Spacescifi

It has virtually nothing to do with chalenges a protagonist has to overcome. Not in my case. Rather, without fiction some scifi stories cannot even be told. And yet economics is at least one thing we understand well enough that we could get it right since unlike warp drives we have working economic real life examples to go off of. Space governments would be massive space habitats. Maybe a scifi civilization of biological immortals is solving the problem of population control by a mix of artificial reproduction (think like birthing chambers for kryptonians in Man of Steel) and space habitats for those that chose to have natural birth.

Provided a realistic setting with spaceships like Elite Dangerous, is it remotely realistic that you could buy up 20 tons of fish and sell it somewhere else and reap a good return on your investment? I mean honestly, habital earth-like worlds have plenty of food, and if you wanted to make better profits you would could realistically find a place on the same planet you bought the fish from to sell it to someone else and reap a good return on the fish. You would not need to interstellar planet hop for mundane food items, since the greatest demand for them would be on the world you got them from, since those folks know it and use it. I guess a case could be made for space habitats, but unless the population is huge you would be better off with profit margins if you kept food trade/shipping down to the planet of origin. My conclusions: I am not sure it would be wise or profitable to create a company based on shipping prepared meals to various worlds that are ALREADY Earth-like and inhabited. You could try to ship to space habitats, but they would limit trade more than a planet would due to a limited amount of storage. Chances are good they would already have food contracts with delivery companies already, and your profit margins would have to compete with that... if they even let you have a contract. Am I correct in concluding that buying 20 tons of Earth oranges and trying to sell them by shipping them via starship to another Earth world is silly and not a way to maximize profits?

Just because a spaceship can go 9g does not mean it will, and I mentioned doing so would drain a drive's power reserve and require a recharge at a solar moon power base... which would take longer to charge than with lower max acceleration drives (like the 5g 1000 hour one).

I guess I was not explicit enough in the OP title. I literally meant an alien race dropping language teaching satelites in orbit of worlds with human-like aliens who ALREADY have something akin to a modern space program. Meaning they have rockets and a bunch of satelites already in orbit. The aliens make the satelite look as non-threatening as possible, and they fully expect planet astronauts to enter inside it (the satelite is large enough a group of people could go inside it). When the planet people approach in a shuttle craft, arrows would light up on the satelite directing them to an open door. When they walk through the air will already be pressurised because a forcefield screen is keeping it inside while permitting them to cross over. Inside would be a control panel and a language learning screen that would activate, as well as several portable pad devices with multiple power AC outlets that also have the language learning software. Within 10 years the aliens figure we should figure the language out, because they expect we would throw a lot of resources at the challenge.

True but that increases difficulty and has other risks. And when you are setting off for dozens of worlds a drive by language learning method is most efficient.

Seems to me the laziest (yet profoundly effective) way is to simply do a drive by. Not in a bad way... rather just fly into low orbit, drop a few language learning satelites into orbit, then fly away. Then come back in ten years. In ten years they should have studied and learned how to speak the language, and if for some silly reason they have not then they probably are not worth your time anyway (Pakleds lol?). Pre-requisites: It helps to already speak a vocal language as well as use visual writing to communicate. Otherwise less people beyond experts will be able to communicate with you. Although the good news is that they should have some form of google translate, and inserting your given language into that would be possible. Also it goes without saying that it's required to monitor a planet enough to verify the planet uses spoken language and visual writing so that using language learning satelites can actually be effective. Last but not least it helps immensely to have a common space faring language, a lingua franca of sorts. That way whoever you meet will have to learn it and your influence and ability to network will increase across the star systems. Main Question: Any potential challenges to this method of first contact? Sure it is not fool proof but what ever is? It surely avoids the issues with immediate communication that would occur otherwise.

