By the way @spacedocks. Have you done a video about emergency solutions on SF ships ? Like escape pods from SC, life boats from 5th element, or even suits like in lockout. Or armored shelters on the center of ships like in the gurvan trilogy.
7:00 speaking of- after season two they completely abandoned the idea of rationing the replicator allowance ( food rations ) I still not sure how there supposed to explain how they suddenly got the energy to negate that .
Things to keep in mind for Space Exploration in sci-fi: - Spaceships can be made to be self-sufficient. In other words, the crew can grow food, rely on different forms of power generation to last forever, replace its own parts, and recycle water. - If the spaceships don't have the ability to generate gravity, there are realistic ways to induce it, such as centripetal force and turning exploration ships into mobile space stations that can orbit a new world. - Germs, diseases, and bacteria are ever-present threats, not only to us but to the places we bring them to. Make sure you address on how that's resolved. - There's no shame in having an exploration ship or crew that can defend itself. - Exploration ships can be as big as you want. Space doesn't care. The bigger the ship, the more resources you can bring.
Which is why i tend to think long distance exploration missions are best done with automated space probes rather than crewed vessels. Likewise, initial landings on foreign planets, done with drones and automated lander's rather than living crew. Other details about how to handle exploration are more tech dependent. In settings with no FTL, years long missions just to reach nearby stars are largely unavoidable. however contact with aliens is also pretty unlikely. But in a more star trek esque setting with FTL capability and who knows how many potential uncontacted alien civilizations are out there, long range missions greater than a year really should be avoided for crewed ships. In situations like that, probes are cheap, crews are not, so you absolutely want to take every possible measure to ensure crews return, and this includes making sure they dont get too far from friendly ports, again leave the really long duration charting missions to automated probes. this both makes sure that if an exploration ship is in trouble, help is not too far away, or they have a better chance of being able to limp home on their own if something forces them to abort the mission. Likewise its also a good idea to make sure that an exploration ship has a buddy ship as well, that these ships just aren't going it alone, that they always have at least one partner ship in a similar capability range. And it would be really bad if one of your exploration ships ventured out too far, got into serious trouble, then had to resort to space piracy to survive, only in the process to accidentally provoke a war with a larger power. Probes aren't going to do that. Of course even under these circumstances larger ships still make better explorers than smaller ones for pretty much the reasons you stated.
Moreover, it’s more realistic to have self sustainability especially in more hard scifi settings. Colonies and other planets can and will trade, but for surplus and improvements to quality of life. Not growing food on an entire planet is a death sentence.
I think if we're being realistic, spacesuits are going to be worn on all manned planetary expeditions, even if they've got a breathable non-toxic atmosphere at earth like pressure. At least something that filters the air coming in and creates a protective barrier around the explorer. Any planet with life, or even the potential for life, is a serious biohazard risk to humans. God knows what an alien bacteria, virus or parasite might be able to do.
One way to deal with the whole diseases thing is to completely sanitize the ship and make sure your crew have no germs on them when they enter the ship. Just like that you have a realistic way to not deal with diseases.
The effect of food on morale is something that needs to be seen more in SF. I remember being amused in Dark Matter (not the Apple one) when the crew came into possession of a 'pleasure android', and were singularly unimpressed by her ability to sing, dance, tell jokes and, er, perform the most intimate functions of a pleasure bot, but were overjoyed when it turned out that the thing was a great cook.
I'm currently reading a sci-fi series and a couple of times in universe ship captains have emphasized the need for fresh provisions, because while recyclers and stuff can generate basic protein/food rations, any ship that has to use them immediately suffers as morale tanks because everyone knows where the stuff is coming from and hates it.
@@MonkeyJedi99 Bro you have no idea. Nothing prepared me for how quickly morale collapsed during my first deployment, when we completely ran out of normal food and ate MRE's for a week or two. Got so bad even the Captain was openly talking about how one more delay and he would ram our ship into the pier if he had to lmao.
Like how pretty much every story set in the age of sail involves getting stranded on a deserted island at some pont, space travel would likely be the same... except you can't just build a simple raft to escape.
