Fictional (But Realistic) Spacecraft

[robunos]

Stephen Baxter and Alastair Reynolds wrote a sequel to it: The Medusa Chronicles

Didn't know that, I'll have to look out for it . . .

cheers,
Robin.

 

[martinbayer]

One of the most capable spacecraft—Apollo—had a cone up front…one in back—and a simple cylinder in between.

Future spacecraft will likely also look like Volvo products…that’s my guess

Nothing wrong with Volvos .

 

[The K2]

Irony of History
Allot of crew of Medding Team, who worked on Journey to the far side of the Sun (aka Doppelgänger)
Got hired by Stanley Kubrick for Models building and support SFX for 2001: A Space Odyssey

because Derek Medding and his team was one best SFX Specialists of their time.
Some of their best work.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wi2QVirXBVQ

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAEBZjVRbAc

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fro

Irony of History
Allot of crew of Medding Team, who worked on Journey to the far side of the Sun (aka Doppelgänger)
Got hired by Stanley Kubrick for Models building and support SFX for 2001: A Space Odyssey

because Derek Medding and his team was one best SFX Specialists of their time.
Some of their best work.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wi2QVirXBVQ

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAEBZjVRbAc

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8PR3QIwXHs

From an interview with one of his apprentices (Brian Johnson), Meddings could not work on 2001 due to his contract with Gerry Anderson. He encouraged those who wanted to leave to work on 2001. Speaking of “Moonraker” art designer Harry Lange (who also worked on 2001) designed for the film. You will see similarities to 2001 most noticeably in the EVA spacesuits.

Kubrick was a fan of “Thunderbirds” and initially reached out to Gerry Anderson to see if he could hire Meddings for 2001.

Sorry for the late addition to this post:

I forgot to add that while Brian Johnson was filming the FX for Space:1999, an American film maker named George Lucas visited. Lucas was planning a film which became Star Wars and Gary Kurtz offered a job to Johnson. Johnson couldn’t because of S:1999, but he accepted later for The Empire Strikes Back.

 

[martinbayer]

I not imply centrifuge in this designs, because for Mars Exploration are 600 to 800 days in space.
With good training program on board the crew can do those mission without artificial gravity.

I design also manned mission to Saturn Moon Titan for other Alternate History.
But entire Mission take 40 months, so it need artificial gravity by rotate the spacecrafts.
habitat on long Boom with other end nuclear reactors as counter weight
The engines and propellants tanks are at rotation center of Boom.

As a side note, Pete Conrad successfully demonstrated in Skylab that you don't even need any gravity at all to run in circles in space: https://dissolve.com/video/Skylab-a...ts-managed-stock-video-footage/002-D30-41-425

 

[publiusr]

Apart from spent Shuttle external tanks and such...Skylab still holds the record for the largest object put in orbit. Early R-7 cores nearly had that title IIRC.

 

[Rhinocrates]

I posted this in another thread, so my apologies for the duplication, but a common trope in sf is the mind-controlled (or brain in a jar controlled) spaceship. In likely reality, as the captain of a ferry once told me (part of studies in ergonomics), at sea things don't so much happen as develop, so instantaneous reactions aren't normally necessary. However, since this does appear in sf so often...

OK, this might require a new thread about brain-machine interfaces or applications of AI or whatever.

Anyway remember Firefox and 'think in Russian'? Here is mind-reading brain-machine interfacing that uses AI to reconstruct perceptions from brainwaves.

Scientists Recreate Pink Floyd Song by Reading Brain Signals of Listeners​

The audio sounds like it’s being played underwater. Still, it’s a first step toward creating more expressive devices to assist people who can’t speak.

www.nytimes.com

https://www.science.org/content/art...loyd-song-reconstructed-listeners-brain-waves

A thing that Peter Watts has pointed out (remember him?) is that consciousness is Dilbert's 'pointy-haired boss' of the brain - it takes the credit for initiatives that have already been set in progress. A true human-machine fusion would require not just someone reading information off an instrument panel and pushing buttons in response - think of Ripley using the power loader to fight the Xenomorph queen at the climax of Aliens. In practise it would use an intuitive 'preconscious' reading of intentions by the computer controlling the mechanical augmentation would be greatly more efficient. There's plenty of data showing that we perform basic tasks like the brain instructing an arm to reach for a glass of water before consciously 'deciding' to do so.

