All Questions
Tagged with spaceships space-travel
262
questions
12
votes
2
answers
2k
views
Using a planetary flyby to reduce speed
At the end of my novel, the surviving crew of a spaceship is hurtling past a Dyson swarm that encloses the sun where the asteroid belt used to be. They are traveling too fast for orbital insertion and ...
- 121
5
votes
3
answers
203
views
Would the discovery of a room temperature superconductor with a high critical current improve ion drives?
I'm just an optimistic, uneducated bum, so if any of the terminology or ideas are wrong I apologize. So I understand that ion drives are very economical but very low thrust. Partly because powering ...
- 377
10
votes
2
answers
2k
views
Engine most likely to be available in the next 80 years to accelerate a craft at 1g for 4 weeks
I posted this in Space SE, but someone suggested I also post it here. So here it is!
I am wondering what type of engine would most likely be available in the next 80 that can constantly accelerate a ...
- 203
8
votes
7
answers
4k
views
How fast is too fast for travel inside the solar system?
I'm looking past the science of fuels and star ship engine details at this point because I'm trying to establish speed limits around our solar system. My initial idea was to use TIME TO DESTINATION as ...
- 307
16
votes
22
answers
6k
views
Why can't escape pods be opened from the inside?
Set in the near future Space tourism is a thing, all commercial and non-military spaceships must come equipped with multiple escape pods. The minimum specs for each escape pod are as follows:
min ...
- 48k
11
votes
11
answers
3k
views
What would space equivalent of trucks look like? [closed]
I'm writing a story and the peoples' given profession is basically "space truckers": delivering small-to-medium containers of cargo across long distances in the galaxy. Because the journeys ...
- 193
2
votes
5
answers
311
views
How large a mass could a spacecraft tow between solar systems?
For the purposes of this question, let's assume space travel does not involve 'shortcuts' through other dimensions (like so-called hyperspace) and that 'tractor-beam' technology exists.
Provided the ...
- 3,169
3
votes
3
answers
280
views
How would you get a ship out of a gravity well?
Context
I'm helping a friend with a hard sci-fi story and we ran into an issue. In this setting the technology for absurdly powerful and efficient fusion drives which seem not to have heat managment ...
- 101
7
votes
10
answers
4k
views
Avoiding time travel or causality stuff
How to avoid blatantly time traveling or breaking causality in a big way when getting my characters to places quickly (Faster than light)?
The method used is a tunnel in some sort of different space ...
- 415
3
votes
1
answer
225
views
How much liquid hydrogen is required to veer a manned probe off course into an escape trajectory in deep space?
I am working on this horror-scifi story based on the lost cosmonauts theory, where the Judica-Cordiglia brothers detected an SOS from a manned probe veering off into space before Yuri Gagarin ahem... ...
- 3,422
9
votes
3
answers
3k
views
What would it take for a spacecraft to travel to the sun's nadir and stop?
In a science fiction future universe, spacecraft routinely travel from a distance "above" a star's north or south pole to rendezvous with planets orbiting in the star system's orbital plane. ...
- 107
10
votes
8
answers
5k
views
Space-ships and stations...made from cast-iron?
If there's two things i love, it's space-flight, and late 19th century technology, and i hope to implement as much of the latter into as much of the former in my current setting. And one thing that ...
- 1,222
4
votes
2
answers
1k
views
Amount of antimatter needed to propel large spacecraft?
Okay, So i'm not really into physics or mathematics but i'm trying my best to learn some bit of how the calculations needed for the amount of antimatter needed to propel a spacecrafft to relativistic ...
- 567
4
votes
2
answers
750
views
Spacecraft Design of a Cold-Blooded Humanoid Race
I was talking with a friend recently and he reasoned that a cold-blooded race would take longer to get to space, but survive more easily once the technology progressed enough. The rationale was that a ...
- 195
3
votes
1
answer
252
views
Seeking chart of nebula particle density vs. ship velocity
The traditional Sci-Fi nebula is thick as ketchup (I'm lookin' at you Star Trek!) but the reality of nebulae we know about is that a pilot wouldn't even notice that they're in one due to particle ...
- 126k