SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion

I am and forever will be a huge fan of the 'Eagle'. This Spacecraft was featured in the British TV series 'Space 1999'.

It had everything. Quick to build, easy to adapt for a variety of roles, and great looking. I could see this actually operating from Colony to Colony.

So what's your favourite craft? Which one do you think could actually exist in the Future?

Millennium Falcon is up in my mind there because it's design isn't symmetrical and it doesn't have goddamn wings...which are pointless in space.

David Weber stuff normally wins the realism boat on anything farish future...but those designs are also visually boring.

Which one do you think could will actually exist in the future?

RX-78 Gundam, not because it's practical or good but because of Japans obsession and they will find a way to make it work.

Did you intend to post a link to a pic, Steve? (If I remember Space 1999 it's the one made of a crane girder with a cabin at the front? Still got one somewhere.)

My favourite? Red Dwarf, modeled on a pregnant flea!
Which could exist? "Journey to the Far Side of the Sun" [1969] by Sylvia & Jerry Anderson https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/....

Long pointy ones are unrealistic - too much waste of cladding to enclose a small volume. Globular is the most functional shape, if you don't ever want to land. More than likely physics, and not aerospace engineers will design the practical spacecraft, which will not look anything like our current perceptions since hyperspace poses its own problems and is the only realistic option for interstellar travel. More than likely, the craft will not even 'exist' in the sense of being able to see it.

Colony hopping? Autonomous drones with a passenger bubble underneath.

The Bengal Class Carrier:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOx9r...

That carrier is an interesting bit of kit.

The Millennium Falcon was an interesting concept. I remember the battle scenes with the X-Wing fighters. So much of that seems to have been inspired by WW2 B17 footage.

V.W. wrote: "The Bengal Class Carrier:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOx9r..."

Forever in development...apparently next year will be the year.

Aaron wrote: "V.W. wrote: "The Bengal Class Carrier:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOx9r..."

Forever in development...apparently next year will be the year."

That one looks bad-ass.

it's too expensive to climb a gravity well, so i don't think that you'll ever want to land the main ship.

i don't think that a globe provides the most effective use of space, though. i think it's a cube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rN5cR...

Alex G wrote: "it's too expensive to climb a gravity well, so i don't think that you'll ever want to land the main ship.

i don't think that a globe provides the most effective use of space, though. i think it's a cube..."

Yes, a cube is the most efficient use of internal space, (merely because we are used to square spaces around us) but a sphere is the most efficient use of cladding materials. I'm not much good at the maths but:

a 1m diameter sphere produces a volume of 4.2m3
and a surface area of 12.6m2

A cube with 4.2m3 volume has a surface area of
15.7m2

That's 25% more cladding material to lug up into space.
So mold the fuel and oxygen tanks etc to fit a spherical space, leaving a cube inside for the crew. Simples!

although an o'neill colony (a pair of cylinders) could be adapted for interstellar travel:

http://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/4...

Rama though is pretty good and is more compact which would result in less stress on the structure during acceleration. sorry. can't find a good image of the ship. but i read more about the series and i'm going to read it (i only read the first one in high school).

Don't forget space does have friction and it does start to matter once you hit really high speeds...though the shape required if any really depends on your version of hyperspace/warpdrive whatever.

Also the moment you add warfare into the game everything goes crazy.

Do you design for stealth?
Do you design for deflecting direct hits, very important in closer range laser spam
Do you design for withstanding explosions big hits(doubtful considering that weapon tech tends to outpace any form of armor).
Do you design ships to have most number of guns covering a single zone of combat?(very important in missle spam fights, where missle hit=dead ship)

@pete so would you design a cube that is encased in a sphere, the space between sphere and cube bring used for something, not just dead space, but not life supporting areas.

Or maybe, as needed to sphere 'retracts' in some manner when unnecessary...could be defensive and aero-d.

I'd love to posit designs as I plan out my next series, which will likely have them, though I'm leaning toward steampunk.

