Spacescifi

The knowledge required for casual spaceflight, let alone casual interstellar system travel, would mean they would know more and guess less... at least about things they already know or have experienced. I think important questions to ask are: 1. For whatever kind of technology your races have and use, what does that imply about what they know and understand to allow them to make it in the first place? 2. For whatever they have already done on an interplanetary or interstellar scale, same question. Casual interstellar travel implies you already explored and or colonized your home solar system. Which means you will already have old planetary records of data that allow you to compare what you know with new planetary data. As for sensors, I would just go with super good cameras and regular EM sensors to complement them. Hard to screw up there unless you are literally landing on a death trap where everything is disguised to look safe but really is'nt. If that is so then you have bigger problems than your sensors alone can solve anyways. For that you need weapons... unless you can also make your sensors weapons. Probes still seem like a great idea to test said death trap.

While it it is not impossible, my argument was that design is simpler if you just have two vessels working in tandem to simulate gravity. I will admit part of the reason I am a fan of this approach is that I love the idea of spaceships being able to do SSTO to planets and back to outer space on their own thrust. Doing this IRL is nigh impossible since you pay a severe propellant cost and the only way to lower it we know how is by radiating your launch site or dropping expended rockets as you ascend (and you will run out sooner or later). Of course scifi offers other options like antigravity and etc but I digress. Your idea is definitely possible, but it works better for orbital interplanetary cruisers that are not designed to ever land.

If your scanners/sensors follow current understanding of physics they are limited to lightspeed. Which means any calculation you do of a target vessel's location will be where the target was and you have to make an educated guess about where it will be next to even match it's speed and get the drop on it by warping in to the correct distance. Granted... this becomes easier to do when vessels don't have super efficient propulsion methods, since making a lot of course corrections costs propellant and propellent is finite. If they have some kind of weird vacuum or diametric drive that does not even require exhausting propellant of any kind propellant then all bets are off though.

Space combat is dependent on effective weapons range. Macron/sandcasters travel at fractions of lightspeed and can hit like a bomb. Railgun rounds are fast but not THAT fast. Space combat by default is long range... unless you can scifi up an alternative (like dropping out of warp nearby while somehow immediately changing your inertial heading to match your target's without doing it beforehand). Long range effective combat is supreme in space combat. Which means before railgun rounds get anywhere near a large spaceship they could get hit dozens of times by it's longer ranged macron/sandcaster guns. Which could either knock them off course or destroy them outright. Slower top speed weapons ultimately just become point defense weapons, since they are not catching spaceships unless the spaceships are on an intercept course anyway. Basically they are ideal for static defense of bases and spacestations, but spaceships that move need the fastest most effective long ranged weapons available.

Good points. Yet even these can be countered by sandcasters. Which means you can turn macron guns into shotguns that fire off clouds of tiny pellets at fractions of light speed to intercept whatever is incoming. What that means is that instead of a bunch of bright beams criss crossing the dark background of space in a cliche scifi space battle, what you get are a LOT of flashes in empty space. You see a lot of them as incoming fire nears warships as their sandcaster cannons work to blast incoming particles. The fizzler sounds cool but once again like all solid fuel rockets should expire in 30 years. That's the kind of thing you are more likely to see on orbiting battle stations or moon battle stations that have infrastructure nearby for resupply/manufacture. It seems the farther out you are away from any hope of resupply/manufacture that missiles become far less useful since they are fundamentally easy to destroy if you see them coming in time. And because space combat is a long range affair by default you usually will. I pity the poor fool who attacks an Earth-like world with spaceships if Earth is armed up for for a real space war. Since it could throw literal tons of sandcaster flak and fizzlers in the enemy fleet's direction... far more than the fleet should be able to put out. So what am saying I guess is that against casaba howitzers, ultra lasers, and sandcasters, missiles as we commonly know them are virtually obsolete. For example. Let's take a swarm of 100 casaba howitzers fired against 100 nuclear chemical propelled missiles. Casaba howitzers need nuclear chemical missiles to propel them otherwise they're only good for line of sight/sensor point defense. Casaba howitzers could intercept missiles with relative ease since they don't need to actually collide with enemy missiles because their shrapnel will at fractions of light speed.

