What ticks you off about scifi spaceship designs?

[daniel l.]

There might be psychological reasons for that. Going off into space, possibly never to be seen again is stressful enough. Being cooped up in a soup can certainly is not going to help. It might very well be that somewhat spacious living quarters are required for long term, healthy survival.

Do not forget that so far, in real life, we only made it to the garden shed. Anyone can crash out in one of those for a night, but living in one for the rest of your life is another matter.

Why do people think that warships will all the way to point blank range, any military spaceships in this century will be tissue paper compared to the weapons used against them, its more a matter of hoping your weapons have long range because if the enemy has longer range then they'll fire on sight and you will be rekt before you even get a chance.

[Camacha]

Why do people think that warships will all the way to point blank range, any military spaceships in this century will be tissue paper compared to the weapons used against them, its more a matter of hoping your weapons have long range because if the enemy has longer range then they'll fire on sight and you will be rekt before you even get a chance.

Is this actually a response to my post or a random deviation?

[Fel]

2. There is always an "up" side. Usually where an exposed bridge is located. This baffle me. Can be excused somewhat for small fighter craft since it is designed around a cockpit and a human can only be oriented one way, and it can turn fast enough due to low mass. Still can be better designed though. But looking at huge capital ships with a clearly vertical design somehow all aligned on the same spatial plane(?) to fight face to face really ticks me.

The thing is, Sci-Fi tends to design space capital-ships like luxury liners. Most of Star Trek's ships aren't suppose to be military, but the ones that are have huge spaces inside and what makes a ship a capital ship? It's bigger... and has even less space devoted to weapons.

In space, combat is going to be so far away that any projectile based attacks can be dodged with small changes in your heading. Thus a capital ship should have the terrifying ability to absolutely blanket an area with shrapnel... not just get bigger and bigger making it an easier target.

And of course, the whole "shoot here! This is the bridge!" aspect of trek ships.

Perhaps that's the reason the only way they could beat the borg was by cheating. (Or rather, the borg's cube more closely resembles a capital ship than anything else in trek)

Pretty much everything listed here.

Really, that reads like "I read someone smarter than me write something and now I'm parroting it back poorly." It's like he knows the topics, but doesn't know WHY they're the topics. Like space windows, there's nothing wrong with them... the idea of space cruises isn't faulted either. The problem is how Star Wars uses them in battle. Instead he talks about radiation and bright sunlight as if we cannot solve those problems; glass isn't the only thing that is transparent.

[daniel l.]

Is this actually a response to my post or a random deviation?

Kinda both, I wanted to know your opinion.

[Camacha]

Kinda both, I wanted to know your opinion.

Long range warfare has been a fact since the beginning of last century and is still happening today at even longer ranger. I do not see any reason why that would change in space, especially since long range is essentially 'free' due to the lack of atmosphere and conservation of momentum.

[ChrisSpace]

Almost no sci-fi spaceships are symmetrical or aligned with their center of thrust. Also, many of them either have aerodynamics but don't need them, or have no aerodynamics and need them (for an example of the latter, Serenity)

[Camacha]

Almost no sci-fi spaceships are symmetrical or aligned with their center of thrust.

How do you know? Maybe they have some very heavy stuff stuffed away in a lopsided fashion.

[Whirligig Girl]

Pretty much everything listed here.

Was about to link Atomic Rockets.

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Engines mounted so that they don't thrust through the center of mass. Damn near all SF ships do that.

I have a love/hate relationship with the TOS Enterprise for this reason.

[Flymetothemun]

Pretty much everything listed here.

I disagree with him, especially on the "Boats" and "Not laid out like boats" arguments. People want their spaceships to look nice, so they might choose to build it like a boat. Also, for a few people the idea of "decks" might not be good, but for a large crew & large amount of guests it would most certainly make organizational sense to have decks.

Also, why can't rockets be hotels? I'd sure as hell like to spend a week or so in space. Preferably with some nice, clean, large windows to stare at the cosmos out of.

Nyrath seems caught up in technicalities. Also, there's a reason why it's Science Fiction.

[justidutch]

They never seem to include washrooms.

[RainDreamer]

They never seem to include washrooms.

That makes me think of waste disposal in space...

I wonder why there haven't been any fiction feature a field of...well, you know what it is...on an interplanetary orbit due to long term interplanetary travel.

[Kerbart]

When it's designed unrealistically, even though there wasn't any gain to do so...

Technically speaking that's not true. The gain is it looks cool which in a movie is a pretty big deal. But yeah, in the context of the portrayed environment; absolutely.

Arranging everything in decks throughout the whole ship. Maybe a centrifuge could be decked, but decking the whole ship requires some wizardry, for artificial gravity of course.

