Questions tagged [propulsion]
For questions about the process of moving an object forward by applying force, especially in the context of moving flying vehicles or spacecraft by applying thrust.
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Gas-giant aided interplanetary transfer system, ring vs laser
As I mentioned in previous questions, my story takes place within a star system featuring several gas giants.
I have been wondering how they could be exploited to make interplanetary travel more ...
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How much propulsion could solar weather induced variations in Earth's magnetic field provide?
The Bifrost Drive is so named because it taps into a source of energy that drives the aurora borealis. It works as follows:
A craft is placed into the Earth's magnetotail near the L2 point. (I ...
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What materials are best for creating a solar sail based of scientific factors [duplicate]
What materials are best to use for a solar sail? Since solar sails function through the transference of momentum from photons, a high reflectivity material would be best, no? Are there any scientific ...
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Viable power source for a spacecraft to reach relativistic speed [closed]
I’m working on a vehicle that can move from planet to planet in my novel in a short time frame (less than 1 day), and it needs a power source. It is made for shuttling heavy cargo (valuable minerals ...
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Potentially viable methods of accelerating a projectile of 10kg to relativistic speed within the limitations and requirements below
Is there a potentially workable method of accelerating a 10kg projectile to relativistic speed (in this question it is defined as 1%C even though the lorenz factor is fairly small at this speed) ...
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How could jet fighter development be delayed by about 15-17 years without impacting the development of piston engined aircraft?
Though it may sound similar, this is not a duplicate of this. The core difference is that the question there is limiting the development of all aircraft, but this is about limiting development of ...
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Amount of antimatter needed to propel large spacecraft?
Okay, So i'm not really into physics or mathematics but i'm trying my best to learn some bit of how the calculations needed for the amount of antimatter needed to propel a spacecrafft to relativistic ...
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Is there a reason for Rocket-style vertical takeoff craft when you don't need to bring reaction mass?
Reactionless Drives?
I have a sci-fi setting that takes place very far in the future. I like to think it tends toward the harder side of sci-fi, so I'm trying to minimize the number of Clarketechs (...
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Maximum acceleration of minimally modified humans in acceleration fluid
I've been looking into viable accelerations for minimally modified humans in an acceleration-gel-type chamber. Minimally modified means no permanent or significant changes to the human body. Examples ...
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Could a supernova powered starship work/survive?
As in, it forces the star to undergo rapid nova/supernova by contracting the star. It then redirects the force of the nova/supernova out the back end, via ricocheting the force around the ship till it ...
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What is the best engine type for linear acceleration?
Linear Acceleration: A form of transit in space flight where a spacecraft points toward a destination and accelerates for half of the distance it needs to travel, then decelerates for the other half, ...
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Mt. Everest Hyperloop- Reborn
In my previous question, I was discussing about the possibility of using a mass-driver on Mt. Everest, to propel payloads to space, and reduce the amount of fuel needed (RIP bulky rockets). A diagram ...
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With infinite propellant, would a solid offer more thrust than say a liquid or gas?
I've been refining the design and inner workings of my spaceships lately and one thing I've been asking myself was what propellant would work best. I needed my ships to travel astronomical distances ...
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Silent Ships: Can we Keep the Mer folk Happy?
Modern ships are loud.
So loud in fact, that it is actively harming ocean life.
Now, this alone is a serious issue that needs to be addressed. However, in my world the issue is compounded due to the ...
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Would hoofed creatures bother with sails on their ships?
So I am working on a species of large quadrupedal sentient beings at a level of technology similar to 16th century Asia. Specifically I was trying to conjure up an image to what their sailing vessels ...
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I designed a Mt. Everest Hyperloop. Do you see any issues with it? How can I improve it?
So, I designed a mass driver on Mt. Everest.
The mass driver is powered by "PERMANENT" magnet rings with a strength of 5 teslas each (the black lines in the tube). The mass driver then ...