It would depend on the size of your ship. One pulp series had often ships in the 1-2 mile range and some of them were carrying a flotilla of smaller, but fully functional spaceships themselves. To compare it to Star Trek, they would carry at least 20 Voyagers with them. However the writers have used that size to great effect. Yes, here the Hero Ship has the usual Plot Armour, though often they send out smaller ships which don't have Plot Armour. Sometimes the writers are extra cruel. They let us get used to the crew of such a smaller ship and then destroy it, killing the entire or most of the crew. I always worry when there isn't a main character on board of such a ship.
heck, you're not supposed to build a raft IRL, you're supposed to stay in place and call for help (or await search parties) probably a great deal more critical to do so in space, given Space = Huge and the search-and-rescue teams have a lot more volume to cover
Space should, narratively, be treated like the open sea. Terrifying, highly lethal, but irresistible to that segment of people who will never be truly happy in one place.
FTL or not, the original civilization, might already plan ahead with failsafes to terminate the colonists in case they declare independence and have the AI make the life support fail so that everyone on board dies. The abandoned ship could act as supplies for future more loyal colonists who have no idea such AI existed.
Even when you have replicators, you'd want at least a bare minimum of supplies kept on the ship for when those replicators aren't available. Redundancy saves lives.
I'd like to think that the ship's arboretum isn't just for having a natural space but also to keep living back up foodstuffs in addition to hydro and aeroponics labs.
It's not sci-fi, but I really enjoyed Pokemon Legends Arceus' approach to studying wildlife, which was to give every Pokemon it's own set of tasks associated with it that you needed to complete to fill out its dex entry, from just fighting a bunch to catching them in a specific way to having them use their signature move a certain number of times. Felt way more like doing actual field research than just clicking things with a camera.
I was literally thinking of exactly this. PLA really made the research feel like research, right down to the whole "catch, examine, release" routine that so many biologists do in the field.
@@operator-chan1887 Sonething like Black and White 2 is sci-fi, Legends Arceus is more just Fantasy with one additional smartphone. (Also broadly meant it wasn't about space exploration like the other examples.)
Turning a red fruit, a magnetic rock, and a bit of iron into a pokeball seems like the kind of thing you'd only be able to do in a fantacy setting. And I'd imagine the future versions are basically the same functionally.
It always breaks my heart a little to read about what might have been for Star Trek Voyager. You can see bits and pieces of it in the earlier seasons when they were talking about rationing and Neelix's kitchen and that one line from the pilot which said they only had 36 torpedoes and no way to replicate more. But the higher ups wanted more Next Generation-type stories and so we got what we go. Episodes like Equinox and Year of Hell show glimpses of what later seasons might have been like, and that they had another shot at doing those kinds of stories with Enterprise is also a bit of a sore point for me. I'm not saying it had to be grim dark, but Deep Space Nine is still my favourite Star Trek series simply because it took the Star Trek formula and did something different with it. I just think Voyager could have done the same, and might have been better (or possibly worse) for it.
Truly :( twice missed and ib recall thinking in such detail back then role playing it online so frustrated thru couldn't even incorporate basic elements even though they had millions of dollars! Berman was always a corpo shill and classic Hollywood corrupt culture that we see so evident now. and he constantly ruined the potential with his ego. He was running his own little empire. Just look how many times we had to deal with mind-grape stories. Both him and mr. Blue-beard used the show as a vehicle to push their political agendas too. We were all complaining online back then how frustrating it was especially the lack of serialization & evolution combined with This country wouldn't be so bad if we didn't let Holly woods takeover our gaming industry as well... I wonder when ppl will realize the connection between progressives and communists & anti-man bs & cancel culture/ political-correctness the past 30years. It's in all of our
Basically, the suits wanted to sell the show in syndication, and there's no guarantee the stations picking it up would show episodes in order. So they were worried that an ongoing storyline would turn off viewers. That's why they insisted the show mostly stick to one-off stories and not build up a grand overarching plotline, which led to all the repetitive scripts and having any consequences reset at the end of the episode.
@@OneSocaJumbie ah typo, I'll correct it. Yah his character was up and down with emotions, he was on explorations and everyone else was on survival. Since i value both, i was able to admire his dedication.
It got cancelled just when it was about to get good , if they had not had the " communication device" until season 2 or 3 and had a main enemy like the berserker after them most of the show it would have been better.
I remember a friend of mine in reenactment making hardtack and debating whether we should use it for armour or not because it would break your teeth if you tried eating it. That said, I believe if you go back to the medieval era that stuff similar to hardtack was more used as a "filler" in stews and the like because it would thicken the water and make it more energy-dense.
