Scifi Spaceships Are Bombs

[Incarnation of Chaos]

7 hours ago, Mitchz95 said:

My point is, treaties don't mean much when the average joe can decimate planetary populations on a whim.

Treaties don't have to mean much to average joe to be effective though, Triage is what you're after.

I could whip up several cubic meters of Chlorine Gas right now using very common household chemicals and unleash it upon some poor bystandards, and I'd quickly be arrested, charged with multiple counts of murder and put to death. But we haven't seen the use of Chlorine Gas in warfare nearly approach the scale of WWI since, and that's mostly what I'm after. We don't want to stop everyone, just the ones with the industrial base and capacity to deploy FTL on a apocalyptic scale as one of the previous posters mentioned.

Plus, by making it known as a horrific terrible act you inevitably stigmatize it. So those pirates would find themselves quickly targeted by anyone and everyone.

[kerbiloid]

12 minutes ago, Incarnation of Chaos said:

But we haven't seen the use of Chlorine Gas in warfare nearly approach the scale of WWI since

In some modern conflicts it's being from time to time used. 

Also as far as it's known, sarin and yperite were from time to time used in regional 1980s war(s).

Edited December 28, 2020 by kerbiloid

[Incarnation of Chaos]

Just now, kerbiloid said:

In some modern conflicts it's being temporarily used. 

Also as far as it's known, sarine and yperite were temporarily used in 1980s war(s).

Yep, numerous ones where it's been suspected. But limited, and local. Not massive clouds rolling across untold acres of land for years upon years.

It's still horrible stuff mind you, but considering there's still places today that are still toxic because of the usage of various agents in WWI I'd say less is more.

[KerikBalm]

I must say, I think I agree that most oof these threads belong in the lounge.

Sci-fi ship = bomb is not really a scientific question.

The answer is simple and the concept well known among hard-scifi as a simple consequence of KE calculations, similarly with drive dangers (see the kzinti lesson)

[Spacescifi]

6 hours ago, Terwin said:

Yes, all realistic spaceships using on-board power have the energy density to be bombs.  Some are less literal, such as a RTG powered ion thruster, but most are literally bombs configured to 'explode' in a useful way, particularly those that are chemically powered.  (fission powered ion engines, should they ever be deployed, are an edge-case, as it is really a bomb designed to *not* blow up in a useful way).

 

Inter-planetary, and even more so inter-stellar, transportation is a very energy intensive process.

 

On the other hand, science fiction vessels are driven by plot, not by physics, so their qualities will be whatever is demanded by the story, which is usually completely distinct from what is required/allowed by physics.

As such, too much realism in space travel is usually a bad thing in a story, as it will force plot changes that are not beneficial to the story, at best adding unneeded complexity to the narrative.

 

Example:

"I went to the store to buy some milk" is not improved by: specifying the brand name of the milk, the name of the store, the fuel efficiency of the means of conveyance, or the name of the cashere/store owner.

Sure that is not much of a story, but without some larger narrative to provide additional meaning to those additional details, adding them would only make the story more complicated without adding value to the reader.

I agree

Narrative is exactly the point. It can and should be affected by the drive limitations if they are ever brought up at all.

Today people don't just get to read about space travel, we have legit space sims like the one which shall not be named.

Navigation is half the challenge/fun...and I want to show that.

Even scifi vessels can and should have limited energy reserves, allowing for situations that call for good navigation or else a trip back to the nearest base for refueling/charging is the only safe option.

The obvious differece as opposed to real life is that in scifi the energy reserves of scifi vessels allow greater margins of error in navigation than our modern tech allows.

Granted there is really nothing to stop relativistic WMD in scifi, other than. weapons that are even more overpowered. That is why energy reserves would be regulated, and great space wars would instead be substituted for lower tech proxy hot wars and higher tech cold wars.

Edited December 28, 2020 by Spacescifi

[Scotius]

Thing is, nobody wants to read seventeen chapters about crew working their shifts, doing maintenance, filling paperwork and trying to combat boredom. This is the reason all media omit that part of the voyage. For the same reason space games have FTL drives and time warp.

You can include this part in your writing, sure. But - unless you mix in a lot of dramatic happenings, it will kill interest of readers rapidly.

[Spacescifi]

29 minutes ago, Scotius said:

Thing is, nobody wants to read seventeen chapters about crew working their shifts, doing maintenance, filling paperwork and trying to combat boredom. This is the reason all media omit that part of the voyage. For the same reason space games have FTL drives and time warp.

You can include this part in your writing, sure. But - unless you mix in a lot of dramatic happenings, it will kill interest of readers rapidly.

 

Oh no...not like that no.

Characters with their cutures make all the difference though, and exploring just what life in space under those scifi conditions would be like.

For example, imagine because time works different using the hyperdrive, that it is faster to travel over4 LY away to the next solar system than fly across the home system!

The setting itself IS the opportunity for stories to grow all day long.

 

I will also counter that you do not need constant danger if characters are fascinatiing enough.

Action for action's sake can be a crutch for poor characterization I don't intend to use.

If action happens so be it,but it won't need to happen just to fill some quotient.

