Spacescifi

How would such an SSTO look? My guesses are: 1. Provided antimatter safe storage and effcient production is possible, we need.. Air intakes, likely some sort of turbo-ramjet with a shock cone during ramjet speed. Big main engine nozzles handle heat better, so forget tiny ones, as we need not worry about combustion as we are using nuclear power. Result? A large oblong fuselage body with big engine nacelles with shock cones and large nozzles behind it. Aerospikes may not be practical, since they use tiny nozzles to spray exhaust onto tge aerospike.... which dealing with nuclear energies they may overheat and melt. Takeoff: Like a plane. Lands like one too. So ultimately, the easiest practical SSTO we can make is belly lander that takes off and lands like a plane. And we could also augment it to land on the ocean instead. May even be preferable if it uses water as propellant. The engine: Uses FIFTY mini antimatter catalyzed nuclear reactors to power the rocket propellant thrust. How much thrust would I get with water as propellant and using StarshipX as a model? Augmented to land on the ocean.

I see... technically there are counter measures. 1. Search out and blockade with lethal force any black hole you find like your world's life depends on it, because it DOES. 2. Build massive antimatter shotgun particle beam orbital stations that can wipe out a large asteroid into space dust... doing much the same to anything coming from the precalculated direction of known black holes. 3. Granted spaceships could manage a sneak attack. Which is why ALL vessels can only jump in from like... saturn and then take weeks to get here at 1g. Otherwise orbital battle stations will shoot on sight. Yes... a civilization would have to be either paranoid or experienced in war disasters or paranoid to do such.

Hmmm... maybe. Two questions. Time dilation: Won't time dilation effect the spacecraft, even if it is a massive black hole? Meaning any peace treaty will be null and void if the AI auto death spacecraft attacks years later LOL? And I presume you only do stunts like this if the enemy is trying to annihilate your race from existence right? Like... this is not the kind of stuff you pull over mere proxy wars over territorial disputes right? I hope not. That would be rather extreme and quickly put your empire in the 'evil empire' catergory to every known race. Because if your plan works... let's just say someone somewhere will seek to pay back the favor... so unless there is an off world or other colony world, this seems really risky. Just because you devastate a world does NOT mean all their space assets are gone too.

Nice try again. Yet as I originally envisoned the this newer jump point drive... it still would not be easy to pull off. Say you jump to a light second from Jupiter from Earth. Retaining your previous speed and trajectory of a near miss of Earth at lighhugger speed means you will leave jupiter's jump zone the second you appear. Also, you appear at the edge of the lightsecond border NEAREST your vessel's position before you jump. Which means that even if you jumped back to Earth's jump zone after a miss you would STILL be flying away from Earth. At which point you are at the mercy of whatever STL engines you have to try to intercept a 1g or higher planet's lightsecond out jump zone border. Which would be... hard to say the least given the fantastic speed the vessel is already at. Far more likely to be headed straight out of the system with no way to get back for a long time... unless it somehow manages to snag a lightsecond jump zone of a 1g or higher planet years later in the next star system LOL. No 60 second cool down waut required this time. Enough wait time as it is just boosting at 1g to reach the jump zone border. Wait time is for arbritrary suspense, which matters a lot less when vessels rely on jump points and constant acceleration.

Hahaha... Nice.

Missiles don't jump, only ships are big enough to carry that equipment. I guess you presume you can jump and then rapidly jump again once you hit yhe radius zone at 99% light speed. It would not work, since you can only jump between DIFFERENT planets... sorry I forgot to mention that. You cannot repeat jump the same planet without jumping to another you select. Clever try though.

What? How? Inerta won't let a vessel reverse course at 99% lightspeed, these are constant acceleration 1g engines. Lazy... but efficient.

Well... depends on how expendable the spacecraft are. And how the writer makes things go. Unmanned are by their very nature expendable. My idea of scifi combat means a homeworld fleet generates jump points a light second from any world with 1g or higher gravity, and each jump point will only accept the ship that generated it's own jump point. Jump points stay active for 7 hours, more than long enough to reach them at constant 1g (their fleet can do that). Instead of sending crew to possibly die in vessels as is common in scifi media, they send waves of unmanned vessels, which conserve their momentum and trajectory upon entering a new solar system, and the jump point closes after the vessel appears. Tactically and strategically it means war is very much a waiting and hoping kind of affair. Hoping that your AI controlled vessels return within a day or two via jump points with news of victory. If they don't return at all... now people will panic and start preparing for a defend the homeworld system with everything they have... most of it unmanned spacecraft. Relativistic strikes via jump points are possible, but it would take months of acceleration and you only get one chance... you miss at 99% lightspeed and it will take you months to turn around and go to the light second from 1g world or higher radius where jump points can form.

