fusion reactors do weird stuff to spacetime and so are way more powerful than we expected.' In-universe, measuring those discrepancies led to the physics underpinning the Kearney/Fuchida (aka jump) drive and the notion that a standard fusion reactor messes around with spacetime means that using one to charge a KF core (which is designed to do weird things to spacetime to enable FTL jumps) is a risky proposition. Hence drive charging is done slowly via solar panels (and again, don't look at those numbers!) rather than quickly from your reactor. Unless you're in a real mess when a possible death due to catastrophic mis-jump is better than almost certain death by enemy action.

 

Well...I don't even have to know the numbers to know something is off with Battle tech fusion drives, although I do give them credit for including the fiction of space time manipulation, so it is obviouly more than a garden variety fusion drive,  as normal fusion does not do that as far as I know.

The devil is always in the details they say.

Jump drives are convienient for any hardish scifi setting as you need not worry about the  'FTL equals time travel folks' who look at the negative numbers and trust the math is not wrong. Even though math is actually only right in some cases if you actually KNOW what you are looking for.

Realistically, torch drives like Battle tech are rather overpowered and could and likely would be weaponized. And the jump drive only partially solves that by spreading spaceships out across a solar system rather than jumping right in above a planet.

 

There a variety of ways to fix the relativistiv spaceship problem with jump drives:

1. Some sort of auto trajectory and speed translation to nearest gravity well upon jumping. Works extremely well if you have torch or high thrust fictional constant acceleration drive, but can even work without that provided you are ready to deal with the tyranny of the rocket equation.

2. A jump drive that ONLY works if you match orbits (trajectory/transverse velocity) with your target with a 5 kilometer speed margin of error allowed. Also requires a constant propulsion system like the previous jump drive to actually be helpful. But it nips jumping in for instant ramming in the bud.

3. Some type of stand off distance for jumping into a star system. Rather certain both the original Elite, it's midway successor Oolite, and the modern ED all do this. Can jump out most places, but always jump in at a distance. From there using a kind of slow warp drive to cruise around the solar system.

Granted the warp drive will induce the ire of the 'FTL is time travel folks', but I seriously doubt many players ponder this while playing LOL.

Edited by Spacescifi
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Or you could just decide that all FTL travel is done via wormhole Space Gates, like in X-Universe. And those Gates need to be placed at set (large) distance from the main star. In such setup you still can use rocket equation, because even with powerful (but non-unrealistic) drive it still would take days and week to reach inner system.

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7 hours ago, Incarnation of Chaos said:

Again, i actually liked Mass Effect's solution to this. Their lore basically has a treaty that outlawed the use of FTL ships as KE impactors or the use of asteroids, comets or space stations as KE impactors.

The problem with that is, plenty of starships in Mass Effect (and similar settings) are privately-owned by individuals who never signed the treaty. What's to stop some disgruntled batarian pirate from launching a suicide attack on Eden Prime just for the sake of killing a bunch of humans? We see examples of this kind of behavior all the time in the real world, sadly. I can't imagine any such treaty being enforceable enough in space to prevent these kind of attacks.

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23 minutes ago, Mitchz95 said:

The problem with that is, plenty of starships in Mass Effect (and similar settings) are privately-owned by individuals who never signed the treaty. What's to stop some disgruntled batarian pirate from launching a suicide attack on Eden Prime just for the sake of killing a bunch of humans? We see examples of this kind of behavior all the time in the real world, sadly. I can't imagine any such treaty being enforceable enough in space to prevent these kind of attacks.

 

Right.

Either the FTL is inherently more safe, or weapons are good enough to wipe out relativistic objects.

Doubt it though based on game footage.

2 hours ago, Scotius said:

Or you could just decide that all FTL travel is done via wormhole Space Gates, like in X-Universe. And those Gates need to be placed at set (large) distance from the main star. In such setup you still can use rocket equation, because even with powerful (but non-unrealistic) drive it still would take days and week to reach inner system.

 

The only tech we have that even comes close is Project Orion.

Even with that, it puts us back to space program 4.0.

Not space opera. We are talking missions with singular objectives that cannot alter.

With scifi high thrust constant acceleration drives, which I prefer, they need not be unlimited.

Even allowing them to do 1g for only 4 hours before recharge/refuel would be enough...provided the drive had higher thrust modes up to 4g at the cost of less thrust time than 4 hours. And provided they had a jump drive to get them close enough (even a few hundred kilometers is close enough).

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3 hours ago, Mitchz95 said:

What's to stop some disgruntled batarian pirate from launching a suicide attack

Greed. Pirates want to get and spend money, not to give them to the friends by price of life.

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Yes, all realistic spaceships using on-board power have the energy density to be bombs.  Some are less literal, such as a RTG powered ion thruster, but most are literally bombs configured to 'explode' in a useful way, particularly those that are chemically powered.  (fission powered ion engines, should they ever be deployed, are an edge-case, as it is really a bomb designed to *not* blow up in a useful way).

 

Inter-planetary, and even more so inter-stellar, transportation is a very energy intensive process.

 

On the other hand, science fiction vessels are driven by plot, not by physics, so their qualities will be whatever is demanded by the story, which is usually completely distinct from what is required/allowed by physics.

As such, too much realism in space travel is usually a bad thing in a story, as it will force plot changes that are not beneficial to the story, at best adding unneeded complexity to the narrative.

 

Example:

"I went to the store to buy some milk" is not improved by: specifying the brand name of the milk, the name of the store, the fuel efficiency of the means of conveyance, or the name of the cashere/store owner.

Sure that is not much of a story, but without some larger narrative to provide additional meaning to those additional details, adding them would only make the story more complicated without adding value to the reader.

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