The practicalities of sci-fi starship production...
Discussion
I do like reading and watching sci-fi, especially of the 'space-opera' variety, with vast armadas battling it out thousands of missiles.... well you get the picture more Star Trek than The Expanse (both of which I love). But it did get me to thinking about the actual size of these ships and from there the practicalities of building said things.
It started out re-watching Andromeda and wondering how big she was (1.3 km btw) which led me on to the link below (which is quite frankly stupidly big and crap to look through) and some of the sizes on there are mind-boggling. How on earth (which I guess is the clue) would we have the resources to build a whole fleet of (for example) an Eclipse-class Super Star Destroyer. 18km long with a cargo capacity of 800,000 tonnes etc etc
https://i.imgur.com/RJp9POI.jpeg
Do we just accept that logic/economics goes out of the window (with the obvious exception of The Expanse among the more popular sci-fi works)?
It started out re-watching Andromeda and wondering how big she was (1.3 km btw) which led me on to the link below (which is quite frankly stupidly big and crap to look through) and some of the sizes on there are mind-boggling. How on earth (which I guess is the clue) would we have the resources to build a whole fleet of (for example) an Eclipse-class Super Star Destroyer. 18km long with a cargo capacity of 800,000 tonnes etc etc
https://i.imgur.com/RJp9POI.jpeg
Do we just accept that logic/economics goes out of the window (with the obvious exception of The Expanse among the more popular sci-fi works)?
whitesocks said:
I've read A LOT of science fiction over the years. And the size of Star Ships is something that always intrigues me. You will need a vessel that can house -
. Human colonizers (Living quarters and places to work)
. Vehicles (For planetary exploration)
. Food and recourses
. Equipment
Life support for the food and colonizers (and that probably includes livestock) would be quite the undertaking, too! . Human colonizers (Living quarters and places to work)
. Vehicles (For planetary exploration)
. Food and recourses
. Equipment
The obvious solution would be to manufacture such a thing in space, either by sending it up in small chunks or, more likely, mining the materials somewhere with lower gravity and no atmosphere to get in the way (such as the moon or in the asteroid belt). The amount of energy required to get enough matter from the surface of the earth into space is just too great.
Using the moon as a stepping stone to going further afield makes a lot of sense.
The bigger problem with the sci-fi type of ships is that they all have some magic means of generating gravity. Right now we only know two ways to do so - keep accelerating at close to 1g (which obviously requires obscene amounts of energy), or spin something very large around in cicrles. And in the case of the latter, to make the Coriolis effect small enough for it to be comfortable for humans it needs to be several km across.
Using the moon as a stepping stone to going further afield makes a lot of sense.
The bigger problem with the sci-fi type of ships is that they all have some magic means of generating gravity. Right now we only know two ways to do so - keep accelerating at close to 1g (which obviously requires obscene amounts of energy), or spin something very large around in cicrles. And in the case of the latter, to make the Coriolis effect small enough for it to be comfortable for humans it needs to be several km across.
Edited by kambites on Thursday 3rd December 09:13
Your pic is nice, but this is better. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTPwbVqU6lc&ab...
ANd yes: suspend your disbelief - it's scifi!
ANd yes: suspend your disbelief - it's scifi!
I enjoy sci-if. In fact working my way through Hugo award winning books. Just picked up Ringworld from the library today (I was wondering whether it would appear in the linked video). However, most Sci Fi is heavy on the Fi with little believable or possible Sci. Most credible attempt at showing what it would really be like last to fight in space was The Forever War.
Kilometre long spacecraft are just figments of the imagination.
Kilometre long spacecraft are just figments of the imagination.
Esceptico said:
I enjoy sci-if. In fact working my way through Hugo award winning books. Just picked up Ringworld from the library today (I was wondering whether it would appear in the linked video). However, most Sci Fi is heavy on the Fi with little believable or possible Sci. Most credible attempt at showing what it would really be like last to fight in space was The Forever War.
Kilometre long spacecraft are just figments of the imagination.
Enjoy Ringworld. It's in my top ten.Kilometre long spacecraft are just figments of the imagination.
Esceptico said:
I enjoy sci-if. In fact working my way through Hugo award winning books. Just picked up Ringworld from the library today (I was wondering whether it would appear in the linked video). However, most Sci Fi is heavy on the Fi with little believable or possible Sci. Most credible attempt at showing what it would really be like last to fight in space was The Forever War.
Kilometre long spacecraft are just figments of the imagination.
They are right now because space is difficult to get to right now. There were cargo ships of about half that length in the early eighties, so I don't find it too far fetched that a spaceship could be that big. Kilometre long spacecraft are just figments of the imagination.
That said, it would need to be build where gravity isn't an issue (as stated earlier). Given we have done something a little similar with the ISS, people are living there for months at a time. It's not impossible to imagine building that bigger to include manufacturing facilities, improving the life support, then mining resources from bodies in space (or even recycling the old satellites and other junk), then building the spaceship. So for me, definitely fiction, but I can get onboard with the science... I guess the biggest "fiction" here is that nobody would ever fund it!