Now we have machines that can to a limited degree read minds in an experimental setting. Practical applications would be exoskeletons that could synchonise with cues from their wearer's nervous systems and weapons systems that can read mental cues.

 

[Rhinocrates]

a common trope in sf is the mind-controlled (or brain in a jar controlled) spaceship

In Brian Stableford's Hooded Swan series, the titular starship had a brain-machine interface so that the pilot identified with the mechanism of the vessel and other authors went even further. Anne McCaffrey's The Ship Who Sang is one example and a few novels by Clifford Simak - Cemetery World* featured a couple of cyborg supertanks and Shakespeare's Planet had a cyborg starship. There's 'Becalmed in Hell,' a short story by Larry Niven, 'Gottlos' by Colin Kapp (https://www.blackgate.com/2018/03/1...ionscience-fact-november-1969-a-retro-review/) - and so on and so on.

*I've always had a soft spot for this novel. Despite seeming silly in some aspects, things like AI-generated art and Boston Dynamics' robot canines were predicted. I certainly wouldn't mind having Elmer, Bronco, and Wolf as mechanical companions, and Cynthia as a human one.

 

[publiusr]

Not to mention brains in a jar in one of HPLs stories...just the cure for locked-in syndrome if you happen to catch a glimpse of Ghatanothoa

 

[robunos]

Now we have machines that can to a limited degree read minds in an experimental setting. Practical applications would be exoskeletons that could synchonise with cues from their wearer's nervous systems and weapons systems that can read mental cues.

This is is how the 'Mechs work in the 'Battletech' universe.
The operator wears a 'neurohelmet' that allows the machines systems to, for example, use the operators sense of balance to stop the 'Mech falling over when moving or firing it's weapons . . .

cheers,
Robin.

 

[Michel Van]

In Perry Rhodan Serie
Pilots use SERT bonnet - similar concept of Neuro interface .
first depicted in Issue #350 on 17. Mai 1968.

Oh by way.
Perry Rhodan Serie play in Universum with own laws of physics.
There is realistic for spaceship to have inertia dampers, powerful engines, FTL drive, energy shields and big guns...

Source: Perry Rhodan Issue 421 from September 1969, artwork by Rudolf Zengerle.

 

[Scott Kenny]

A thing that Peter Watts has pointed out (remember him?) is that consciousness is Dilbert's 'pointy-haired boss' of the brain - it takes the credit for initiatives that have already been set in progress. A true human-machine fusion would require not just someone reading information off an instrument panel and pushing buttons in response - think of Ripley using the power loader to fight the Xenomorph queen at the climax of Aliens. In practise it would use an intuitive 'preconscious' reading of intentions by the computer controlling the mechanical augmentation would be greatly more efficient. There's plenty of data showing that we perform basic tasks like the brain instructing an arm to reach for a glass of water before consciously 'deciding' to do so.

Now we have machines that can to a limited degree read minds in an experimental setting. Practical applications would be exoskeletons that could synchonise with cues from their wearer's nervous systems and weapons systems that can read mental cues.

It will take a LOT of experimental proofs of that system to make sure the reactions it's detecting are the ones that really should happen.

See Macross Plus, where a momentary "If I push him down right here I get the girl" almost kills the second pilot, who happens to be the childhood friend of the pilot having the "get the girl" thought.

 

[Justo Miranda]

Irony of History
Allot of crew of Medding Team, who worked on Journey to the far side of the Sun (aka Doppelgänger)
Got hired by Stanley Kubrick for Models building and support SFX for 2001: A Space Odyssey

because Derek Medding and his team was one best SFX Specialists of their time.
Some of their best work.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wi2QVirXBVQ

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAEBZjVRbAc

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8PR3QIwXHs

Hi

 

[Rhinocrates]

It will take a LOT of experimental proofs of that system to make sure the reactions it's detecting are the ones that really should happen.

