Sci-fi Weapons, Vehicles and Equipment

Well it's the more realistic answer for 1 G of gravity than gravity plates.

In a far future, with casual interstellar travel should airports and space ports be kept completely separate, or hybridized depending on the class of ship/destination, etc?

Orbital shuttles might take off from airports (esp if they take the form of spaceplanes), but space ships would most likely dock in orbit.

You might want separate facilities if nothing for the simplification of local air traffic control. Any craft traveling surface to orbit also tend to adhere to different launch and return windows based on mission. Space planes could land at a generic airfield provided enough runway space but take off might be another matter.

Have we ever talked about the weaponry of Scorn yet?

Edited by Albino_Axolotl on Aug 15th 2018 at 7:58:16 AM

No, why would we?

As for spaceports and all that, in my Space-verse, it differs depending on need. Owning your own ship is entirely possible, but it's like owning a house so it's not cheap.

People with ships go to spaceports, people who live on the planets who want to just travel the planet use airports.

For the most part, I think big ships would probably stay outside the atmosphere. Taking off and landing from a planet is difficult, and depending on the details large ships might not even be able to land to begin with.

Those ships would probably be moored at specialized orbital docks, and ground-to-orbit transports would bring people and cargo to and from them. I don't see any reason why those transports wouldn't be able to use conventional airfields, though it would probably make sense for an airport that handled both aircraft and spacecraft to have separate airfields for the two.

Since we were just talking about aerodynamic spacecraft in the other thread, ground-to-orbit transports would definitely need to be at least somewhat aerodynamic, even if they didn't need airfoils to generate lift.

I’d imagine these planetary spaceports might as well be cities unto themselves, no?

Imagine if Atlanta’s airport also took in spacecraft...the whole port would be half the size of the city

Jas: Maybe. It would partly depend on how much traffic they handle, how big the craft is, and other factors. It would need to be large to launch smaller craft into orbit from some sort of platform.

For a rough sense of scale, the space shuttle's primary landing runway at the Shuttle Landing Facility is over 4.5km long and is considered one of the largest runways in the world. You can likely get away with shorter runways by using various arrester systems to slow the craft down.

For you gear fans who like collapsible staves.

Pocket-sized Collapsible Staff. Rule of cool rather than practical. The way it is made means it is very thin and very flexible so no stiffness for real impact but it looks neat. Of course being sci-fi you can go softer and use some exotic metamaterial and have it work for you or something like that.

That almost looks too flimsy to be able to hurt someone with.

If we're talking collapsables, gotta go with the Asp baton. It's tiny when it's collapsed and you can do some serious damage with one.

Reminds me of the Copeland J5000, well-regarded medical scanner.

Arcon: It is. It's way too thin and flexible. It's more for fun and costuming.

Still, it looks cool.

Edited by TuefelHundenIV on Aug 16th 2018 at 6:22:48 AM

You know what else is thin and flexible? A Qiang.

Put a blade on the end of (a slightly more sturdy 'future' material version of) that collapsible staff and you've got a somewhat viable weapon.

Not a weapon of war, though.

Rob: True but the Qiang is also rather solid down its length which lends it enough stiffness that you can actually hit someone with it. The short demo of the device in the vid shows that putting more than light contact force on it can cause the rod to collapse. It sacrifices that solid length and degree of stiffness that gives to make it collapsible. Still, it is a pretty neat gimmick device.

There are other collapsible staff weapons that are built more like an asp but they are not exactly pocket-sized either.

Would it make sense for small craft launched from ships to have one-way/onetime use emergency FTL drives?

Was definitely thinking of that, for fighters, especially if I didn't want to go the Star Wars route of having small hyperdrives the size of the X-Wing.

Edited by Jasaiga on Aug 17th 2018 at 12:00:07 PM

I'm confused by your question. Isnt the mothership right there?

"Emergency" would imply mothership isn't available or not safe to land on for a variety of reasons

It might make sense if it is cheap easily replaced one shot and actually brings the pilot and craft to safety where they can be retrieved.

Unless the drives are really cheap, or emergencies are really commonplace, it probably makes more sense to send another carrier to come get them.

Not to mention, even if they would get "stuck behind enemy lines" even IRL, they normaly just take the stranded sailors POW.

I cant imagine that would change in space, if any thing I imagine they would be under even more pressure to take them POW due to the hostility of the environment.

Actually, it would be a lot better to have the pilot transported close to the carrier. One you don't have to send the far more expensive ship into possible harm's way to fetch a single pilot. Two you get to keep your pilot and better yet keep them out of enemy hands. It would also help simplify SAR given you could have programmed to pop them out within a given range of the parent ship without having the scan vast swathes of space to find a relatively small and possibly rapidly cooling spacecraft and its occupant human. Time is also an issue especially in very dangerous environments like space. The sooner you are within recovery range the better your odds are of surviving.

The one catch is if it is a cost-effective method or not? If you can build cheap one-shot FTL drives that can do a pre-programmed return jump and afford to put them in your small craft, there is actually a lot more reasons to just use that option over sending the big parent ship to gather them up or letting the enemy snag them. Getting a living pilot back in general and increasing your odds of doing so is almost always preferable.

Only question is if it would be safe to use. The jump Might kill the pilot, depending on how damaged the craft is.

Same could be said of any pilot ejection or safety mechanism. Much better to have the option in my opinion.