Spacescifi

By 'danger I was implying situations where having a little extra muscle would be an asset...namely, physical confrontations. As for security in general the sex matters less, since it firearms do not require a lot of muscle, nor does monitoring screens. The main issue with long duration crews though is babies. Maybe they really should just send families and be done with it. Since that may cut down on the baby potential. From what I read of western colonization of the Americas, the Spanish crews were mostly male and had a lot of babies with the natives, so is no wonder why spanish is spoken nearly everywhere english is. The british/english on the other hand brought families and were more likely to enslsve the locals than have babies with them. For this analogy to apply to a Mars mission though, I think the British way is better, since otherwise you will have a bunch of really frustrated guys on a several years long mission. Stuff happens. I have read. In the Antiartica research station I have read they have a mixed crew of male and females. I have read that they get large orders of.... stuff that prevents pregnancy.. That is what isolation does to males/females long term. If it os just males, things get weird sooner or later, read this: I found the crossing the equator 'ceremony'to be quite disturbing, but it also illustrates how bored these guys are that they think this gross stuff is fun https://www.google.com/amp/s/taskandpurpose.com/life-submarine-raunchy-cramped-occasionally-smells-like-sht/amp/

Pregnant launch. One and a half years of coasting to Mars.

Two scenarios here: Scenario 1. You have some variation of a nuclear rocketship on it's way to mars. In order to keep the crew of 30 healthy the rocket begins to roll/rotate. The crew has a hollow cylinder area ten feet wide, and the rocket spins up to 1g. Could the crew function well enough in this environment for 6 months or longer? I know it is not ideal since gravity will be stronger at the foot than the head, but some g is better than zero g I say. I also know it will be disorienting, but can't they just tough it out? There are worse things in space after all. Scenario 2: A female crewmember is about to give birth to twin baby girls, but in this case it is another spacecraft without provisions for gravity as it coasts a year and a half to mars. For the sake of discussion, this ship is fully radiation shielded, the only challenge now lies with... how in the world do you deliver twins in zero g?! This will get messy folks... please stay appropriate as the thread will get closed otherwise.

Good points. Now I would like to discuss genders on a realistic starship. IRL it is predominantly male, but what reasons are their to include females (besides being an equal opportunity employer)? I guess what I am asking is, what jobs on a starship are females an ideal choice for, since I am being pragmatic and no nonsense about this. Two roles comes to mind. Pilot: Females reportedly make good drivers, getting in less accidents overall compared to to males. I dunno, maybe they are more careful. CNA: Do you really want a big, burly man man-handeling you off to tuck you into your hospital bed? Not to mention other duties that get up close and personal? That's all I can think of. For security though, males are ideal, especially if the danger level is high.

IRL the trend is for small crews, due to the limitations of rocketry and the resistance that gravity gives. In scifi though crews may range up to a thousand or more for a single large spaceship. So I was thinking, does a spaceship really need all that crew? I think it really depends on the tech level. 1. Realistic: Tiny crew. A few tons payload. Spaceship is an orbit to orbit vessel with a lander. 2. Scifi: Tiny crew with orbit to orbit vessel, small payload, has SSTO landers. 3. Imaginative Scifi: Large crew, the large ship is an SSTO. So even in scenario 3 there must ve a reason, like an earth-like world to drop off passengers, in which the standing crew would be far less than the passenger readout. Or colonization of an Earth-like world. For that matter, I do not ever see people signing up by the thousands to go to the death worlds of the solar system (any place other than Earth). When you consider that the plantd s grown need special filtering or else they kill your immune system, it just does not seem worth it. Plus the plants grown are not even green! They are some weird yellow unhealthy color. Now if it was an Earth-2 colony then yes. For missions like the Enterprise though it does not make sense to ne. Large crews I do not understand. Unless it is a bunch security, since science experiments should not require a thousand people unless you are running tests on them. Unless those transporter accidents are a lot more common than starfleet reports and large crews compensates for that....

Just curious if it would work. Since hydrogen absorbs radiation. Would it also do it it's metallic form? Assuming we managed to make a stable form of it and layered beneath the outer hull as a protective inner layer? This is a scifi idea I admit, but I just wanted to know if it could work? If it does... Pros: Lighter weight radiation protection, as opposed to having tons of water/concrete between crew and the outer hull. Cons: If something really hot pierces the hull, the metallic hydrogen is liable to blow up.... and I think several here are aware of just how explosive metallic hydrogen is. It's like metallic dynamite... but worse. Your thoughts?

