Family Car Spaceships

[TOSDOC]

Watching a certain sci-fi movie this weekend got me thinking again about how most of our beloved sci-fi spaceships are treated like the family car, with our beloved characters jumping right in, [turning the key] and blasting off into the atmosphere and beyond, without the hassle of preflight checks and countdowns. I understand that's to drive plot, and need not be depicted anymore than a character stopping to use the loo, but I thought it would be fun to start naming some of our favorite ships here, the characteristics that make it comparable in fiction as what's in our driveway, and how today's tech can work towards this.

What would it take for you to be comfortable enough to climb into your personal ship and blast off without worrying about atmosphere checks and engine trouble with NASA attention to detail, as easily as going to the supermarket?

[Zor]

A whole lot of automation, including an emergency shutdown system that turned off the vehicle. Also, some gravitic or reactionless drives that turns off when it if fails, rather than exploding.

Zor

[Batman]

Except, of course, that's not anybody but yours definitition of a spaceship.

[Batman]

Technically true, though by that definition cars and naval ships are spaceships too. They too travel through space, afterall, they just do it on the surface of a planet.
And I'm not all that sure the 'blasting off into the unknown' happens all that often either. ANH, Han was already prepped for takeoff, he just needed to calculate the course for Alderaan. ESB, Han was already prepped for takeoff, the damn hyperdrive just wouldn't work.
Trek, about the only instance I recall where they set sail without proper preparations is TMP and that one backfired on them something fierce.
Just because we aren't shown in detail how the ship was prepared for departure/battle doesn't mean it didn't happen.

[Simon_Jester]

Although a lot of the characters in pulp would be quite capable of doing preparations in advance- checking wiring and hardware on their own ships, calculating courses, and so on.

[Batman]

Or the runabouts on DS9 are prepped for departure by default/the onboard computer actually does all the preflight checks (with that kind of technology, you essentially have two choices-a) you trust the computer or b) you don't launch. There's no way you're going to find out if anything's wrong without involving the computer, at least not in time to matter).

[PeZook]

Automating pre-launch checkouts is a big thing nowadays, so I think it might very well become a trend in starship design, especially if one of the design goals is to reduce turnaround (and for commercial spacelines, it almost certainly will be)

[TOSDOC]

Artoo certainly had plenty of time to troubleshoot and prep the X-Wing for takeoff in ESB, and ANH showed dozens of ground crew prepping fighters. The Falcon strikes me as more like an airliner than a car in cockpit layout, and I imagined a prep of at least a few hours before each run.

I like seeing the simpler designs for this kind of thing--I can definitely imagine someone making something like the travel pod in TMP and TWOK as a simple box with automated atmospheric integrity and a simple water-jet propulsion system like D-XIII mentioned. When you talked about atmosphere, the first that came to mind was a spinner from Blade Runner, and I can definitely see the complexity in that compared to the above pod for what's involved. Gravity's a bitch.

The depicted casual use of a complex vessel like DS9 runabouts appears to subliminally prepare people for the wonders of the future without considering or worrying about the consequences of explosive decompression, computer viruses, worn components, and preflight safety checks. I wonder what Jake's training for such a ship was like.

So we have increased automation and decreased complexity of propulsion. What about AAA? Would you seed the solar system with emergency automated tow trucks, running on pressurized water to intercept errant or broken-down vehicles, giving them air and supplies as they need it while waiting for a pickup?

[Terralthra]

As to blasting off, I can think of quite a few in Star Trek: the runabouts in DS9 are used very casually, including by untrained people like Quark and Jake, making off-screen preparations unlikely. (The time Jake did it didn't end well, but that's because he didn't have the keys and tried to hotwire the thing and fell under attack. Quark's little ship would have been fine if his cousin didn't sabotage it.)

The time Jake flew the runabout, he also didn't launch it. He and Nog beamed up to a runabout already in orbit. Pre-flight checks aren't really relevant to a ship already in flight, so to speak.

Both times Quark's shuttle was used, it had preparations beforehand - on its maiden voyage (DS9 to Earth), Rom checked it thoroughly before setting out; on the return trip, Odo spends hours getting the ship ready for departure before the three Ferengi escape.

