Questions tagged [interstellar-travel]
When your question concerns travelling distances that are measured in light years or more.
36
questions
31
votes
10answers
7k views
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....
20
votes
5answers
3k views
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 ...
23
votes
13answers
6k views
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 ...
6
votes
2answers
231 views
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 ...
3
votes
2answers
227 views
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 ...
0
votes
1answer
78 views
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 ...
6
votes
1answer
141 views
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, ...
6
votes
2answers
279 views
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 ...
4
votes
1answer
363 views
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 ...
6
votes
4answers
830 views
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 ...
8
votes
4answers
541 views
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 ...
4
votes
2answers
547 views
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. ...
16
votes
18answers
5k views
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 ...
1
vote
1answer
90 views
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 ...
19
votes
21answers
6k views
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 ...
4
votes
1answer
106 views
Looking for an Explanation of Time Dilation I can program into a CLI calculator [closed]
Thanks but I can code it, not what I am looking for
I am just looking for an explanation or equation that is clear and not too heavy in parlance for how these trips would be to people of Earth and ...
-2
votes
2answers
568 views
How long would it take to colonize the galaxy with FTL? How long before colonization space is at a premium? [closed]
It's easy to find search results for how long it would take without FTL - but I'm wondering how long it would take with FTL, and there don't seem to be many estimates for that. Some very rough ...
0
votes
4answers
216 views
Which of these two spaceships would count as the fastest man made craft ever launched? [closed]
For a while now, I've been "working" on a story where mankind begins to set out towards the stars; and in my procrastination I started to get hung up on something.
In the universe I'm working on, ...
10
votes
7answers
488 views
What would grand strategy look like in a world with fast interstellar travel and slow interplanetary travel?
The specific situation is the tech in the Battletech universe. The Kearny-Fuchida hyperdrives are jump drives that can travel instantaneously up to thirty light years - being deposited (usually) at ...
2
votes
6answers
190 views
How can as many probes as possible be sent to nearby stars?
In the near future, say about 50 years, the most powerful governments are starting to compete for control of interstellar resources. The first step is to send a probe or probes to a neighbouring star ...
6
votes
2answers
314 views
Einstein-Rosen Bridge Worldgate time-gravity travel issue
In this mostly hard-science universe I am using a theoretical "Hyperstable Gateway" to travel between planet X and Y; The wormhole has a ~5m diameter, The "Bridge" itself is negligible and a physical ...
0
votes
1answer
133 views
How realistic are these levels of cryptographic advances within the setting described? [closed]
Recently, I've been musing about cryptographic applications of theoretical future technologies for (breaking) secure interstellar communications. The setting is a video game (Stellaris) featuring ...
-3
votes
1answer
206 views
Can liquid nuclear fuel be injected and ignited like petro from a fuel injector?
[![enter image description here][5]][5]
Model Lightcraft under laser power
While sadly the funding for this research has not been forthcoming, there have been proof of principle flights and open air ...
2
votes
2answers
289 views
Would this “reverse Dyson sphere”/“light-bridge” idea work?
So the idea is some hyper advanced civilization has figured out a way to send multi generational ships through space to other planets. The ships are self contained living ecosystems with near perfect ...
-1
votes
2answers
78 views
How can a probe at high speed launch a satellite in orbit of another planet? [closed]
This question may seem pointless for some people, but I think it actually may a real problem for space exploration.
Imagine an interstellar probe that is launched and accelerated up to 20% of the ...
6
votes
6answers
2k views
Relativistic effects on brains encoded in light
I am trying to build a hard science-fiction world where the interstellar travel might work like this:
Travellers bodies are scanned and all relevant information regarding body structure, neural ...
46
votes
28answers
10k views
How do I explain that an interstellar spaceship still requires risky spacewalks?
It is the mid 22nd century A.D. Twenty men and women signed on a ten year space exploration trip to the nearest star system. There are robots to do ship maintenance and a powerful A.I. to monitor the ...
15
votes
9answers
2k views
How might the spores of an interstellar lifeform navigate?
Voidcrawler (Mycocelium Nocturnis) is a voracious invasive species, most similar to a fungus but much hardier and with some singularly unique properties:
Firstly it absorbs not only light, but also ...
-2
votes
1answer
64 views
Sending people to the nearest star - frozen or via relativistic propulsion? [closed]
At the end of the 21st century C.E. humanity planned to visit the nearest star system. It will be the biggest human endeavor ever attempted and of course the most expensive experiment to date.
By ...
1
vote
5answers
498 views
How do I keep FTL from being used as a weapon of mass destruction? [closed]
I am trying to write a story occurring in a retro-future setting. The civilization in the story is a hodgepodge of contemporary Canadian-American culture and faster-than-light travel. I know this is ...
0
votes
4answers
165 views
Under these conditions, how would interstellar trade in large-scale systems compare against local manufacturing?
Here I asked about interstellar trade in raw materials, possible under the right conditions if necessary but not hugely useful. One of the obvious spin-offs of this was discussion of trade in ...
6
votes
3answers
277 views
Could time dilation cause unwanted structural effects?
I'm working on a science fiction story involving starships travelling about 95% of the speed of light. I wanted to have a reason for the starships to need to shield themselves against time dilation of ...
7
votes
3answers
505 views
Gravitational observatories vs. teleporting aliens
Let`s suppose there is an alien supercivilization whose interstellar vessel has «exited hyperspace» in a close proximity of the Earth (i.e. a certain volume of physical space only filled with vacuum ...
2
votes
1answer
193 views
Two-stage fusion propulsion [closed]
I am currently developing an interstellar mission layout for a science project and am starting the propulsion selection process. The main criterion of my mission is that it must be feasible with the ...
2
votes
1answer
474 views
What is the energy requirement needed to make a Visser wormhole and what kind of civilisation on the Kardashev Scale could do this?
So, after discussing how to make a wormhole in chat (after I started with how long Earth could last in the middle of an invasion of Earth in the mid 1970s - early 1980s), I was curious:
How much ...
4
votes
5answers
282 views
Interstellar probe designed without FTL?
Thanks to enhanced space telescopy Earth has found some great candidate star systems for colonisation. But they are not yet ready to try sending people.
There's no new physics. However, the cost of ...
