can anyone help me? sci-fi fan in a spot of bother

[film_student_07]

i am a level 2 film student, currently writing a sci-fi film (it's in it's early pre-production stages), however, i want to stay true to the genre, and as much research i have done and how much i love sci-fi i am unfortunatly limited in my knowlodge, my hope was that someone here may be able to help me in the technology side of the ship i am setting this film on...

...i have given the ship many back-up/alteration systems as i'm aware most technology has that capability to back itself up if it needs to (and sci-fi films where the ship has only one computer that gets sabataged annoys me), i have also made everything as essential/basic as is nessesary, i.e. crew quaters and workstations...

...some of my questions may seem a bit tedious but please bear with me, i love the genre and have no desire to ruin it but to myself write a story about it, but, as i already said, am limited to my own knowlodge and thought that you guys would be able to help me a bit more....one of my first questions is how i can fit in a heating element, the ship obviously needs to be heated in some way (its in our galaxy but around the jupiter and saturn area) so was wondering if i could get advice on that....also the life support system, how exactly can i keep that real?

i'd be so gratefull for replies and if you are interested in helping me on a regular basis with this, please let me know i.e emails addys etc, i'm more than happy to share credit.

thank you
Kristen 'smithy' Smith

[Patrick Degan]

Electric heating elements connected to the ship's power grid would be adequate. For life support, you have an onboard oxygen storage —possibly backed up by vegetation to supplement oxygen production (an idea of Clarke's), carbon-scrubbers to keep the air pure (such as what's depicted in Apollo 13) and you will need water filtration and recycling. The ship's life module would have to be insulated to keep the internal heat from simply bleeding away into space, and will also need some sort of shielding against cosmic radiation. Several proposed designs for space stations and in-system spacecraft discuss the possibility of using an outer layer of ice to block radiation. If you want to make your ship a bit more advanced, you could propose the idea that it generates its own electromagnetic field to act in the same capacity as Earth's own magnetic field to deflect incoming radiation.

[Shroom Man 777]

Indeed, the ship's power source will give all the electrical energy needed for the water heating. As for the air, yes, oxygen supplies and also a greenhouse. See the excellent film Sunshine for some cues.

Anyway, unless your film's subject matter deals specifically with starship heating and oxygen supplies (like, if your movie is about a stranded ship losing air, or the crew freezing to death first), I don't think you should sweat on the small stuff. Excellent sci-fi films from Star Wars to Aliens didn't really delve too deep into these technical aspects.

Does your film need a very realistic or technically accurate depiction of spaceship sci-fi technology for it to work?

[Simon_Jester]

i am a level 2 film student, currently writing a sci-fi film (it's in it's early pre-production stages), however, i want to stay true to the genre, and as much research i have done and how much i love sci-fi i am unfortunatly limited in my knowlodge, my hope was that someone here may be able to help me in the technology side of the ship i am setting this film on...

All right. So your goal is to produce a hard science fiction film. Excellent! There are not nearly enough of those! This deserves encouragement.

Now, let's ask some general questions:
-Does your story involve interstellar travel, or does it take place entirely within our solar system?
-Does your story involve space combat?
-Does your story involve planetary exploration?
-How comfortable are you with the different distance and time scales involved in astronomy?
-How many technologies not known or easily predicted from today's science are you willing/planning to introduce?*

There's a lot of advice that people here can give you regardless of the answers to those questions, of course, but which advice they give you depends heavily on the answers, because you're operating under different constraints when you explore different parts of the overall set of possibilities.**

*From the sound of it, I'd guess that the answer is "zero," because you're so concerned with making everything technically accurate.
**Consider the differences between filming a romantic comedy set in 2010 New York and 1860 London, for instance; even if the plot synopsis is very much the same, many of the details change enormously.
________

...i have given the ship many back-up/alteration systems as i'm aware most technology has that capability to back itself up if it needs to (and sci-fi films where the ship has only one computer that gets sabataged annoys me), i have also made everything as essential/basic as is nessesary, i.e. crew quaters and workstations...

Backups are good; so are spartan living conditions if you're trying to get the feel right.

