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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When would we notice an object entering our solar system at 0.20c (20% speed of light)?
At what point would we notice or be able to detect an object entering our solar system at 0.20 speed of light?
What's the maximum range we would be able to detect with certainty beyond a reasonable ...
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Is this concept for very low energy space travel plausible?
Humanity is on its last lap. A once great empire has been reduced to a single Dyson sphere around the dying sun, and most of the matter of the solar system has already been incorporated into this last ...
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A device to negate time dilation believability [closed]
In this setting spacecraft are able to approach the speed of light and are equipped with a device to negate the time dilation, this allows things to go horribly wrong if this device fails plot wise.
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What is the best animal to cryogenically freeze then revive?
I had recently watched this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tdiKTSdE9Y video on how scientists were using microwaves to revive hamsters after they've been frozen. Now Tom Scott mentions this doesn't ...
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What would be the least physics breaking way to travel at light speed or faster?
Essentially, by bending a few rules of physics and other sciences with as little handwavium and unobtainium used, could there be a way to travel several parsec and/or lightyears in a (relatively) ...
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How would a spaceship not affected by gravity navigate between planets?
Presume there exists a metal called X-matter that has all the properties of steel, except it is repulsed by normal-matter instead of attracted. (For instance, a block of it would accelerate 9.81 m/s/s ...
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Galactic 'geographic' features, how could they impact galactic colonization efforts?
I have been wondering how galactic features could impact interstellar civilizations in the process of colonizing a galaxy (either andromeda or the milky way).
According to this video these features, ...
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Where could artificial satellites be placed in a binary planet system?
I’m building a binary planet system, and I want to know where I could place large groups of satellites. I’m worried centrifugal force and coriolis effects will prevent a satellite from occupying any ...
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Plausible evolutionary pressure for an organism to evolve space flight?
A recent question asked for a natural mechanism for a creature to escape one planet and go to another. The answers prompted me to this question.
Given any answer to this, is there any plausible case ...
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Is a Bussard Ramjet for collecting water possible
My spacecraft's propellant is water, so an idea I came up with is that it would melt icy bodies in the rings of gas giants into water vapour. Is it possible to collect water vapour with some sort of ...
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How could an organism reach escape velocity using only biological means?
The species in question that can survive in the vacuum of space for extended periods of time (say months). They can feed on stellar radiation and have an innate sense of orbital dynamics. They come ...
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Using Diamagnetic repulsion to help negate the affects of weightlessness
I had an idea of a chamber that an astronaut would use when they would sleep that would allow their body to experience a gravity-like force to negate the negative effects of weightlessness, (Bone or ...
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Locating items in space drifting together
A bunch of cargo got sucked out of a spaceship during a depressurization event. Mostly crates and barrels of medium size liftable by a human without a forklift.
Now that cargo was a valuable ...
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How do Winged Sapient Creatures Keep from Panicking in Zero G?
I have plenty of space fairing aliens with wings that are capable of flight. I can’t help myself it’s just a cool feature for an alien and a have. But I want to adress A potential issue in getting a ...
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Could harvesting antimatter from a Gas giant's van Allen Belts be feasible?
Could a sufficiently advanced civilization feasibly harvest antimatter from the van allen belts of a gas giant and use it for fast interplanetary travel.
The main idea stemmed from this video, among ...
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Safe Alcubierre drive
I want my world to have an Alcubierre drive for slower-than-light-travel. One third the speed of light will do. Since there is no FTL we don't have to worry about causality paradoxes. However the ...
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How to Sneak Von Neumann Probes Past the Enemy?
150 years into the future, a space faction is in a confrontation with a stronger rival. Our faction is a Kardashev Type I civilization and has a similar technological level to its rival, but the rival ...
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How would time logically be measured on a massive starship in perpetual flight?
So, say I'm writing this story that takes place on a giant starship travelling from galaxy to galaxy (delivering goods or something like that). This ship was created and inhabited by one race ...
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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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Social status by fuel used?
In this universe contained self sustaining fusion has been achieved. As we know the fuel for fusion is most commonly isotopes of hydrogen, and helium is produced as a byproduct of that.
Helium is, as ...
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How would Utility fog grey goo travel through space?
An advanced alien species in my story created smart matter similar to utility fog, nanobots with extendable arms which link to form programmed structures. When the species moves to new locations a ...
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How would a "plasma torus", generated from Phobos to create a magnetosphere, look from the surface of Mars? How would it work?
One theory for how to create a magnetosphere around Mars is to generate a plasma torus by "evaporating matter from Phobos or Deimos, ionizing it and using electromagnetic current drive techniques ...
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A better way to do a planetary invasion?
Planetary invasions are usually depicted using drop-ships which come straight down from the sky. Pretty much armoured Apollo Era capsules. These can be bigger, for example Warhammer40k has company ...
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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 would a spaceship look like if our design aesthetic had not changed since 1890? [closed]
I am struggling to visualize the space battleships of a human civilization which made it into space in the mid 1800s and have progressed to a level of technological development similar to that ...
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After we drain the Sun and migrate, why would humanity find the Solar System important?
