Spacescifi

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.

Yuck. Count me in on space travel the day we have the means to shorten the time scale enough that imported food will be enough. When or if we get warp/FTL/jump drives, even intetstellar restaurant malls/stations could have imported food. Which is easier than keeping critters and beasts alive in an environment that they utterly fail to live healthy in.

Even if we can make a lot of food, probably a deciding factor on colonization is whether or not it tastes good. I just do not see people lining up to go to space habitats en mass knowing full well they will be eating the same meal for weeks/months on end. Not for fun anyway. Only for professionals.

Ad Astra had a short horror scene with the baboons aboard the derelict spacecraft. It got me thinking though, if we put animals in space on spacecraft that coasted a lot, which animals would be an optimal fit? Nominate an animal and explain how they would be dealt with. I nominate cats. I would deal with them by putting lots of stuff for them to grab onto, and also putting the crew in plushy suits so they do not get clawed too bad. Also get them diapers... you know why. At least they do not eat too much. Unlike these guys...

When effectiveness is more important a factor than what looks nice, interesting spaceship shapes result. These are the conclusions I have reached. Limited thrust starships: When you have to watch your propellant or risk running out. Virtually any shape you want can work, since you will spend more time coasting than under thrust anyway. Even near illogical Star Trek designs can kind of work. Constant thrust acceleration: Forget the saucer shape, it's not optimal. Use a cross beam shaped rocket. The mid-beam rocket has an engine at the rear and has the deck oriented for horizontal landings. Thus that is what the mid-beam rocket is for. The cross beam is actually two beams attached to the sides of the mid-beam rocket. These beams rotate so that the floor is oriented with the forward acceleration so any crew in them can have 1g gravity. So when about to do long periods of constant acceleration, crew go to the side beams and rotate them to have gravity under thrust. When the ship is about to land, crew leave side beam areas to go to the mid-beam rocket, and the side beams also rotate to match the ground too. Thus all is oriented with 'down' when the vessel lands. EDIT: Realistically constant acceleration of 1g for several days or even months is a dream right now, but if we had it, a shape similar to the one I described would be optimal. What other designs can you think of? Did I overlook anything? What I learned is that spaceships are better off having moveable parts rather than being the static bricks so often seen in scifi that are based more on ocean navies.

I take it you mean near invisible in space? Since this methane rocket plume is visible in the air. https://m.youtube.com/watch ?v=e7kqFt3nID4

In the average human's life, if he/she lives long enough they will face all six versus scenarios sooner or later. Among other things we can hope for individually is this, to quote the show Andromeda: "When we die, let it be as better men than we were, or no worse than we feared."

In scifi man vs man is what humans vs aliens is usually. Except when their tech is VERY high end, then it becomes man vs a godlike being or beings.

In fiction, it has been said that the basic story has a few variations that are repeated again and again. The main interest the viewer/reader has is to see how matters change and who wins/loses and how. 1. Man vs man. 2. Man vs self. 3. Man vs environment. 4. Man vs society. 5. Man vs beast. 6. Man vs God/a godlike being or beings. Which one has featured in your own life story the most? Can be more more than one. You can only guess mine. If you guess correctly, I will let you know.

So we will never truly know how effective any of the designs were until they are built and tested. Hopefully the time will come when there will be a need for such weaponry. Not for killing each other, but for asteroid mining. And because there will always be humans like me who love to watch stuff go boom.

I know. It did do a good job of making us care about who won or lost though. The shadows actions made me hate them so that I was glad when they finally got their comeuppance by getting driven off for once by the younger races they bullied ('guided' according to them) for so long. All star trek battles I never cared as much. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UAsk3ay3e98

Try telling that to anyone on Babylon 5! It is just for entertainment though. At least they had newtonian movement. As for nukes, they are still viable. Project Orion detonates nukes much closer than 3 Km near the pusher plate. In other words, armored ships could survive. Even better if they do not pressurize much of the ship. A big pressurized station like Babylon 5 would die fast. Only a matter of penetrating it's hull and sending a nuke through. Pops like a balloon.

I was being generous with autoshifting at 1000 or even 100 kilometers. Babylon 5 has ships autoshifting out of hyperspace at 3 kilometers or closer. At that range, missiles can cross it in mere seconds. Which means big bulky ships would get slammed with lots of nukes/missiles. Spacestations would likely get wrecked. The only way maneuvering will save a ship here is via counter fire and also missiles targeting other craft while it flies away with a big fuel tank.

