Spacescifi

Cold war. Called sprint missiles. Designed to take out an ICBM during launch. Likely did have staging, but I doubt the final stage was anywhere near as thrusty as the first. Granted you are right. So it is possible to hit a 2g target trying to escape orbit. You would have to stage the missile with the most thrustiest solid and chemical propellant known to man though. Since the ship in question is trying to literally break orbit into deep space the moment it detects the launch. The best way to pull off tge launch is high altitutude aircraft launching the missiles, to shorten the distance to the target.

Newtonian maneuvers. Center of mass vs center of thrust. Maneuvering will be a nighmare for you.

So for this scifi scenario, you have a 1000 ton spaceship capable of 2g constant acceleration while fully loaded. No propellant required for the sake of discussion. You are in LEO. Several Earth nations decide they do not like you and launch 500g acceleration missiles (burn time is a few seconds at best so they are more or less like suborbital bullets). I suspect that 2g is more than enough to escape the onslaught after you detect the launch, while taunting them via broadcast as you break orbit. Let's also assume you are orbiting over the Pacific ocean about to fly over China. Question: What is the lowest constant acceleration rate of g where Earth based forces could not reliably hit you in orbit? It is interesting though, since as common as constant acceleration is in scifi, if you take that up against modern technology it becomes clear to see that we probably could not even reliably hit them in orbit. Lasers work sure, but people know that lasers are not all that good at hitting distant space targets unless the lens is huge due to beam spread. What do you think? Is constant acceleration of 1g or 2g so much that Earth could never hit them from the ground with current technology? If so.... this seals all those war of the worlds scifi stories. Since assuming they have good thrust constant acceleration, they will always have the highest 'ground' and we will NEVER hit them unless we build a giant laser lens or they are foolish enough to land. When they could do orbital bombardment all day until they run out of ammo instead. They won't even need scifi shields. What do you think?

This is NOT one of my story ideas. I just wanted to know how wiling people here are to have a scifi spaceship, knowing full well the controls are manual only. Turns out we think alike. Thought perhaps their would be some either macho, masochistic, or both kinds who would welcome manual controls. But not even then apparently... it's that hard lol.

Nope. You are just you. Any nerves of steel will be your own. Personally I have played a newtonian 3-D space game without any flight assist whatsover. I got past training mode, but not the first level. Space travel is more work tham fun if you have to do it all manually with no flight assist. My guess is landing will require more than eyeballing it. Likely would require you to at least ask the computer your meters per second so you know how much you need to slow down for landing. Computer will do that. Even will tell you how close to impact you are. It just won't help with thrust control..

What I mean is that you literally have to hard stick the controls. There is no computer aided thruster assist. If you turn left, you must tap the right thruster enough if you want to go straight instead of keep turning. Every thrust turns you a little, so you will have to correct any unwanted rotatations yourself. The computer won't help with that. All the ships fly newtonian in space, and if they can fly in the atmosphere, aerodynamics will come into play while you hardstick it. So would you? And what scifi ship would choose? Can be any scifi ship from any TV show or book you have seen or read about.

Doors? If these humanoids are anywhere near accident prone as both humans and animals are, they would probably just use a mix of sliding heavy doors, and curtains where security is less a concern. I have seen cats get their tail caught. It's not pleasant. For the cat. But I agree, doors that sense tails and close is an easy tech fix. Yet, given all the issues tails give, I can't help but think that cutting tails will be like circumcision male babies get. Don't need it. In the way. It really takes a mindset slightly different than the average guy or gal to want to keep a tail when life is easier without it. Multiply that average person attitude by 7 billion and I do not see tailed humanoids NOT cutting off their tails since they can survive fine without them. About the only legit reason I can think to keep the tails is if they grow back. Since that is just painful to do to an adult, and no one likes that. Maybe they grow back within two months? Maybe these humanoids convert their food into healing body parts more efficiently than us? With the cost meaning they go into hibernation when they lose a limb or body part. In two months it grows back just fine.

Less hostile? Only in Elite Dangerous! Hardly realistic. A star is so hot it can literally melt a spaceship a few light seconds out if it sits there for any length of time. Skimming it required much closer range. I also see no problem in making planets and asteroids fuel sources in addition to money makers. If anything it would make the game more fair and planets less useless. Add to that the fact that they could play around with different propellant efficiencies that way. Now players would actually have territory to fight over instead of just a rating.

