Questions tagged [interstellar-travel]
When your question concerns travelling distances that are measured in light years or more.
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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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Stellaser Part I: Trial by stellar Fire or The best design out of three for a solar powered 5 Petawatt laser?
I´m building a hard-sifi setting and want to use Stellasers (abbreviation for stellar laser) to provide thrust and power to interstellar vessels. This part one is only concerned with the construction ...
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Is it possible to break the sound barrier in space with a really fast spacecraft
I was doing some research online about slower-than-light interstellar spacecraft, and it got me thinking about a couple things. Although it may seem empty, the space between stars isn't a perfect ...
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Life on other planets via nuclear signal
A nuclear explosion in space? Directing a nuclear explosion is difficult even in theory, but is it possible to direct one in space, with a trajectory and width of a significant diameter and wavelength ...
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Feasibility of an Antimatter-Catalysed Ram Augmented Interstellar Rocket (AC-RAIR)
A fictional starship that I am designing functions via a form of Bussard ramjet that uses hydrogen from the interstellar medium as reaction mass, not as fuel.
In order to accelerate the propellant, ...
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Alcubierre warp-lanes, what is the most stable way to create them?
2 informational references for Alcubierre fields can be found at the end of this question.
Warp-lanes aren't a novelty in science-fiction. Space ships can use a specific route to go through a Galaxy ...
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Interstellar Propulsion for Hard Sci-fi Novel
Hypothetical: Hundreds of years into the future. Humanity needs to travel to exoplanets quickly. I'm aiming for hard sci-fi. What kind of propulsion can travel people at 0.1 - 0.9 lightspeed?
Is it ...
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Potential system to system travel?
So one of the ideas I've come up with for system to system travel, in the early colony stage of my world, is using fuel boosters to start the journey and then to reach the required speed for the ...
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Feasibility of deceleration by collision
There are many hypothetical systems for bringing spacecraft of the near-future up to speed, some of which may attain some relativity-bending velocities. However, these systems, to achieve such high ...
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Interstellar "reefs", plausibility and detection [closed]
Most of the interstellar medium is, as far as we can tell with current technology, pretty empty and most of what is there is in the form of single atoms or tiny particles only a few molecules across. ...
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What mandates travel in an interstellar society?
A while ago this question on medieval travel was asked. I looked at it again today and it got me thinking about situations that would mandate travel in other settings, in particular what would force ...
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Is there a way in which we can travel to other local groups?
Suppose that a super advanced alien civilization comes to Earth. We don't know why they came and they don't really provide much information. Their species comes to Earth only for a few hours and then ...
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How to explain why humans weren’t encountered by alien species? [closed]
So, I’ve been writing a sci-fi novel that takes place a few centuries in the future. In the novels lore, it says that there was plenty of life throughout the galaxy, but humans were just contacted ...
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