See Macross Plus, where a momentary "If I push him down right here I get the girl" almost kills the second pilot, who happens to be the childhood friend of the pilot having the "get the girl" thought.

Indeed.

BTW, there's work on reading imagery from brainwaves, though so far less advanced, I gather. I was watching the Quatermass and the Pit serial of 1958 (film in 1967, aka Five Million Years to Earth) and a gadget that could read and show memories had a major role in the story. There's quite a pedigree for this sort of thing in sf of course, so it's very exciting to see it starting to emerge in reality.

 

[Rhinocrates]

Strut-tastic.

(30 St Mary Axe, City of London, Foster + Partners)

 

[Orionblamblam]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1694066777133560177

View: https://twitter.com/voubi1/status/1694066777133560177

 

[Rhinocrates]

Rather than opening a new thread, I thought that I'd post this here. View it as a footnote or a sidebar. It's not aimed at anyone or any argument but is meant as a reminder of why we're interested in fiction alongside fact and why its inspires us.

From Buzz Aldrin on his Facebook account:

In the pantheon of great American science fiction writers, I think it’s safe to say that Ray Bradbury stands tall. For many of us, science fiction authors represent more than just spinners of entertaining yarns – they are the intellectual engineers, the thinkers about what could be, or in Bradbury’s case, what we should be concerned about. Bradbury would have been 103 today, but his works live on for us to enjoy. Of course, out of all of Bradbury’s contributions, The Martian Chronicles are probably my favorite!

 

[Justo Miranda]

I think Buzz Aldrin is getting a little senile. Ray Bradbury was just a bad poet recycled by a lesser literary genre that accepted anyone. The good science fiction of the time required writers with a minimum of scientific knowledge (Heinlein, Asimov), but unfortunately for honest dream engineers the Bradbury faction was the one that prevailed until degenerating into the medieval epic fantasies that are published today, with much magic and no science.

 

[Dynoman]

From Netflix's Stowaway, a cable supported, artificial gravity producing spacecraft.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_apvQkWsVY

 

[Michel Van]

I think Buzz Aldrin is getting a little senile. Ray Bradbury was just a bad poet recycled by a lesser literary genre that accepted anyone.

i have to contradict here

Ray Bradbury made some of outstanding literary work:

Fahrenheit 451 - a clear warning for dystopian future were books and people are burned.
There Will Come Soft Rains - in short story, he recognising the potential for the complete self-destruction of humans by nuclear war.
A theme he also explore in first collection of short stories The Martian Chronicles,
What is lovely farewell to old Mars stories before the atomic Bomb. I love the vignette Rocket Summer for this collection.

he wrote only two sci-fi Novels, the rest are short story collection like The Illustrated Man

for rest of his work, i don't care, its not sci-fi literature...

 

[Orionblamblam]

The good science fiction of the time required writers with a minimum of scientific knowledge

The good science fiction of *any* time requires more than a minimum of science knowledge.

 

[Rhinocrates]

A gallery by Michel Montagne, who's illustrated the Firefly concept mentioned above. His work has been featured in Principium, the journal of the Initiative and Institute for Interstellar Studies.

https://www.deviantart.com/michel-lamontagne/gallery

Principium

i4is.org

 

[zebedee]

In Brian Stableford's Hooded Swan series, the titular starship had a brain-machine interface so that the pilot identified with the mechanism of the vessel and other authors went even further.

The Hooded Swan series is on of my all time favourite Space Operas... the subtle descriptions of technology and how it works adds a loverly depth to the works. What stands out though is his description of how the biological systems work, sometimes not quite the way man and the other species would like them too...

Zeb

 

[Rhinocrates]

The Hooded Swan series is on of my all time favourite Space Operas... the subtle descriptions of technology and how it works adds a loverly depth to the works. What stands out though is his description of how the biological systems work, sometimes not quite the way man and the other species would like them too...