TV seldom captures that because we sort of sense the reset coming. Moments where it felt dangerous and scary that I remember: 1) The Doomsday Machine 2) the first time EntD encounters the Borg and that entity, Nacquilim(I think). 3) The moment when we saw Vala catch fire and realized she was going to die (even though she didn't). 4) Eli looking out from the Destiny after he put everyone else in stasis. 5) The Shadows 6) The Krell thing from the Id. I'm sure they are more, but those are mine.
the Borg and Shadows had a continuous grip on me. Cant forget that first time with the Borg neither the movie. The Shadows could be reasoned with later, but always gave me the feeling of futility, a real inevitable bogeyman.
I had to chuckle when I saw a clip from the film Pandorum with Dennis Quaid and Ben Foster because ironically that movie is not about exploration... If you've seen the movie, you know what I mean 😄
IIRC the Voyager writers wanted to have many episodes about collecting resources and with Voyager damaged, but the chefs didn't want that. We only get a glimpse of that in Year of Hell
Yeah best part actually testing all the high ideals of the federation when there is no one to judge. I still never liked all the time travel stuff makes it to easy to do a reset button like with the imperium
Why I maintain that the first season is truest to the original idea: a ship stranded far from safe space and the Federation, having to survive. Shame they abandoned that premise so early on. Then BSG picked it up and I truly enjoyed that aspect of that show; constantly having to hunt for resources and just stay alive, not just because of the Cylons, but because of your own inability to renew your stores.
Its a shame they never really went that direction in voyager. I really love the first season of Stargate Atlantis because they were cut off from earth. I don't think they went quite far enough in exploring the consequences of that but it was still better then most other shows.
Its a shame they never really went that direction in voyager. I really love the first season of Stargate Atlantis because they were cut off from earth. I don't think they went quite far enough in exploring the consequences of that but it was still better then most other shows.
@@boxhead6177 in the end you certainly were right, though the first couple of seasons set the vorlons up as benevolent and the shadows as malevolent, only to later reveal they were two sides of the same coin.
I fondly remember long exploration trips in Elite Dangerous with my rather well equipped exploration ships. I could explore all I liked, refuel as I went, resupply on planets or in orbit, and manufacture the various supplies needed for repairs and the like. And for added fun I always made it a point to land on a planet for the night rather than just logging off wherever. Only made sense to land, shut down most systems, conserve fuel, etc. I also had a technically not needed but still important for realism first class passenger cabin for myself plus good life support. Didn't exactly need to feed yourself but still. Good times. :)
One thing to keep in mind especially for realistic settings is the lack of infrastructure while exploring. For example: In a realistic setting where the ships themselves are unable to land they need to use landers. On a colonised world the ship may just dock to an orbital station and than the landers will be provided by the station. But when exploring this is not possible. Also making your landers arodynamicly dependant (something like the valkyrie shuttle from avatar) than every time you go to explore a new planet you have to make some modifications or get a new one. Or what do you do when exploring an airless planet? Infrastructure-less planetary interface is perhaps the most difficult thing to get right in a realistic sci-fi setting.
Oh, I like the idea of a modular lander that just comes with a variety of different pieces and attachments for different gravities, air pressures, surface compositions etc.
@@RorikH I’ve been thinking about how to make realistc planetary interface without the need for some crazy modular landers and this is what I came up with: In most realistic scifi the main problem with landing a ship is that the engine exhaust is increadibly hot to reach crazy ISP (fusion, antimatter, etc…). This means that it would just melt the landing zone into glass (which is a feature with the avatars ISV’s and copletely ignored in the Expanse). So to make a universal lander that doesn’t rely on aerodynamic lift you will need some colder less efficient engines. But this would also mean that the lander would need to carry insane amounts of fuel. So the solution for my setting is what I call “neutrino jet engines”. This bassically replaces the good old fusion/antimatter drives on every ship. It is based around a fictional forcefield that can interract with neutrinos. Since neutrinos are everywhere the engine can use them as reaction mass sucking them in and shooting the out of the back. And since neutrinos rarely interract with other matter you don’t instantly glass the LZ. I should peobably get checked for autism.