I love sci-fi. The bigger the space opera the better.
However, most books/shows conveniently ignore one conclusion of ‘casual interplanetary travel’
If we have engines that can propel significantly large ships at high enough delta-v to make travel between planets “easy”, you’re handing every truck driver a planet killer. Point freighter at planet. Wind up to cruise speed. Don’t brake.
It would seem trivial to strap these engines to lumps of rock and just hurl them at whatever you want to kill. No need for fancy weapons. Mass and velocity will do the job nicely.
However, most books/shows conveniently ignore one conclusion of ‘casual interplanetary travel’
If we have engines that can propel significantly large ships at high enough delta-v to make travel between planets “easy”, you’re handing every truck driver a planet killer. Point freighter at planet. Wind up to cruise speed. Don’t brake.
It would seem trivial to strap these engines to lumps of rock and just hurl them at whatever you want to kill. No need for fancy weapons. Mass and velocity will do the job nicely.
The easy solution is generally not to bother with practicalities. If they can't think up a magic phrase (warp drive, Heisenberg compensators) then just ignore it. All these ships have gravity but Discovery One seems to be unique in having an explanation for it.
The sheer amount of raw materials gets glossed over too. Yes, you can get robots to do the building and that can be in orbit but simply shuffling all that metal around from the mines (asteroids?) to the shipyards must be an enormous task. Robot miners and robot ships I guess. Of course, Star Trek has a post-scarcity economy thanks to replicators so that helps.
For the other end of a ship's life, there is or was a website somewhere that put a lot of effort into assessing the environmental damage done to Endor by the Death Star's destruction. Turns out the Ewoks were doomed.
The sheer amount of raw materials gets glossed over too. Yes, you can get robots to do the building and that can be in orbit but simply shuffling all that metal around from the mines (asteroids?) to the shipyards must be an enormous task. Robot miners and robot ships I guess. Of course, Star Trek has a post-scarcity economy thanks to replicators so that helps.
For the other end of a ship's life, there is or was a website somewhere that put a lot of effort into assessing the environmental damage done to Endor by the Death Star's destruction. Turns out the Ewoks were doomed.
I have to confess, Sci-Fi (and superheroes moreso) does bore a little with the carte blanche the author/screenwriter gets. Obviously it's all make believe, but it needs to be a bit credible otherwise for me, it turns into a Disney fairytale.
Back in the day though, I loved Star Trek with Kirk, Spock, Bones, etc and the poor bloke in red that died every week. Now with CGI it takes a little away for me. Perhaps someone could point me at a box set of something to get me back into it over the weekend?
Anyway, can someone tell me how big a Klingon Bird of Prey is please?
Back in the day though, I loved Star Trek with Kirk, Spock, Bones, etc and the poor bloke in red that died every week. Now with CGI it takes a little away for me. Perhaps someone could point me at a box set of something to get me back into it over the weekend?
Anyway, can someone tell me how big a Klingon Bird of Prey is please?
irocfan said:
I do like reading and watching sci-fi, especially of the 'space-opera' variety, with vast armadas battling it out thousands of missiles.... well you get the picture more Star Trek than The Expanse (both of which I love). But it did get me to thinking about the actual size of these ships and from there the practicalities of building said things.
It started out re-watching Andromeda and wondering how big she was (1.3 km btw) which led me on to the link below (which is quite frankly stupidly big and crap to look through) and some of the sizes on there are mind-boggling. How on earth (which I guess is the clue) would we have the resources to build a whole fleet of (for example) an Eclipse-class Super Star Destroyer. 18km long with a cargo capacity of 800,000 tonnes etc etc
https://i.imgur.com/RJp9POI.jpeg
Do we just accept that logic/economics goes out of the window (with the obvious exception of The Expanse among the more popular sci-fi works)?
This is a good question. I too love the comparison sizes of different fictional ships.It started out re-watching Andromeda and wondering how big she was (1.3 km btw) which led me on to the link below (which is quite frankly stupidly big and crap to look through) and some of the sizes on there are mind-boggling. How on earth (which I guess is the clue) would we have the resources to build a whole fleet of (for example) an Eclipse-class Super Star Destroyer. 18km long with a cargo capacity of 800,000 tonnes etc etc
https://i.imgur.com/RJp9POI.jpeg
Do we just accept that logic/economics goes out of the window (with the obvious exception of The Expanse among the more popular sci-fi works)?
Although I do think some franchises do it simply for a numbers game. Personally it is one of the detractors of Star Wars. It always seems to have a chip on its should that it must have the BIGGEST.
I do like that for the most part, Star Trek has tried to keep the realm of being more plausible (barring a few exceptions) with regards to this.
Gassing Station | The Lounge | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff