Space ships in sci-fi - which is the most 'realistic'?

[Chronos]

Basically, you’d have a group of crewmen huddled over a box with wires coming out of it, and explaining to the Captain what that box would do if it wasn’t broken. Some boxes they could fix, some boxes even the crewmen didn’t understand, and could only order replacements for. Interesting contrast to the “Do Anything Engineer” that you see in other shows like Star Trek.

Firefly had a bit with that, too. In one episode, some part or another breaks, and Kaylee can’t fix it-- She needs to get a replacement part. Some things you can fix, and some you can’t.

What’s really great about it is, if you re-watch the series and pay attention, in every episode before that, Kaylee is nagging Mal about replacing that part, since it’s under a lot of strain and wearing out.

[XT]

In the Vatta’s War series being discuss, a lot of the tech is deliberately proprietary and put in closed, sealed modular system. Only techs from the various companies can get into the closed systems. If you have a problem (they have redundancy in most cases) you’d just swap out a sealed unit at the next port of call. That actually makes sense. I agree that the Vatta universe ships are also relatively realistic, and space combat also seems pretty realistic. However, they do have instantaneous communications and eventually figure out how to put that on star ships as well, which sort of takes away a bit, for me at least.

I really like the Lost Fleet series for just this reason. Star ships can jump between stars, but when not traveling in hyperspace they are pretty realistic, only getting to speeds of very low fractions of the speed of light (like .1c at most, IIRC), and you have all of the time lag in communications, you have inertia effects and even some relativistic effects to deal with as well. Same with the Kris Longknife series…when not leaping between the stars using hyperspace jump points the ships act like you would imagine they would if you could come up with a continuous thrust drive. When they are accelerating it’s at speeds of 1G (or maybe up to 3G’s for short periods), and the crew has the effect of gravity…but when the ship stops accelerating they have to worry about zero G effects.

-XT

[Raguleader]

@Chronos

Firefly had a bit with that, too. In one episode, some part or another breaks, and Kaylee can’t fix it-- She needs to get a replacement part. Some things you can fix, and some you can’t.

What’s really great about it is, if you re-watch the series and pay attention, in every episode before that, Kaylee is nagging Mal about replacing that part, since it’s under a lot of strain and wearing out.

There’s a later episode, with Kaylee and Wash poking around in a junkyard for spare parts. If you watch Wash in the background, while Kaylee is complaining about being stuck doing this instead of getting to go into the city, Wash picks up a part exactly like the one that recently broke and had to be replaced, shrugging before tossing it over his shoulder.

[Rocketeer]

@drastic_quench

That means you’d have to manufacture all of those systems to have a pi curvature which would be a nightmare for both manufacturing and shipping.

…and yet somehow they manage it on commercial airliners :dubious: