Questions tagged [space-travel]
For questions about the process of traveling through space, including in orbit around a planet or moon. Consider also [spaceships]. See also the tag information (click "info") for more details on when this tag applies.
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Ugh, I'm stuck in an orbital spaceport. But why?
This is, for the record, the same universe as in Is space piracy orbitally practical? and How can I prevent Kessler Syndrome among space stations?.
In my world, circa 2100, space stations orbiting ...
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Could astronauts find their bearings in the Universe after being transported 6 gigalightyears from Earth?
In my world, humanity reaches their new home among the stars by way of a portal that pops into the solar system one day. This portal instantaneously transports those who enter to a place that is ...
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Spiders In Space: How to design a space suit for an arachnid?
In my stellar empire, the sapient life of the home world are arachnids. Due to an oxygen-heavy world with certain evolutionary characteristics, spider-like beings developed intelligence and formed ...
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How could we fake a moon landing now?
The moon landings actually happened, and there's plenty of contemporaneous evidence of it. But what if the United States government wanted to fake a moon landing now?
We have the technology to ...
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How can I move a planet?
There are a lot of answers on Worldbuilding about how to destroy planets - just as an example - and they seem to be the method of choice for many people intent on destroying the world. My objection to ...
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Why would any interstellar starship still bother with streamline body design?
Let's not debate whether is there any friction while traveling inside vacuum space and assume all ships can brave a perfect storm brewing inside the giant molecular cloud. OK let's get down to ...
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Are there any ways to allow some form of FTL travel without allowing time travel?
Faster than light travel is a really cool thing to have in sci-fi settings. It allows humans, in relatable time scales, to travel the galaxy and see a variety of worlds. It allows for conflicts ...
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How to prevent superluminal traveling idiots from wrecking half of the universe?
Linked but not a duplicate of this question.
An example of the problem
During the last Star-Wars movie, I was dumbfounded by the sheer stupidity of admiral Holdo's move, during this particularly ...
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Is space piracy orbitally practical?
I'm considering a story set about fifty years (2065) in the future. It takes a rather optimistic view; space exploration has led to colonies on the Moon and Mars, as well as several space stations ...
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Why would technology dictate graphical interfaces to be rare on spaceships?
This question differs from that question in that the other question is asking about a change in history while this question is looking for a change in the future.
In a near future setting I am ...
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How do spaceships determine each other's mass in space?
Set in the distant future, space travel becomes prominent and cheap. I can imagine each spaceship would have a multitude array of sensors to track distance and relative position in space. Is there a ...
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FTL travel is impossible. How is interstellar trade possible?
Assume a universe depressingly like ours, in which special relativity holds. No hyperspace, no warp drive, no wormholes, and even the limited get-out clauses offered by real world physics either don't ...
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How would people conceivably escape a planet too large for chemical rockets?
I was reading this article from NASA about chemical rockets and they argue that, with a planet 50% larger than the Earth (assuming similar density, about 1.5G surface gravity), it would be impossible ...
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What could prevent a sentient species from going to space?
I am still puzzled by the original The Planet of the Apes movie from the 70's. How come that sentient species invented weapons, but was unable to develop powered flight, or spacecraft. Thus, the ...
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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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A planet you can take off from, but never land back
Can there be a planet that space missions can take off from, but never land back?
It is easy to imagine that thicker atmosphere, large amounts of space debris or higher gravity could entirely stop ...
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Society rules for marriages and love on multigeneration ship
Earth, far future: We built multi generation ship which can get 20 000 people to another solar system in next 20 generations (600 years)
For scope of this question assume that ship itself is well ...
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What would be the most effective way of keeping a psychopath with a spaceship from wreaking severe havoc in a suicide crash?
Any spaceship over several hundred tons is an extremely dangerous weapon in the wrong hands, particularly if it's intended for reentry. Made mostly of metal and possibly shaped to be able to breach ...
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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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How to add tactics and maneuvering into space warfare
I have a setting with space fleets fighting, the include both capital ships and human flown 'space fighters', which I already put some work into justifying: How to keep humans pilots instead of AI in ...
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Electricity free spaceship
Assume there's a spaceship in earth orbit that its crew of 24 want to get to Mars, the crew are all humans and possess all of modern day knowledge and equipment, is it possible for said ship to make ...
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On our way to Mars: how do we do the laundry?
A human crew of 6 has been sent on mission to Mars
The lowest energy transfer to Mars is a Hohmann transfer orbit, which would involve an approximately 9 month travel time from Earth to Mars, about ...
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Why would a previously spacefaring civilization become unable to build another interstellar ship?
I'm writing a story in which a civilization previously capable of (firmly technobabble-based) FTL travel has become stranded, orbiting an isolated star with no rocky planets. (There was a planet, but ...
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How can a space station prevent docked ships from irradiating each other or the station?
I've been puzzling over the logistics of orbital spaceports, and this has been the one sticking point I keep coming to: radiation control between docked, or even neighboring, ships. Mass limitations ...
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Why would a sleeper ship be designed to only wake one person in case of emergency?
Starliners are huge colony ships. They carry enough equipment, building materials, embryos, colonists and nutrient rich rations to permanently establish a sizeable colony on a far-flung world. ...