Maybe... but the thrust? Seems all I ever hear is ISP with nuclear, and when anyone mentions the thrust people start frowning in dismay. Metallic hydrogen was countef as an SSTO game changer. The best one could do with nuclear is say sayonara to public health abd use air augmented rocketry mixed with nuclear liquid propellant project pluto style open cycle. Because closed cycle risks melting the engine and nozzle. And let's rememeber that magnetic nozxles are for space. And to get to orbit? We are'nt doing that with mag nozzles. We know why too.

My concern is with the ignorant, not the nitpickers who know the latest in space technology. Thus in the foreword I will admit freely that some of my stuff (constant acceleration engines) are pure fiction powered by the needs of plot. That said, I take pains to ensure all of the plot enabler fictional tech have something that will counter them from being overpowered. I do not favor being merely arbitrary, so wherever possible, I use things that are subject to known science that could counter constant acceleration engines as a threat. It would require a civilazation with either war experience fighting itself, or a peaceful one that is paranoid enough to do that. Since we are talking about putting an UNMANNED fleet in orbit ready to strike anywhere from a year to decades later or longer. In the meantime they do ABSOLUTELY nothing, waiting for a threat from space that may or may not come. LOL. Better use some propellant that won't gas leak during the long wait for action. Even assuming scifi aliens do exist in a universe, they may be not be keen on attacking a system with automated fleets ready to strike at explorers/instruders.

Science fiction... it's not the starship science wants that matters but the starship that physics and plot deserves.

You won't want to hear this... but the answer is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.... that I know of that humans actually currently have and can develop. Theoretically, if we had kilogram of safely stored antimatter (we don't) and filled up some big water tanks, you could LITERALLY fly Starship X (Elon's) SSTO style wuthout boosters to orbit and land on Earth, then fly to orbit again before you ran out of water propellant. Because AM has that much thrust when applied to liquid propellants.

Define written. As in actual chapters? Or worldbuilding drafts? I explore concepts more because it's part fun, part frustrating, learning that most all of scifi is wrong... yet at times reality can be a boon, as in the case of antimatter. And I like how overpowered mixing reality and scifi tropes is... far greater in power than usual scifi media fare. The more one mixes reality with scifi tropes, the more likely the result will look like some overpowered newtonian nightmare with a glass jaw (tv tropes... you probably know what the phrase means). Which ironically and makes me laugh is that such thorough mixing will hurt even unrealistic starships. Who even needs photon torpedos? We can fire antimatter particle beams thousands of kilometers away at near light velocity given the same tech shown in the setting. And going further, the fact that PLASMA beams actually weaken trek shields makes them look kinda weak. They may as well put gatling guns on ships and fire those... they would pack a greater punch... if newtonian physics even mattered in trek on a consistent basis.

Racing and powered flight indoors sounds risky. I would rather do that in space. I learned from playing newtonian games that playing 3-D soccer with spaceships is quite viable so long they can bump into each other. If I did it I would net off the entire course and put it in geostationary orbit anchored to... the moon with tethers, that way the course won't drift off nor will it crash into the moon, as I would always know where it is and have drones to adjust it's position as the need arises.

Arthur C. Clarke's short story (little over a page long) I found both entertaining and funny. http://www.mayofamily.com/RLM/txt_Clarke_Superiority.html How would you could make a good movie adaptation? How would movie be if one of these did it? Zack Snyder? Michael Bay (cringe)? James Cameron? Steven Spielburg? Quebtin Tarantino? If I did it, I would play it kind of like a tragi-comedy. Tragedy being all the mistakes that lead to a final orbital last stand above the homeworld with music similar to this playing. Comedy being characters thrown in to give the destined-to-lose general company, not unlike the lower decks well received TNG episode. And the main character general would be this guy... only with MAXIMUM HAM! Look up tv tropes if you don't know what 'ham' is.

Maybe science fiction that has fictional stuff should be called Science Fantasy then? Because anything we dream up that we know does not exist is just that... until we learn otherwise. Regarding such, it is my approach to modify or enhance or manipulate stuff we already know to make scifi super tech. Technology like culture is iterative, the future is based on the manifold acomplishments/failures of the past. For example, the greeks/romans developed primitve steam engine technology, but even if they had went further to actually utilize it in an industrial manner it would not be as efficient as modern tech steam engines Since they lacked the fine and precise tools and machinery that made steam engines an efficient choice for the 18th century. They would have likely resorted to some manpower and gear/pulley analog to run their primitive steam machines if they chose to industrialize them. As for tech scaling... warp and FTL is fantasy... since even known theory admits as much that we need *we hope it exists* 'exotic' stuff to make it work. Which if it does not... is fantasy again. Thus, the way I see it, if an author chooses to use antimatter freely because the civilization has WARP starships... it does not bother me. Warp literally involves messing with fabric of space itself! If a civilization can do THAT... then engineering a material that won't go boom when it touches antimatter gets a pass as far as my suspension of disbelief goes. It may not yours... but I cannot have an alien race with cars rely on bow and arrows if you get my drift.

