This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Moved from YKTTW
Dark Sasami: Ok, time for a namestorm. You know that thing where any time you're in the Jefferies Tubes, or any time a ship is landing, or any time you're anywhere with technical things going on and it might be dangerous, something somewhere is going to needlessly vent gases into the shot? What do you call that so it doesn't sound overly flatulent? (Or do we want it to? Like, In The Future Machines Will Be Flatulent or something?)
Bluetooththe Pirate: How about some alliteration. The Stanley Steamer Spaceship, or maybe Gratuitous Fog Venting.
I like the idea of Stanley Steamer Spaceship, and I've noticed the same thing in not only TV but movies, I think the entry would be somthing like,
High tech stuff, while it can do incredible things, tends to look, well, boring when compared to the older more “mechanized” versions it replaced. Writers and set designers sometimes take this to heart when dreaming up the innards of a futuristic spaceship or space station. Sometimes the engineering sections look more akin to a steam locomotive, or the boiler room of the Titanic with huge moving gears and parts or geysers of steam or other gasses being vented all over the place. It sure looks impressive, but why should scalding from live steam be a hazard for crews of a spaceship sufficiently advanced to go faster-than-light?
Doesn’t count if you’re in a SteamPunk universe
BT The P: Lest we forget, the most advanced ships in the US fleet, the nuclear aircraft carriers, are steam powered. The fact that the boiler is fired by a uranium chain reaction and not an open flame is unimportant, the major guts of the engine are Mark Twain era crap. I'm fairly certain the gasses being vented on Star Trek and the like are either extremely hot (like plasma) or extremely cold (depressurized atmo gas or coolants). It being actual steam is unlikely.
Almost no proposed engine design for real spaceships is able to do away with the need for volatile fluids of some type, and no one can say for sure how many moving parts an FTL engine would need, were such a thing possible under the current understanding of physics.
Y'know, I think I'll just go ahead and write a stub.
And so he did, and there was much rejoycing. (Yay.)
Dark Sasami: Hit it out of the park in fact. Rock rock on!
Nohbody: I know it's not really this trope, but I've no idea where (if anywhere) this would work, so I'll just put it here for y'all's amusement:
- In Freefall, the Savage Chicken is, according to a somewhat disappointed Sam Starfall, a steam powered rocket ship
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