Scenario: This is a scifi drive, one that emits fictional extremely repulsive rays of white light from mirrored nozzles with an emitter down the throat. The effect is much the same as a normal rocket. You get the blow back effect from the exhaust and the sound of the roar of the engines in atmosphere, just minus the rocket plume even though the nozzles are lit up. Different models of drive have different operating time limits, but the protagonist's starship has 1000 hours of drive acceleration before needing an electric recharge (done at moon bases covered with tall solar panels, which combine all their collected energy to charge new drives and visiting ships that need a recharge). Max acceleration for the protagonist ship with full payload is 5g. Which the ship cannot go past due to drive limitations. Drive Limits: Due to weird drive physics, the highest acceleration that has ever been achieved was 9g, but the operating time was only an hour before a recharge was needed. 9g drives also take longer to recharge and are expensive to purchase. In practice manned vesssls often have drives with lowered maximum acceleration limits such as 5g. What Happens If You Attempt To Accelerate Past Your Acceleration Limit: Your thrust will invert, meaning instead of emitting extremely repulsive light rays, you will start emitting ATTRACTOR rays. Meaning your nozzle will create a vacuum suction effect, sucking up anything nearby with the same force it was emitting extremely repulsive exhaust with. So for example if a 500 ton vessel was accelerating at 5g, if it tried accelerating with engines beyond 5g it would find that it's engines would create an equivalent vacuum suction force. That. Is some serious suction folks. Advice For Pilots: Don't do that in an atmosphere. Why? It would increase air pressure inside the throat of the nozzle (which is plugged at the throat bottom because of the emitter lens), eventually warping it out wider than it should be. Too much air pressure and you would crack the emitter lens. In space converting your repulsor drive into an attractor ray won't cause any harm so long nothing crashes into your nozzles. Main Question: Even though I know this is scifi, I trust I got the physics on inverted thrust correct.... right? Disclaimer: The inverted thrust only applies to the scifi drive acceleration. Obviously if you strapped rocket boosters to your ship for extra thrust you could increase your acceleration since you would not be relying purely on the scifi drive.

I loved when the narrator said "So at Aperture Sci-I mean uh, Rocketdyne." If you know you know lol: This was a triumph I'm making a note here "Huge success" It's hard to overstate my satisfaction Aperture Science We do what we must because we can For the good of all of us Except the ones who are dead But there's no sense crying over every mistake You just keep on trying till you run out of cake And the science gets done and you make a neat gun For the people who are still alive -Part of the lyrics of Still Alive (by John Coulton sung by GLADOS).

This is so cool. Also fluorine as propellant is BAD if you if you you remotely fear Murphy's law. Still easier to work with than antimatter though lol....

Not really, unless you are proposing putting the core itself at the rear end on the outside of the vessel.

So I was designing a scifi SSTO. It has a drive core that requires a mass of at least 30 tons in order for it work at all to get the reaction that causes the scifi drive to work. The drive core is a single solid unit. 30 tons of drive core can propel 300 tons of spaceship at a maximum of 3g. Indefinitely so long you have electricity running. No propellant required. If you had a 1000 ton vessel you would need 300 tons of drive core to allow you to do 3g, and so on. Mass limits: Despite the ability to generate a lot of thrust and indefinitely at that, I think the real limit to the scifi SSTO mass is the drive core itself. Because it will be the single heaviest object on your entire vessel and will effect it's center of mass... or rather it WILL be it's center of mass. Too heavy and the ship's floors won't able to support it under thrust as it would fall through and tear through the ship's rear as it accelerates. Main Question: I could totally see 300 ton SSTOS being common, because making a floor that could support a 30 ton object is feasible. What amount of crew sounds reasonable for a 300 ton SSTO? 30? 40? 50? More? Less?

Completely unrelated, but this whole thread was inspired by a joke thread about the Outsiderverse and reponses to it below: https://well-of-souls.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2717&sid=89db28358e859cb1694ee4c8cec8a725 The phrase Yottachad got me wondering about a yottabomb lol. Originally it was all about Gigachad lol.

Just curious? If a nation on earth was gifted one by scifi aliens (who are going to sit back and watch from high orbit while they eat popcorn), just how destructive is that? What could you do with a 3 yottaton energy level bomb? I aware they stopped making nukes more powerful because a lot of blast energy is wasted knocking air out into space rather than destroying the target. Yet once you are in yottaton territory, I think matters start to change... right? Is a yottaton the kind of bomb that rearranges the shape of continents?

Ok. What if I just go with timeporters that can only go forward in time then? Choice is no longer illusory as you can no longet manipulate the past to an excess... only a little. Like figuring out your ship was either destroyed in the future or it's timeporter disabled when it ceases to timeport test objects past a certain date. You never cease to amaze me with your creative and sometimes dark but efficient humor. Reminds me of Kang's conversation with Janet in Quantumania. Janet: "That's what monsters do." Kang: "That's what conquerors do. They burn the broken world. And they make a new one." The irony is that to behave like a a god you also have to behave in a way that many would see as rather amoral if not evil for the sake of efficiency. Superman in comics has gotten himself killed or permanently defeated more than once in dark multiverse comic variants purely for failing to act more ruthless when it comes to countering massive threats. I think any moral person would have doubts about acting as you suggested, yet what may cause them to do it is if data poured over by analysts suggests that it is the optimal way to get results. Because in the end, the only thing man cares about or ever will is getting results for his labor. Getting nothing makes him want to die.

