Spacescifi

I am not a coder (even though I have played around with game coding to modify them). Often space sims choose atmospheric flight simulation over newtonian flight simulation. The reasoning is that newtonian qould lead to overshooting your target and space jousting. I have a solution where one would not have to give up newtonian. Translation: Translate spaceship across space by moving space past the spaceship, and when you drop out of warp your speed/trajectory shifts to a relative stop in comparison to masses larger than your vessel within 3 kilometers. 3 kilometers is the radius your translation drive will mass-lock to, dropping your vessel out of warp if a larger mass than your vessel is in the radius. If no larger mass is found, original speed and trajectory are retained. From there you could burn out of the mass lock radius or do rendezvous or landing with the mass nearby. All with newtonian maneuvers. Also I would make fuel limited on the RCS thrusters, just so players are more careful about maneuvering. So with my mod included, would space sims like elite dangerous be better or worse?

Alright yeah... if their AC breaks and they do not have suits it is only because they are like thrill seekers or in like Survivor game competition, since know lizard man would impose such danger on himself otherwise. For what it's worth, I intend to write a story about several races being part of a crew on an explorer starship. The races were involved in an interstellar war a few years ago in the past, but eventually they all had enough, made concessions, and called it off. The explorer ship is an attempt at healing the wounds of the past, while also an attempt to build new friendships with former enemies. The reason why body types matter is that not all have the same needs. 1. One race is basically cat humans with sharp forward teeth but back teeth are human. Best of both worlds. Hearing is super human, plus a prehensile tail with smelling holes on it. Thus they can tell where a person was last just by moving their tail near the floor and following the scent trail. Retractable claws on fore finger flex joint, better for grip without snapping a finger off (human fingers are toi flexible to risk). Also have back, neck, tail, arm, and scalp fur, but no where else. 2. Another race is lizard people. 3. Another is shapeshifters that can see in gray scale (black/white) or rainbow thermal vision. Sleep as a puddle. EDIT: I was thinking for the lizard nan to be the ship's doctor, but he will definitely need a sub for when conditions won't suit him. Make that several. If you get care from the lizard doctor it would have to be on the ship, as I am not sure how well he would cope in a suit trying to do medical in weather that does not agree with him. Definitely not suited fir field medic

This is what I have found through memory/research. Cold blooded lizard humanoid: A definite disadvantage. In really hot weather you're in a lot of trouble and have to slow down since coldblooded creatures lack sweat glands to cool down. In cold weather the same applies but only because you're body lacks the heat necessary to move faster. With a lot of tech they can do fine, but if their ship crash lands the crew would have a harder time surviving in a desert than us. There is a reason why we do not see human size lizards, and dinos were reported to not be pure cold blooded anyway not too long ago. Furry humanoid: Fur grows a certain length and it sheds. Vacuum cleaners would be popular. Also in heat? Even with sweat they will likely not endure hot weather as readily as us. Cold weather they can beat us on though. Sharp teeth: I will admit that I actually lime sharp teeth on scifi humanoids. It is an easy way to show to the reader/viewer that said charcter is not us. Even so, sharp fang teeth are'nt good at chewing. What they are good at is tearing and to a lesser extent breaking food. Basically, with chompers like Quark you will be swallowing your food in small chunks like your were eating fast. Ideally you would just eat meat or soft fruits and veggies, since both are easier to tear off and swallow with your sharp chompers. So, what about you? What scifi humanoid body types do you think improve or make them worse at being capable human rivals?