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Fusion Prevention Field - What Are the Plausible Mechanisms?
In my story, a group of human colonists are set to colonize a distant planet. But on their way there, the fusion drive on the ship stop functioning when they enter an uncharted system, and they crash ...
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Does shoving matter between two portals generate thrust?
My sci-fi has alien ships coming carrying warp gates. I figured that this technology would have steppingstones and other possible applications. One of which was propulsion without losing mass.
To ...
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Is there any plausible way for a creature to fly in the way characters like superman does? [duplicate]
I'm making a superhero comic a little more grounded in reality. One of the characters in it is a genetically modified soldier who has abilities very similar to superman. How would such a character fly ...
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Is this concept for very low energy space travel plausible?
Humanity is on its last lap. A once great empire has been reduced to a single Dyson sphere around the dying sun, and most of the matter of the solar system has already been incorporated into this last ...
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Could an aircraft power its flight only by heating the air around it?
Your typical aircraft propels itself by expelling something, may it be air, combusted fuel or even ions. Would it be possible for an aircraft to do none of those things and simply heat the air around ...
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Nuclear Propulsion System [closed]
Is it plausible to:
Have a huge nuclear powered aircraft carrier to be propelled by H2-O2 rocket engine (size adjust) where you generate both reactants from sea water through Electrolysis.
What would ...
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For how much and for how long would a "Closed Cycle Nuclear Thermal Rocket Engine" generate thrust for a floating ship?
Context/TLDR:
The "Closed Cycle Nuclear Thermal Rocket Engine" is just a big nuclear steam engine that in this specific case, uses the (non radioactive) water steam to stay in air, at the ...
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Moving Ceres to a new home?
Is it possible to use Ceres is a generational garden ship? The idea would be to tunnel out a Stanford torus like set-up under the regolith in the ice layer around the equator: underground but ...
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Industrial scale Tritium production from Helium3?
Currently Tritium is produced by neutron bombardment of Lithium. I was looking into alternatives and learned that Helium3 has a rather large cross section for reacting with thermal neutrons. From what ...
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Is a Nuclear Thermal Propelled Submarine Possible?
So I've recently read about NTR's and how they can be applied in space. Here is a link to the website that I've looked at: http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/enginelist2.php#ntrsolidcore
It ...
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How could I make an ion engine work within an atmosphere?
I’m trying to think of a way to explain how the ion engines in Star Wars ships are able to work within an atmosphere. Ion engines can only work in a vacuum, and don’t have the proper thrust to take ...
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The demise of the Bussard ramjet. Long live the Bussard ramjet. Can we save it @ Worldbuilding?
Robert Bussard's ramjet, as featured in Tau Zero and most recently noted by Carl Sagan in Cosmos, may be dead. In 1960, Bussard proposed a space propulsion system that relied on a nuclear electric ...
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How hard scifi is a graviton gravity drive?
What if, hypothetically, gravitons could be captured and stored. Then, a beam of gravitons is projected in front of the ship, each individual graviton not having much pull, but together, warping space ...
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Realistic sublight propulsion [closed]
I was wondering if there was a realistic propulsion method that needs at most the power output of a fusion reactor which can be small enough to fit on a personal spacecraft, is efficient enough to do ...
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Does it make sense to put solid propellant in a funnel?
A particular spacecraft engine is designed to work with a propellant made up of very dense dust. If this engine was on a ship that was designed for constant acceleration through space, would there be ...
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Decelerating a relativistic, beam-powered starship at its destination without pre-established power-beaming infrastructure at said destination
Some background
As most of us know, accelerating to relativistic speeds requires truly astronomical amounts of energy. I have internalized that a ship carrying enough energy/fuel to accelerate to near-...
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Asteroid/comet deflection: Will a stream of nukes work?
Imagine you want to change the course of an asteroid quickly. You have huge resources at your disposal. What is the best way to move an asteroid quickly? Consider different compositions, chiefly solid ...