K: just wanted to make sure that we're on the same page. steampunk wouldn't have interstellar spaceships, right? it would have airships, which would then have to be aerodynamic.

yes, Pete, that is true. i overlooked your point that the sphere is more efficient material-wise than a cube. the interior would be made of less expensive material.

a cylinder might be a good compromise. a cylinder can also have artificial gravity. on another practical note, unless we hit a real technological game-changer, fusion is probably the most likely near-future (100 years) form of propulsion and from what i recall might give us up to .2c.

as far as warfare goes:
* most combat would take place close to important planets as it's pretty difficult to detect ships in open space.
* in space, most damage would be done by radiation (lasers or nukes) or impact rather than explosive pressure waves (there's nothing for waves to travel through).
* mass and energy are the top considerations on a spaceship, so passive defense like armor is inefficient at best.
* it's more effective to invest in ECM, chaff, anti-missile defense, drones.

Steve wrote: "I am and forever will be a huge fan of the 'Eagle'. This Spacecraft was featured in the British TV series 'Space 1999'.

It had everything. Quick to build, easy to adapt for a variety of roles, an..."

Allow my t-shirt to answer that question:

Https://flic.kr/p/oNDXAw



See also: Mark IX Hawk

Tie: OG Jupiter II

Alex G wrote: "but steampunk wouldn't have interstellar spaceships. it would have airships, which would then have to be aerodynamic. so, i don't think that what we're talking about here would fit into steampunk.
..."

Anti armour missiles would still work. The shaped explosive charge would convert the material of the missile into armour penetrating plasma just like they do against tanks despite the lack of atmosphere. Similarly, nuclear warheads would also work.

Old fashioned kinetic energy weapons would still be effective although explosive propellant would require a counteracting thrust to prevent the ship from being propelled in the opposite direction.

Armour may work in the future depending upon the progress made in materials technology, and the possibility of energy "shields" beloved of SF. There are indications that such shields are not as impossible as they seem:

http://www.universetoday.com/20671/io...

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/18...

ah yea, now i remember that series. very cool.

V.W.: thx for the links! yes, a direct hit would send shockwaves through the ship. good point about an equal and opposite reaction req'd for kinetic weapons. drones would be more desirable in that respect. worthy of note, the ships in The Forever War use drones almost to exclusivity.

When talking about spherical spaceships we have David Weber's "Dahak" i.e. planetoid spaceships which rely upon sheer mass as part of its defence.

The Kzinti in Niven's Known Space use spherical ships, as do the Puppeteers for the largest of their General Products hulls.

The Valley Forge from "Silent Running". Both inside and out, it was realistic and detailed.

I love the design of the Battlestar 'Galactica'. It both looked and WAS a tough, powerful ship.

This is hardly related, but I think it's pretty.

http://dirkloechel.deviantart.com/art...

Spheres FTW.

Peter F. Hamilton's Night's Dawn Trilogy (The Reality Dysfunction and the rest) has what I consider to be some of the best high tech designs. Spheres and teardrop shaped.

Here's someone's idea of one of the ships from that series: http://theunisphere.com/artwork/scott...

Alex G wrote: "* mass and energy are the top considerations on a spaceship, so passive defense like armor is inefficient at best."

IDK some highly reflective surface with high heat resistance if angled to take hits at a high angle could be extremely effective against lasers.

Alex G wrote: "* most combat would take place close to important planets as it's pretty difficult to detect ships in open space.
* in space, most damage would be done by radiation (lasers or nukes) or impact rather than explosive pressure waves (there's nothing for waves to travel through)."

* Detecting spaceships in open space wouldn't really be that difficult if you're talking levels of tech high enough to create viable combat spacecraft. There is really no way to stealth a spaceship's heat signature. Look it up, it's almost impossible. But what about asteroids and comets, you might ask. Those are difficult to spot. Yes, they produce no heat. A spaceship (especially ones carrying living creatures) HAVE to produce heat. Some estimates I've seen state that running life support for oxygen breathing occupants makes a ship's heat signature 300K hotter than background space. Engines, thrusters, weapons, computers, etc. just add to that.