@@mirochlebovec6586 It's a really intruiging idea, because depending on what sort of systems you need to manipulate the field it could act as a substitute for contragravity or repulsor systems. Sure, it may be that it needs an engine-like structure to draw in and accelerate the neutrinos, but then I imagined "what if it was a field spread across the underside of the vehicle?" Neutrinos would pass through the body of the vehicle with ease, and then get accelerated out of the underside to make thrust, so it could effectively appear to levitate?" Or if the field could be easily redirected to change the vector of thrust, you have something similar to a reactionless drive allowing incredible maneuverability? it all depends on how you describe the field operating, but there's an interesting range of possibilities in the idea...
@@bouncymischa What would be pretty cool to do is give different versions of this neutrino jet drive to different factions in a setting. More low tech factions have to use something like engines but the more advanced ones can use that levitation pseudo-reactionless approach. Or you could make normal ships use the engine approach and that pseudo-reactionless approach for something like ultra advanced prototypes or extremely expensive luxury ships.
This is why Starsector does space exploration justice. You not only have to worry about fuel and supplies, but also have to bring a big enough fleet to scare away potential hostiles, who probably want to take away your hard earned loot.
Ehh with enough salvage ships and skill you can get most of what you need off of derelicts and battles against smaller hostile fleets anyway, i've done an entire exploration cycle covering a third of the outer system maintaining my fleet that way. Sometimes you get unlucky and have to limp back to the core worlds but that adds to the fun of it
One exploration story that sticks with me to this very day, is Freelancer. After the story finishes and thr sandbox opens up, you can go pretty.much anywhere. Use the gates, or brave jump holes. I used a jump hole to get out into the unknown and found a system with two planets. One of animal people one of robots. The space was infested with Nomad ships too. (They're the big bad of the story mode. Energy amoeba things.) Freaky place couldn't repair at the planets, or resupply or anything.
The Evochron games are interesting like that as well, you have a map of charted space, with trading and space stations, but outside of that there's a vast uncharted space as well, sometimes hinted at in communication with other ships that may give you coordinates to check out, but there's a lot more out there for you to explore on your own, build refueling stations and explore deeper and deeper into the unknown.
I've not looked into the actual science of it but I do wonder how resource-rich most asteroids actually are. Because to me it could either swing anywhere from "having to harvest hundreds if not thousands for minimal gain" to "a single asteroid can set you up for life".
One other good example of the feeling of being stranded in space is the book, “Project Hail Mary” by Andy Weir. He writes hard sci fi, and that book is about being alone in space.
Any recommendation for a story involving outer space version of Noah's Ark? Something like Arthur C Clarke's Rama, but updated to modern sensibilities. Also, if there's an equivalent to ocean going Ark such as in the movie 2012.
@@simpletongeek Try "Children of Time" by Adrian Tchaikovsky. It's about a crew on a generationship trying to survive to the next planet after the original goal has turned out to be uninhabitable. That could fit your theme. Not easy reading by any stretch, but if you like challenging sci-fi try it.
@@simpletongeekalso "a deepness in the sky" by Vernor Vinge. Not the ark per se, but still there are people on a STL starships stranded in a remote star system and attempting to influence the local civilization throughout decades for it to develop enough industrial base to repair their vessela
This is one reason I love Stargate Universe so much. In its short run, it used far more of the potential of the "stranded far away from home without backup" scenario than Star Trek: Voyager ever did. You've got food shortages, a damaged ship you can't magically fix between episodes, external threats like the Nakai, the drones and the Lucian Alliance. Also, many of the characters didn't get along very well at first, which took a long time to overcome, with the best example being Colonel Young and Dr. Rush. Compare that to the Starfleet crew and the former Maquis members: There was lots of wasted potential regarding conflicts between characters. They started to get along far too quickly in my opinion. Imagine for instance Captain Janeway and Commander Chakotay being at odds more often and slowly over many seasons building trust. Or Voyager accumulating exterior damage and welded on hull plating (like the original Enterprise in TSFS or the reimagined Battlestar Galactica) over time.
Stargate Universe got screwed, Like its first season was kinda bad but the second it was finding its footing and then they canceled it. Infinite money Amazon does own MGM now so they should restart it on Prime.
Another great vid from Spacedock. I think Event Horizon does the 'search and rescue far from home' theme really well, with an added dose of horror for good measure.
What's really interesting about Event Horizon is that the search and rescue mission is going to a planet in our solar system but it still feels really far away. It's rare to see that! - hoojiwana from Spacedock
Although its more of a background role in Stargate Atlantis, getting supplies atleast in the earlier seasons was also big obstacle. they were always on a hunt for food, zpms or nukes.