If you want information on what living conditions aboard a large spaceship might be like, the closest analogy you can get within historical experience would probably be submarines. Like submarines, large spacecraft would be away from port for a long time, with a large, technically skilled crew living under crowded conditions. Many of the amenities of modern life aren't going to be available. As in a submarine, there are many pieces of equipment that must work for the ship to survive, and keeping things running often requires great mechanical skill and improvisational ability.

One of the best films I know of for conveying the feel of life in a submarine is the classic Das Boot; you might want to watch it if you haven't already. Among other things, it's something that other people in your department are relatively likely to have seen, which makes it a good reference point for them, as well as for you.
________

one of my first questions is how i can fit in a heating element, the ship obviously needs to be heated in some way (its in our galaxy but around the jupiter and saturn area)

By this you mean that the story takes place inside the solar system?

In any case, as Patrick and Shroom said, your best bet is a simple electric heater: the ship will need electric power anyway, and there are several plausible ways to generate it. Their other ideas are good for life support, too.

In general for questions about the kinds of spacecraft that could be built using easily predictable* near-future technology, the best reference I've ever seen is Atomic Rocket, a website maintained by a fellow named Nyrath who's actually a member of this forum. The site contains a lot of equations and tables that you can use if you're inclined that way, but there's a great deal of content describing spaceships in the words and pictures alone; the math is not necessary if it wouldn't be helpful to you. In particular, you may want to look at the design aesthetic of some of the more realistic spacecraft designs.

The only catch, of course, is that the site's a bit overwhelming at first; it's gotten very large over the past few years. Just don't be intimidated, and it should prove helpful.

*As in, knowing what we do about science, we can confidently predict that it will one day be possible to build these things, even if we cannot build them today.

[Serafina]

If you want to story to be hard sci-fi, it will propably limit the scopes of stories you can tell. The harder it gets, the more limited you are (naturally, since you have to leave out the soft sci-fi stuff).

If you want to include a piece of technology, always ask yourself how necessary it really is for your story.
E.g. faster-than-light travel is pretty much a necessity if you want to involve more than just a solar system within reasonable timeframes. So while FTL is quite soft scifi, it is often necessary.

Another example: StarTrek-like Teleporters. They are cool etc. - but do you need them in your story? Are they just a neat little way to get down to a planet or a deus-ex-machina to get out of danger? Or are they an essential part of the technology? Are you willing to consider all implementations such using them as storage, for revival and rejunvination, medical devices etc. etc?

An excellent example for this way of thinking is the Honorverse by David Weber. All its special (read: soft) technology revolves around one thing: Gravity manipulation (and, to an excent, the existance of a sort of hyperspace).
He took that and used it do decribe all sort of things - such as inertial compensators (necessary for any significant acceleration), FTL, exhaust-less drives, shields, giant buildings (they are cool ) and so on.
But the fact that it just adds one new "kind" of technology makes it feel harder than if you use tons of different explanations.

Don't let the technology interupt the storytelling. It is ok to show off once in a while, but don't do it all the time.
You want to show that your ship was built by good engineers and has backup systems? Just add a line like "primary systems are down, secondaries are coming up" or "Captain, we lost our secondary reactor - if the primary fails now, we are all dead".
You want to show that space travel is about acceleration rather than maximum speed? Just don't use any maximum speeds - or make it an arbitrary maximum that takes really long to reach and is therefore only relevant over long distances.
You want to show that they have biodomes and lifesupport? Show them, and make the chief of the enviormental department an important person.

Oh, another important point:
Space is not expensive aboard a spacesship - mass is.
Of course, larger rooms need bigger walls, so space still costs something - but due to the square-cube law, big rooms are not that much of an issue. So you do not need to have cramped crew quarters.
However, this changes on a warhip - you want to have more walls and smaller rooms since it reduces the risk of depressurizing and damage. Bit rooms are still ok (say, for storage areas), but the rooms get smaller. After all, you do want to be a small target.

[Thanas]

One piece of advice - do not make it about technology. Technology does a bad story make. You need characters first and foremost.

Yeah, I know this usually goes without saying, but if you got the choice between character exposition and technology exposition, go with the former.

[Knife]

I would suggest doing a little google fu on water purification systems on naval ship, and perhaps some research on power cells. What would be cool is if you could merge the two technologies for your story; in which, you have 'ships power' powered by a power cell turning hydrogen and oxygen into water; then using that water to drink, wash, and cook; and then break the water up into hydrogen and oxygen so you can breath the oxygen. Along with carbon scubbers and other passive technology.