I recently learned a few things, which when added to what I already knew, changed my view of how space combat would actually go down. On Earth solid fueled missiles are what everyone uses in war. In space they are of limited value though, since solid fuel missiles burn through their fuel quickly and typically are not designed for toggling thrust on and off to conserve fuel. Additionally solid fuels have an expiration date (about 30 years if I recall correctly from my internet search). What that means is that not only is their effective range rather short, but that you need someone to resupply or manufacture brand new missiles over time when the originals degrade over the decades. So if you are on one of those generational spaceships solid fueled missiles are not going to last you on your journey. You would have to manufacture new ones and those too would expire with time. Chemical fueled missiles: These can last indefinitely if properly stored and maintained. The main challenge with these is their lower fuel density per volume... which would force weapon designers to make larger missiles just to hold the chemical fuel... which makes it a huge target and kind of defeats the whole point of a missile in the first place. Nuclear chemical propellant missiles: Great for space combat since nuclear power if properly utilized can compensate for not having tons of fuel available. Yet you also run into waste heat issues... which may force it to have radiator wings installed, making it a target everyone in the entire solar system can see brightly on their sensors. Scifi Fusion missiles: We don't even have a way of doing this unless you are talking pulse propulsion using ether pusher plates or magnetic nozzles. Superior to many nuclear chemical missiles with a few exceptions like the dreaded NSWR rocket engine from Zubrin (has deadly chernobyl level exhaust). Scifi Antimatter fueled missiles: Excellent for range and thrust if we had them but freakishly expensive. Cheaper to use it as a warhead than actual fuel for a disposable missile. The future: Nuclear chemical fueled missiles seems like the way to go for space combat, especially when you are so far out that you cannot count on being resupplied with fresh chemical missiles when the ones you have already expired. Your thoughts? What about this scenario: A generation spaceship on a 200 year journey has to use it's missiles to defend itself near the end of it's journey. Unfortunately the ship designers stocked it with 2,000 solid fueled missiles which have long since expired. The reason? Let's just say there was a war during launch and several ships that were supposed to accompany the generation ship on the journey did not make it. The solid fueled missiles were really useful back then but now? That is the question. What happens when you attempt to launch 190 year old solid fueled missiles lol? It seems for generational ships what you should install are RBOD laser cannons... since it should still work with proper maintenance even if 190 years old... I think anyway unless I missed something.

Seems like you are talking about sending at bare minimum two squadrons (equal to one floatilla). Since a floatilla is anywhere between 3 and 10, we are talking about a fleet that can be anywhere between 6 or 20 ships in total.

Don't get me wrong, I think space travel is awesome, but our aim should be to send people to space and back with the same bodies they came with. Unfortunately that is not what has been happening. Granted I can accept that some are willing to suffer for science research on the effects of weightlessness on the human body, but by now we already know so there is no need for people to be coming back less than what they were when they lifted off. Former astronauts have reported reduced visual ability and beyond that I don't know why, but multiple astronauts who have been to space look as if theur adam's apple on their throat is larger than normal. My dream is for one day in the future for astronauts to come back from space with strong bones, good vision, and with bodies overall good as they were when they left. We are not kerbals who don't worry about those issues. We are human.

Even in scifi settings like the Expanse where they can have gravity via constant acceleration I dare say traveling by twos at the very least is better than going solo against the airless expanse of the universe. Why? Fuel is finite, and when you do orbit anywhere your engines won't provide any gravity. Now you may say use rotation to get gravity, but you simply cannot design your ship for thrust based gravity AND self rotational gravity without making it needlessly complex. A simpler solution is to send spaceships in pairs at the bare minimum. Never alone. I know there are narrative reasons why scifi has stories about lone spaceships (or they have fictional artifcial gravity floors that don't require rotation), but it really is a dangerous choice to make for the safety of the crew for all the times the spaceship will be cruising on inertia. The main reason to send spaceships in pairs is because they can tether to each other and use each other as a counterweight as they rotate for gravity. Last I checked you need 100 meters wide at 1 RPM (revolution per minute) to feel 1g (earth gravity)... if you want a SOLO spaceship to do it by itself. You can avoid having to build super fat spaceships by simply tethering a pair of spaceships with a 100 meter long tether (or longer if desiired or needed) and using their manuevering thrusters to rotate. After which inertia does the rest. I think even Musk plans on sending his spaceships in pairs to mars for the same tethered rotational gravity reason. Even in ultra scifi settings where you have constant thrust acceleration or even artificial gravity flooring having a plan B option when plan A fails is a wise move. Fuel is finite, and as often as spaceship get blown to hell in scifi you would think their artificial gravity field floors would go offline once in a while (but they never do because of plot). So my reasoning is having a plan B option available is ALWAYS better than nothing. What happens when you have to orbit? What about when your fancy artificial gravity floor goes offline? What? Get weak bones? Get vision problems from all the blood pooling up in your skull? You don't have to even have the potential to suffer... send two ships, then tether and rotate them together as counterweights. Potential danger or ill health averted. I know the Expanse and much of scifi tells stories as they do for narrative reasons as opposed to what the most safe option available to use is. Your thoughts? I dunno... it just bothered me... more for settings like The Expanse that could have used it but chose not to. Star Trek puts absolute trust in their artificial gravity fields... and perhaps rightly so. The one and only time I saw a trek ship lose artificial gravity in battle was in Star Trek VI and it was a klingon ship getting sucker punched without even raising it's shields.