[Sky Captain]

A space to space ship that only needs few km/s of delta V could be simple enough to be used with minimal training. A pressure fed low performance chemical rocket engine could achieve that performance easily enough. Suppose you want to get from space habitat in lower orbit to habitat in higher orbit. You get aboard the thing power it up, have a computer do all the preflight checks, calculate the course and off you go. You could have crew section seperated from propulsion section by lightweight truss and protected by kevlar shield so in the unlikely case of engine explosion crew section would survive and just drift off to await rescue tug.

An easy to use ship that can lift off from Earth and go into solar system would be a much more harder and basically impossible without significant breakthroughs in propulsion technology.

[PeZook]

You'd really want traffic control in orbit, though, due to obvious concerns about debris et al.

So the flight computer would most likely talk to orbital traffic control and essentially be flown by it, too. Preflight checks could be automated, yeah - with RFID chips and el cheapo sensors in everything, a computer could probably tell when parts are wearing out, nearing their service life and such - and wouldn't launch if the air filter says "No way, I'm past my service date. Swap me out."

Emergency oxygen supplies would be stowed aboard in case life support fails for whatever reason, introduce redundant radio becons to signal for help. Have the crew wear simplified pressure suits, too, just in case.

[Skgoa]

Traffic control isn't universal though. It is only a major problem in low orbit, so it really depends again on just where you are.

In higher orbits, especially if you are already in them and thus don't have significant relative speed to anything, there's a lot more space and a lot less impact energy, so the risks are much smaller.


That said, having it around is probably a good idea anyway since it is a cheap way to be that much safer. But, part of the appeal of the family car is that you can just get in and drive without being stuck to a particular plan or needing advance clearance, so avoiding it is good for that scenario.

Due to the distances involved and most of the travel essentially being done by inertia, you aren't going to get around pre-planning anyways.

You might also have a computer collision avoidance system, standard on all cars. If you are going to hit someone else, fire a quick burst of the emergency thruster. (which might be a separate system, or it might just be some fuel kept in reserve, but a separate system - a simple pressurized gas thruster prolly, could be as simple as one of those co2 cartridges you can buy at bike shops today tho bigger obviousl - would give some reliability if the main engine failure is what caused the problem.)

To make sure the other guy doesn't fire the same way and still hit you, there can be some kind of standard or communication. Like "always fire to the left unless someone is coming up behind you, in which case fire to the right".

Or the car computers can talk to each other, which might be needed of there's going to be a pile-on.



Once the emergency thing fires, you're still in trouble, but the immediate threat is gone, so you can now sit back and wait for the authorities to send a tow. Hopefully, collisions will be rare enough that this is manageable.

Due to orbital mechanics, we know at all times exactly when which spacecraft will be where. But you are right, IMHO we will see a certain minimum dV to be available at all times written into the lawbooks. ("To the left" is meaningless in space BTW but we all know that already. )

[aussiemuscle308]

The jump in and fly seems to be most common on Star Trek. There is one episode of DS9 where all the stations on defiant make their call out and they make sure moorings are retracted and stuff, which was cool.

if i was flying FTL i wouldn't be just sitting their until i decided i was close enough to my destination to turn it off. You'd more likely have the computer counting down by the millisecond.

[vengence]

Because everything is automated in the future; you don't need to do anything because the computer did them already. preflight check: done, flight plan logged with traffic control: done, approval to launch: done; whats left... turn the key, well if your really lazy you can get the computer to do that too, same goes with flying(better yet it would probably be safer to let the computer do the flying).

[lPeregrine]

Also don't forget that at least some of these scenes involve taking off under time pressure. For example, in ANH Han might have liked to run through the entire preflight checklist, but those pesky details tend to get put aside when people are shooting at you. Most likely it works like a real-world airplane: you can just turn the key and go (if I was parked next to the runway, I could be in the air in under a minute), but it's really not a good idea since you're giving up your best chance to catch any problems while you're safely on the ground.

And of course technology level counts as well. A civilization that has had widespread space travel for a long time is a lot more likely to have refined everything to the point that you get family car level safety and reliability along with automated startup. On the other hand, a civilization that is new to space travel won't have that refinement, so there will be a lot more preflight checks and preparation if you don't want to risk your life on a stupid gamble.

[PeZook]

As Destructionator points out, civilization is measured by access to rescue.

200 years ago, venturing into the Rockies required very, very careful preparation because if something went tits-up, you were basically fucked. Today, you can do short trips with only very basic preparation because help is available quickly (cell phones YAY).

Same for space, really. The closer you are to help, the less stringent safety measures have to be.