Haha! Only your mail by ballet vote would count. Having clones of people around is something legislators are trying to prevent as well as time paradox shenanigans (changing the past to change the future). Ideally you could freely travel between the future and the past for distant space exploration, using starships as if they were like stargates... only they are time travel porters.

I think there would or should be a law that you can only timeport to a time AFTER you left on your space trip, and that time would be the same day you left. I understand that time paradoxes are in issue, but not one that is impossible from a writer POV. Branching alternate timelines not unlike with the TVA in Loki the TV series are a way to allow for time paradoxes.

I wanna say yes... since every government known is based on laws made in the past that still govern us today. It's not the dead people governing so much as their laws and aspirations are. I was pondering on how to create scifi space opera without violating the lightspeed limit and came up with the following below. Here is a scifi scenario: Transpace Warp drive: Translates space past starship at the max speed of light speed. Timeporter: All starships carry them onboard. Seems like a teleporter pad but actually transports you forward through time instantly on the same spot on the teleporter pad. That is how crew can travel years at lightspeed without aging. You can also travel back in time, but not further back than the date of timeporter's activation. A fun trick is that it helps the ship avoid fatal collisions by foretelling the future, since if you cannot timeport to a future date it means the ship must have been destroyed by colliding with something huge while warping at lightspeed or in some other way. So you adjust ship's heading until you can make successful timeports with random items, and then send crew after. Empire Control: Using timeporters aboard starships is how they keep control over a vast interstellar empire. Of course, the past governs the future, and it is not everyday that a starship bothers to travel home to see the future. Especially because they wish to live in their own timeline... usually. Main Questions: 1. How feasible is running an interstellar empire like this? 2. What would be the main challenges to doing so? 3. What common sense laws on time travel would exist, provided basic human morality/immorality is still in play? I would expect crew families back on the home planet to get fast response on how things are going 50 or more LY out, since timeporting future crew back in time to when the starship was still docked on the planet or in low orbit of it is all future crew have to do. Basically you will know in minutes if the mission a starship was sent on was succesful or not.

Starships in setting don't typically arrive close enough to planets to make a successful RKV shot right away. And if tried... weapon ranges are extreme. Blue space babes have a kill beam that hits at a light second out, and the space bugs have beams that can kill at a little over half that. Both of which are particle beams that take mere seconds to cross such vast distances at most.

I was discussing this with the author of an ongoing scifi space opera webcomic. In it the blue space babes have been at total war for about 28 years with space bugs. Either side winning is not desired by the other because the blue space babes are known for virtually wiping out two worlds prior they fought against, and the space bugs have made known their intent to wipe out the space babes, despite not having a history of trying to totally wipe out intelligent races they are making an exception for the blue space witches as they call them (because some have superpowers). The blue space babes are losing so many trained personnel that they are having difficulty keeping up with pumping out trained space navy officers to replace the dying, and few old veterans exist (since most died in combat... even the empress and her flagship were blown up at one point). I opined that drone ships with a few crewed core vessels woukd solve this issue, and besides the author wanting to write.. indeed NEEDING to write a navy analog to make his story work at all, he said crewed vessels need regular maintenence as they are away for several months at a time (six months is not uncommon) and can do 30g max for 100 hours (more if they do lower g or spend time cruising on inertia) besides having interstellar jump drives.

