New answers tagged spaceships
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How could a spacecraft defend against a train of small hypervelocity impactors?
Putting aside my inclination to frame challenge the notion that each individual impactor would hit the same point (which is a really really big problem) - there are a few options:
Hard-Kill Active ...
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3
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How could a spacecraft defend against a train of small hypervelocity impactors?
This is the same working model as a practical pulsed laser weapon, and yes... if you deliver a fresh helping of energy to the bottom of a crater, you can dig it deeper.
However.
Pulsed lasers can make ...
- 72.9k
4
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How could a spacecraft defend against a train of small hypervelocity impactors?
Your major issue would be having the whole train or even part of it impact the same spot when everything is moving that fast. Possible if you're firing head or stern on, but otherwise seems ...
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Realistic protection for spaceships against kinetic projectiles
Hmm... how about something more exotic? A big chunky ship is a prime target, and as the other answers point out, super-fast space junk just tends to vaporize whatever it comes in contact with so there'...
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0
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Realistic protection for spaceships against kinetic projectiles
In Neal Stephenson's Anathem, the spaceship is protected by a huge net of gravel which can be positioned.
Certainly not easy on your delta-v expenditure, but at least somewhat effective.
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Realistic protection for spaceships against kinetic projectiles
I'm astounded that the term LASER is mentioned once, and then only in a comment in passing, in this post. A LASER or similar "electromagnetic energy beam" [EM] weapon travels at 300,000 km/...
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4
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Realistic protection for spaceships against kinetic projectiles
In Rendezvous with Rama, Clark solved this by having Rama extrude miles and miles of fuzzy cable. This wasn't quite a Whipple shield because the cables had a bit of intelligence and could wrap ...
- 14.5k
6
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Realistic protection for spaceships against kinetic projectiles
The Sponge Approach
Realistically there is very little to stop high velocity rounds.
It's age old problem faced by the armed services in the battle between armour and weapons.
In The Expanse, ...
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7
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Realistic protection for spaceships against kinetic projectiles
Evasion
Space is big, and space battles could plausibly occur between ships located thousands or even millions of km apart. The first defense is not to get hit, and being very far from the enemy makes ...
- 6,950
12
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Realistic protection for spaceships against kinetic projectiles
I'm sure we've had questions on this before, but a quick search wasn't turning up anything particularly good, so here we are. You could have a quick read of my answer to Ideal materials for the outer ...
- 72.9k
4
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Realistic protection for spaceships against kinetic projectiles
I have always been a fan of ice. It's easy to come by, space is cold anyway. It works well as an ablative armor either stand alone or as a type of pykrete. Can be used as fuel radiation shielding and ...
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Can a spaceship "hitchhike" on an explosion to escape a gravity well?
Only a spaceship with very advanced technology would dare explore black holes. Escape by riding a shockwave was actually the plan all along (how else would you escape!?). The ship is equipped for it: ...
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Can a spaceship "hitchhike" on an explosion to escape a gravity well?
I'm going with maybe, but for reasons not previously mentioned.
Let's talk about star drives and their power output, then compare that to the power output of an explosion.
Your ship is capable of ...
- 117k
6
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Can a spaceship "hitchhike" on an explosion to escape a gravity well?
No.
No matter how tough the egg is, the yolk would still get scrambled. Any explosion strong enough to throw a spaceship into space would kill everyone onboard.
You'd need force fields and inertial ...
- 45.9k
6
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Can a spaceship "hitchhike" on an explosion to escape a gravity well?
Yes. If you're resourceful.
Nuclear pulse propulsion is the way to go - however it is possible to use the 'Medusa' method instead of intensively using pusher plates and springs.
This is when you eject ...
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5
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Can a spaceship "hitchhike" on an explosion to escape a gravity well?
No... except, maybe
Propulsion is what you get when reaction mass expands in a controlled fashion inside a suitable chamber, thereby pushing your ship along. The keyword here is "mass."