[Serafina]

One piece of advice - do not make it about technology. Technology does a bad story make. You need characters first and foremost.

Yeah, I know this usually goes without saying, but if you got the choice between character exposition and technology exposition, go with the former.

That's why you have important characters if one field of technology is important to you.
If engineering is important in your story, let the chief engineer (or another person from engineering) be an important character.
If medicine is important, let the surgeon commander be an important character.
If enviormental tech is important - well, you get the picture.

Just be carefull that you do not make them one-dimensional characters - if a character is nothing but his job and defined by nothing else, you did it wrong.

[Teleros]

Number one, and I know this has been said already, but even so... make it a story about people. Those people might be advanced AIs and robots, but make them recognisable to the audience as people.


As far as technology goes, this really depends on how "hard" sci-fi you're going for. Most popular sci-fi is of the "soft" variety (or space opera) - eg Star Wars etc - although quite a few bits of "Avatar" are hard sci-fi (eg the big starship at the beginning, but probably not an Earth-like moon in orbit around a gas giant). The fact that you have already decided to include proper backup systems is a good thing from a technical standpoint (although it will make drama more difficult). As for the heating system and life support... well here goes nothing.

Heating:
Most sci-fi settings have ships powered by some form of reactor (fission, fusion, antimatter... whatever). Due to thermodynamics, no system can ever be 100% efficient... and due to engineering limitations, you'll be lucky to get anywhere near that. As such, your reactor will produce a fair amount of waste heat, depending on just how efficient it is. Unless your ship is to melt (!), this will have to be radiated away from the ship using, well, radiators. Watch the intro to "Avatar" - those big glowing panels are that ship's radiators, pumping out waste heat into space.
As such, heating your ship is in fact the least of your worries - some heat will always radiate away from the ship's hull, but unless you have incredibly high efficiencies for your power supply, you'll more than make up for it.


Life Support
There are perhaps four key parts of this you have to consider. In no particular order:

1. Recycling: Unless you're on a fairly short mission, you'll need to recycle waste products in order to avoid having to lug around even more mass (which isn't efficient - unless the bulk of your recycling systems is even less efficient, but that's... unlikely).

2. Gravity: The easiest realistic way to generate this is the good old spinning section of a ship. Important for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is damage to bones caused by prolonged exposure to low gravity in astronauts today.

3. On-board supplies: Apart from food, water, air and so on, you also have to consider tools, spare parts, and so on. The shorter the trip and the more extensive the infrastructure is where you're heading to etc, the less of an issue this is.

4. Shielding: There's plenty of radiation zipping around in space, not to mention micrometeorites and the like, and the last thing you want is to irradiate your crew or have to plug leaks every day. Probably the cheapest way of shielding the crew & critical components of your ship is to coccoon them in supplies. Armour works well of course, but the extra mass will do bad things to your delta-v.




Finally, and frankly I'm surprised this hasn't been mentioned earlier by anyone... go and read the Atomic Rockets website. It is perhaps THE best free, web-based resource out there for anyone seeking information on all this kind of stuff. The author can also be found on these forums, under the username "Nyrath".

[Drooling Iguana]

I was under the impression that algae tanks would work better for converting CO2 into oxygen than greenhouses. Is there any truth to that?

[Simon_Jester]

If you want to include a piece of technology, always ask yourself how necessary it really is for your story.
E.g. faster-than-light travel is pretty much a necessity if you want to involve more than just a solar system within reasonable timeframes. So while FTL is quite soft scifi, it is often necessary.

On the other hand, there are a lot of things you can do with slower than light interstellar travel, because when the trip times are measured in years (at best!), decades, or centuries (more likely)... you can't go back home in case you forgot to turn the gas off, so to speak.

Others have mentioned Avatar; Avatar is written using slower than light travel. Relatively speedy slower than light travel, but still slower than light. And that affects the story in a good way, because it means that the human enclave is a long way from home and doesn't have a very good option for retreating. That contributes to an "us against this alien world" attitude that makes up a lot of the villains' motivation.

