Spacescifi

Scifi Spaceships Are Bombs Yep, conservation of energy and thermodynamics, if even remotely in play will turn several popular scifi spaceships. into potential high yield bombs. In fact I would say a basic understanding of conservation of energy and thermodynamics is key to scifi spaceship design, since it means limitations are no longer totally arbitrary, since you KNOW how much energy a ship is packing, and you have to decide just how that would be regulated. In scifi we can view a SSTO fly into space and warp/hyperdrive somewhere , then fly to land and take off again without refueling at all. Star Wars is a prime example. You know how much energy that would cost? I am not even considering the hyperdrive as that is total make-believe, but the energy to reach outer space is well known...we do it often. The energy to stay in space (orbit) is a somewhat more, but we know that too. And it looks like massive tanks of propellant. Obviously SW does not use massive tanks of propellant. Leading to not one but two conclusions if conservation of energy and thermodynamics are even remotely applied. 1. Most of the thrust must come from some exotic reaction propulsive force, not the propellant. Since if the engine were shooting out an exhaust plume at the requisite exhaust velocities required for such high efficiencies the Millenium Falcon would glass every stretch of land behind it every time it takes off. It clearly does not. Also, no matter if the propulsion is an exotic force or super high efficiency rockets, the energy requirements remain ludicrously high. We are talking a spaceship that has enough stored energy to casually burn through the energy equivalent of a two stage orbital rocket on a whim and twice on Sundays! Without refueling! That's conservation of energy talking. This ship would explode like a tactical nuke or perhaps a full scale one if it crashed. TIES trying to dogfight it would be be incinerated if they actually blew it up. 2. Either the ship's engine innards are resistant to the high waste heat energies such ludicrous performance requires or they are not. If they are resistant, that raises a whole can of worms, like why not armor the outer hull with it? Blaster bolts surely don't have near as much energy based on what we see TIES threaten with. If the ship's engine is not able to take high heat loads on par with it's performance that thermodynamics would require, then there is only one conclusion. The ship's engine is 100% efficient or very, very nearly so, so that the waste heat actually produced is miniscule in comparision and radiator fins are not required. So perhaps that breaks both conservation of energy and thermodynamics as we know them, but that does not change the fact that the ship is a potential bomb. Any spaceship that can do a lot without even refueling is a high yield potential bomb. Now how safe do you even feel in such a scifi setting LOL? EDIT: The safest way to regulate this is a number of ways. 1. Limiting the energy levels so not every John Doe has access to a tactical nuke of a spaceship. 2. Spreading out enough refueling/recharging stations that Space John or Jane Doe can still have a Space life. That's all I can think of at this moment.

Hmmm...that would be so perhaps if they were actually catfolk which I have discussed before. Yet here they are nearly total human, only retaining cat memories and personality, as well lacking a human conscience, which could make them extremely dangerous around normal humans. They also would lose the cat agility, enhanced smell and hearing and night vision. As such, although I am sure they will initially try living like they are used to, they will quickly grow frustrated when they realize they cannot. Indeed, without fur, many of the cat things, cleaning themselves won't work, and they will learn quicky 'I have hooman hands now. Use em!' Trying to live like a cat would lead to sickness and early death probably, and you or their new owner would have to tell them or else.

Interesting. I surely did not know, but in a way, amoral animal behavior is apparently predictable. EDIT: There is alsoa possibiity the explorer female cat turned human female may not become attached to anyone. In that case her primary goal will be working for her own self. Whatever interests she pursues. Depending on her courage level she will either fight against obstacles and those that oppose her pursuits or flee and choose easier ones. But I don't know cat's record...you do. Why is twenty too young? Psychological or physical or both? If none of my business you can tell that is so and I will accept that, as I know that is also true

I agree with you that the virus could have been taken seriously earlier...and you can guess where I am from via that comment. What do they say? "To err is human." Not an excuse...but really....what did you expect LOL? It's what we do! I am not saying accept it...just...expect it LOL.

Edit: They can speak your language right away and do not need to be taught after becoming human. They can speak to you directly. That would be bad otherwise yes. Because are'nt you the one who is keen on using insects for space food? I can see it now...hundreds of new young twenty year olds who fear the once giant human, who also gave them food. My guess? They would ask you for food right away. Doubt they would be hostile right away, as they at least gain human intellect. Yet if they turned hostile I doubt you could 1v600 of them and win LOL. Nevermind that some of them might want to reproduce too if you have males and females LOL. Hmmm...my reply will be kinda dark, but with a light at the end of the tunnel....if you chose to be that light. Going from worst to best scenario: Worst Scenario: You let the young female 20 year old human ex-cat explore the world without ANY guidance. Since she is used to doing things the cat way, she will have problems with the police sooner or later (shoplifting, going to a restaurant and leaving without paying). She will be in jail fast, and might get in worse trouble there for biting some female prisoner she ends up fighting with, assuming she does not simply get knocked out, as she won't know how to fight human style. The serial killer cat now human will obviously have a habit of killing small game ingrained, and once he learns that is a LOT harder to do as a human he will likely get frustrated. Without guidance I can see him attacking some poor dog and getting either killed or arrested for animal cruelty. The cat that apparently wants to marry you without guidance will likely grow jealous of other humans taking your attention and be obnoxious to them assuming she does not attack them eventually LOL Best Scenario: You train and guide all three of your cats turned human. So that they act human enough. As they have zero faculty of conscience that normal humans have, their best chance at success is for them to live with you LOL. You would be their moral compass, as you have at least established a relationship with them so they will be more inclined to listen to you than any random human. Going even further, I think the cat that wants to marry should just marry and have babies with the serial killer cat. The serial killer cat can be taught to hunt human style with a rifle....small game like birds etc. He will LOVE it once he becomes proficient at it. Endgame? You would probably have to start your own cat/human community, since they understand each other best, and would be better off mating only with each other (brothers and sisters at first). Congrats! You just created a new amoral race of humans! As for the female cat that wants to explore the world? If you provide her a guardian who goes with her everywhere so she won't end up in jail, that could work. Until she understands what it means to be human in a human society. Even when she does, I suspect her greatest loyalty will be to whoever she is most attached to. Hopefully that person will be a good person. Don't ya just love it when logical conclusions come about?

I read up on the series, and found it both amusing and atypical cat behavior to ignore the person who is surprises he can speak and therefore pays him attention he does not want apparently. IRL, cats will often approach shy or people who avoid them, and people who seek put cats they often avoid. Hahaha! Well...dogs are known for determination and courage...sometimes stupidly so.

All your pets become 20 year old humans tomorrow. They retain their pet memories and personality, but lose their instincts. Neither do they gain a human conscience, so right or wrong are simply available choices to them, influenced to a large degree by relationship status or lack thereof. How do you and your family fare?

Hmmm...phone is about to die, so I will brief until I return. Metallic hydrogen is a rabbit hole of sorts, since we both know the energy required to make it might exceed the energy extracted....unless there is another way, and if we knew that we would be cashing in on it. Perhaps an easier solution that has similar outcomes would be engineering a solid material that can absorb liquid hydrogen and retain it at room tepmperature? Palladium absorbs water I read, so it would be a stretch to engineer a material that could absorb a lot of LH and retain it, but it is worth a try perhaps. Going further...perhaps there are other gases that can be metalllicized? If we cannot squeeze hydrogen into the mold we wish, perhaps there could be some hidden benefits in creating solid materials that absorb other gases, like: Oxygen: Why not? Nitrogen: Plentiful and why not? Methane: For Elon...he might think of one or two uses LOL. That's a BIG if. If we can actually make a solid that can absorb liquid gas in large quantities.

Feel free to correct me if I get any of the following wrong. Due to conservation of energy, the only way to have plenty of energy is to actually have plenty of energy to do the work you want. Especially in ciosed systems that do not extract energy from outside systems. This manifests itself in rockets by all the propellant required. The only way to reduce the amount of propellant required is to either add more energy to the propulsion or have a propellant source that is more energetic. In the far future I have no doubt that many of man's technological feats will dwarf what we have now by a large margin. Even so, simple inventions like the wheel and the bath towel more or less won't have much of any reason to be changed much if at all. They are already optimized for what they do. One future technology that would be nice to have is super batteries. By super batteries I mean batteries that can hold as much potential energy as a fully loaded two stage rocket! We do not have metallic hydrogen, but if we did, could we not make a battery out of it? Batteries do not store electricity, rather they create it by chemical reactions when part of a circuit. So a metallic hydrogen battery I assume could be designed to hold a considerable amount of energy, and compactly at that. The downside of known batteries is that they loose charge over time, whether or not you charge them. So all batteries have an expiration date, it just takes longer for the most rugged of batteries. The obvious potential downside of a metallic hydrogen battery is that it could have high enough energy to be a high yield bomb. Even nuclear level probably. With such high energy levels TWR could increase for electric quadcopters, and while Ironman won't be a thing, quadcopter man could be!. So what do you think about metallic hydrogen batteries? Would they work as I think they would or could they be designed to do so? EDIT: Batteries create waste heat like all other energy sources known, so a very high energy discharge would require mass increases due to heatsinks or radiator fins which will lower TWR in space. Unless some physics breakthrough is found there is simply no way around that. This would also imply that small space vehicles using such technology would be impractical as they would burn themselves up.