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Differences in mindset between people born in space and people born planetside
In my world, humanity has populated the stars and now lives in isolated groups in single star systems. Most people never leave the system they were raised in [interstellar travel is very unusual, but ...
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How long would human immunity last in space?
I won't claim to be a biologist, but I'm fairly certain that it's really hard for disease to survive in space because most bacteria and viruses need a host in order to survive for long periods of time....
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Why would space fleets be aligned?
Recently I noticed how space fleets are all constructed so the ships are all aligned.
With 'aligned' I mean the way how all ships seem to have a 'right way up' and that all the ships have the same ...
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Why would PMCs be in politically-unstable places, as opposed to waiting in comfort to be called?
I'm writing a story, based vaguely off of the Stars Without Number system. There are lots of things bugging me, but by far the biggest issue is this: the military contractors and bounty hunters and ...
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How can paleolithic humans colonise the stars without direct help from aliens and still be primitive?
In my story I have paleolithic era humans who were contacted by aliens long enough ago for them to have used space travel to spread across many planets. I want them to be able to fly and somewhat ...
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Can a space-faring robot still function over a billion years?
This short story, which I've already written, is set in the FAR, FAR FUTURE, where a robotic space probe is exploring as much of the known universe as it can, despite its AI not knowing if its ...
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Are dead worlds a good galactic barrier?
In my fictional universe there are two galactic civilizations that have never interacted until recently and thus have developed different cultures, science, etc.
From a technological standpoint, one ...
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What does the view outside my ship traveling at light speed look like?
World Rules:
Travelers are able to move at the speed of light without disruption of their lives. Time passes "normally" for them. They think, breathe, love, cry, and steer the ship as if they were ...
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How would two ships travelling at light speed communicate with one another?
Supposed we have a ship travelling at the speed of light, or very close to it, or over.
A second ship is travelling behind it at the same speed.
The second ship wishes to communicate something to ...
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Interstellar war without co-ordination, is fine timing important at these scales?
I've been working, on and off, on a universe with limited FTL based on the "one big lie" principle of sci-fi writing; travel speed averages just a hair over 4 times the speed of light, travel is ...
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Non-relativistic FTL is trivial. Why are spaceships mostly pretty small?
In space-trading games like Escape Velocity, Elite: Dangerous & others, cheap FTL exists, but lags in other advancements results in a playable environment that is politically fractured and not a ...
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How to get directions in deep space?
A spaceship crew, during their interstellar travel loses control of the spaceship for a few hours due to external factors (exact factor not important). This causes the spaceship to deviate from its ...
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Why is dwarfism considered an advantage for jobs in space?
First, a clarification:
Dwarfism is the umbrella term for 200+ medical conditions that result in short stature. Since this is Worldbuilding, my question refers to human beings with genetic dwarfism (...
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How could the crew on a small spacecraft (6 people) on an isolated long (10yr) mission remain productive and harmonious?
Near future, Earth is starting to die, we send out dozens of small spacecraft to investigate promising exo-planets for habitability among neighbouring star systems:
AI isn't smart enough to do the ...
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Are external lights on spaceships even necessary?
Many fictional spaceships of all kinds are known to have external lights. Do they even need them? Outer space is lit by the billions of stars and galaxies, so why are there external lights on ...
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Velocities in space without using massive numbers
The story I'm writing is about an intragalactic war and is told from several perspectives including the CO of a small warship. Because space is massive, I have run into an issue with presenting ...
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How can you find where the Earth is, if you were lost near Neptune?
While on a space mission to Neptune, you accidentally broke your tether on the way. After a couple of hours floating, you were hit by an asteroid.
You passed out.
When you are conscious again, you ...
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Does my Fast-as-Light travel method run afoul of causality or relativity?
I am writing a hard science fiction story and I want to avoid violating known physics, while still enabling some of the classic mainstays of science fiction under the auspice of sufficiently advanced ...
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Plausible natural reason why you can land on a earthlike planet yet can never get back to orbit from it?
Imagine a future where humanity has reached the stars, an exploration party lands on a earth like planet that's liveable (doesn't have to be perfect but life on it is on the range of what most people ...
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Non-aqueous eyes?
I am trying to create an organism that can survive in space for short periods, but I realized that I can't have its eyes be similar to those of most animals and humans because they would boil in space....
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How to effectively slow down a ship about to shoot through the Solar System at 0.6c?
Suppose that our random heroic brave interstellar expedition is returning to Earth from Alpha Centauri at 60% of the speed of light, but there was an accident in the nuclear reactor, forcing the ...
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How to avoid FTL as a plot device?
Many SF stories feature faster-than-light travel as essentially a trope: Roddenberry has stated☡ that the Enterprise travels at the speed of plot. As an allegory of the south seas, or some throw-away ...
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What could possibly power an Alcubierre drive?
I understand that in order to compress and expand spacetime, an Alcubierre drive would require some sort of "exotic matter" with a negative energy density.
Is that sort of exotic matter purely ...
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Two or more advanced civilizations aren't even aware of each other
Humans have achieved FTL and have colonized several planets in our greater stellar neighborhood. While we have discovered several planets that harbor life as we know it, we have not yet discovered ...
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Skydiving... From a space station
It's now the late 23rd century and there are now hundreds of space stations, orbiting approximately at the height of the (now deceased) ISS, give or take a few kilometers. Lately, the International ...
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