Fast travel is good for world-hopping adventure; slow travel is good for embattled pioneers on a hostile world. Or for stories about people feeling out of place in a strange new environment, because they can't go home, or can't count on home being the same when they get there.

Think about how a story about farmers in Illinois today differs from a story about farmers in Illinois in 1850. Today, the farmer can hop in his truck, drive to a city within an hour, catch a plane, and be practically anywhere in the US within six to twelve hours elapsed time. Back in 1850... you were probably days away from the nearest military base and months away from the centers of civilization Back East. If something went badly wrong, it was you and the neighbors and that was it.

Don't let the technology interupt the storytelling. It is ok to show off once in a while, but don't do it all the time.

Oh, God, yes. This. Fortunately, it's a little easier to keep it under control in film, because you can have blinky lights in the background while interesting characters talk in the foreground.

Oh, another important point:
Space is not expensive aboard a spacesship - mass is.
Of course, larger rooms need bigger walls, so space still costs something - but due to the square-cube law, big rooms are not that much of an issue. So you do not need to have cramped crew quarters.
However, this changes on a warhip - you want to have more walls and smaller rooms since it reduces the risk of depressurizing and damage. Bit rooms are still ok (say, for storage areas), but the rooms get smaller. After all, you do want to be a small target.

Shoot. Sorry. Forgot about this.

although quite a few bits of "Avatar" are hard sci-fi (eg the big starship at the beginning, but probably not an Earth-like moon in orbit around a gas giant).

Out of curiosity, what's wrong with that?

Finally, and frankly I'm surprised this hasn't been mentioned earlier by anyone... go and read the Atomic Rockets website. It is perhaps THE best free, web-based resource out there for anyone seeking information on all this kind of stuff. The author can also be found on these forums, under the username "Nyrath".

Ah, Teleros... I did mention it.

[Serafina]

Well, of course STL can be interesting - it all depends on the story you tell.

That has been my main point - ask yourself how your story profits from a technology.
Sci-Fi gets harder if you only include what is necessary to tell your story and the capabilities that result from that (i.e. if you have anti-grav because you NEED it for cheap orbital travel, you will also get higher buildings or airships or something like that). As opposed to just including a piece of technology because it's cool without condsidering this question and the implications of the technology.

[Sheridan]

Since you want your story to be set in the outer system, there are a couple of things to consider.

1.)Habitats. Is humanity spread out through the system, inhabiting various places beyond the Earth's surface? If so, where are they? Do you want to have many orbiting "tin can" habitats, spun for gravity (ala Babylon 5 or Space Station 5 from 2001: A Space Odyssey), or would you prefer to have groundside colonies (like the ones featured in the Mars episodes of Babylon 5 or Moonbase Alpha from Space: 1999)?

2.)Drives. What kind of drives do your spacecraft use, and how brawny are they? Do you want something that can be built off-the-shelf with technology today (like the Shuttle rockets)? Something that might take ten years or less to develop into a usable drive (like NERVA)? Or something that might take a half-century or more (like fusion drives or plasma-core antimatter rockets)?

These two questions will tell you several things about the distance (read: "time") between people, their attitudes towards commercial (and military!) spacecraft, and maybe even something of the politics of the system.

I third (or fourth?) the Atomic Rocket pages. It's unlikely that you'll go wrong with them. However, also see this thread for some interesting ideas about spaceship/colony sensor suites and the feasability of stealth in space.

[Simon_Jester]

I think, before we say much more, it would be good to get more feedback from Film_student about exactly what she's planning. We don't really know what kind of story she wants to write, and giving tons of generic advice without knowing that could get confusing.

[Teleros]

Out of curiosity, what's wrong with that?

Mostly issues with the gravity of the gas giant.

Ah, Teleros... I did mention it.

*Facepalm*

[takemeout_totheblack]

I was under the impression that algae tanks would work better for converting CO2 into oxygen than greenhouses. Is there any truth to that?

Sounds about right, something like more than 80% of the earth's oxygen is created from oceanic algae. Or better yet, you could have the oxygen scrubber algae tanks also serve as Spirulina (super food algae) tanks for food as well, a two in one system!
One thing I've always found interesting but almost never see in mainstream sci-fi is the essentially required 'self contained environment' aspect of hard scifi space travel.
For atmospheric systems: Air -> person -> CO2 -> Algae oxygen scrubbers -> air -> person, and so on.
For food: protein/veg synthesis->person->waste matter->protein/veg synthesis-> and so on
Water reclamation goes without saying.

