What would a 'real' spaceship actually look like?

[Cmdr Memelord]

Alright, it's about to get sciency, strap in your Trumbles.

In space, there are no molecules, except for a few hydrogen atoms and solar wind, so you could build whatever kind of shape you want. However, if you want your ship to hold under extreme G-Forces, and be able to enter atmosphere, you would not want antennas or any protruding parts. Your ship would also need to be able to travel at extreme speeds to travel through space. The simplest way to achieve such speed would be a blackhole tractor system. Basically, your ship would generate small blackholes around your ship. These blackholes would pull you in whatever direction you need. But that leaves a serious problem: G-Force. Using blackholes to travel that fast would crush you, your ship, and anything inside into a very compact ball. To counteract that, you could generate a blackhole opposite of the one that pulls you. Your ship would need a massive amount of power to generate blackholes, so the powerplant of your ship would probably be a nuclear-fission setup. All of your life, you've heard that the speed of light is the fastest you can go. That's not true. You can go as fast as you want, as long as you have a necessary G-Force counter. Example:

You want to go 100,000 lightyears a second, but you don't want to wait 600 years to slowly accelerate to that speed. In that case, you would just generate a blackhole in front of you, and off you go! But wait, you just experienced 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 G-Force, and now your ship is torn apart. Let's try again.

In order to safely accelerate to 100,000 light years per second, you would need to generate two blackholes of equal strength; one in front of your ship, one behind it. However, you can't just generate them both at the same time, or your ship would be torn in two. You would need to generate the second blackhole IMMEDIATELY after the first, by that I mean 0.0000000000000000000000001 milliseconds. That's just enough time for the first blackhole to spawn, without it tearing apart your molecules, and the second blackhole will be caught in the first one's gravity, saving you from destruction, while traveling at 100,000 LY/S.

Now let's assume that the main type of weaponry used are lasers and missiles. Your spaceship would need to be slightly reflective and and have a heat-absorbing ceramic material underneath a glossed layer of an aluminum/titanium alloy. The alloy would protect you from kinetic impact, and the ceramic layer and gloss would dissipate laser heat. And no windows. Your ship would need cameras and screens, no windows, at all, under any circumstance, absolutely not.

Basically your ship would look similar to an oversized Asp MK II, compact, angled and big.

[Diziet Sma]

I love this blithe talk about simply generating black holes..

Care to explain how that might be done?


G'day Cmdr Memelord, and welcome aboard!
(nice screen-handle, btw)

[Smivs]

The Elasteroid Drive!
You have a ship with a reinforced nose, to which you attach a large asteroid using a length of elastic hawser. Small thrusters attached to the asteroid push it rapidly away from the ship stretching the elastic hawser. When the hawser reaches maximum stretch it effectively stops and the ship is pulled towards it as the elastic contracts. The ship bumps the asteroid (hence the reinforced nose) and pushes the asteroid away again, until the elastic reaches its limit of stretch at which point the ship is then pulled towards the asteroid again. Rinse and repeat. With little to no friction or drag in space his could happen dozens of times before the asteroid's thrusters are needed again.

[Wildeblood]

The Elasteroid Drive!
You have a ship with a reinforced nose, to which you attach a large asteroid using a length of elastic hawser. Small thrusters attached to the asteroid push it rapidly away from the ship stretching the elastic hawser. When the hawser reaches maximum stretch it effectively stops and the ship is pulled towards it as the elastic contracts. The ship bumps the asteroid (hence the reinforced nose) and pushes the asteroid away again, until the elastic reaches its limit of stretch at which point the ship is then pulled towards the asteroid again. Rinse and repeat. With little to no friction or drag in space his could happen dozens of times before the asteroid's thrusters are needed again.

Ingredients:-

Wyle E. Coyote
Skateboard
Sail
Fan

It really works! In space their is no atmosphere (allegedly), so you need a really BIG sail, and replace the fan with some ion thrusters. It could really work!

Not the first time recently I've made that mistake. I'm concerned about early-onset dementia.

[Smivs]

Wyle E. Coyote
Skateboard
Sail
Fan

It really works! In space their is no atmosphere (allegedly), so you need a really BIG sail, and replace the fan with some ion thrusters. It could really work!

Prior art. In 'The Mote in God's Eye' the first Motie ship was propelled towards Earth using huge photon sails which were 'powered' by massive lasers on the Homeworld.
I still reckon Elasteroids are cheaper

[Wildeblood]

Wyle E. Coyote
Skateboard
Sail
Fan

It really works! In space there is no atmosphere (allegedly), so you need a really BIG sail, and replace the fan with some ion thrusters. It could really work!

Prior art. In 'The Mote in God's Eye' the first Motie ship was propelled towards Earth using huge photon sails which were 'powered' by massive lasers on the Homeworld.

It seems you completely missed the essence of the cartoon drive system.

[Smivs]

No, I didn't It made me chuckle (Beep Beep!), but also reminded me of the (very implausible) method the Moties used to reach Earth.

[Cody]

Now 'meep meep', you bastard!

[Cmdr Memelord]

I love this blithe talk about simply generating black holes..

Care to explain how that might be done?


G'day Cmdr Memelord, and welcome aboard!
(nice screen-handle, btw)

Basically, you collide two molecules really hard and they go KASKIDDLYDO and then there's a very small blackhole! It's pretty much just magic.

[Diziet Sma]

Now 'meep meep', you bastard!

Of course, Wile E. had a little help..

[Alex]

Reacently read about stars traveling at near light and very possibly faster than light on the NASA pages.
So maybe blackholes ain't far fetched as thought. And if you can accelarate with 'tame' blackhole G'forces become null and moot as you are generating your own localized gravity.

Still think the sphere is best for ship and was thinking some sort of nano fiber epoxy emmulsion for outer skin and litteraly just blowing it up like a balloon in orbit to what ever size required and add fixer. Would give you a zero G atmosphere to construct your internals. Start it spining and build it in layers like an onion with the centre being the chamber for propulsion. The zero G there might be handy for the tame BH or antimater reactor.
Maybe even some sort of plasma generation on outer skin to fend of the nasty little atoms you might collide with when getting up to fairly fast.