Magnetic nozzles to my knowledge have yet to be implemented for space travel. What are the pros and cons as opposed to using a regular rocket nozzle? Pros I can think of: it can have hotter exhaust up to a point, since the exhaust won't hit the nozzle in space. Hotter exhaust gives longer acceleration times, which usually means lower thrust unless one is mixing metallic hydrogen or antimatter into the propellant. Cons: Does no good in an atmosphere, as the air is all around it and will heat up the lattice nozzle. Also, even in vacuum the radiation from the exhaust alone is enough to heat the nozzle too. If the exhaust is bright enough (antimatter may qualify). Rocket plumes: Would they even look normal with a nagnetic nozzle? Because it seens to me that if you have a super high exhaust speed and low mass flow you won't even see the exhaust, kind of like the glowing nozzles I see in space videos but with no obvious exhaust plume. Chances are magnetic nozzles would be the same, the lattice nozzle may glow red as the particle exhaust is shot out at lighthugger speed. Don't wanna be in it's path, but you will probably miss the classic rocket plume look? Am I right or wrong? Both?

Good points, you're quite imaginative. As useful as a rapid jump drive would be, I think it would solve too many problems. But I may still employ at for another alien race. Can't think of any limitations to such a drive. In the case of long jump drive recharge times, either star maps or good telescopes would be invaluable for jumping into grav-assist. Even so, grav-assist would take a non-trivial amount of time. I am thinking a few hours at least, or over an hour at the very least. Black holes are risky to use for grav-assist because of time dilation. Pulsars are risky because they spew plasma and radiation and cosmic rays like a massive cosmic flamethrower.

Fully aware. Antimatter is just an example that people can easier discuss. Yet I also tend to think that constant acceleration drives are needed if you wanna keep the scifi tech to a minimum. For example, even if we had a working jump drive to translate us across space to another solar system, we would still have to use engines for trajectory and speed matching, asduming we did not do so beforehand. Here is the real kicker that demonstrates the need for fast constant acceleration: Some stars have a 100 kilometer per second orbital speed difference with our sun, try compenstating for that with limited fuel and you begin to see the problem. Constant acceleration, like it or not, is one of the easiest, less imaginitive ways to get around in scifi. With limited fuel you will have to spend most of your time in space drinking tang, waiting as you coast or near a planey for a gravity slingshot. Or try a really dangerous goal of orbital gas giant refueling.

Only somewhat. Truth is, even then some places are off limits. Go too deep into jupiter and the pressure will implode your vessel. Go to the sun and you will burn up before you ever get there. Plenty more places you still could not go boldly where no man has gone before. I guess the main subject is, what are space resources for in such a setting? How could one even make money off them?

What?! Are you saying someone built and actually launched an Orion already?!

Nah, they're not Russian, but they have been on and around Earth for several years. So they are familiar enough with us to actually replicate our tech and even improve it.

By the way, the PM offer still stands. PM me for a surprise gift. Many are invited, but few will take it. But I can assure you thay you WILL like it.

True... I was thinking that the opportunities here to consider the full implications of a given tech are rarely explored fully in scifi, (with babylon 5 thet do give it a good effort though). Also the opportunities for creating humor are endless. I was thinking of a creating a plot where aliens make peaceful contact with earth. After several years of humans asking for an uplift and the aliens being dismissive about it, they finally concede. Location: NASA HQ The aliens land one of these via massive SSTO nearby. Human official: Uh... does that run on thermonuclear weapons?" Alien ambassador: "Antimatter bombs. It is also preloaded." "We do appreciate your gift, but we were hoping for one of your constant acceleration crafts?" "This qualifies." "Yes, but you of all people know how destructive antimatter is." "Just launch it in the Nevada desert or the wilderness of Siberia." "It's not that simple." "Oh really?" Alien ambassador clicks a remote and the TV screen shows Russia launching an antimatter Orion to orbit. The American official's jaw drops. "You gave the Russians antimatter bombs?!" "Are you concerned they will start more wars than they already have?" "You knew THAT and still-" "They won't be starting any wars with antimatter. And neither will your country. We have failsafes for that." "How?" "Do you really think we could process as much antimatter as we do safely if we could not contain it?" "I see, but I am not sure the air regulators will let antimatter bombs explode in our atmosphere. "We could always trade them for thermonuclear bombs if you wish?" "Nevermind. We'll keep it."

