Questions tagged [interstellar-travel]
When your question concerns travelling distances that are measured in light years or more.
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Interstellar travel via a moving walkway of dust
The "moving walkways" pass close to local solar systems fairly far from their suns. They are very small, and thus hard to detect. Each "walkway" consists of two columns: dust and ...
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Rationale for sending manned mission to another star?
In the near future an ancient, derelict spacecraft or space station has been discovered orbiting Barnard's Star, 6 light years from Earth.
Why would Earth send a manned mission to Barnard's Star to ...
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Near-instantaneous inter-star communication utilising wormholes
This is my first question on the worldbuilding stack exchange, I discovered this place last night when double-checking that my world's river-carving-through-a-mountain-range is possible (it was, which ...
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How to make intragalactic space navigation difficult
Say there are two factions in a cold war with each other. Each faction controls huge amounts of the known galaxy, but there is a demilitarized neutral zone in-between them. Both factions have access ...
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How to map arms of the galaxy?
Some background:
My interstellar civilization(s) have fled our home Solar System, spreading throughout the nearby systems in the Orion Arm. They possess FTL, but for plot reasons, they have only just ...
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How to stop interstellar civilizations from becoming too dissimilar?
In this world there are humans have developed the technology to allow for interstellar travel, accomplished by light speed engines. However, this has created a problem. Is there any way for those who ...
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A laser-propelled starship loses its decelerating beam; what options do they have to slow down?
New to the site, and like many others here, I've been bouncing around a few ideas for a hard sci-fi short story with some friends, centered around an interstellar voyage to colonize a habitable world. ...
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Would a living being moving at 99% the speed of light see time stop, or would it see time move faster?
Let's say I want to write about a living thing that can naturally go to 99% the speed of light in just one second of acceleration.
I would like to write what this being would experience at such speed ...
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How can I figure out measurements/distances and hyperspace jump time in my universe that is simple enough for readers to understand?
I'm using an alternate version of the Milky Way as my setting. I need to know how far it is from one planet/area to another, and know how long it takes to jump via hyperspace -- Yes, I realize ...
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How can we build a space probe's computer to survive centuries of interstellar travel?
TL;DR: Can human build a computer that lasts for a few hundred years under active maintenance with a limited spare part supply, not too bulky or power hungry, and has the performance similar to a high-...
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Does my concept for an "ergosphere highway" make scientific sense?
In my current science-based project, I have this idea for a string of rotating black holes (bonus points if you can figure out how they can be lined up without gravitating towards each other) that are ...
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The Earth is teleported into interstellar space for 5 minutes. What happens?
Humanity has just developed a star drive and begun sending their first probes, and have now discovered an unstoppable force of doom approaching to destroy the solar system. Their only option is to ...
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FTL gates and drives used simultaneously without redundancy?
This world has 3 forms of faster-than-light travel:
Warpdrives don't require destination coordinates. They can be activated and deactivated at any time to move continuously through space. But they ...
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Reaching Proxima Centauri within 10 years of ship time in the year 2300
For scenaristic reasons, my colonization spaceship needs to reach Proxima Centauri within 10 years of ship time. How do they do that?
I'm starting to get a headache over this. At first I thought the ...
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What socio-economic pressure would cause humans to depend on an interstellar resource? [closed]
It's generally cheaper to make it at home, but when we can reach another star, what non-magical pressure would make that not true for humanity? There exist small niche markets in wine and some ...
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Lightspeed travel survivability [closed]
In my sci fi novel, a technologically advanced version of the human race is capable of harnessing and creating large amounts of antimatter for interstellar travel at 99% the speed of light , ...
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The demise of the Bussard ramjet. Long live the Bussard ramjet. Can we save it @ Worldbuilding?
Robert Bussard's ramjet, as featured in Tau Zero and most recently noted by Carl Sagan in Cosmos, may be dead. In 1960, Bussard proposed a space propulsion system that relied on a nuclear electric ...
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Surface of interstellar convoy's asteroid shield
A voyage of several ships at 0.2c needs raw materials and protection from impacts with interstellar dust. For these purposes, they installed enormous thrusters on the circumference of a 10-km-diameter ...
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Is delta v relevant for interstellar travel for generation ship?
Imagine I have a generation ship that is heading to a nearby star system say 10 light years away, the average lifespan for the crew is 150 years on Earth and is expected to increase by about 5 years ...
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Best design for Plasma Magnet Sail/Catch
What's the best design for a receiving end of a Plasma Sail/Catch.
That is, (ignoring the specific means of how for now), a broadcaster in solar system x sends out a soup of macro-scale particles at a ...
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Is there any data that would indicate a correlation between stellar metallicity and the actual metal content of bodies in orbit?
Metallicity measures the heavy element load of a star, heavy being defined as "not Hydrogen or Helium", but doesn't give a direct indication as to how much of a star is what might be called &...
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Interstellar laser sculpting
Some artistic and civic-minded aliens want to put a bust of their glorious leader, Rigel Rigelius R, in every solar system in the galaxy. Interstellar spaceships are very expensive, and slow besides, ...
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How could interstellar, single-molecule nanobots survive launch?
Civilization X needs to explore nearby exoplanets using nanobots. These nanobots are made of singular (relatively large) molecules. These react with common gases in the atmosphere, acting as a ...
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How would humanity uplift an intelligent ice moon species?
Now in a previous question I tried to figure out what would a realistic response to humanity learning that we are unequivocally alone in the universe, (check it out here, How would humanity react to ...
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How could Creatures have Interstellar Travel?
I'm looking for a way realistic creatures could travel between stars in a time span of a year or less.
Is this even possible?
I want this to be as realistic as possible but this is a Sci-fi setting so ...