Well if the expanse folks were dealing in antimatter they could pull it off, although not with railguns. They could instead make a mini-pusher plate antimatter bomb propelled missile. The only issue would be launch, since your vessel would want to back plenty far away before it does the Orion thing. If you thought a nuke orion was something, wait till you get a load of this!

The discussion was primarily to see what other biological upgrades we could apply to humanoids (because otherwise you have a plain human). The humanoid shape is arguably more efficient than four legs, especially for building stuff as a team. Gas bag aliens would have a tough time developing fire and metals among many other things, so they are'nt plausible to me. As for being alien, can a human make an alien? Yes. But it is not an alien. No one of us can really say what they make in scifi is alien, since it is not. All I am interested in is making my 'aliens' different from baseline humanity in several ways. That's good enough for me.

As it is scifi, and I have already made the eye stalks semi-plausible enough for my satisfaction, I am really not concerned about whether it conforms to accepted popular ideas. The rainbow thermal vision would always work, but would be impractically blurry to use unless you poured cool water on it. From there the thernal vision would be clear for 15 min before it began to blur if it was a hot day. In cool weather it could last longer. And I am not changing their head or neck size anymore than a normal human. It's a stylistic choice. Fiction allows for that. I also think the ability would be great fun use and write about. The nutrients part is actually the simplest fix.Just have the planet provide foods that meet their energy needs efficiently (much like Earth does for us).

Well I will put it this way, if FTL/warp starships are on the table, then so would FTL/warp missiles be. One thing that I am aware of is that DEW's are more energy hogs than kinetics. And a warp engined kinetic would seem logical enough a choice. Only because it's cheaper than something more exotic. Quantity of inferior weaponry will trump rare high tech weaponry sooner or later. Take one nuke vs several nations of american indians. If one nuke is all a side had, they would'nt win, since there would be too many of the other side to kill them all. Or take ten guns with limited ammo vs a thousand bows and errors. Again, quantity tends to beat quality in war... so long one can reach their target to do damage.

I utilize them as an extra set of eyes atop the head, not the main ones. And with the right chemicals flowing through the eyestalks, they could retain a cool temperature quite well, for a while anyway. That is why I brought up dumping cool water on the head to cool the eyestalks for seeing. And they are not so vulnerable, since if you watch the video it shows a snail retracting the eye into a stump. Such eyes are also far more flexible than ours, as it deformed itself to retract.

You have made a valid point. I guess the only downside to such tecnologies is that it kills potential stories. Just like the gun killed any potential stories of people duking it out with bows and arrows in a western, modern city. Beyond that, at some point, the tech level extrapolations are only speculation anyway, and it is virtually indistinguishable from fantasy. Jusy curious, is not a singularity bomb a black hole? How does it work? Because hauling around that kind of mass is greater tech than even theoretical Alcubierre warp drive, since that only requires a mass of a few tons converted into energy.

I know. Therein lies the challenge. Possible solution: Use telescopes to estimate speed and trajectory before you jump lightseconds from the surface of the sun. Then accelerate to a proper trajectory so you do not go headed directly for the sun. Would that work? EDIT: Are you saying that an autoshift trajectory/speed to star jump drive would be safer? Only up to a certain range, since another poster already pointed out that a few lightseconds from the sun is 6g. And most of the stuff we make cannot handle that without breaking. Plus you would need at keast 7g to escape unless you did the kerbal way of an orbital slingshot.

Not zero relative velocity. Let's say moon orbital velocity, since the ship just left a moon like ours lightyears away and jumped near our star. It's a starpoint jump drive, making ship's jump near stars and travel through the solar system from there.

Humanoid aliens are common in scifi, but not all of their features are very useful. Like once I was going to make a race that 5had adhesive hands and feet, but turns out, it's slow going. Reaally slooow. Because lifting our own body weight is hard. We heavy. In orbit it would be awesome though. Rainbow thermal vision would be quite useful as a second pair of eyes, perhaps on eyestalks like a snail to keep them cool. Maybe even toss a bucket of water over the head to cool them so one can see through them for a while. Snail eyes are awesome because they can retract into stubs when not in use. Other stuff like wings and extra arms seem rather superfluous. No advantages gained I can see. Smell is another good one, if humanoids had dog smell ability they could know the last location a person was just by sniffing the ground. And so much more. What about you? Any other useful humanoid features scifi aliens could have?