So it dawned on me that much of the resources in space currently are good for building a space economy, but not really for Earth in any way. Unless you beam solar energy down with giant mirrors and solar pabels to collect. Since the resources needed to bring a lot of anything back to Earth would outweigh what we get back. With unlimited scifi constant acceleration everything changes. By the way, the source of it is easy matter conversion to antimatter. You could take a sandwich and run it through the converter and it would be an antimatter sandwich on the other side. Beam core rockets or fission antimatter rockets, either or. How do things change? 1. No more spacestations. Instead, planet based spaceports on the moon and mars. Why build a station in space when getting to space is easy? Especially when stations are easier to resupply on planets anyway. 2. What is a gas giant worth for resources now? In theory you could scoop the atmosphere for fuel to convert to antimatter. But it would be safer and easier to just land on some random moon or chase down an asteroid. That's what I was thinking. Have anything to add?

Still... 3 seconds without gravity could prove injurious without magnetic shoes. Just imagine how high a ball or a tool can go in 3 seconds with no gravity. Before crashing down again.

In school a fellow student I thought was a friend decided to do something disturbing. We were both at the urinals, and when I am done, he turns and urinates on my pants. Naturally for me I became quite upset. The odd thing is he thought it was funny but later became upset for me getting upset. Needless to say I never viewed him the same ever again. He was then marked officially as weird and nasty to me forevermore.

While you may be right about the fission rocket, my point still remains that radiator mass on a vessel with self sustaining fusion would be a large part of the vessel. Antimatter could also perhaps be made to work without substantial radiatiors, but I believe the high thrust performance would have to be scaled back a bit. Unless you also know of antimatter designs that do not require massive radiators? If they are like slow ion drives then not having big radiators is not a plus since ions take forever to get anywhere. EDIT: Could one not just unfold the medusa net from the ship in orbit. Some assembly required is how they having been doing for decades now in orbit. And I kind of agree with you about Orion being awkward. You would not have gravity every 3 seconds, so if something or someone lept up high during the 3 seconds of free fall/weightlessness they would come down harder than normal from height alone. Electromagnetic shoe soles anyone? To keep crew grounded at all times?

It is a matter of practicality. Say I give you a choice of a spaceship propelled by antimatter bombs Orion pusher plate style or one where is it an actual antimatter rocket. Either beam core core or antimatter thermal liquid propelled. I reckon that either rocket scheme will require more mass (radiators) than the Orion will, since the Orion's push is coming from outside, not inside. Mass penalty is a big deal with spaceships if it is NOT expendable, and radiators really are'nt. You need less radiators with an Orion, plus an Orion looks somewhat closer to classic scifi spaceships. Rather than a massive set of radiator wings stemming from a small vessel.

You may post an example or just say it. Currently what I am listening to is this. Strauss is better known for the Blue Danube which is about as overplayed as Ein Nachtmusik, therefore as much as I hate Blue Danube, I do love this music. I tend to like music that seems like a journey, with highs and lows, definitely sounding like it is leading somewhere. Or at the very least something that sounds like it go as background music to a story. Like this below. I do not quite understand the meaning of the pic if any, but there is some heavy irony there. I dunno... is it become what you defeated? Or is it more out of respect for what remains? I dunno. What about you, what is your fave music? PM me if you want a surprise. Yes, it is something you can enjoy. It is a gift.

Haha... this was OP was not for that. It was for analysis. Some will say a fusion powered spacecraft is more realistic than a fictional drive powered spacecraft. But based on what I read about fusion, fusion powered scif spaceships looking like anything seen in popular media are just as fictional. Mankind's abilty to generate lots of heat in small packages does not scale with their ability to reject lots of heat in small packages. Thus, even if we had loads of antimatter and a way to safely store it, a working self sustaining fusion system, and metallic hydrogen, we STILL could not have a scifi spaceship. Why? Heat. Even fission NTR generate a lotta heat. So the heat from a self sustaining fusion reaction would be likely worse for a spaceship. Stars were not meant to be put in jars. And that is only one reason why fusion is so hard. The one way we could have a starship that won't need radiators that are massive is one that essentially blows up mini-stars out the back. AKA project orion. So even with tech we do NOT have, orion is our most efficient bet for a starship that I have seen. Unless we dramatically increase our heat rejection abilities for small amounts of mass (currently not possible that I have seen). Or do the more realustic option of just putting on massive radiators or.. just make an Orion.