So if you can't mask heat, you will be seen. The only thing that works to your advantage is that heat travels at the speed of light. And if you've got spacecraft capable of FTL jumps, maneuvers, or whatever, an attacker can hit and run. By the time the attacker's heat signature arrives at the defenders' sensors, they will have gone elsewhere.

* Also, lasers and other beam weapons aren't really viable for long range use because they suffer the inverse square law. the farther away the target, the more diluted your weapon becomes. For example, the lasers used by NASA to bounce signals off reflectors left on the moon by Apollo astronauts were over 6 kilometers wide by the time they hit the surface of the moon. That's at a range of only 1 light second. Hard radiation from nukes is another thing. But do not underestimate the power of very small kinetics...say, pea-sized rocks...small things pack an incredible kinetic power at the speeds you'd see in space. Delivering these to the right place a the right time, then, becomes the problem.

Also, missiles are very viable weapons in space. Because they are unmanned and little mass, they can achieve extremely high G forces w/out problem. Manned ships could barely be expected to perform 10G maneuvers...while missiles might withstand 100G turns. You can't outrun a missile in space. You might confuse it or destroy it, but you can't out maneuver it. And missiles could be loaded with a variety of payloads.

Going back to Night's Dawn Trilogy, Hamilton had missiles equipped with nukes, kinetic payloads (basically a shotgun pellet payload), x-ray beams (I think), and shaped plasma explosions. Missiles might be the very best way of reaching out and getting close enough to do damage.

R. wrote: "The Valley Forge from "Silent Running". Both inside and out, it was realistic and detailed.

"

Well, "realistic" in that you have to assume we invent artificial gravity sometime in the next 25 years. Definitely a pretty ship. Such an annoyingly dumb story, though.

K. wrote: "@pete so would you design a cube that is encased in a sphere, the space between sphere and cube bring used for something, not just dead space, but not life supporting areas.

Or maybe, as needed to..."

What you do inside the sphere depends on how large it is. Take the Death Star, foir instance - that's a spaceship, but is so large that curvature doesn't waste any space. If it's small, say 10m daimeter, a designer would probably dice the volume into cubes, making whatever living space is needed, and designing propulsion motors, storage, cargo, batteries, fuel,air, insulation, weapons, comms etc etc into the less-than cubic spaces.

Micah wrote: "Also, lasers and other beam weapons aren't really viable for long range use because they suffer the inverse square law... There is really no way to stealth a spaceship's heat signature. "

good points. thx!

so, let's take another tack. there's a lot more room to maneuver in open space, so why not just wait for the enemy to come close to a valuable resource?

another interesting thought that i had this year was would a space-faring civilization really want to destroy or seriously damage a planet that was habitable to both denizens? we haven't discovered that many "goldilocks" exoplanets.

Alex G wrote: "Micah wrote: "Also, lasers and other beam weapons aren't really viable for long range use because they suffer the inverse square law... There is really no way to stealth a spaceship's heat signatur..."

There have been numerous examples of human societies who would destroy a resource rather than allow it to fall into enemy hands. And who knows what an alien species would think. It is illogical to assume they would conform to human logic. Perhaps in the animal phase of their development land that was occupied by an enemy species became unusable to them so destruction of the scorched earth variety was "logical" and that trait became socially and psychologically ingrained.

Trike wrote: "R. wrote: "The Valley Forge from "Silent Running". Both inside and out, it was realistic and detailed.

"

Well, "realistic" in that you have to assume we invent artificial gravity sometime in the..."

Artificial gravity is a requirement for commercial space deployments. Prolonged exposure to low gravity presents too much of a health problem for people working in space. Simple rotation to simulate gravity is not practical for a variety of reasons.

As to the story being dumb, we live in a world where there are nations that claim "scientific research" as the excuse for commercial whaling. If our reality is that stupid, then the plot of "Silent Running" does not seem that far off the mark.

"It's no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense." - Mark Twain

Reading through the diverse subjects this port raised, there are some interesting scenarios that keep being raised.

The need for gravity and the ability to avoid hitting something being two of the most common.