Advice to the indecisive: "No matter what choice you make in life you will have regrets and make mistakes. Everyone does that, so do not fear, go out and try. Since even if you do not... you will still have regrets and make mistakes. May as well work toward a goal while you're at it, as it may payoff later." -Anonymous

If a starship had a jump drive that made them exit 5 light seconds from the sun, could the vessel survive if it had a constant 1g-5g acceleration drive? What about 15 or 30 light seconds if 5 is no chance? Could a stainless steel hull work? Or would concrete be ideal? We are NOT limited by weight or material for this post, so I don't care what your hull is so long we manufacture it now in large quantities. Thoughts and solutions?

When FTL/hyperdrive is available, then I can understand why battles happen closeup, although the autoshifting of speed and trajectory is a silent technique that should have been made clear. Space battles in scifi are by nature contrived to be entertaining. Yet if one used a warp/hyperdrive tactically at subwarp speeds, the combat dynamic changes. Sibce warp is only spatial translation without moving. One could do warp strafing with lasers at sublight speed. Like light second per 30 seconds for large vessels, and 5 seconds per lightsecond for small warp vessels It may or may not be enough to destroy other vessels, but it could do damage. So with this, every vessel would not be nearby to attack unless they wanted to be by mutual agreement. Or if a small ship just rammed another at warp. When small warp ships are the fastest thing you have, they become the only effective missile available. Ramming is back in style. Although admittedly the moment the ships crash they will both drop out of warp at previous speed and trajectory. Which means it could be catastrophic if they were collision course, or it may not do any damage if they were flying away from each other to begin with at orbital speeds. Lasers would be the one thing that could still hurt at that range.

What's OML? I read a more simple idea that warp fields are toroidal, which still does'nt jive with starfleet's design choices. Unless they just stuck with saucer only designs to fill out the volune of the field. Please. Let us get away from star trek. I well know how absurd their designs are. I just like saucers and am trying to find ways to make them jive with reality in scifi. In fact, I posted the Kelvin class kerbal starfleet ship because it is arguably one of the only ships starfleet has that would fly straight under thrust. The rest of Enterprise ships would spend all their time looping.

Good point. I had not thought of that, but it does explain why flying saucers fly so wobbly in KSP. The problem gets worse since RCS requires propellant, and overrime, mass distribution will become unequal on one side of the ship, even if only slightly. When trying to land that could be devastating as the ship may flip towards it's heaviest end on the side when you're only trying to land the belly.

Perhaps...but I was only considering the functional aspects from a realistic POV. But it is also worth noting that a rod or cylinder could also do the job in Trek physics, unless the warp field is only so big and requires that nothing reach beyond it. In that case a sphere or saucer would be optimal. Drag should not matter, as Trek vessels have the power to deflect space dust at warp... FTL warp no less.

It depends really. What good is a saucer from a functional POV in space anyway? For forward flight it is hardly an efficient use of space,, but as a rotational space station it is ideal. Conclusion: The Enterprise, with proper modifications, could make a great space station.

Almost unrelated, but as a scifi writer I created a humanoid race with sharp teeth. As they enjoyed fresh (live) meat, I found fish to be an optimal choice, since it really is meal size for a humanoid. A whole cow will go to waste. They don't like the taste of cooked meat, but will ironically cook other food groups. As for a space station, I would favor a massive torus. As the crew walks the glass transparent floor as it rotates, they will be amused to see an aquarium beneath them full of fish. EDIT: Not sure anyone has pointed out just how lethal martian soil and lunar regolith is. Martian soil: Has toxic compounds in it. So unless that stuff is somegow filtered out, I would not suggest eating such crops grown there. Lunar regolith: Has what amounts to glass in it. Radioactive compounds: No doubt present on the surface of both mars and the moon. Likely in the dirt.

It really depends. See... having been around KSP long enough and read sources too, I know that RCS propellant is a finite resource, I also know that CMG's have limitations that preclude not having any RCS thrusters. So... let's say your engine is below your vessel. Get's to space fine, but flying sideways through an atmosphere means that you will fall forward unless strapped in. Rear engines solve that, at the expense of needing the setup I offered earlier in the original post.

Pets for companionship. Take Fluffy with you. But you make a good point, in such a closed environment everybody needs to conyribute. On Earth cats and dogs contribute by either killing critters/pests, or in the case of dogs, sounding the alarm against all intruders. In space... they cannot contribute anything I can think of other than companionship. Spider silk is useful, bit you would need a bugs for the spiders to eat. Flies do not even fly well in space, so spiders may adapt their webbing to cover walls and surfaces. Since flies have been known to give up and just start walking. Flies would have food in the form of astrobaut turds (poop). Could work.