Hmmm... if we could just do a chain reaction of fusion with say... 20 atoms exchanging their 2% for energy we can do it? The irony is how fusion is depicted in scifi. The way they depict it, they would need and have other contrivance to make it work. Since with known understanding, we need like kilometer size radiators for a fusion ship. The more performance, the more the radiator wings will GROSSLY dwarf the tiny spaceship it is attached to. I dunno... perhaps they use duralium/unobtainum alloy, which can absorb massive amounts of radiation as potential energy before radiating it again (read explode). Such fictional alloys would make lasers a lot less effective against it as a side effect. It would also be used as a substitute for nuclear reactors, as you could extract the energy you needed and no more or less.

The more I google fusion, the more it seems not viable right now. It is basically trying to put a star in a jar without the planets worth of mass and density that a star has. To compensate we use lots of heat which can cause fusion with plasma that is basically infintesmal when compared to the mass of the sun. Yet the challenge is not over, since we try to manage the plasma with magnetic fields, but plasma create magnetic fields of it's own which interfere. End result? Plasma escapes the containment field and hits the chamber wall, turning part of the wall into plasma which cools the wannabe mini-star just enough to kill the fusion processs. So in light of all this and more that I have not even mentioned, what are the chances that we could improve fission? Hyperfission: More. More. More. More split atom, more energy released, more dangerous radiation in it's wake. Basically you take an atom and convert more of it into energy than we currently do with fission. How about oh... 25% of the atom converted into energy after it is split? Instead of the standard 2%? Would we even need antimatter or fusion at that point? And yea I know, using it as an SSTO is still hazardous to public health, only probably more so. And yea... epic nukes too. More epic. What do ya think? And yea, this is partly inspired for scifi. Partly over fusion frustration?

Congrats, you just realized a scifi job that does not exist in pop scifi. Pulsar Mapper. "These are the voyages of the USS Exciting Undertaking, on our five year mission to map new pulsars, seek out new life and civilizations, and hopefully... get back home." Basically it sounds like you're saying that the only way to make really far extragalactic jumps would be to get lost first, and then map every pulsar needed to get back home. Sounds like Captain Kurt would be spending less time chasing alien space babes and a lot more time drinking tang in weightlessness, while occasionally teasing/annoying his version of Spork for entertainment. It least with more reality inserted into scifi. Fun times LOL.

Ethics? I mean... only if that is what the scifi boils down to, a moral dilemma. Besides, scifi aliens are a reconstruction or deconstruction of human civilization, so their 'morality' may be either more or less than current human civilization. What's the saying? History is written by the victors. Certainly not the losers. Their world is all but forgotten and relegated to the likes of the museum and an alien encyclopedia britannica. Scifi can indeed be used to send any given message on morality, but that will be polarizing to any given audience. You can only truly choose who your allies and enemies will be. Or rather, your supporters and opposers, assuming you are'nt actively in conflict. Choose wisely. The same logic can be applied to aliens who met others in a first contact scenario.

I doubt it shows the raw power of landing a large fusion rocket vessel on a planet. People who make pop scifi seem like they confuse the overpowering shockwaves of rocket exhaust with the mere loud hum of a jet engine. There is a difference. I wanna see something like the craziest scott manley has done with unlimited fuel mods. But in a movie via a realustic fusion drive.

LOL. So valerian's daring escape would likely leave him with second degree burns and hearing loss? Assuming his ship uses fusion? Wow. I really want to see a scifi movie with physics turned on LOL

Another thought just came to mind. The m drive is far more dangerous than the the other ones here. You could even use the m drive to repeat falling into a planet multiple times and then redirect all that velocity elsewhere. Basically, you can virtually get free speed boosts quickly and easily with a planet/m drive combo.