And even then... Sane engineers would orient the decks on the Enterprise aligned with the main direction of propulsion, one would think, and not perpendicular to it.

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They never seem to include washrooms.

That's just efficiency; nobody goes there anyway.

[Flymetothemun]

That makes me think of waste disposal in space...

I wonder why there haven't been any fiction feature a field of...well, you know what it is...on an interplanetary orbit due to long term interplanetary travel.

In Space, you must fight to survive...

...But do you possess the industrial windshield wipers that are used in the fight?...

...Starring Morgan Freeman as Captain John Smith and George Takei as Admiral T. O. Let...

...Stuck in the middle of space without any TP, Thrust Propulsion, that is...

...Nowhere to hide, nowhere to go...

...There's only one way in and one way out of this predicament...

...Morgan Freeman and George Takei star in...

...Brown Dwarf...

...Coming This Fall.

[basic.syntax]

...they broke a long convention, by lowering the warp nacelles to the same level as the primary saucer, taking away their line of sight to space ahead,...

They weren't obscured, though?

My bad... very, very bad. I based that on a memory of a quote from one of the "prime continuity" designers, that I didn't have in front of me, I should have checked up on that old memory before posting.

I get the distinct impression that to do the nacelles and secondary hull, someone stared at the USS Pasteur for a while. Just a thought. But even the Pasteur’s Bussard collectors had line of sight to open space, which the nacelles on this new ship don’t seem to have. Perhaps the designers didn’t know exactly how the different hardware bits worked (I violated this rule a little here and there, but I knew when I was doing it). Now I’m not being a whiner, just an informed critic. There’s room in this Trek world for healthy design criticism, as well as simply sitting back and enjoying a well made SF film. I -hope- the film is well written and clever and has good proportions of action, humor, tech, etc. but I’m also prepared to analyze the design work to see, perhaps, how far the shapes and colors and functions stray from 40 years of evolved gear.

Which was itself based on one of the first released images, a low-angle shot. Rick Sternback took back his words, when reboot-redesigner Ryan Church explained the problem Sternbach thought he saw, was due to the viewing angle. Full story here.

Note to self: don't write bad words about things when you don't know what you're talking about. I have now read a ton of articles to catch up on what I was missing.

This site goes overboard, exhaustive detail:

Star Trek Ship Design Guidelines

New (2009) Enterprise Design criticism

[A35K]

A lot of things mentioned like using too much space for crews instead of fuel doesn't really make sense if we don't know what these futuristic spaceships run on. These technologies are obviously hundreds, if not thousands of years ahead of ours, so they may have some form of propulsion that lasts for extremely long times. That would explain why they always seem to travel in straight lines instead of orbital trajectories. They simply burn until all the trajectories are straight lines. This can be done in KSP with mods such as Interstellar, you can have ludicrous amounts of dv for very little mass and essentially all your trajectories can become straight lines. You can get to Jool in just a few days!!

[megatiger78]

well, this is what a spaceship should look like:

aerodynamically stable, and capable of atmospheric flight, without needing massive wings. also good missiles:

no nose cones in space.

I let the hornet of on this because it needs weapons mounts, and wings are a easy thing to add to the design for it.

[Fel]

And even then... Sane engineers would orient the decks on the Enterprise aligned with the main direction of propulsion, one would think, and not perpendicular to it.

In space.... propulsion either is extremely small and thus negligible as a source of "artificial gravity", or extremely large and last only for a short period of time. "Sane Engineers" wouldn't be saying "but I wanna design it my way", "sane engineers" would explain the problems associated with the design and then shut up as they come up with ways to mitigate said problems.

Let's take a look at the car designs "sane" engineers make... boxes are in now? What about drag? What about protection against collision (i.e. egg like roofing), or the whole insanity with wanting to have wireless controllers all over the vehicle to make part replacement easier. (I don't care how strong the encryption is, it is an unnecessary security risk with minimal benefit... doesn't mean I'm going to get my way.)

Engineers aren't there to tell you no, they're there to explain the problems and explain what is needed to overcome these problems... even if the change doesn't create a single benefit. Call it "design over function" if you're a technician; but if you are an engineer you should know that you're always given impossible specifications, your ability to create new material to "best meet" these specifications is what engineering is about.

I disagree with him, especially on the "Boats" and "Not laid out like boats" arguments. People want their spaceships to look nice, so they might choose to build it like a boat. Also, for a few people the idea of "decks" might not be good, but for a large crew & large amount of guests it would most certainly make organizational sense to have decks.

Also, why can't rockets be hotels? I'd sure as hell like to spend a week or so in space. Preferably with some nice, clean, large windows to stare at the cosmos out of.