Zeb

The Hooded Swan series is a damn good read, for sure. I've got all the Pan paperbacks with the Angus McKie covers and bagged the hardback omnibus, Swan Songs. I think Brian Stableford is a very underrated author. He's willing to take hold of ideas and explore them thoroughly through the eyes of intelligent characters. His scholarship of SF history and translation of key texts has been incredible too.

You're absolutely right about your descriptions of the technology. Reading the books, you don't know how the FTL drives would work precisely (and there are several techniques, not just a generic 'warp drive'), but you get a thorough sense of how the pilots and engineers would use them and feel about them. There's that melancholic meta-narrative of the beginnings of galactic empire too - and it's seen as a failure of spirit already, and not a triumph, long before the decline in temporal power described by Asimov.

He has a degree in biology and a doctorate in sociology and really exploits them in writing. It's more than a bit off-topic for this thread, but I have to say that he's the only living author who really gets the depth of philosophical thought or Wells or Stapledon, despite or perhaps because of the space operatic trappings. Space opera can allow the sort of scope after all without resorting to lazy hand-waving about 'The Force' (that said in the present tense, his health is not good now and it's not likely that he'll be writing any more).

SFE: Stableford, Brian M

Welcome to the fourth edition of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.

sf-encyclopedia.com

Not technically accurate, but one great painting by McKie. it's for Swan Song, the last of the series, featuring a truly fearsome and original space monster, the Nightingale.

 

[mr5oa]

Huh. That's a Rockwell TAV/Space Sortie/military spaceplane from the 80's. Do you have more on this?

Only a resin model somewhere in my garage, I could post a picture of it when I find it.

 

[Orionblamblam]

Only a resin model somewhere in my garage, I could post a picture of it when I find it.

Would like to see it.

 

[Justo Miranda]

TC-6745 "Silver Queen"

 

[martinbayer]

Which universe is that from ?

 

[Justo Miranda]

Which universe is that from ?

https://www.amazon.com/Something-Eating-Dragons-Silver-Queen-ebook/dp/B0BJ14L2P8/ref=sr_1_26?qid=1698352334&refinements=p_27%3AJusto+Miranda&s=books&sr=1-26

 

[martinbayer]

Yet you literally give Discovery One a pass for not broiling the crew alive due to its lack of radiators. Which should be the actual movie: just dudes dying of heatstroke because they forgot to add the radiators to their ship. But it isn't. Because it was filmed in Britain, not in space, so yes, "we all", as in "humans", definitely do this. It's called "suspension of disbelief".

I'm sure there's no fertility symbolism in the movie that ends with a fetus overlooking the Earth after the phallic starship travels to Jupiter.

Anyway I don't see what vampires has to do with Theseus's visual design.

Because the plot of Blindsight is a science fiction story about people discovering that consciousness, introspection, and what we might call the very essence of what we call "Humanity" is holding us back from achieving evolutionary success, it is pretty thematically dense. Not as dense as 2001, which despite you liking it, introduces a lot of things beyond just the Monolith.

The most successful organisms in Blindsight's story are completely unconscious automata that think at the speed of reflex, just at a intellectual level far beyond ants or whatever, and humans end up stuck in a local maxima due to consciousness. The vampire is necessary, to show something that sits between these unconscious superintelligences like Rorschach and the Captain of Theseus, and more importantly it's a way for the Captain to interact and boss the crew around.

Writing around characters lacking introspection, individual consciousness, and aesthetic values is important because otherwise there would be nothing to write about, which is why there is a human crew. This is sort of lampshaded in the book at one point where the crew wonder why they sent people at all, but Theseus's mission command assumed that anything they find would require a human touch, because the Mission Command is only human.