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Why are certain spaceships capable of warp at a moment's notice while others require some preparations?
After seeing an advert on my holo-watch about the latest fleet of interstellar spaceships capable of going into warp at the press of a button, I was both amazed and dumbfounded by it
Conventional warp ...
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How would humanity react to finding the universe is uninhabited? [closed]
If there is one trope I am sick of it is the one I like to call the Empty Universe.
This is when humanity has spread out to the stars and finds...well, nothing. Spending centuries exploring the ...
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Crew member overboard! Interstellar Space Edition [closed]
I am just curious what would happen to those poor souls whom are thrown overboard while the spaceship which is enveloped in a warp bubble, does the bubble acts like a firewall similar to the black ...
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Is it useful to use a reverse thrust system on a huge interstellar spaceship (1.7km) to slow down in space?
I’m working on a personal 3d animation project: A big, BIG interstellar spaceship (about 1.7 km long), propelled by two antimatter engines (Like the Venture Star, in the introduction of Avatar).
https:...
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Efficient way and rough design to detect rogue planets in interstellar space
Let's imagine a civilization that has a way of colonizing rogue planets (ones not orbiting a star). It would want to expand, and therefore search for new worlds. What physical principle and rough ...
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Rebuilding a collapsed empire
I am making a galaxy where humans have reached an age where everything is peaceful and paradise, like spanning thousands of planets. However, a disaster happened that caused all the worlds to be ...
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Is this a decent description of the process for an interstellar drive based on this handwavium/element zero? [closed]
My story needs four variations of an interstellar drive that uses exotic matter (detailed below). I know what the processes need to do, side effects of using them, etc. but explaining them/showing ...
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Harvesting Antimatter from Solar Flares
An old NASA news article I came across states that a solar flare observed in 2002 produced around a half-kilo of antimatter:
https://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/solarsystem/rhessi_antimatter.html
How ...
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Two Interstellar Vessels, passing each other at a fraction of Lightspeed, how would that look? [closed]
so suppose you have two vessels in Interstellar space. One is the ITV Europa while the other one listens to the name ITV Lea Sudux.
Europa is flying at 0.5c, so 149896km/s where as the Sudux chills at ...
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Starshot fails--do we know why?
This question is related to a SE:WB question of mine. I shelved the project about a year ago and am now dusting it off. To sum the concept up: several hundred million years ago a rather impenetrable ...
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How can I justify a Type III civilization using planetary jump drives instead of FTL starships for galactic commerce and travel?
I have this idea for a science fiction story (It actually came to me in a dream.). In the distant future, the inhabitants of the Milky Way have formed a galaxy-spanning civilization similar to the ...
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Can a Shkadov thruster be made passively stable?
So, I envision a world that has forgotten it's en route to another galaxy -- it's been in transit for only a million years, hasn't even properly left its "home" behind (still stars in the ...
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System of government inside a generational ship (videogame)
I'm designing a sci-fi videogame.
But I've many doubts about the hierarchical structure.
On a ship "the captain" is the highest authority, directs, coordinates and controls all activities, ...
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Would would occur if a person travelled from a wormhole in flat empty space, to one on Earth?
We are using a Morris-Throne Wormhole Metric. Let's presume the throat of this wormhole (in internal hyperspace) is short, let's say 1km.
Now, as you are travelling through the entrance wormhole, ...
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Could Kerr Metric Black Holes hypothetically be used for Interstellar Information Transfer?
Kerr Metrics should (extremely hypothetically) allow travel into "mirror" universes. However, I have heard that some theories estimate the time-swapped black hole on the other side of the ringularity ...
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How would a new planet join an intergalactic united nations and economy? [closed]
Wordy title, heh. Say a new planet gains access to spacefaring capabilities comparable to that of what exists in some galaxy or galactic cluster. And in that galaxy or cluster, there's a body akin to ...
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How to prevent humanity from using alien spaceships and technology exclusively?
A long time ago, far far away, in the distant future of this galaxy, (don't think about that too hard) aliens created links between star systems enabling interstellar travel to occur within a day. Now ...
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Basic concepts for a functioning generation ship [closed]
I'm writing a story (part of a larger work) which features a generation ship. I don't want to get too deep into the science, because it's not the focus of the story, but I'd like it not to be so ...
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Solving the biggest problem of relativistic interstellar spacecrafts
In FTL-free universes, interstellar travel is often done by vessels capable of continuous acceleration (the drives themselves are often magitech), which can use the effects of relativistic time ...
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Time Dilation and Multistage Terraforming/Colonization
Could a time dialtion effect at near FTL speeds used to space apart in time the arrival of multiple ships to a distant destination?
Let's say there's a terraformable planet somewhere in the Milky ...
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Would there be artificial gravity on a spaceship that undergoes constant acceleration?
One way of creating artificial gravity is acceleration- gravity by inertial mass.
So in theory, if we would find a way to travel interstellar space by accelerating, reaching near light speed, would ...
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Why would humanity have left Earth 2 so quickly? [closed]
In the world I am building (based heavily on the Star Wars universe setting, but more historical), humanity first abandoned Earth to travel to another planet within their solar system, which they ...
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How can solar sailed ships be protected from space debris?
So we all know that interstellar starships that travel at high relativistic speeds, like 50% c or above, would be very susceptible to getting destroyed just by a grain of salt hitting it during travel....
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How would a physicist explain this starship engine?
In my world, interstellar vessels use a drive whose design mankind learned from an extinct elder civilization. While construction of the drives is possible, the physical principles making them work ...
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Most bit efficient text communication method?
What would be the most efficient text communication method for a spacecraft operating on a super low bit rate (I'm talking something like 5 bits an hour, excluding error handling)?
As you want both ...
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