Had me thinking what if they changed it to that? Still speed capped, just at a higher cap than most normal ship speeds. Would it make missiles less or more effective ingame than the airplane manuvering in space gimmick missiles currently in use? Nothing else would change except missile mods: Go full kerbal on missile design. Any shape, or propellant, can even make it a nuke. And of course, shields can shield against nukes to an extent. What do you think of the concept? Would it work or not?

I could add flight via flapping wings in a torus room, so you could just keep flying in a broad circle. Actually even soccer could work, just in a flat circular room with adhesive shoes and a lot of PPE. There won't be any fancy foot work, but there will be a LOT of rebounds off bodies and the circular side walls and the floor and ceiling.

Oh it is a big deal. Just not as big as it could be because these are trained professional adult women. And the fact that women are few and most cut or tie their hair back. But imagine a few hundred of these LOL. "Houston? We got a BIG problem. Somebody is gonna pay for this, you hear me?!" I assure you the ladies do the big hair mainly for photos, as I really doubt the other astronauts are OK with hair swishing around during regular work hours.

Which brings me to the topic of zero g sports. What would they be with adhesive shoes and zero g? Track running: Eyewear is needed, since while hair nets may catch hair, sweat beads will trail behind a runner, especially if you are close. And it may sound amusing but I have seen runners experience flatulance (farting/blowing gas) while running fast. In zero g this MIGHT provide enough boost to give a win in a sprint LOL. Basketball: Not seeing it... even if so would be nothing like 1g basketball. One would need ample protective gear, and given all the collisions and rebounds nvolved, it would look more like football, especially after PPE was added. Baseball: No way. Requires gravity more or less. Dodgeball: So long everyone dresses like a professional football player it should go fine. EDIT: Actually... basketball COULD work. Use a vertical standing disc room, with one hoop above and one below. To reach the opponent hoop fastest you run with adhesive shoes while dribbling. Something tells me the floor would have to be bouncy, kind of like trampoline basketball, but the shoes should also adhere so one can run if desired. And the hoop and pole must both be soft for the inevitable player/hoop collision. And football player dreess required again.

I see you are pro carpet. I dunno why I lean toward non carpet... probably scifi tropes borrowed from the navy. Yet carpet beats floor I suppose if it catches dust. So we need the most dust absorbent carpet known to man! Knowing me If I designed it I would coat walls and floor with carpet, and assign vacuuming each room by robot drone. 120 staff I think is small for 880 passengers. A good portion of the staff must be medical, besides the basics like room service/care. Security would be the smallest (so not a lot of redshirts... although I I'm sure passengers WILL substitute), done mostly with robots or drones. I also thought of running track in zero g with adhesive shoes. If a woman is running ahead of me... ouch, hair is going all in my face. Happened to me at 1g on Earth, so in zero g it's sure ti happen to someone. Believe me, as a teen my mom used to ask me where I was and who with just because of looking at all the female hair in my back seat lol!

It may sound control freakish... but what about female hair? Just having them ride in the back seat of my car leaves long strings of hair behind. Now imagine how much a THOUSAND people will create! That's why I want eyewear in weightessness.

Hmmm... my parents had a rough time several times. My dad. (never were we ever close, not even now) would leave for a few dats and return decide to work it out. I dunno... I hope you and your mate can work it out, since if you loved each other before, surely it is possible to rekindle it. I know the whole corona deal is making everyone cranky though. No matter what relationship, there will be challenges and give and take. I hope you can helo salvage it if possible. Is preferable.

Expensive? Depends on the setting does it not? Frankly... any setting that has FTL or warp frieighters and luxury liners gets a pass on antimatter being cheap. Since unless another way of generating lots of energy with tiny amounts of mass is found or made up fictionally... how else are they powering it? Billions of barrels of gasoline fed through portal gates to their reactor LOL? Sounds crazy but you get my point?

Yes and no. What is my target? Is it a drifting, unpowered predictable asteroid? If so I can throttle back my particle beam power to something more reasonable, even missile speed if I want LOL. With antimatter I can do that because it will HURT either way if it's slow or fast. Meaning I can save ship power when I get fly close to immobile or predictable targets I want to blow to smithereens. Now if it is a mobile high thrust spaceship a light second away... then yeah... I have to use more power to throttle up the particle beam to max so I can destroy it.