I just find your weird hyper focus on the "telematter" engine of Theseus, and the vampires, as opposed to its visual design aspects that make the ship look like something NASA might build at the Lunar Gateway, odd. I feel like if Rhinocrates hadn't mentioned the antimatter engine and the vampires, or if you simply hadn't spontaneously come across the plot beats first, but rather an image of Theseus itself first, you would have a completely different opinion about the ship.

Which is weird, to me, because I usually segregate visuals from themes. Theseus has no thematic requirements beyond "it needs to look like something NASA could make".

Contrast this with 2001, whereas Discovery One has a ton of thematic requirements, in addition to being realistic. This might make Discovery One a more significant and audacious undertaking, because the visual design has to be both realistic (for its time, obviously it looks nothing like a spaceship would today) and translate thematic understanding, but the only reason those engineers were consulted in the first place is because Kubrick had a running theme of using powerful fertility images in his films. Or maybe he used powerful humanistic images? You can easily read Discovery One as a spinal column and a human brain. Or a eyeball and an optic nerve.

Unfortunately the film ends with a shot of a fetus overlooking Earth, so I think Kubrick had one real vision in mind (a nascent God-like entity overwatching the Earth after its birth), but he was open enough about the themes to design the ship with multiple valid interpretations. There are books literally written about this, while Clarke himself had a belief that mankind and machines would eventually merge to create a super man, which is what actually happens at the end. Because the film is very vague and probably should be watched before reading the novel tbh.

Blindsight is more about Clarke's future of man and machine combining and it creates a better machine, rather than a better man.

All that said, it's about as pedantic and nitpicky as focusing on the lack of radiators of Discovery One, or its mere existence being more for the symbolism of a film masquerading as a science fiction film but being more about the poetic man's search for meaning and God in the natural world, when the spaceships actually look cool and you ignore the design of the ship in favor of focusing on a minor and irrelevant plot point about a book you said you won't read.

Okay? What does that have to do with Theseus being cool looking? I'm probably not going to watch 2001 more than once or twice in my lifetime but I can still appreciate that the nuclear missile satellites and Discovery One look cool, although I prefer the Leonov from 2010 by far. Discovery One always looked a bit naked to me.

TRL scales and stuff aren't important for cool, realistic spaceships, but you can make cool, realistic spaceships without using TRL scales. Discovery One, obviously, predates TRLs? How did they design a ship that is so evocative and capturing of the imagination without them? Probably because Discovery One was designed around thematic symbolism over hard realism. That doesn't mean it's not realistic, for its time, but the main driver was the theme of the movie: the merging of man and machine into a new form of life that creates a ultra intelligent superman.

Comparatively, Theseus's main driver was "I think this looks cool and realistic":

View attachment 705936

View attachment 705942

Probably closer to Discovery One if it were built in real life tbh and certainly more of a 1980s spaceship in appearance.

I have no issues whatsoever with Kubrick's symbolism in any of his oeuvres, but even after all these months, as an aerospace engineer I simply do not comprehend how you can blithely continue to try to divorce *realistic* spacecraft design from the TRL scale. You seem to try to conflate *realistic* (which has cold hard metrics, as in, oh, reality [TRL]?) with some fuzzy notion of "cool", which are *completely* different concepts. May I ask what your academic pedigree (if any) and current profession are? And NO, you simply CANNOT create *realistic* spaceships without taking TRL scales into account. Anything else is just *fantasy*, you know, like with fairies and gnomes and unicorns and sorcerers, but you do you, bro!

 

[Scott Kenny]

And NO, you simply CANNOT create *realistic* spaceships without taking TRL scales into account. Anything else is just *fantasy*, you know, like with fairies and gnomes and unicorns and sorcerers, but you do you, bro!

And you keep conflating "unobtainium" with "handwavium".

Unobtainium is things like Fusion reactors: Can't make them yet, but if we did make nuclear-thermal fusion rockets, we have very solid ideas about what their specific impulse and probable power to weight ratios would be. The Leonov from 2010 is made from Onobtainium due to said nuclear-thermal fusion rockets. Sakharov Drive, IIRC they called it in the book. Things somewhere in the TRL3-5 range for us today, but how can you know where they are in 10, 50, or even 100 years?