According to users on reddit, part of the original script for Alien that never made it into the film would have had the crew find out that something has been chewing through the spaceship's wires. In other words, given that even xenomorph blood is acidic, whatever is in their hellscape of a stomach must be worse. Reddit users headcanon is that the xenomorph was eating through walls of the ship to grow so big so fast... which still does not explain why it was not leaving giant turds everywhere. I mean even goats poop... and they will eat just about anything soft (including the paper and glue off tin cans).

That may be true... but humans beimg minaturized... even though for only a petiod of time, presents unique challenges. Minaturized bodies of ten year olds that are only 12 inches tall amd become mobile within days would be more vulnerable to cold temperatures since they are so small and are furless. Parents may have the challenge of their kids being hungry more often than not... since it would take these creatures longer to grow to adult human size than it does normal people.

Which is why most soldiers should have normal guns. The guys with bomb bullets would be small specialized sniper squads. Since putting them in the middle of a firefight is a 50/50 they win, do friendly fire, or both. Bomb bullets are like artillery... just more portable. Tanks would go extinct lol. Mobility and evasive maneuvers would be king.

Honestly if it were me I would just do ultracharged bullets (with so much energy storage that when they do hit something it is like a small bomb going off). Not as ridiculously overpowered as AM and more practical to handle from a physics POV even though it's very existence is fictional. That said, I dunno about you but I would not want to be in a gunfight against guys firing off multiple rounds that each blow up like concussion bombs on impact. Armor would be even less effective than it already is... since bomb bullets could easily be scaled up for worse destruction. War would be more about drones than it already is.

Scenario: Alien humanoids that are born 12 inches tall more or less with bodies more like 10 year olds and capable of successful walking within days of being born. With time and proper nutrition they grow to the full size of normal humans, Main Questions: How practical is this from a physics standpoint? Analysis: I have read before that some doubt the human brain could be minaturized and still perform at the same level. Yet in order to born with a minature but otherwise ten year old body would mean that their minaturized brain would need to perform at least as good as a normal ten year old human's. Otherwise they would have a growth period where they only really start acting their age until their growth catches up with their true age according to normal human size and weight. Beyond that it would take time to eat enough to grow to full human size. Still... I am not sure this is as unlikely to happen from a physics POV as warp drive. I think physics might allow for such a creature to exist.

Nice work. I guess particle beams of regular matter could be used to react with equally small amounts of antimatter to release energy. A lot of energy is released as gamma rays, so I imagine any true antimatter reactor will need thick walls that can catch or absorb the gamna rays and collect them as an energy source as well. In other words... not like the glowy long tube warp cores Star Trek is famous for.

Perhaps the more important question is would our understanding of physics allow for a solid material that... when powered up, would not react catastrophically with antimatter? Don't know really. Probably not I mean... if you had a way of literally freezing time upon a solid then antimatter would not react with it at all even if in contact... because things only happen if time passes... not when time is frozen. And I know that is even more farfetched...but it would also work lol. Time frozen solid armor.... who knew?

Which is exactly why a posited the scifi solid material A lot easier to work with since all you need is electricity and worrying about keeping it frozen is not a concern or a factor.

Probably because I never heard of a Joffe trap lol. Second because I don't want to assume anything about what we have not achieved yet.... so scifi methods it is. Yes I know it cannot be mined, even though I read there are regions of outer space even in our solar system where the probability of producing it is fairly high if you know what you're doing Read that Saturns rings are bombarded with enough cosmic radiation that antimatter is created.. just not enough to do anything substantial besides a lot of radiation. Antimatter is a great way to transfer a LOT of energy if you had a way to store it... hence the scifi solid material.