In my books, gravity is created by passing charged particles through a gyroscope.

One thing I haven't covered but will, is the ability to deflect objects while traveling at high speed. This would be done by projecting a magnetic field several kilometers ahead of the space ship.

Steve wrote: "One thing I haven't covered but will, is the ability to deflect objects while traveling at high speed. This would be done by projecting a magnetic field several kilometers ahead of the space ship. ..."

Several thousand km, I would think.

As for maneuvering in space, battles are likely to last milliseconds, regrouping several weeks minimum, and then another millisecond skirmish. G-forces, even on unmanned ships, limits the amount of dog-fighting, as do the physics of acceleration and deceleration, course changing, vector matching etc.
Much easier, as Alex G suggested, bait a trap and mine the surrounding space with pea shingle.

Pete wrote: "Steve wrote: "One thing I haven't covered but will, is the ability to deflect objects while traveling at high speed. This would be done by projecting a magnetic field several kilometers ahead of th..."

I suspect space fleet battles may be more like sailing ship ones. The fleets detect each other and deliberately slow down to practical combat speed, or run like hell.

Pete wrote: "As for maneuvering in space, battles are likely to last milliseconds..."

Some of the best (most convincing) space battles I've read about were, again, in the Night's Dawn Trilogy by Peter F. Hamilton. Positioning takes a while but when battle is finally joined it's all very fast and deadly. There's usually one clear winning side and one clear losing side. All or nothing. And if you're on the losing side there's very little you can do to get out of it.

Some of Alastair Reynolds's Revelation Space books have battles that are pretty realistic too. The "battle" may last months...that is, it may take months for weapons to reach their targets. But when the battle is finally joined, it's BOOM you're dead. You may not even know who shot you (or when).

I've seen people say space battles will be more like old naval battles, but I think they're likely to be more like complex chess games. But chess games where every move is made simultaneously.

R. wrote: "Artificial gravity is a requirement for commercial space deployments..."

Only if you're restricting humanity to baseline human form. Many SF books include body modifications of one kind or another (surgical, genetic, evolutionary, etc.) to deal with the weightless environment.

Micah wrote: "Pete wrote: "As for maneuvering in space, battles are likely to last milliseconds..."

Some of the best (most convincing) space battles I've read about were, again, in the Night's Dawn Trilogy by P..."

That would depend upon the kind of drives that are assumed. If thrust is sufficient, constant semi-random movement will make long range missile strikes useless unless the missiles can pop out of some kind of hyperspace. A globular screen of defensive drones/fighters would render missiles less dangerous too, again depending upon the kind of sublight/supralight drives assumed.

I think space battles will be beyond anything we can imagine now, so if you're writing Sci-Fi with realistic space battles you might as well make them fun.

V.W. wrote: "That would depend upon the kind of drives that are assumed. If thrust is sufficient, constant semi-random movement will make long range missile strikes useless unless the missiles can pop out of some kind of hyperspace..."

That's kind of why it becomes a chess game. The attacker must make several assumptions:

*How fast is the target moving?
*In what direction?
*How maneuverable are they? (constant semi-random movements would still be constrained by g-force limitations, so the maneuverability of a ship is going to be a limited and predictable thing)
*What defenses have they deployed?
*Can those defenses keep pace with the target?

From that the attacker would calculate a probable area of engagement, and would figure out how many and what kinds of missiles to deploy, and in what configuration.

The earliest missiles to arrive would target defenses (drones or whatever...I don't think light manned fighter craft make any sense in space; they simply cannot maneuver enough to be effective, not unless you've got way out there tech like inertia dampening). Of the following waves of missiles, only some are likely to actually be in range of the actual target. These would deploy kinetic and energy beam weapons, some might carry nukes and try to make direct strikes on the target or explode in advance of the target hoping to bathe the enemy ship in hard radiation.

But basically if the missiles can reach the target, the target will be killed. You just can't carry huge amounts of armor and shielding. That extra mass ups your energy needs too much (and probably wouldn't be effective anyway).