The ...
- 117k
24
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Accepted
Can a spaceship "hitchhike" on an explosion to escape a gravity well?
I would vote no.
Whether or not you are in the well of a black hole doesn't really matter. The gravitational well of a black hole is almost identical to that of any other celestial body outside the ...
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2
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Can a spaceship "hitchhike" on an explosion to escape a gravity well?
To escape a gravity well one needs to supply to the escaping object enough energy to reach infinite distance from the well with velocity 0.
In principle any sufficiently big explosion can satisfy this ...
- 277k
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Necessity of army and navy in a space warfare setting
The other answers are great, but I want to point out that energy and material resources on the surface of a planet are much greater than could be stored in space. This means that a ground-based laser ...
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Necessity of army and navy in a space warfare setting
Why send a starship in the first place?
Turning any unit in to a smoking crater is rather powerful. A number of the other answers have addressed scale of response, but one thing I have not seen ...
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Avoiding time travel or causality stuff
If you travel back in the past, you are just no longer executed by the simulation that runs the universe. Its like beeing memory pasted into amber. You float forever preserved in some past flickering ...
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Avoiding time travel or causality stuff
Differentiate between light cones and universal now
In theoretical physics, there is a concept of "universal now." People who don't actually understand relativity insist that there is no ...
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Avoiding time travel or causality stuff
Well, let's break this down a bit.
First, what is the actual problem with FTL travel?
According to special relativity, kinetic energy is asymptotic as you approach light speed. This means that ...
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How would you get a ship out of a gravity well?
Obviously, bringing something that big down to Earth is just asking for trouble. It was built in space and operates in space... subjecting it to gravity and turbulence and weather and an atmosphere ...
- 72.9k
3
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How would you get a ship out of a gravity well?
Well, first of all, they wouldn't. Bringing something this ludicrously big (90,000 tons) down to the surface on anything atmospheric just wouldn't be done with the hard-scifi level you describe, just ...
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3
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How would you get a ship out of a gravity well?
The most likely answer, as has been pointed out in the comments, is that nobody would try to land such a large ship in the first place. Not with any expectation of launching it again. Or surviving the ...
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Avoiding time travel or causality stuff
I'm going to re-post a modified version of an answer I made to a similar,previously asked question:
The simplest solution is to assume that the 'laws of physics' including those pertaining to the ...
- 15.5k
3
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Avoiding time travel or causality stuff
Time travel is not a consequence of no-preferred-frame
I am familiar with the problem you're worried about: it plays an important role in the novel Exultant by Stephen Baxter. But I think it's a ...
- 14.2k
5
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Avoiding time travel or causality stuff
No Loops
The easiest way to ensure that there isn't any time travel is to make sure that there are no loops in the wormhole network. They need to form a tree-like graph with only one path from any ...
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Accepted
Avoiding time travel or causality stuff
TL;DR: Decide whether any part of your system needs actual FTL (and wormholes do not require this by themselves, if the mouths get moved at sublight speeds). If you do need FTL, handwave a preferred ...
- 72.9k
6
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Avoiding time travel or causality stuff
You could just say that time travel doesn't happen. No, really - this isn't a cop-put. Sometimes nature is just like that.
Suppose you are looking at the Andromeda nebula. If you have good sight and ...
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Avoiding time travel or causality stuff
The universe may have an in-built mechanism for causality protection, preventing wormholes specifically from forming time machines.
Wormholes as we understand them don't always form time machines. ...
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Avoiding time travel or causality stuff
It sounds like you are referring to a wormhole.
Think of space like a piece of paper. Ordinarily it may take quite some time to traverse from point A to point B on the paper. But if I were to bent the ...
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Necessity of army and navy in a space warfare setting
MY COMMENT on reddit reworked:
Inconsequential. The issue is that honestly by time civilization has capability traverse interstellar space and develop the weaponry for long distance fighting; Land ...
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