It goes without saying that a story is a lot more interesting if there are costs at stake. Thus the reason for crewed space warships being so common in scifi. On the other hand drone vessels operating under the command of one or just a few crewed vessels would seem to give the best of both worlds. But it's not that simple since both designs have costs and advantages. Crewed Vessel Advantages: Can make judgement calls... especially when it goes beyond the scope of the original mission, something a robo-mind or machine would never do unless it thought like a human. Also humans can make minor ship repairs on the go (fix leaks or patch hull damage). Lower cost of ship construction, as it is understood crew will do regular maintenence on vessel to keep it in it's best operating condition. Crewed Vessel Disadvantages: Increased operating cost due to the crew being on board. Also crew can die. Drone/Robot Vessel Advantages: Decreased operating cost due to no living people aboard that you have to pay or risk losing. Drone/Robot Vessel Disadvantages: Increased ship building costs, as the ship will need to be built more reliable as it has no crew to do routine maintenence. This may lead to to a smaller automated fleet as opposed to a crewed one, or at the very least a less maintained one, since crewed vessels will be doing a lot more maintenence on their vessels than robot ships that either won't or only do the bare minimum. Meaning crewed vessels over multi-month missions would perform better than the robo-vessels that cannot do routine maintenence. Other Question: What kind of maintenence on a spaceship (especially a scifi kind or close) would having a crew be ideal for? My guess is for patching leaks and replacing mechanical parts BEFORE they totally fail and etc. This is for vessels that will spend months away from base without ressupply. I guess the closest analog are navy nuclear powered USA warships. But the big difference with outer space is the environment. The only regular maintenence you need on a crewed space vessel is life support, propulsion, and weapons to make sure they still work or work properly. Probably less wear and tear since outer space is not like the ocean nor does it have waves crashing into the hull. A robot vessel has no life support, but any wear and tear done to any part of it's propulsion or weapon or sensor systems is unlikely to be repaired. Second Question: What parts on a robot vessel will wish they had a crew to maintain them over the months and begin to wear out faster than if they had a crew to do regular maintenence?

I never said they did not have air support. Since I did add later that air support would work, and people already mentioned that tanks could since grenades cannot penetrate tank armor. I guess the bad guys would be far more of an unstoppable threat against the police that do not have air support or artillery options like the military does. Honestly the modern military is why superhero villains lasting for a long while is unrealistic, since most of the midtier ones the military could take out with air support or artillery if it came to that. Green Goblin of the spiderman movies would die via multiple RPG hits, and the same goes for Venom. Only sandman and electro are tge kind of guys you would need to level that part of the city and even that might not work.

That is the fiction part of science fiction, yet physics WOULD allow for a bullet having the explosive force of a grenade depending on the energy of the explosion device inside. Antimatter would do it provided you had secure storage methodz far beyond our own.

Often scifi depicts handheld weapons as DEW types. Even though they are wildly inefficient for sudden lethality when compared to a rifle or even an ancient sword. But what if a modern army unit was up against guys with scifi BOMB slug throwers? Scenario: The bad guys have both pistols and AK-47's with special bomb bullets. Look like normal bullets but when they impact they explode with the force of a modern grenade and even have shrapnel, albeit much less than a real grenade (since you can only fill so many metal beads inside the hollow nose of a bullet. Question: How can a modern army unit with guns only in a hope to win against... THAT? You know suppressive fire? If the baddies start laying down suppressive fire and soldiers are hiding behind cover, the bomb bullets will blast through it anyway with sustained fire. Less places to hide effectively. There is only one main advantage the modern army guys have, and that's the fact that it will be fairly easy to track where fire is coming from... because every shot, hit or miss leaves a smoking crater. On the other hand if the baddies use fog of war tactics with shock and awe, then the modern army guys may not be to stunned and in pain to fight back effectively. Since with regular guns a near miss with a bullet hitting the ground only scares you, but with these you are going to take an injury, the worse the closer you are to the blastwave and shrapnel. Edit: The easiest way to deal with this threat is to just call air support, be it drones or attack aircraft which the baddies on the ground can't reach effectively with their guns. Yet I honestly think a ground battle is not hopeless... but nearly so against such firepower as bomb bullets. Your thoughts?

Good point. So they would have to doing it in a weeks time could be a possibilty. Maybe a kind of hard cocoon underwater where it is shallow, so when they break out they can swim to the surface easily in their new form.

Very true. Starship uses cold gas thrusters mainly for fine attitude control in space and reentry. In atmosphere it actually uses main engines to flip it's attitude rapidly, since cold gas thrusters are not really designed for as rapid a response. The plan I read is to switch to hot gas thrusters using methane once Mars is industrialized (mars has methane and oxygen but little or no nitrogen). For a scifi spaceship that travels all over, what you want is versatility, but in so doing you sacrifice the power of specialization. What that means is that an explorer space SSSTO would probably rely on hot or cold gas thrusters for space maneuvering, and be slower at pitch, roll, and yaw than an orbital low orbit planetary defense fleet that regularly refuels from the planet below. In other words, an orbital defense fleet could afford to use more thrusty RCS thrusters because they always will have a place nearby to refuel from (the planet below). Which means they could dodge weapons fire better than a vessel that was designed with versatility and space wildnerness refueling in mind.