No doubt. Even animals are often smart enough not to pull a stranger's tail. Although I have observed a kitten pawing at his mother's tail as she swayed it back and forth, which is okay since she is family and does not mind. Even so, I still think the whole situation would be more awkward with tails than without. If anything, personal space is a bit bigger than before, and body suits of all kinds will have either tail cloth or tail holes. Prehensile tails at best have limited use with humanoids who use technology. They won't be living in trees that's for sure. From a standpoint of pure utility, tails add little to the humanoid to even begin for a normal human to want to wish they had one. Other than to play with, but far from needed and very helpful utility as far as I can tell. It's not as if a prehensile tail has the load bearing capacity of our arms, and if it did the lower back muscles would be so pronounced that the person would at best look like a mutated for a humanoid. Unless that's the look one is going for... my point is, all changes to reality in fiction have, or I do think should have consequences.

Are prehensile tails on humanoids more trouble than they are worth? I tend to think they are. Thought about it while working the other day. I realized just how much they would get in the way of well.... everything. Cups are going to get knocked over. Kids are going to swat each other in the face with their tails, plus pull each others. Tails may look cool, but in practice they are far more suited for beasts than humanoids, since beasts use tail wagging to communicate for lack of the far superior humanoid speech. Even if all your doing is using the toilet a tail means NOW your touching it. Really, I think if we did have them it would be fashionable to cut them off. Balance is surely relevant, but humanoids for the most part do not do cat-like feats nor do they need to. Just my thoughts. If you wish to add for or against I will listen.

Got me thinking... it's a crying shame Elite Dangerlus and other space sims rather have you skim a STAR to refuel than break up and mine asteroids for fuel. Unless they do... doubt it though.

Technology of the setting really decides this, as it decides what can be done and what cannot. If I wished, I could make the ring shaped warp drive double as a portal and have two ships carrying it. Anytime they see something interesting they open the portal and out comes a ship to investigate without a warp/portal ring. So it will rely on rendezvous and constant acceleration to rendezvous with the ring carried by the other ships to get back home. But I digress. That ia just an example that solves the challenge by technology alone. Good enough. Just do not expect to be hauling off a lot of loot I suppose. The irony is that I suppose the classic media portrayal of starship captains is that they all act like age of the sail privateers. Doing whatever they like whenever they like. I guess being a pirate gives you that freedom. But otherwise you're really assigned for one job only. Passenger carrier. Search and rescue patrol. Cargo hauler. Space science researcher. Pick one. Unless you own the vessel, then you can do any of them you wish so long you're not under contract. Granted no one can find you to make you pay up if you break a contract, but they surely won't let you visit that planet or station again without being penalized.

Don't get that channel, but good points everyone!

Ummm... piping and injectors differ depending on the chemical propellant. So you either need several sets of injectors and pipes, or injectors and pipes that auto-adjust to fit the propellant type. Several sets will probably require multiple launches and orbital assembly. Adjustible piping and injectors is an expensive engineering problem that likely has some challenges involving clogging the pipes and injectors with previous propellant mixes. The easiest way to go is to just nuclear thermal with water extracted from ice. Problem is that such a rocket has poor efficiency, so you will be coasting a lot, even though thrust is good for a short while. Solid propellant via nuclear is not a bad idea though. You just better plan tge burn carefully, as it is one long burn that exhausts all of the propellant before coasting.

Good enough I suppose. Just dawned on me that if you had 1g constant acceleration parasite craft (shuttles) you would not even need to delay a cargo run. Just send some robo-shuttles, a few brave redshirts crewmen on other shuttles, telling them you will give them extra hazard pay if they come back with loot. The funny thing is, even if there was no hazard at all and the derelict ship crew really needed help, I'm betting at least in some cases the 'rescuers' would go rogue. Since they easily could. Like, the crew is totalky stranded. You have shuttles that can do 1g constantly, they cannot go anywhere. There is literally nothing stopping a rogue crewman from the shuttle to take whatever, ditch his job, and take the shuttle with him. Unless.... shiuttle programming stopped him, which is not hard to do actually. So come to think of going rogue would be hard unless you could deactivate programming protocols on your vessel that prevent you from flying away wherever you want.