Supposedly... aren't star trek warp cores this more or less? My Scifi scenario: A neutral solid material is made that won't go kaboom upon touching antimatter. The only issue is that this is not a passive process but requires a constant flow of electrical input into the material to ensure it won't go kaboom with the anti-matter. Fortunately the amount of power required is not great... just make sure you have a bunch of auxiliary back ups so it never loses power. Main question: Assuming someone made this fictional material and hired engineers to go about making an anti-matter/matter reactor from it how would they do it? Let's also presume mankind has reached the point of making antimatter at an efficient rate as well as safely (in no small part due to the scifi material that does not go ka-boom from touching antimatter).

I personally doubt we will have a bunch of mars bases... with humans on them. Maybe robotic or drones but not people. Because mars is incredibly hostile to life, and the irony is that small populations have a better chance at survival if anything goes wrong when compared to bigger ones... even though that has it's own disadvantages. To live on mars for any extended period and not get lethal cancer you need to live underground like a mole. To do that you need heavy industry to build tunnels first. On top of that you have to grow fruit and veggies from the martian soil and make a filter out the toxins of mars from leeching into the food you eat. It's not like Matt Damon's movie where he survives off using his own fecal matter to fertilize potatoes which somehow had green leaves after growing. In real life we have done an experiment using an analogue to martian soil and you know what kind of leaves the plants grew? They were yellow. There is no way at least some of the martian toxins won't get into the food you grow on mars and into the bodies that consume them.

That reminds me of the scene in the New Krypton comic where Superman and 100,000 Kryptonians fly to redirect a moon's orbit (they stole one of jupiter's moons to use it as their own for their new planet they were terraforming). Due to a brief war with the Thangarians which wrecked Kryptonian technology that would have put the moon on the correct orbit, the kryptoniams had to manually redirect it to keep it from crashing into their new world. The somewhat amusing scene comes later when Alura (leader of the planet and Supergirl's mom) tells Superman that according to their calculations several billions of years later New Krypton would be flung out of the solar system and earth would fall into the sun... because of the decisions they made that day. And at those time scales Superman was actually OK with it.

Cool story my russian or european bro... (because few Americans can talk that way and the dripping sarcasm seems to be a cultural thing as you're not the first to have it).

Ugh. At least the present does not seem to be a repeat... since we have yet to unearth any remains of advanced technology that is millions of years old. This aint like Stargate that's for sure.

Do we have enough time though.... provided we don't nuke ourselves silly so that we have the time to progress technologically? Secondary question: I think technological progress is incremental... you cannot make great leaps of technology without a fundamental understanding of the physics in play that allow us to make our technological marvels. That said... what advances do you predict to be here in 2125 (a century later). My predictions: Provided we don't get nuke happy and pull a Dr Strangelove. Will we be on Mars? Maybe a research station... I doubt a full blown colony. It's just high difficulty to live there. Will we have space tourism in space stations? You betcha! We have it now... but then it will be somewhat... more common. Flying cars? Please no... folks drive bad enough as is. Like they feel they need to speed in the parking lot only to brake 60 feet later. Now imagine them pulling the same crap but flying lol. Realistically even if we could... it's a terrible idea. War? Drones. More drones. War is hell 9.0 lol. Infantry will be a harder sell as a job against peer nations with FPV (first person view) drones. Since everyone will fear drones like WW1 infantry feared crossing into no man's land. They have a kill zone, and if you're in it, no mercy is shown. Infantry won't be obsolete, but getting recruits who will be willing to fight against FPV drones will be hard. I have seen the war footage from modern war... that's how it is. Human drone controllers are detached about killing because they are not literally on the battlefield. It's like a videogame where racking up kills is all you do... only it's real. The internet: Every country, even poor ones should have good internet by then. Globalism will be even more a thing than already. Movies: By then hopefully someone has done a good Superman series of movies (besides Christopher Reeve's) after the Snyderverse was cancelled and whatever Gunn is planning came to pass. At any rate all those movies will be considered old and will be freely available to watch anyway... just like many old movies are today. What do you think? What technological progress do you predict in 2125?

So we all know propeller or rotor based flight is not a thing in the animal world. They all use wings Would there be an advantage at all for bird like creatures to have biological rotor based flight or perhaps a mix of wings and propellers? Right away I think wings allows for more simplicity (less moving parts that might break), so from a survival POV just plain flapping wings are better so long you're light enough and eat often enough.