True. Reality is wilder than fiction because it is real. Still...how can you beat a true cloak flying aircraft that somehow can see you and manually target you but you can't see them? Not even with thermal IR. Nor any other EM spectrum band. Sonics can be tricked easily...might work the first few times but once they catch on they would just deploy decoy noise makers. Perhaps I finally made up something that is not over the top overpowered but challenging enough that no one knows an optimal way to neutralize it for once...besides carpet nuke bombing the area LOL.

Fictionally you can do it other ways...I am also familiar with the image projecting 'cloaks' used IRL. A fictional scifi cloak is far better, since camouflage cloaks won't stop missile tracking. Fictional will. You would probabky use scifi grav sensors if the cloaked pilot.

That does it! I want the powers that be to make an Expanse like show with Orion....not some goofy fictional Epstein drive. Going to Saturn and back is fair enough for an Expanse setting.

Hmmm...I stand corrected. Harder to detect true full spectrum invisibilty cloaks. Coincidentally it would make a perfect fit to use in conjuction with a radiator or heatsink in space, since it is a way to shield ship parts from heat...although that now means that at least some of your ship on the inside will be invisible LOL. So a pure invisibilty cloak has no counter unless it leaves behind exhaust emission trails in the air? Sonic tracking would be problematic since decoys would be too easy. You and others have defeated the jammer. How would you defeat the invisibity cloak if it had no emissions? Or would we all be doomed by invisible flying death machines launching misslies like they are going out of style? Here I am really curious? What if the pilot is an idiot and shines a flashlight while within the cloak field? Will the light be visible from within the cloak field? Or will it be invisible? Making all inside the cloak slowly cook to death if they don't turn the cloak field off? Like I said...such would make a great heatsink. But apparently even scifi tropes when mixed with a little reality has it's limitations.

Clearly you just defeated another scifi trope. Good job! Even invisbility cloaks that deflect ALL radiation including visible light are not safe, although they would be harder. Sonics are about the only way I can think of to track invisble enemy whooshing through the sky. Since radar and IR would be useless, even multiband spectrum scanning. Perhaps wide laser sweeps could still work? Simply by sweeping the sky where you hear the sound and noticing when the laser beam is deflected. Not perfect, but it is a start. At least lets you know what area in the sky to blow to smithereens. With enough ground sweeping lasers you could track invisibke craft just fine...until they struck them with airstrikes via missiles of their own anyway.

Anyone who watched Babylon 5 knows the Minbari were feared because their spaceships did not show up on human sensors despite being visible. According to the lore, the actual reason is that they jam human sensors so bad they don't detect them. Main Question: If there were an alien scifi sensor jamming device that jammed ALL eletromagnetic sensors we have from detection other than eyeballing it, would we even have any hard counters to that? Because it seems to me dogfighting with fighters would be the only way to take down flying enemy craft with devices that jam missiles from locking on. Wait...sonic seeking missiles might work, but the enemy could easily counterthat to if they were at least as creative as us. Making noise is not hard. I cannot think of any effective counters...can you? EDIT: Oops..laser guided missiles would work, since the target is visible. Babylon 5 5 got that wrong. Even LIDAR would work great. So we could still counter them...with LOTS of retrofitted AI LIDAR missiles.

Well...that limits the options the does'nt it? Real life spaceship Orions are like heavy trains that have a super long straight track and a limited amount of detour tracks. Unless you make more detour track (asteroid ice refueling). Makes little sense to mine any gravity well since the gravity fuel losses will cancel out the fuel spent to grab it unles...cannon. A chemical powered cannon on the moon could be designed to shoot stuff into orbit around the moon. And by stuff I mean bagged ice for the orbiting Orion to intercept and pick up. The cannon could use hydrogen and oxygen from ice to power it to launch. the bulk of the ice inside bags to prevent sublimation from sun rays before the orbiting Orion catches them all.

Thanks. What do you think about my pusher plate chemical bomb RCS vs using propellant? Would that be more efficient in space? Obviously getting all that into orbit will be hard and time consuming...but once there good right?

The difference between a scientist and an engineer is that an engineer has every intent to actually build something. The scientist? Not always. Science is by it's very nature a quest for more knowledge about the universe. Building new stuff is secondary to that...even though it is often the intent behind the science in the first place. Knowledge is and always will be power. Being all knowing would make anyone a god more or less...but we are'nt..thus science. Scifi tends to blur the line between brilliant engineer and mad scientist a lot.