Of course you'd pack supplies, but for the long haul a ship aught to be a balanced and self sustaining 'ecosystem' in terms of life support. So long as you can supply the energy from the powerplant or from external solar power a starship should be able to sustain life for as long as its parts hold out.

[Simon_Jester]

I was under the impression that algae tanks would work better for converting CO2 into oxygen than greenhouses. Is there any truth to that?

Sounds about right, something like more than 80% of the earth's oxygen is created from oceanic algae. Or better yet, you could have the oxygen scrubber algae tanks also serve as Spirulina (super food algae) tanks for food as well, a two in one system!

Doesn't Spirulina taste so utterly horrible that no sane person would ever eat it?

One thing I've always found interesting but almost never see in mainstream sci-fi is the essentially required 'self contained environment' aspect of hard scifi space travel.
For atmospheric systems: Air -> person -> CO2 -> Algae oxygen scrubbers -> air -> person, and so on.
For food: protein/veg synthesis->person->waste matter->protein/veg synthesis-> and so on
Water reclamation goes without saying.

Of course you'd pack supplies, but for the long haul a ship aught to be a balanced and self sustaining 'ecosystem' in terms of life support. So long as you can supply the energy from the powerplant or from external solar power a starship should be able to sustain life for as long as its parts hold out.

There's a catch:

For any given ship size, making the recycling system more efficient is always going to add weight. At some point, making the system better doesn't justify the mass penalty, because the extra weight of the system is heavier than just packing supplies would be.

For example: Let's say my crew uses 100 kilograms of water a day. The ship needs to be able to stay out in space for up to 100 days. I can choose one of two recycling units.

Unit 1: This unit weighs 1000 kilograms and recycles water at 90% efficiency.
Unit 2: This unit weighs 2000 kilograms and recycles water at 95% efficiency (twice as heavy, but half the wastage).

If I use unit 1, I lose 10% of my water every day: 10 kg a day, or 1000 kg over the course of the trip. I will need to pack 1000 kg of recycler, and 1000 kg of extra water, for a total of 2000 kg.

If I use unit 2, I lose 5% of my water every day, or 5*100 = 500 kg over the course of the trip. I need 500 kg of extra water... on top of a 2000 kg recycler. Now the total is 2500 kg.

So at some point you hit diminishing returns: it's easier and cheaper to haul the surplus food than it is to haul a system that can recycle the food. As a rule, for water and air, it makes more sense to use a recycler. For food, the math generally works out so that it's better to haul dried food along than to try and feed the ship off a vegetable garden.

This might change for ships designed to fly extremely long voyages, of years or more. For one, at that point the total tonnage of food the crew consumes is staggering and a renewable food source becomes more appealing. For another, most kinds of nutritious stored food don't last more than a few years.

[takemeout_totheblack]

I was under the impression that algae tanks would work better for converting CO2 into oxygen than greenhouses. Is there any truth to that?

Sounds about right, something like more than 80% of the earth's oxygen is created from oceanic algae. Or better yet, you could have the oxygen scrubber algae tanks also serve as Spirulina (super food algae) tanks for food as well, a two in one system!

Doesn't Spirulina taste so utterly horrible that no sane person would ever eat it?

Seems to be the popular notion, but I've tried spirulina recently and it seems to be okay*! But I was thinking more along the lines of what you talk about below, a 1000kg vat of spirulina can probably perform similarly to a several thousand kilogram industrial sized oxygen scrubber. As an added bonus, should the 'hydroponics bay' suffer a bout of [insert contrived catastrophe here] then all you need do is reroute sufficient quantities of hydroponic nutrients to double Sp-reproduction and eat the excess. The crew can just hold their nose and stomp their feet until normal food production is restored, but they'll still eat it. I thought it'd be a handy double function for an integrated system.

*In that I didn't feel the need to vomit, spit it out, or rather die than eat some more. Seriously, the stuff has insane nutritional value and the taste isn't too bad.

For any given ship size, making the recycling system more efficient is always going to add weight. At some point, making the system better doesn't justify the mass penalty, because the extra weight of the system is heavier than just packing supplies would be.