Micah wrote: "V.W. wrote: "That would depend upon the kind of drives that are assumed. If thrust is sufficient, constant semi-random movement will make long range missile strikes useless unless the missiles can ..."

You're assuming the missiles cannot be detected at time of launch, indicating some kind of hyperdrive. But if the enemy can detect your fleet, you should be able to detect them.

Using the same hyperdrive, the entire fleet jumps towards the enemy. Enemy expects this and jumps somewhere else after firing. Missiles have no target and the two fleets hop around like fleas forever.

Assuming no hyperdrive that can be used within a star system, then the missiles will be travelling at sublight speed and easily avoided or intercepted. The fleets will need to close and pound each other.

Fighters carrying a load of anti-missile missiles plus beam or kinetic kill weapons operated by AI and remote at closer range can be effective against missiles that have to travel long distances.

Long distance combat only works if you assume that fleets must enter a system at a particular point like a jump gate or whatever. Otherwise random approaches to the system and lightspeed limited radar will require the fleets to deliberately close.

Gigantic hollowed out asteroid ships could take a lot of pounding before being destroyed. Or even asteroids mounted with drives used as shields.

Steve wrote: "So what's your favourite craft? Which one do you think could actually exist in the Future?
..."

Thanks for starting this thread, Steve, and thanks for everyone contributing! It's totally engrossing for me.

V.W. wrote: "You're assuming the missiles cannot be detected at time of launch, indicating some kind of hyperdrive..."

I'm not assuming hyperdrives are involved on the missiles.

First of all, I'm assuming the distance between ships is in the light minutes to hours range. So when you fire missiles it will take minutes or hours for the target to detect them.

After that it's a game of whether the target can outrun the missiles (doubtful as missiles are going to have far better acceleration and g-force capabilities), and whether the attacker has sent enough missiles to cover the entire area that the target could possibly maneuver to in the time allotted.

The target is going to be limited to where it can travel to during the flight of the missiles. Basically you end up with an imaginary sphere of where the target ship could possibly be when the missiles arrive. So the attacker needs to send enough missiles to cover that entire sphere. If they can do that, and their missiles can take out enough of the defensive swarm of the attacker, then the target will likely be destroyed.

There's no need for hyperdrives in that case. It's all a game of planning, and extrapolation of probabilities based on what you know of the enemy ship's capabilities.

Micah wrote: "The target is going to be limited to where it can travel to during the flight of the missiles. Basically you end up with an imaginary sphere of where the target ship could possibly be when the missiles arrive. So the attacker needs to send enough missiles to cover that entire sphere. If they can do that, and their missiles can take out enough of the defensive swarm of the attacker, then the target will likely be destroyed."

this tactic is very much like current carrier battlegroup considerations. assuming equivalent overall firepower, a bunch of smaller ships spread out would win over larger, capital ships.

V.W. wrote: "entire fleet jumps towards the enemy. Enemy expects this and jumps somewhere else after firing..."

If you do have in-system hyperdrives on ships then the cat and mouse game becomes pretty interesting, but as I see it, the attacker holds all the cards.

The constraints of light speed for electromagnetic radiation make "stealth" actually doable if you have hyperdrive.

I jump into your solar system at a range of 4 light hours from your fleet. Assuming your fleet has been in-system for at least 4 hours, my sensors will spot you immediately. Your sensors won't pick me up for 4 hours. I calculate your speed and course, make another hyperdrive jump to somewhere close in front of your fleet and drop my missiles. Then I pop off somewhere else.

Before you even know I'm in-system, you've got massive waves of missiles coming at you. You're probably dead.

Ken wrote: "I think space battles will be beyond anything we can imagine now, so if you're writing Sci-Fi with realistic space battles you might as well make them fun."

This right here.

The most boring space battles are those which are "Horatio Hornblower in space" types. At this point, any sort of space opera is akin to Epic Fantasy so you might as well just postulate whatever imaginary tech you're a fan of -- A.I., hyperdrive, warp speed, artificial gravity, dark energy weapons, whatever -- and just make sure it's internally consistent.

