Spacescifi

Alright then... let's go the slightly more realistic route then Ion air craft with a SUPER battery with sufficient power and discharge rate for flight of a 1000 ton air vehicle. That is just a scenario. Possible? I dunno. We always say and wish we had more power (fusion is slways 20 yeaes away). But if say... scifi aliens gave us super batteries with sufficient power to actually make an ionocraft out of a 1000 ton vessel... how would that even look? Lots of glowing halo all over the hull? Maybe a large plasma plume trailing the entire rear end of the ship lol? Note: I am just making up a scenario since I already know we cannot make super batteries like that. The rest of the ship we make using modern tech, while an array of super batteries powers the ionic flight. Something tells me that having power and being able to utilizs are two different things. For example we could utilze nukes as a fusion power plant by detonating them in a water pool and using the water blast to power turbines for electricity. Other than that though we are batting a thousand outs so far for fusion power. I do know there is only so much energy you wznt to discharge at once, since too much melts things.

Like superman but needs enough airflow to provide lift. In real life we have to move blades, or propellers and move with wings to provide lift. The OP aircraft would manipulate airflow directly over it's surface for lift and flight. In other words, unlike superman, you won't reach outer space with this, since by the time your speed was high enough the hull would like heat up from air friction and you woild lose the magnetism and therefore flight.

I was curious, when you take a common superpower and instead shift the same ability to an aircraft, how effective would it really be? Let's suppose the hull, when magnetized, becomes capable of directly moving air over it. My guess is you could make large and heavy aircraft like the floating spaceships of scifi... yet as always there would be a limit based on physics I believe. The heavier the vessel I presume the more air would need to be moved over the hull to provide lift... which would mean higher air speed over the hull. What I am getting at is that if a vessel is too heavy, airspeed moving over the hull will move so fast it would heat up the hull and make it lose it's magnetism, causing it to fall out the air. Question: What us the heaviest vessel you think can be lifted based on this OP via aerokinesis. I suppose one could chill the hull via an inner liquid hydrogen tank but even that will only get you so far.

Kind of like spaceship rendezvous... meeting in space up close generally must be agreed upon by both parties otherwise it won't happen.

The safest option would be for manned spaceflight to rely on propellant depots already in existence. It seems illogical for manned spaceflight to ever bother with wilderness refueling themselves rather than relying on a pre-made propellant depot. Why do I say this? Because processing propellant by the ton takes time... could be weeks or days depending on how much you need. During that whole time ideally the manned vessel is spinning 100 meters away from a rotating axis point... likely another vessel, while a third vessel is unmanned and gathering and processing chemicals/gases for propellant. Otherwise crew would suffer from having no gravity. The safer alternative to this is to simply send unmanned propellant depot fleets ahead of manned missions, set up and fill the depots, and THEN send manned flights. Kind of like paving a road for cars to drive upon. What I am particularly at odds with is the Star Trek way... boldly going where no man has gone before without even bothering to send an unmanned propellant depot ahead of them first. I know with Trek refueling at sublight is really never an issue... only warp requires refueling. But a somewhat more realistic scifi setting would indeed send propellant depots ahead of any manned missions always. Because imagine if you drove your car, was low on fuel, but no gas station was around and you already knew that? So you do what any unusual person would do... you grab your tools and machines out your car trunk and begin digging for oil... since you were at least wise enough to drive around where natural oil deposits exist. It takes you a whole month, but eventually you process your fuel and drive back home. Quite the ordeal... and space wilderness refueling is so much worse from a difficulty and dangerous enviroment POV. I know in video game space sims like Elite Dangerous and others you can refuel easily but realistically such is a process of steps and a lot of waiting.

I do not plan on mimicking Star Trek totally. You can indeed design SSTO's like starship that can land on their own and SSTO off low gravity worlds. To mimic star trek IRL, you need large SSTO's period, since as I already stated.. landing in lava because of an overpowered pulse fusion rocket is bad... which is why I recommend less efficient chemical rocket engines for landing/lift off... and of course flipping upward to use the more powerful and efficient fusion pulse engines to reach space. Can we do it now? Doubt it. Yet pulsed fusion is something we KNOW how to do... containing it is what's hard. Naturally enough in a scifi setting with hyperspace/warp FTL, fusion tech should be old and established as the automobile. To be sure you do not even need the magnetic surfaces or hover tech... that is just a cool technology that has manifold applications. As for engines... yes I see the folly in one big nozzle. I am thinking a wiser design is a cluster ring of chemical rocket nozzles surrounding a somewhat larger one in the middle that is the fusion pulse nozzle. That way the ship can throttle easier and only use the overpowered engine when it desires to. Which is very important for any orbital rendezvous.