Handwavium is the Trek transporter. Pure fooking magic. Nothing up my sleeves, wave my hands dramatically, abracadabra! No basis in any semblance of known science. Usually cause more issues by the existence than they solve. Again, the transporter has caused more issues in plot than it really solved. Which is ironic, since it was created to avoid having to film Shuttle reentries for budget reasons. Nevermind that they probably could have done two or three runs with different atmosphere colors and been done for the entire TOS. TRL zero, if not negative or imaginary numbers because there's not even a theoretical foundation that would allow the thing to work.

 

[southwestforests]

Scientists Recreate Pink Floyd Song by Reading Brain Signals of Listeners

Okay, but can scientists recreate listeners by reading the brain signals of Pink Floyd?

 

[martinbayer]

And you keep conflating "unobtainium" with "handwavium".

Unobtainium is things like Fusion reactors: Can't make them yet, but if we did make nuclear-thermal fusion rockets, we have very solid ideas about what their specific impulse and probable power to weight ratios would be. The Leonov from 2010 is made from Onobtainium due to said nuclear-thermal fusion rockets. Sakharov Drive, IIRC they called it in the book. Things somewhere in the TRL3-5 range for us today, but how can you know where they are in 10, 50, or even 100 years?

Handwavium is the Trek transporter. Pure fooking magic. Nothing up my sleeves, wave my hands dramatically, abracadabra! No basis in any semblance of known science. Usually cause more issues by the existence than they solve. Again, the transporter has caused more issues in plot than it really solved. Which is ironic, since it was created to avoid having to film Shuttle reentries for budget reasons. Nevermind that they probably could have done two or three runs with different atmosphere colors and been done for the entire TOS. TRL zero, if not negative or imaginary numbers because there's not even a theoretical foundation that would allow the thing to work.

If you even have to ask "how can you know" you have by default left the realm of what's realistically expected, because for some technologies we may *never* get past TRL 5, 4 ,3, 2, 1, or even 0, which, while not on the official NASA scale, would in my definition denote technologies that are merely postulated or wished for - you read it first here, folks! I call those rainbow technologies, because while they certainly appear alluring, we're evidently never able to get any closer to that fabled pot of gold at the end of that mirage, no matter how hard we try. In other words, there are technologies that simply seem to be stuck in development hell - some fabled/postulated/wished for technologies of "tomorrow" will always stay just that. And as a side note, in terms of cinematography, 2010 can't hold a flickering candle in the wind to 2001 in oh so many respects.

 

[Scott Kenny]

If you even have to ask "how can you know" you have by default left the realm of what's realistically expected, because for some technologies we may *never* get past TRL 5, 4 ,3, 2, 1, or even 0, which, while not on the official NASA scale, would in my definition denote technologies that are merely postulated or wished for - you read it first here, folks! I call those rainbow technologies, because while they certainly appear alluring, we're evidently never able to get any closer to that fabled pot of gold at the end of that mirage, no matter how hard we try. In other words, there are technologies that simply seem to be stuck in development hell - some fabled/postulated/wished for technologies of "tomorrow" will always stay just that. And as a side note, in terms of cinematography, 2010 can't hold a flickering candle in the wind to 2001 in oh so many respects.

It also doesn't make very interesting science fiction if you spend 5 years on a Hohmann transfer orbit out to Neptune, only for the mining outpost you're going to rescue to have died out because it takes 5 years to get there...

Again, we have the math, we know what the requirements are to get brachistochrone trajectories. FFS, I have an excel spreadsheet for first-order approximations. I know how much power it takes to do those. And how much delta-vee each takes. I have a whole slew of different engines I can abuse for my rockets. Clear the hell up to a Zubrin nuclear saltwater rocket, if you assume a sufficiently large ship to keep the acceleration down to human-survivable levels, but I prefer using those for deep space torpedoes. For manned spaceships, my default is a fusion nuclear-thermal rocket, though if I'm writing a book for Martin I guess I'd have to use a NERVA or maybe a nuclear lightbulb because I can't write a damn science FICTION story unless the hardware is at TRL8 today.