Jack Chalker had one where ships were skipping in and out of reality, so dogfights simultaneously took many hours and just minutes, depending on your frame of reference. In R.M. Meluch's "Tour of the Merrimack" series, you can only attack a ship traveling in hyperspace from a specific angle, so the characters (read: the author) has to come up with clever ways to exploit this very narrow vector.

When done right and obeying its own rules, they can be great fun.

But Ken's right: the reality is probably going to be super weird.

Micah wrote: "V.W. wrote: "That would depend upon the kind of drives that are assumed. If thrust is sufficient, constant semi-random movement will make long range missile strikes useless unless the missiles can

"That's kind of why it becomes a chess game. The attacker must make several assumptions:..."

In one of Larry Niven's books, I think it's Protector, they have a space battle between two hyper-intelligent creatures where they are constrained by the physics of space travel and by their own super-intelligence: there is only ever going to be one right move and they both know it.

Ultimately it comes down to shooting a rifle. Which, within the universe as explained, makes perfect sense. (view spoiler)[Brennan, the human Protector, makes a slingshot around a neutron star, forcing the pursuing Pak Protector to do the same. Brennan shoots the rifle at such an angle that the bullets will fall on the star, causing a flare of deadly radiation. They don't know if it worked for weeks because of the time it takes the light to reach them. (hide spoiler)]

Micah wrote: "V.W. wrote: "You're assuming the missiles cannot be detected at time of launch, indicating some kind of hyperdrive..."

I'm not assuming hyperdrives are involved on the missiles.

First of all, I'm..."

The sphere you missiles need to cover is not just travel time, but also the max distance in any direction that my fleet may have moved since the lightspeed signal reached you and you fired.

Assuming my fleet isn't in a cluster hundreds of metres apart, that is a lot of empty space. Plus if the defending fleet has a globe of detectors out a say, half your max firing range, their warning signals will reach the defending fleet much sooner than your missiles. If the defending fleet then both moves off at 90 deg to the incoming missiles as well as spreading out in an arc it has increased the area to be covered by the attacking missiles greatly.

Plus at fractions of a light year, the missiles would have to be massive to carry enough fuel and engines powerful enough to catch up with capital ships capable of constant or near constant acceleration that are also dodging them. It would be also logical to assume that the detection systems on the ships would be much more effective that those of the missiles, especially if they had launched another screen of detection drones towards the missiles at full boost. It would be impossible to carry enough missiles of that size to englobe the hypothetical target area, fight or dodge counter missiles, AI fighters, decoys, etc.

I still say it would not be as simple as popping in, detecting the enemy and firing off a salvo in a massive in-depth circle.

And if there isn't a one shot kill, your opponent now knows where you are and roughly how powerful your fleet is.

Another thought is if fleets are split into two fleets operating in tandem. The possibility of englobing both fleets with a single salvo is getting very remote indeed. Or even clustered units like platoons or Roman centuries operating in a swarm. They could always regroup faster than an enemy could approach, but provide an impossibly large target to long range missiles.

Trike wrote: "Jack Chalker had one where ships were skipping in and out of reality, so dogfights simultaneously took many hours and just minutes, depending on your frame of reference..."

That sounds like Vernor Vinge. He had ships skipping in and out of reality so their missiles had to try and catch the enemy ship while it was in "real space." IIRC battles took a long time.

Another challenge is writing a story that requires a series of space battles. Each one has to be different enough, or with different enough stakes, to keep the reader from thinking, five battles already, and they're all alike--I'm bored.

Micah wrote: "R. wrote: "Artificial gravity is a requirement for commercial space deployments..."

Only if you're restricting humanity to baseline human form. Many SF books include body modifications of one kind..."

Sorry that is not practical. If the human body is adapted to living in space, how are they going to visit planets where normal 1 G gravity would make them invalids? People can live in space, but they are naturally going to want to visit planets for recreation, business, etc. Where are they going to retire when they are done working in space? I just do not see people condemning themselves to low gravity environments for life. It could be tenable for a select few, but to have robust commerce it will require that the space-based workplace is adapted to humans not the other way around.