Long ago, our ancestors worked out how to travel faster than light: by sending craft directly into the Sun, employing fusion, quantum entanglement, and a healthy dose of handwavium/science ...
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Is it possible, at least in theory, to travel between two spots in the universe through an Einstein-Rosen bridge?
I'm using as a means of "long-distance travel" the generation and exploitation of Einstein-Rosen bridges, through quantum entanglement of black matter in different points of the galaxy, as a ...
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How fast would strangelets travel in space?
At what speed would strange matter travel in space after being ejected from a neutron star merger? I have searched around online but I have not found an answer.
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Is it radio silence between 2 Alcubierre drives?
Suppose we grant a 1 time scientific miracle for exotic matter to power Alcubierra wrap drive, then could two such drives communicate with each other? The drive discharges exotic matter particles ...
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Fusion drive in a spaceship: What would the damage be if such a ship were to be attacked?
I've recently read some news about progress in building plasma reactors. The technology is basically that plasma is held by magnet field because otherwise, it would melt everything it touches. It has ...
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Figuring out the precise location of Earth a certain amount of time ago
Movement is relative, but I've read that an ex-NASA scientist has quantified the speed of Earth hurtling through space to be 1.3 million mph, using the Cosmic Microwave Background as a frame of ...
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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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Is it possible to somehow create a field where time dilation works in the opposite way and use it to create an interstellar highway?
I want to make my world as realistic as possible, so no otherworldly FTL ideas like wormholes, teleportation or warp/alcubierre drives that will violate causality according to relativity. Let's begin.
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Zero propellant interplanetary travel [closed]
I am creating a world where there is an interplanetary network that allows planetary commuting to and from all planets and major moons in the solar system with 0 propulsion being supplied by the craft ...
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What things should I consider about Titan while landing, in terms of geography?
What are the challenges to landing on Saturn's moon, Titan, with respect to atmosphere and geography?
Consider we are landing a team of scientists, in a ship based geometrically on the Jupiter of Lost ...
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Awaken after millions of years of spacetravel, what day is today, what time it is and to where should I look at? [closed]
Bob is a 30 years old man who has a religion, called Bobism that is a particular blend of Judaism, Islamism, Christianism, Buddhism, Madeupism and Wtfism. Bob is a strict rigorous practizer of Bobism.
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Effects of CME (coronal mass ejection) on astronauts, or other ways to die in space
I'm writing a sci-fi story involving a lot of asteroid mining and things like that. A major character is a 'development scout' for a large company and has a backstory in which they apparently made a ...
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Gravity assisted travel along a Cosmic string
VSL (variable speed of light) cosmologists have theorised that Cosmic strings could be used as FTL highways for information. This is based on the theory that the speed of light was infinite at the ...
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Playing cards in zero-g
Suppose there is a wandering starship that travels between the stars, bringing blackjack and hookers to every wormhole it crosses. This casino is like any other on a planet or station, except it ...
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How could a starship take on a planet-massed passenger without noticing?
tl;dr: How could one ship transfer a planetary massed being to another ship without them noticing the gravity field during the operation? How could two ships rendezvous in deep space with one of ...
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Could a rocket use negative mass to fly without energy?
My scifi world obeys the real world conservation laws. This presents a problem for spacecraft; due to the conservation of momentum, the spacecraft will need propellant, and a lot of it, for every ...
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What are some hypothetical specs for Elon Musk's next generation Starship for 2060?
Elon Musk's Starship, formerly known as the BFR (then the ITS), is planned to be the workhorse to transport people and goods to Mars. Theoretically, the rocket could be ready for orbital testing ...
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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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What is your fuel consumption when traveling at relativistic speeds?
For a given distance of travel, your fuel consumption can be calculated by running hours instead of distance. This is common when you're traveling by boat for instance. You don't typically say "I ...
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Non-sphericity of "omnidirectional" signals? [closed]
Short version: If an omnidirectional signal is being sent from one side of an object that causes appreciable attenuation does it result in an egg shaped detection envelop or something stranger?
Long ...
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With FTL technology is it possible to leave after another and yet arrive before it?
There's a plot point in my script that has been bothering me for a while. My story has faster-than-light travel thanks to distortion engines, which re-purpose the artificial gravity inside the ships ...
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What would be the possible energy sources for long term space travel?
What makes the most sense (real or theoretical) for energy sources to power large spaceships for thousands of years, not renewable
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Warfare in a universe with FTL on rather fragile platforms? [closed]
How do you imagine the large picture of space warfare would shape into in a universe with the following characteristics:
There is FTL, but it's just available in very large and expensive platforms, ...
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What is the most optimal thruster placement in a planet-sized creature?
As a follow-up to my previous question, I spoke about an anomalous planet-sized serpentine creature that lives in space and how close it could get to earth. However, while developing the thing, I ran ...
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How to stop space pirates from stealing goods using a teleporter, without breaking the bank?
In the good old days, the space pirates used tractor beams to reel in unsuspecting merchant vessels before robbing them. Recently reports of them cohorting with the rebel army soon spread across the ...
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