I am willing to make lighter weight SSTOs that are 100 tons. I am not married to the idea of SSTOs being the end-all... I recognize the value of two stage orbital cruisers. But without SSTOs orbital cruisers are just that... forever stuck in orbit. Ultimately I see orbital cruisers carrying one or two large SSTOs sitting outside the hull. Even SSTOs could be optimized... wingless for non-air moons, winged for anywhere with atmosphere. Having a pair helps.

The rocket nozzle won't be magnetized. The reaction chamber uses magnetic fields for compression and redirection of fusion blasts out the vacuum chamber into and out of the throat of the rocket nozzle. It seems this is less a no go and more a matter of finding a mass sweet spot for an SSTO. 100 ton SSTO is a lot more doable. Perhaps 1000 tons is pushing it but may be possible. And yes... even I agree 8000 tons is extreme for an SSTO. But it is relevant to know what is the heaviest an SSTO should practically be in this setting. I think lifting on par with Starship (SpaceX) but with my SSTO design would be totalky possible... at the very least. With the difference that unlike Starship it would carry less liquid propellant since it would use it's super thrusty and efficient fusion pulse main engines to slow it's descent before flipping belly first to use it's belly chemical engines for a powered descent. Starship stats are only a rough estimate. How many tons can a Starship carry? The Starship has a dry mass of 85 tons and has a propellant capacity of 1200 tons. The ascent payload capacity is 150 t to low earth orbit and it has a return capacity of 50 t. The Starship is to reenter belly-first with two aft fins and two canards provide skydiver-like I do not care so much that it is difficult... only that it CAN be done. At any rate the lightest weight one can go with still a reasonable payload ought to be interesting. And the magnetic hover tech is just too cool anyway not to use!

The magnetic hoverboard uses liquid nitrogen and superconducting magnets to allow it to hover over magnetic surfaces. In theory, an SSTO could launch this way using a ramp. To return it could just land by using a powered thrust landing via ship chemical rockets. My whole point was to rationalize the classic scifi belly lander spaceship with the engines in rear...but IRL you would need belly engines as well to survive a powered thrust landing. Rear overpowered pulse engines would mean that keeping them in the rear rather than landing with them (in lava) is the safe choice... thus the need for landing rocket engines and the more efficient and powerful rear pulsed fusion rockets for reaching space. Wings would allow you to glide to land but are otherwise useless for reentry and space travel in general. In practice for a spacecraft I think what Lexus did would have to be inverted. In other words, make a superconducting chilled runway and ramp, then use a spacecraft with a magnetized belly to boost it's rear engines and half-loop launch into the sky. I suppose one could land using wings to glide over a superconducting surface as well. So if you want to land an 8000 ton space freighter in one go without rocketry, you need a lot of wing and a lot of superconducting runway and a magnetic underbelly on the spaceship. Otherwise it would have to trade cargo space for propellant for a powered thrust landing. As for shape, I think a blunt edged disc would be best, either winged or without. If winged the wings must be able to sweep all the way backward to avoid reentry damage. If un-winged it will be a clumsly flyer but will be able to land or launch so long it has propellant. Pulsed fusion being more efficient would not take nearly as much fuel, since it would rely on meter wide snowballs enriched with fusion fuel per pulse.

Because scifi drives based on the power it would actually take to pull of such feats likely leave craters behind. My idea is that at a planetary spaceport you don't want craters. The ship still has chemical rockets though for VTOL because again... who wants to labd inside a smoking crater?

Is there any practical reason to go with a thicker nozzle IRL? I was thinking of several: 1. Armor it so it is not riddled with holes from space lasers easily. 2. Or stuff it with regenerative coolant lining to keep it cool from waste heat. Those are the only reasons right? Besides me just liking the look of a giant rocket plume coming out of a single big and thick nozzle from a spaceship?

In my opinion it will be something something involving pulsed fusion and magnetic fields. Nothing about either is forbidden by known physics, the current barriers are often a lack of the power needed to pull off scifi feats.... or prohibitive mass required to generate it (you are not launching it it's too big). Having excess power on tap always helps.

And I goofed up. I meant to say specific impulse NOT delta v for the seconds.