 

[southwestforests]

Ego pissing contests are so wearisome.

 

[publiusr]

Just how long can tethers be?

I was thinking about an ultra-long tether where either end has a hub such that two tethers rotate around around the terminus…such as to deposit objects at near zero velocity.

Having two statite sails with cables intersecting in an “X” means that the intersection can rise or lower by simply having the two sails tack towards or away from one another…lifting items from a surface?

 

[Scott Kenny]

Just how long can tethers be?

I was thinking about an ultra-long tether where either end has a hub such that two tethers rotate around around the terminus…such as to deposit objects at near zero velocity.

Having two statite sails with cables intersecting in an “X” means that the intersection can rise or lower by simply having the two sails tack towards or away from one another…lifting items from a surface?

It's not easy to make a continuous long thread. The core concept for Orbital Elevators involves a tether that is some 36,000km long coming up from the surface, a massive station at geostationary altitude, and another 36kkm tether up to a counterweight. Both of the 36kkm tethers are continuous strands of carbon nanotubes (or some other material with massive tensile strength).

In fact, making a single continuous tether that long is one of the core technologies preventing the creation of orbital elevators.

 

[martinbayer]

It also doesn't make very interesting science fiction if you spend 5 years on a Hohmann transfer orbit out to Neptune, only for the mining outpost you're going to rescue to have died out because it takes 5 years to get there...

Again, we have the math, we know what the requirements are to get brachistochrone trajectories. FFS, I have an excel spreadsheet for first-order approximations. I know how much power it takes to do those. And how much delta-vee each takes. I have a whole slew of different engines I can abuse for my rockets. Clear the hell up to a Zubrin nuclear saltwater rocket, if you assume a sufficiently large ship to keep the acceleration down to human-survivable levels, but I prefer using those for deep space torpedoes. For manned spaceships, my default is a fusion nuclear-thermal rocket, though if I'm writing a book for Martin I guess I'd have to use a NERVA or maybe a nuclear lightbulb because I can't write a damn science FICTION story unless the hardware is at TRL8 today.

There are science fiction epics out there that span millenia or even longer timescales, so spending a measly 5 years on a Hohmann transfer is small change in the big picture. But *of course* you can write any scify story you please without paying even the slightest heed to any of my considerations, concerns, bellyaches, or objections, and more power to you! The only quibble that might arise is if you classified any of your yarns as *realistic* science fiction without the actual science falling anywhere on the TRL scale of 1 to 9. I simply prefer *hard* science fiction that falls into the TRL range of 6 to 9 as opposed to shall we say more speculative fiction below that threshold. No wizards, vampires, zombies, elves, dwarfs, giants, bigfoots, yetis, dragons, or fairies gene manipulation for me, please. I draw a line at the border to fantasy with extreme prejudice.

 

[Justo Miranda]

For NASA, the only proven technology is the one developed by the Nazis, there is no budget for the imagination when allocations depend on the approval of officials.

 

[publiusr]

Rockets do seem to work rather well—thus my support for LV growth to brute force lots of mass up there to get colonies started.

Earth’s Trojans may hold an answer

(614689) 2020 XL5 - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[Rhinocrates]

Another series from Apple, Constellation. Starring Noomi Rapace.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dAaLbsQSzI


I've just watched the first episode of four. Two more are also available and I'll look at those tomorrow perhaps.

Premise: accident on the ISS, something collides with it during an experiment that resembles the creation of a Bose-Einstein condensate. Damage, fire, fatal injuries, emergency evacuation, desperate but methodical fight for survival, and so forth. Judging by the trailer, lots of Philip K Dickery meets Scandi noir ensues in the next episodes, which appear to be set entirely on Earth.

I think it's worth mentioning because the research into the ISS has been extraordinary and the visual design is excellent and real Newtonian physics applies. As for the quantum physics, it's probably woo.