Edited December 28, 2020 by Spacescifi

[Terwin]

7 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

Oh no...not like that no.

Characters with their cutures make all the difference though, and exploring just what life in space under those scifi conditions would be like.

For example, imagine because time works different using the hyperdrive, that it is faster to travel over4 LY away to the next solar system than fly across the home system!

The setting itself IS the opportunity for stories to grow all day long.

So your plan is 'Slice of Life' type story-telling which happens to be on a spaceship.

This can be  done, and it can be done well(see Firefly).

But be aware, every technical bit that is not specifically plot-related will distract and detract from the story.

Examples: I recall life-support coming up roughly 3 times in Firefly:

* Birthday cake is made of protein  ('It's basically the same thing we just ate for dinner, but I made is a chocolaty as I could')  This is world building('real food' is for rich people, which also comes up with Shepard paying with fresh veggies, and the engineer at the party)

* Passing reference by the slavers ('You can fit twice as many in your crew quarters, and you don't even need to take on more food') This is showing that those are bad people and makes it more permissible for Mal to steal from them.

* The episode where life-support goes out, and most of the crew leaves on the shuttles while Mal stays behind.  This is a vehicle for 2 things: Showing Mal's back-story via flash-backs, and giving Mal (yet another) opportunity to be a bad-ass.

There may have been additional passing references with regards to refuel/restock the ship while in port, but that is primarily to highlight the 'we are barely scraping by' aspect of the ship finances.

One of the biggest differences between 'unreadable' and 'unable to put down' is removing extraneous details, and for a slice-of-life type story, > 99% of the technical details are extraneous.

 

Example:

I have watched the entire Firefly series(more than once) as well as the movie, but I could not tell you what type of drives the main ship uses, nor if it is especially fuel efficient or inefficient.  In fact, I am not even sure what type of fuel it uses, other than they need to pay to fill up at spaceports and the cost is non-trivial.  I know they have twin vectored thrust atmospheric engines robust enough to ingest a rather beefy human without damage that allow VTOL, and the rear of this ship is apparently some sort of space drive that gives off a flash when engaged(they 'flashed their ass' at the imperials when salvaging food from a derelict vessel).  I am not even sure if both engine types need fuel, or if they both use the same type of fuel as it was never useful for driving plot, so it never came up.

[Spacescifi]

6 hours ago, Terwin said:

So your plan is 'Slice of Life' type story-telling which happens to be on a spaceship.

This can be  done, and it can be done well(see Firefly).

But be aware, every technical bit that is not specifically plot-related will distract and detract from the story.

Examples: I recall life-support coming up roughly 3 times in Firefly:

* Birthday cake is made of protein  ('It's basically the same thing we just ate for dinner, but I made is a chocolaty as I could')  This is world building('real food' is for rich people, which also comes up with Shepard paying with fresh veggies, and the engineer at the party)

* Passing reference by the slavers ('You can fit twice as many in your crew quarters, and you don't even need to take on more food') This is showing that those are bad people and makes it more permissible for Mal to steal from them.

* The episode where life-support goes out, and most of the crew leaves on the shuttles while Mal stays behind.  This is a vehicle for 2 things: Showing Mal's back-story via flash-backs, and giving Mal (yet another) opportunity to be a bad-ass.

There may have been additional passing references with regards to refuel/restock the ship while in port, but that is primarily to highlight the 'we are barely scraping by' aspect of the ship finances.

One of the biggest differences between 'unreadable' and 'unable to put down' is removing extraneous details, and for a slice-of-life type story, > 99% of the technical details are extraneous.

 

Example:

I have watched the entire Firefly series(more than once) as well as the movie, but I could not tell you what type of drives the main ship uses, nor if it is especially fuel efficient or inefficient.  In fact, I am not even sure what type of fuel it uses, other than they need to pay to fill up at spaceports and the cost is non-trivial.  I know they have twin vectored thrust atmospheric engines robust enough to ingest a rather beefy human without damage that allow VTOL, and the rear of this ship is apparently some sort of space drive that gives off a flash when engaged(they 'flashed their ass' at the imperials when salvaging food from a derelict vessel).  I am not even sure if both engine types need fuel, or if they both use the same type of fuel as it was never useful for driving plot, so it never came up.

 

Well...now that I found the key nugget of scifi spaceship design (conservation pf energy and thermodynamics), I would find Firefly troublesome.

Ignorance is bliss. The more you know the less you can sometimes accept.

I will say the time I saw a whole herd of cattle on his ship with no specialized rooms or gear to hold them that that disturbed me.

And that was long before I had an understanding of how the 'nugget' would truly apply to such a setting.

One thing The Expanse does right is the singular large nozzle. Since they are using fictional fusion engines, a large nozzle is ideal to diffuse the heat as opposed to melting it.

Which coincidentally is the same sort of engine the Firefly would actually need if it were running on propellant based on it's onscreen performance and payload..and it does use propellant in the show.

In atmosphere there is no really long plume setting stretches of land up in black plumes of smoke...but that is what you actually would have with a super efficient fusion rocket taking off from the dirt in some random location.

Edited December 28, 2020 by Spacescifi