I like ramps though so.... nah I'm kidding. I do like ramps though lol. Engineers don't care about likes and dislikes so much as a design works for efficiency though. Thick nozzles I also like. I was thinking throttling was easy as using less or more fusion fuel and magnetic compression. Since my idea of a fusion torch would likely be pulsed and ignited via magnetic compression of fuel pellets. Nonetheless if the ship pulls a Star Wars and lands and takes off again from some random planet I think it's going to leave a mark on the spot it launches from.

Using fusion fueled pulsed high thrust rockets as in the OP should require considerably less fuel mass than if one used the equivalent in chemical propellant to drive off up/on the ramp.

Imagine if your SSTO has both VTOL and runway takeoff ability via a ramp. If you use the ramp to launch upward then you can save your VTOL engine propellant for later when you really need it... namely landing on another world or for landing someplace other than a runway when you return to the homeworld. As you know.... outer space is drier than the driest desert for liquids... and you have cross vast 'oceans' of outer space before you even reach a place to refuel.

In other words once we get into the 1000 ton or 5000 ton SSTO range.... F1 size nozzles start to become kind of necessary.... right?

I see..... so to even warrant a large and thick nozzle I would need an SSTO both massive and heavy.... in other words like project Orion only a fusion rocket is propelling it. Thanks... so apparently I can go large... but yeah... the plume is likely going to blow up anything it hits nearby. Leaving craters at the launch site unless you drive it off a ramp over the ocean and boost from there. Finally SSTOs can upsurp the supremacy of TSTO.... at the cost of leaving craters in the ground everytime the lift off unless they do it over the ocean.

The F1 was a challenge because it relied on chemical combustion for propulsion. Chemical combustion in larger chambers becomes harder somehow I read. As per the OP the main engine would either use pulsed or continous fusion reactions for propulsion so there is no inefficiency based on chemical propulsion with the main engines.

Heavy torchdrive SSTOs would change the nature and economy of space travel a lot. 1. Suddenly interplanetary tourism/trade becomes a thing, even if more expensive than spacestation trade. 2. Larger orbital stations could be built in less time due to heavy SSTO's hauling up the raw materials to assemble them. Conclusion: Heavy torchdrive SSTO's would open space resources/colonization up wide for the taking by mankind as never before.

In my quest to design scifi SSTO's I realized that not only is waste heat a factor but so is the pressure coming from the exhaust plume on the way out. Obviously heavy SSTO's would require performance and thrust higher than known chemical rockets, which also means their nozzle pressure would be higher than normal. I tend to think that using a single main engine nozzle is good for such advanced rocket engines (be they fusion or whatever) since bigger is better when it comes to handling high pressure exhaust without cracking or breaking. So in this discussion I am curious as to how big and thick such a nozzle would actually need to be for specific SSTO data that is shown below. 1. 100 ton SSTO capable of 3g pulse acceleration for 20,000 seconds of specific impulse. 2. 300 ton SSTO capable of 2g continous thrust for 10,000 seconds of specific impulse. 3. 1000 ton SSTO capable of 2g pulse acceleration for 1000 seconds of specific impulse. Are we talking truly gigantic nozzles? Since obviously these are not airbreathing rockets, they are relying on pure thrust to reach space via fusion or something like that that is high performance. Also I think regenerative cooling ringlets on the nozzle would be necessary so that propellant flowing through the nozzle could cool it. Just wanted to know what the nozzle of dreamy torchdrive SSTO's would look like if we COULD make them. I do not believe I am wrong in assuming that if torchdrive heavy SSTOs were a thing that singular large main engine nozzles would be preferred over multiple smaller ones, since extreme pressure is the price you pay for such high performance... the kind I believe would wreck the typical smaller rocket nozzle cluster you see with chemical rocketry. Now you may say, why not make multiple smaller torchdrive or pulse rocket engines so that multiple smaller rocket nozzles could handle the pressure so you could just fire them all at once in tandem? To that I say this. High thrust fusion rocket and torchdrives are complex processes, and I do think that making multiple smaller torchdrive engines would be more complex and difficult than simply building one big one. Nevermind the fact that clusters of rockets in IRL are often used in case some fail others will still work, and a torchdrive by definition should be more reliable than that. Compared to fusion or a torchdrive, chemical rocketry is downright simple, which is why they can utilize clusters of smaller rocket engines so often. Also bigger nozzles are often avoided at launch because of atmospheric pressure changes as the vessel ascends... yet with the high thrust of a torchdrive.... the plume will be going out fast that atmospheric pressure won't really effect it much in any way that effects performance.