It is a well-worn trope in scifi. Derelict spaceship gives out a distress call. Passing ship decides to investigate. Now let's ignore all the physics barring reasons why we would not do this (very limited fuel and thrust) and consider why we probably STILL would not rescue that poor ship even if we had constant 1g acceleration. Reason 1: Could be a trap. Any time you decide to rendezvous with another vessel you do not know there is this possibility. Reason 2: Crew may already be dead. Reason 3: Constant acceleration is fast, but any delays in your travel time you must explain to your superiors. Unless they do not mind you chasing derelict spacecraft. As an aside for this scenario, what are some legitamate reasons for trying to rescue derelict craft that are not even part of your mission? Reasons that you can actually explain to your employer without him wanting to fire you immediately. For example, saying "I was curious" is not good enough. Your employer would reply, "This is not Star Trek and you are NOT Kirk! Ship my cargo on time!" What do you think?

Good points. However I am sold on the suction plates. It's just an idea I like. With a strong enough adhesive plus multiple tiny suction plates it could work. Yet there is a possibilty of the suction plated being clogged with dirt, since as you mentioned, nature is dirty. I suppose tree climbing can work, they do not get too dusty, mainly because wind and birds tend to keep the dust off. Other option is make the homeworld more windy than Earth, with a lot of vertical rocks jutting out the surface, blown clean of dust and easy to climb. Could do both. Thanks for your imput. Already have a race with cat claws though, so I cannot use that here.

Yeah. I have learned so much from posters here that at this point I am content to just make a VR (vacuum reaction) propulsion drive and call it good. Whether I am proved wrong or right matters little. Humanity has s long, long, time to figure that out. Even though we can do scifi stuff in real life, it is hardly safe enough to justify a lot of people using it. Only the pros, who have done all sorts of testing to qualify for the job. The alternative to flat out making it up is the scary project Orion, even scarier antimatter, and horrifying black hole drives. All of those more realistic or theoretical drives do ONLY what they do, so you literally have to build the plot around the constraints of the propulsion system. Not the other way around, which is the usual for scifi.

Thank you. So I don't need superhumans (did not want that anyway). Regarding the girl, it may have been a weight thing. She weighed less so she probably did not have to work as hard. Same reason why little kids are at ease doing cartwheels but an adult that is not a trained acrobat may end up in the hospital with a fat bill that hurts even worse. Muscle weighs more than fat, and guys automatically have more than females unless she is on steroids. At first I thought to make my humanoids have a human size but weigh less so they could jump higher, run faster, and so on. Yet I chose that for another raxe already, as I don't want all races to the same abilities

True. Yet the issue is health. One cannot afford to stay healthy on the moon, mars, or anywhere else for extended stay (weeks) unless they replicate an Earth environment. Astronauts do not come back the same as when they left. Low gravity and radiation is bad news. The only way I would go is if they had a large enough centrifuge spinning that could simulate 1g. I don't mind being in a spacesuit with lower or zero gravity for hours at a time, but when I go home I want.... I need 1g.

Does a humanoid need to be to stronger than normal humans to routinely climb walls with super adhesive hands and feet (suction pads on them that secrete a super adhesive sticky substance)? I know physics shows humans normally need more suface adherence area to stick, but if the adhesive is strong enough that is no longer necessary. I have seen rock climbers climb either free, or with rope, so perhaps superior to human strength is not necessary to climb? Just super adhesive hands and feet?

My instincts tell me no... but the science is still there to at least try stuff I have not thought of. Anyways... fusion tries to replicate what the sun does. Which involves making plasma VERY hot. Often hotter than the sun (yes we can do that), since we do that since it compensates for not having the mass the sun does to cause fusion. So that is why I think the way I do.

Well I really do not know the specific field strength required to repel air, but I reckon it is high. High enough to liquify bodies? I dunno... but if it is any consolation the magnetic field might knock you or unconscious or kill you long before liquification. The body has electricity so it is susceptible to concentrated magnetism. May be a way to repel from Earth's poles, as magnets can and do repel.

An uber (ridiciculously) magnetic field could actually block air from hitting the hull. I would expect the air in front of the magnetic field to be compressed, thus producing plasma. Yet magnetic fields of that strength are far beyond our state of the art. I even know that at too high of levels, magnetic fields liquify stuff (atomic disassembly), but that is neutron or magnestar territory. Meaning magnetic fields alone can kill without metal if powerful enough. Gruesome way to go.

I guess what I am saying is that many of the common scifi characters and plots won't work. Not with rocketry. Common civilians are NOT signing up for this. So unless I want to do NASA 4.0 with better tech, there are make-it-all up options that CAN do the plots and characters.