If you need a great example id like to reccommend the AMC miniseries "The Terror" It's a phenomenal show that fits sci-fi in all but aesthetics and hits every single beat mentioned in this video. Exploration for a purpose, bad food stores, malfunctioning experimental technology, complete isolation in an inhospitable environment, emergency survival measures and plans, everything you could ask for is executed extremely well here.
The maintenance and repairs was my favorite part of some HFY story involving "break ships". The concept was that to travel instantaneously across the universe, you needed to transfer across between locations in the univese with the handwavey "similar energy state". However even at the best of times, this transfer where they "break" physics by instantaneous travel also means that the entire ship is very slightly warped, to screws are no longer perfectly circular, and so much else, effectively breaking the ship, and forcing a severe overhaul while underway.
Exploration vessels should be always sent out as pairs. The pair of ships should perform survey on different sites but always close enough to rescue the other one if needed.
In my own setting I'm trying to keep this in mind. Like why is the ship over 5km long, cause it needs space for foundries and workshops, and hydroponic/aeroponic farms, and the odd chicken coop. On a mission that will take them decades to complete, beyond the Rim to chase that Ever Distant Horizon they have to take everything they can to survive
Yeah, I've been having to deal with this for a while, as I've been putting together an interstellar mission in modded Kerbal Space Program. It's rapidly becoming clear that I'm not going to hit my preferred mass ratio, so the ship is going to rely on lots and lots of staging, better fuel, and going slower than I initially wanted to.
I recently finished the Revelation Space books and the amount of von-Neumann-level self repairing machinery somewhat bugged me, especially when the large narrative is one of recent and sudden technology decay. The issue of course is that such shortcuts are typically in service to the main storyline, otherwise the technical problems just become the storyline.
That's why I love Andy Weirs Books and I'm hyped for the Project Hail Mary Movie. In his books you know that stuff is going to get wrong, everything around the protagonist is trying to kill them at one point or another and only skill, ingenuity and plot armor can make a difference of life or death.
_Star Trek_ has the interesting issue where replicators will fail 'safe', but holodecks will fail 'deadly', whereas I'm inclined to believe that the opposite is more likely to be true. It certainly wouldn't take much tampering for a replicator to produce food that is apparently fine, but is actually, at least foul-tasting, if not actually toxic. Meanwhile, I'm expect the first _actual_ failure on most holodecks would be generated shapes being wrong, in the sense of them being weird or amorphous.
Yes, it is really strange that it is always this one specialized system that fails. Not like the "people" repeating themselves or get stuck in a door...
@@steemlenn8797 And there also seems to be no way to turn the power off from outside. Like seriously, there was (I think) only one episode, in Voyager where the ability to cut power to the holodeck wouldn't have fixed the issue immediately.
Having learned so much about eras of exploration, yes, space travel should be dangerous, but unless one is looking to make a tragedy, it can't be too impossible for the characters to survive
I think most series, but particularly Statgate Universe, missed the opportunity to have an episode based around making the crews food more tolerable. I can easily imagine a couple of episodes where an accomplished military chef is investigated then snatched to the other side of the universe to use their expertise to stop the crew going insane due to the horrible rations they're forced to live on.
In my Guardians of the Stars setting, the fairly rare 'light cruiser' class tend to be the explorers. Bigger than the next step down (Frigates) which are usually purpose focused, but smaller than Cruisers which are the 'do everything' heart of larger fleets. So they have the size/mass to go out to the fringes of the known and still carry all the gear and supplies one might need to do that job. However, their size/mass also make them expensive to run and as they usually lack the firepower greater than the frigates it can be fairly dangerous when the pirates have gotten there first.
The Expanse is by FAR my favorite story with actually deadly space. ONE character purposefully spaces themselves to go between two ships and it was like, a feat talked about even on Earthe
Babylon-5 Had the Earth-Force Explorer ships, which were massive, being a couple of miles long and the vast majority of it seemed to be storage for supplies and equipment, as well as to support a massively powerful jump drive.
A lot of that size (almost as big as Babylon 5 herself) was also due to their secondary mission as construction ships for Jumpgates. They had to carry the construction materials/parts along with them.