No wings. Maneuvers with rocket RCS and main engines are used for forward thrust. No wings needed for takeoff as the ramp will send the SSTO up anyway From there it only needs to pulse thrust into space. 8000 tons is relative anyway for reentry, as some mass my have been shed (cargo delivery). To shed horizontal kinetic speed you just flip over and pulse fire main engines as needed. As for the exhaust it is a rocket plume, and I reckon the runway could be actively cooled to handle the heat from the plume. I agree the challenges are severe, but they are not impossible from a physics standpoint if you allow for the number one exception of a heavy SSTO and a pulsed fusion rocket. Physics does not say no, it just says it's difficult.

During my time here I have heard many times how impractical heavy SSTO's are. The reasoning has mainly to do with the fact that chemical rocketry is less efficient when you use a single stage... since it requires more propellant and therefore turns the ship into a giant fuel tank with very little practical room for much of anything else. I think I may have had a breakthrough though... and it is grounded.... mostly... in stuff we can actually do with a single exception which is point number one. 1. SSTO that weighs 8,000 tons and uses a runway and a ramp to take off. Relies on a pulsed fusion rocket with a large and thick bodied nozzle. Thrust can be throttled by detonating and expelling smaller fusion fuel or increased by detonating and expelling larger fusion fuel out the nozzle as plasma. Uses a vacuum reaction chamber lined with uber magnetic field generators which are able to compress and fuse and expel fusion fuel out the nozzle. A plasma window separates the vacuum chamber from air that would enter from the nozzle otherwise on planets. If you want to use smaller nozzles you will need more of them to get the same thrust... yet the good thing is that you can also throttle thust back for each nozzle by using less fusion fuel for each one... therefore the nozzle can handle the pressure without needing to be as big as it would need to be otherwise 2. To take off the ship uses a moderately lower thrust fusion pulse to allow it to drive on wheels down the runway and up the ramp and off into the sky. 3. Last of all the ship continues to detonate and expel fusion fuel to reach orbit. Conclusion: No I do not think we can currently do this as it requires uber magnetic fields that I doubt we can generate at such a scale of energy. Yet the ramp and runway seem sound enough. The way I see it, if the main engine is in the rear, why bother with VTOL at all... especially for an 8000 ton SSTO? Chemical rocketry is inefficient for heavy SSTO's anyway. Space: Since 8000 tons is a bit much to try to land using chemical rocketry onboard the ship, instead the 8000 ton ship will be an orbital cruiser, cruising from orbit to orbit. Reentry: At the end of the mission the 8000 ton SSTO will return to it's homeworld to land. How? By using a really long runway and landing with wheels. That's how. It will likely have to pulse fire the main engines to get some horizontal velocity before landing on the runway. Massive jet fans flanking the runway can slow the 8000 ton ship down more than it's wheels on the runway would, and eventually it comes to a stop. Thoughts?

Haha! I remember those theads. Yet here I was more focused on how a humanoid that looked nearly human for all intents (kryptonian or time lord) but with different inner organs may be able to pull off their special abilities. Thanl you for your and other's answers. The bones being modified to mechanically amplify sound would need to be able to de-amplify, otherwise such an alien humanoid race could go deaf or suffer hearing loss from a bunch of amplified sounds. I think that is why outer ears are made of soft cartilage instead of hard bone? since bone conducts sound while soft stuff absorbs it more.

Hmm.... I guess the same hearing as the barn owl will suffice... being able to heartbeats several meters away could be useful. Hearing sensitivity comparison of Barn Owls, Cats & Humans - As charted by M. Konishi, American Scientist Vol 61, 1973. Both the cat and the Barn Owl have much more sensitive hearing than the human in the range of about 0.5 to 10 kHz. The cat and Barn Owl have a similar sensitivity up to approximately 7 kHz. Beyond this point, the cat continues to be sensitive, but the Barn Owl's sensitivity declines sharply. Yet with some owls (barn owls I think) their ears are asymetrically placed, so that they can home in on targets by calculating on the slight delay between the time it takes the sound to reach both ears. https://www.allaboutbirds.org/news/how-can-an-owl-catch-a-mouse-underneath-a-foot-of-snow-in-total-darkness/ https://www.owlpages.com/owls/articles.php?a=6