A thorough analysis. I tend to agree, but we are discussing the popular scifi trope of hyperdriving into a system from lightyears away, with speed and trajectory autoshifted to match the object of interest. For all intents and purposes, relatively speaking, the fleets are standing still either a 100 kilometers or a thousand kilometers apart. Take your pick, I have discussed the pros and cons of both ranges I believe. In this setting, combat can actually be 3-D, although the only real use would be to target a partbof an enemy vessel that you're nit already facing. At high speed maneuvers would be near useless, and big ships would get murdered unless they were mistly fuel tank anyway. I guess the only real warship in such a setting would be big scifi gun boat, firing off rapid fire flack and shells on each pass. Missiles would kill everything else. And I do tend to think that larger distances are the only thing that make lasers competitive with missiles Of course in this classic short rsnge dead stop newonian scifi scenario, lasers do not have the benefit of standoff range to not get attacked by missiles.

Okay, so apparently casaba howitzers are really lethal stuff (looked it up on tough scifi). Change of strategy. Unarmored missile cruisers. Fire everything. Just a box with a rocket engine, minimal sensors, and full of small missiles. It really comes down to cost vs effectiveness. While I will lose a LOT of missiiles and missile cruisers, in quantity those missiles could overwhelm the ships launching the casaba howitzers. So it all comes down to affordability vs effectiveness. Yes yours are more effective, but if you do not have more than me to balance out my numbers (could easily outnumber your force 2 to one) then winning is not definitely assured. The most effective formation would be to scatter my fleet like a vast swarm, since your casaba howiters could cut a hole through the fleet, but are'nt destroying every single one. It's either MAD or a pyrric victory for either side. It's a smashing victory if you outnumber my forces so much that I would not try. Quantity vs quality. Quantity is a quality all it's own. The south arguably had better military leaders in the US civil war. What wore them down? Quantity of resources of the north was greater then theirs. EDIT: Ever played a modded chess game with a normal chess army two rows deep vs 4 row deep army of pawns and a king? Winning is hard agaibst an opponent who knows what they are doing.

The spacebattle ships goung up against the swarm of lasbombs would not only have armor, but arms too. Sandcaster shotgun spray is but one of several ways to mitgate the effectiveness of your attacks. The other is chemical missile swarms, fired from behind the battlecruisers from the missile carriers. Chemical missiles will outnumber your bome lasers since they are cheape/easier to make, so you will either exhaust them all destroying blasting hulks of dead batteships covering for others behind them, or use them up defeating my missiles, or risk allowing my larger, cheaper swarm of chemical missiles hit whatever cruisers that are launching your bomb lasers. That is the advantage of inertia. A killed ship can still drift and provide some cover for a fleet behind it. This is not like star wars where the energy DEW's are so powerful syuff is bliwn into dust. Far from it. At best the bomb lasers try to mic damage you could do with kinetics, just not as penetrative. This battle is essentially the ancient Roman Legion VS a whole army of British longbowmen. Yes the longboman can take out several Romans at a distance, but once the Romans get witin range to throw their javelins and charge with swords, it will be over. Heavy armor/weapons vs long range light but massed offense.

1. They are efficient, but lower DPS than kinetic missile swarms. Railgun rounds too. Kinetics are more or less solid chunks of potential energy. 2. Armored vessels are the only way to counter your bomb lasers from destroying my scenario space fleet assets. Fighters would get wrecked I know. But armored vessels would not. Once the bomb lasers run out the real offensive would begin. My strategy against bomb pumped lasers would be to put a fleet of armored ships ahead to absorb the splash damage from the lasers, and seemingly counter intuitively, have the missile carriers begind them, and behind them would be the drone fighters with shotgun cannon. I would not even bother sending troop transports until my space fleet was unopposed.

Alright. Even so, a thick armored vessel could take a lot of 'splash' damage from such lasers. Unlike scifi, the smart thing to do is NOT pressurize all of a spaceship, as that makes it harder to go BOOM! If there must be a human crew in a space battle it would be a small one in an armored, pressurizef small area of the ship in a place you would not suspect.

Interesting in a way we humans can relate to. While we run from death, they would seek it as their purpiose in life. There are animals that live this way... spending time and effort to reproduce only to die shortly after.