Nyrath seems caught up in technicalities. Also, there's a reason why it's Science Fiction.

Yeah, Nyrath continuously misses the point, but the space hotel aspect is mostly accurate...

The problem is, Trek especially (since we see engineering quite often), has a TINY SMIGGEN of fuel. No one knows how Trek ships work since they aren't rockets (yeah, seriously, isn't it obvious?) and use "magical forces" to move through space. The problem still remains just how little fuel the ship has to provide ALL the energy required.

Let me just clarify that I'm defining "rocket" as a vessel that uses "Third-Law Engines." Again, bad engineering as usual to claim we know everything about the universe and thus all sci-fi ships are using third-law engines because that is all we know about. NOW, if you clearly see plumes then that can only be the result of third-law engines (leaving something behind) and I've seen it many times, Anime especially loves the whole "plumes" on rockets... while having very little room for the fuel they're releasing.

Still though, while you can excuse the enterprise for moving space around the vessel or whatever it needs to get rid of "reaction mass", engineering remains fueled by an exceptionally small bit of antimatter.

Edited June 4, 2015 by Fel

[moronwrocket]

Babylon 5 Earth Alliance ships seem to address most of the complaints (the aliens have much higher tech levels and more scifi ship designs). In "real life sci fi" (whatever that means), I would expect practical ships to be spherical. B5 does a meh job there, with only the civilian Asimov class being sphere shaped. It would have been nice to have a scene from inside an Asimov, with passengers looking through the floor windows to see space rotating around them. Spheres would have the minimum inertia and need the same torque to turn in any direction. They are also the highest volume to surface ratio, so you need the least amount of extra armor plating/shields/whatever. Main guns could also depress below 0* without hitting superstructure, giving better interlocking fields of fire, with no obvious weak spots except maybe the engines. Another big advantage would be any debris from an impact would always be going away from your ship - most sci fi ships are really lumpy/bumpy and an explosion in one location will cause secondary impacts elsewhere in the ship.

I think military ships would probably not go with a rotating section, that is just way too delicate a structure for maneuvers and the huge angular momentum tied up in that would cause severe stresses during high speed turns, and require enormous amounts of torque to handle properly. I suppose they could rotate during peaceful conditions and stop during action stations, but that would be a real PITA to deal with. Probably makes more sense to have a gym room with two rotating rings internal to the ship that can be stopped together without imparting rotation to the rest of the ship.

http://babylon5.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Earth_Alliance_ship_classes

Obligatory YouTube video:

Some notes:

Yes, there's the typical ramming speed trope. But they do show the window in CiC having a blast shield that goes down during combat, and none of the capital ships have any windows. Starfuries are probably the closest to what "real" space superiority fighters would look like, with RCS thrusters on arms to provide high turn rates. While there's sounds in space, it's only when viewed from an obviously exterior Godlike perspective - Ivanova's cockpit views don't have any exterior sounds.

Edited June 4, 2015 by moronwrocket

[basic.syntax]

Film and TV designs are focused on production costs first, dramatic visuals a close second, and explaining how it works, some time later.

[Randazzo]

Nothing.

They are fiction.

[daniel l.]

Why are the guns of space fighters fixed? there is no aerodynamics so it is very easy to put them in turrets and make your fighter invincible.

[Flymetothemun]

Why are the guns of space fighters fixed? there is no aerodynamics so it is very easy to put them in turrets and make your fighter invincible.

The turret provides one more place for things to break down and another joint for the enemy to attack. Some guns might also have a lot of "Backend" behind the barrel that would make the turret very long and hard to manoevre (No aerodynamics, but there's still inertia), essentially making it a fixed-position gun in intense combat situations.

[11of10]

@spherical combat space ships... actually, I believe that Star Wars star destroyers are actually a good design. You can spread your fire around for point defense, or you can focus all of it in one direction.

@what irritates me: thrust not going through center of mass thing. drives me nuts.

[Canopus]

I disagree with him, especially on the "Boats" and "Not laid out like boats" arguments. People want their spaceships to look nice, so they might choose to build it like a boat. Also, for a few people the idea of "decks" might not be good, but for a large crew & large amount of guests it would most certainly make organizational sense to have decks.

Also, why can't rockets be hotels? I'd sure as hell like to spend a week or so in space. Preferably with some nice, clean, large windows to stare at the cosmos out of.

I'm sure that once you are free to choose wether to build your Spaceship like a boat or not it won't matter to you anymore. You most likely won't be dependent on gravity anyway by that time. Edited June 4, 2015 by Canopus

[Plume & Akakak]

What ticks you off about scifi spaceship designs?

The fact that spaceships sounds are not created on an EMS Synthi AKS anymore.