For example: Let's say my crew uses 100 kilograms of water a day. The ship needs to be able to stay out in space for up to 100 days. I can choose one of two recycling units.

Unit 1: This unit weighs 1000 kilograms and recycles water at 90% efficiency.
Unit 2: This unit weighs 2000 kilograms and recycles water at 95% efficiency (twice as heavy, but half the wastage).

If I use unit 1, I lose 10% of my water every day: 10 kg a day, or 1000 kg over the course of the trip. I will need to pack 1000 kg of recycler, and 1000 kg of extra water, for a total of 2000 kg.

If I use unit 2, I lose 5% of my water every day, or 5*100 = 500 kg over the course of the trip. I need 500 kg of extra water... on top of a 2000 kg recycler. Now the total is 2500 kg.

So at some point you hit diminishing returns: it's easier and cheaper to haul the surplus food than it is to haul a system that can recycle the food. As a rule, for water and air, it makes more sense to use a recycler. For food, the math generally works out so that it's better to haul dried food along than to try and feed the ship off a vegetable garden.

This might change for ships designed to fly extremely long voyages, of years or more. For one, at that point the total tonnage of food the crew consumes is staggering and a renewable food source becomes more appealing. For another, most kinds of nutritious stored food don't last more than a few years.

I was thinking more along the lines of a hard scifi generational ship, or a long range transport.

[Junghalli]

Kristen, you may find this useful: NASA Facts: Living and Working In Space.

On the other hand, there are a lot of things you can do with slower than light interstellar travel

Yes, this. I'd hate to see an aspiring author discouraged from writing hard SF because it doesn't let you have the hero visit a new star system every week. If you want an interstellar setting with hard SF there are plenty of possibilities, especially if you abandon the (IMO rather silly and very depressing) notion that people centuries from now would be limited to natural human lifespans.

[someone_else]

Another cool thing to look at, if you are not a math-inclined guy, is Attack Vector: Tactical, a starship battles board game that tries to be both hard-science and fun (thus would be a good starting point for your fiction, that must be fun while also harder-science than most other fiction). The guy that made Atomic Rockets quotes the game developer's words on various matters in his site.

[Feil]

Heating:
Most sci-fi settings have ships powered by some form of reactor (fission, fusion, antimatter... whatever). Due to thermodynamics, no system can ever be 100% efficient... and due to engineering limitations, you'll be lucky to get anywhere near that. As such, your reactor will produce a fair amount of waste heat, depending on just how efficient it is. Unless your ship is to melt (!), this will have to be radiated away from the ship using, well, radiators. Watch the intro to "Avatar" - those big glowing panels are that ship's radiators, pumping out waste heat into space.
As such, heating your ship is in fact the least of your worries - some heat will always radiate away from the ship's hull, but unless you have incredibly high efficiencies for your power supply, you'll more than make up for it.

To follow up on this -

Vacuum is the best thermal insulator - all your heat dissipation is going to come from radiation, which is generally the least efficient of heat dissipation mechanisms (the others being conduction (the reason why you can burn yourself on a mug, when you're just fine putting your lips a centimeter away from your drink) and convection (the reason why your computer has fans blowing air across the radiators, replacing air that has been heated up (by a mixture of conduction and radiation) with cool air from the room). Your biggest heat-related issue will likely be keeping the ship - and certain parts of the ship that generate more heat than others - cool. The more power your ship generates, the more heat you will have to find a way to dump. Big radiator panels are a nice way to go. If you make them coils in stead of panels, so that they can warp and deform a little without causing issues, you might even make them glow red hot without bending physics too much, which would be a pretty snazzy look for a space ship!

And if you really have trouble with keeping the ship from getting too cold, you can solve the problem pretty handily by putting a thin double-hull (vacuum and some insulating framework between the hulls - aerogel is nice) around the parts you are having trouble keeping warm, and making the inside of the outer hull highly reflective in the infrared range (for instance, by covering it with a film of metallic gold).

[film_student_07]

thank you all so much for your information, i have tried replying to you all but it is proving a long task and the building im in is about to close (alas i have no internet at home ) but i have read all replies and thank you all, you all have valid points and great advice, i will use what i need to the best of my ability and if i have anymore questions i know where to come