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How can high PeV particles from galactic accelerators be used to propel a spaceship?
The Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory, or LHAASO, in China has just detected an extremely high energy particle from some unknown particle accelerator in the galaxy, 140 times more powerful ...
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Decent present or near future propulsion system for moving around in orbit or changing orbits
For the world I am constructing, I trying to come up with a spacecraft that could be reasonably be built with present or near future technology that could travel around and change orbits relatively ...
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Is it possible to make a "safe" electromagnetic "jet engine" using extremely long wavelengths?
Here's the idea: Building a "jet fighter" that can operate in extended combat conditions with no atmosphere without losing air superiority in atmosphere.
It's not going to have both ...
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Could a jet engine that uses water as fuel work?
Could a jet engine that uses water work?
The idea is that water is sucked in, compressed, and boiled instantly by a dozen mirror focused industrial grade lasers. The resulting super heated gases would ...
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How can you create non-centripetal artificial gravity and apply it to propel a spacecraft by riding the gravitational space time warp?
I like the idea that it is possible to use the warping of spacetime as a propelling force to move spacecraft through an independent non-centripetal artificial gravity drive.
This drive uses the ...
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Orientation of a cylindrical habitat/ship in transit
Assume you have an inhabited O'Neill or McKendree-style cylindrical habitat or ship designed to move between star systems—not unlike Rama. What are the major advantages and disadvantages of ...
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Realistic acceleration with Laser Propulsion for intra-stellar 1 million ton cargo ship
My question is about how realistic it is to imagine beamed solar energy accelerating a 1M ton or so vessel up to 600km/s or more within a few hours.
I can look up the specific energy required to ...
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Would a Micro Black Hole locked in Mirror Storage have a felt weight?
I understand that Black Holes, even the small ones, are very dense and heavy. Even a micro black hole will probably weigh as much as a skyscraper, a few million tonnes.
I then saw a starship ...
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How dangerous would a Stelaser be?
So assuming the following, a Stelaser is build that can, at max, push a Ship with a Mass of 3 Megatons at 2G for several weeks if need be.
Needless to say, that's a stupidly powerful and concentrated ...
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What is the limit of acceleration of a gravity drive?
Let's say I have a device that can produce an area of artificial gravity. Never mind how, or what universe-rending effects this has; I flip a switch, and the gravitational gradient in the drive's area ...
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Is a Solar Jet possible?
A "Solar Jet" in my imagination would be a thruster that collects solar wind with magnetic fields, charges the particles, then expels those charged particles through a nozzle. It could be ...
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Reasonableness of Micropiles
In a few of Isaac Asimov's stories, including The Martian Way, he uses water as a reaction mass to provide sub-light travel, and he mentions that the water is heated using "micropiles".
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How far off the ground would an android have to hover to not cause damage with their ionic thruster(s)?
If a humanoid robot or other similar weight and sized robots used ionic thrusters on their feet/base of their body to fly and hover along the ground, how far would they need to hover from the ground ...
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What is the maximum size of a planet that a chemical rocket can leave it?
I encountered sci-fi stories about planets of the twice the mass of Earth, and the characters were able to leave them in spaceships.
I wonder, whether it is possible at all?
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Could you create a space craft that is powered by neutrinos mostly?
I was thinking whether neutrinos (or antineutrinos) could be used to propel space craft. This is because neutrinos are plentiful in the universe. What if neutrinos could interact through the weak ...
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Plausible propulsion methods given a virtually infinite electric power source
Humanity discovered a new energy source, virtually infinite, that can produce gigawatts of electric power using devices of few kilograms.
Land and sea transport obviously will switch to electric ...
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Fusion- or antimatter-powered propulsion: Which one will we likely develop first?
In terms of scientific and engineering challenges, which one is closer to fruition? Specifically I am looking for the feasibility of using one of these systems for space-only travel between the orbits ...
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