OK...you got me there. Yet I also think being pulled into a headrest pillow repeatedly won't be so bad. Brain rattling in the skull? Yeah...bad. A sapient bird derived race coincidentally may retain the biology that allows smaller birds to survive high g forces...but I digress. Like woodpeckers..no concussion despite being living wood jackhammers. Biology is awesome. Humanoids? Bad for that kind of thing. Not designed for it. Good points. You could write a story or a book on Orion spacecraft. Ultimately intent decides all tech in scifi. Whereas physics and intent decides all tech IRL. In scifi if you want an interstellar freighter that is owned by civillians that can make random detours you have little choice but to rely on fiction. In real life Project Orion's biggest problem in space is the RCS. The amount of propellant burned for each course correction realistically brings hard lmits to where an Orion can actually go in a timely fashion in the solar system. I mean..processing ice found on an asteroid for RCS propellant is doable, but that is risky and prolongs mission time. My suggestion? On really massive Orions use high powered chemical bombs for pusher plate RCS. Leading to a weird Orion with a big rear pusher plate and somewhat smaller ones tacked on for RCS. Sounds viable in my head anyway.

It would not be pogo because they would be strapped in. Even so, as another said, the stress on the ship without pistoms or shock absorbers would be great, they did not mention the vibrations would rattle screws loose sooner or later as well. Also, as one pointed out, my mass counter to g-force would cancel out the advantages I seek. Coincidentally, the OP has unknowingly stumbled upon what thw crew would feel if they were broadsided with a shaped charge nuclear space missile. Thank you.

How heavy the vessel is DOES affect how strong the g-force is. Basically, the heavier it is, the less g-force will bother the crew. Can autoloader withstand repeated 4g pulses? Perhaps. If not...all we have to do is make the vessel heavier. The vessel would be heavy enough that a pulse blast is merely 4g, or if still heavier 2g. Nevrermind about how to get something that heavy in space....since let's assume the vessel already is in space to begin with.

I never was convinced that FTL equals time travel. Perhaps all it does is stop time for the FTL object? In other words, you age at FTL but the universe does not? If I fired an FTL bullet in space that hit Jupiter in ten seconds that's FTL. If I had a time machine I could go before the bullet hit, but the FTL bullet would STILL arrive after it was fired...it's just faster than light. Legit FTL has a whole host of explosion issues I know, but it is nothing clever hyperspace or jump drive narrative cannot fix. I know gravity and acceleration can cause time warp issues, but only up to a point as far as I know.

[Moderator Note: Thread Title has been changed to reflect the megathread nature] I know why it has both. Just curious if you were already in space and wanted to retrofit a spacecraft to be a an Orion minus the pistons or shock absorbers would that be viable? I don't think (hope) the g-force from the nuke going off will kill the crew, if the spacecraft is heavy enough anyway. So release bombs behind spacecraft and let the directed blast hit the rearend continually. Any advantages or disadvantages over the original design? Advantage? Less mass because no pistons or shock absorbers, equals greater thrust. Disadvantage? More uncomfortable but not dead crew...I hope? Your thoughts?

What? You write scifi? I am no expert, but I do have a grasp of these subjects. 1. I want to say yes...unless you're using gravity flyby assist, which can either slow or speed you up depending on how you do it. Someone can correct me if needed to clarify, but I do not think I am wrong. 2. Yes. The more surface area hitting the air the better you brake. No matter what you will need either ablative or cooling systems in play. 3. Magnetic fields interacting with solarwind at a distance is the safest way..it would take a while though, and by a while I mean longer than your average space opera trip. Flying anywhere near the sun is suicide...it's just too much heat. Unless you were traveling near lightspeed so you spent little time, but then braking would also be impossible. The magnetic field pushed by solar wind is a concept researchers have at least wrote about on paper. As a propulsion system it is not high thrust like a rocket, but if you don't mind waiting...for a looong time...it will push you. Works a lot better and faster on low mass probes obviously.

The most optimal solution may be just to go native, only bringing veggies and fruits they like from the homeworld. After all there would be native colony animals near immune if not protected from the venom completely through outer shell skin. Earth animals would get slaughtered (even domestic cats sadly), only rabbits and fast breeders stand a chance, as well as small rodents. Fish would do alright. May as well tame the native wildlife and kill what cannot be off that remains a threat. Perhaps keeping them in zoo's whatever they let survive.