I like the how they portrayed the NX-01 as a utilitarian ship instead of a space station pretending to be a starship like in the TNG and Voyager. The only thing that I always find lacking with NX-01 is the documentation process during explorations. They have so much computational processing and sensor power at their disposal but the crew only carries a space DLSR for their planetary trips. They don't even take videos, only photos. I guess NX-01only can only afford one license to Photoshop.
The TTRPG Traveller has some pretty good rules, tech and gameplay for exploration. There are several types of sensor suites and probes you can bring along on your ship to make things much safer depending on the level of survey you're doing. Also I love that Townsends has made an appearance on this channel.
Yes, I was a bit surprised but also happy to see Mr. Townsend in this context. It would have been even better, if there was the Max Miller clack-clack scene after the word "hardtack" 😁
Yeah, bringing up realistic logistical problems and trapping through space could be an interesting plot line. Also, I wanted to talk about the subject in a high-tech way of preserving food like stasis machines that can preserve foods for long periods of time on starships.
I was thinking you could have a 3D printer that is able to use basic materials to create food for the crew. You could also have a store of freeze dried food alongside that. Since that might be more practical and also serve as a backup in case the 3D printer breaks
I honestly don't know how useful 3D printed food would be. You still need to store the materials and at that point you may as well just store actual food or a nutrient paste.
Nice overview. And both BSG and SGU show how a premise of a ship and crew on their own could have worked instead of what we got with Voyager (which I still like). So upset they cancelled SGU. Strong cast and setting, even though we had some characters that felt ... off. :)
Another note about ice harvesting equipment: If your ship requires fuel of some variety, water-ice can be very quickly and easily electrolyzed into hydrogen and oxygen, refilling your ships' cryogenic tanks with vital propellant, or being recombined in fuel cells to produce power, heat, and clean water to drink, or being used to refill your supplies of coolant. In a moderately hard sci-fi I'd say asteroid-harvesting equipment is practically mandatory for any exploration ship worth it's salt, or even in some of the softer ones; you never know when something's going to break, and money is always the limiting factor (You can always add bigger tanks, better engines, make the ship bigger etc etc but that stuff costs money. A *LOT* of money), so it's almost always better to have in-situ processing equipment for producing your own supplies than it will be to have those supplies on-board
In one of John Ringo's sci-fi series, the hero ship was created using a modified Ohio-class submarine (retrofitted with some experimental alien tech). At one point, the ship has to mine ice from a deep-space comet to resupply oxygen and water after losing a bunch due to some damage. This ice mining winds up having an unexpected side-effect: the comet *also* happened to contain trace amounts of helium (giving everyone aboard unexpectedly high-pitched voices for a while). The captain was *not* amused with the XO/Science Officer!
@@randlebrowne2048 A submarine in space? Well, I suppose if you can plug all the holes meant to keep water _out_ instead of _in_ and reworked the reactor to run regardless of orientation I can see it working. Don't suppose some of that alien tech included a new power and propulsion system though?
@@williamnixon3994 Specifically, the new tech was an alien FTL drive (which also generated shipboard gravity and antigrav propulsion. Interestingly, the ship remained a fully functional sub (though *extremely* noisy). The propellers were replaced with rocket thrusters; and, a long spike was added to the bow. The spike's purpose is to force air through holes along it's length, lowering the density of the surrounding water, allowing higher speeds underwater. The reason for maintaining it's capabilities as a sub was secrecy. The series has a lot in common with Stargate, including actual Higgs-Bosun portals to other worlds (Stargates without the mechanical rings). The ship, through most of the series, is a secret project (in the same way that the Prometheus, and other human ships, are for Stargate). The enemy in the series is a sentient fungus (think slime mold) that spreads across the galaxy through these portals, taking over other species and enslaving them as resources and slaves. Think of it a bit like the Zerg or Tyrranids. The reason for the ship was to find the enemy borders and detect the enemy's invasion ships (crewed by slave races/bioweapons) before they can approach Earth. The series is called "Through the Looking Glass", if you're interested.
Would love to an exploration far from home and supply story that shows how innovative the crew had to be to keep things running, salvaging and jury rigging often ad hoc replacements etc
The problem I have with some science fiction (and even some historical dramas), is deciding to bump off a redshirt or two nearly every episode to show how dangerous the voyage is, to the point where you wonder how much of the lower ranks, without their protective plot armour, are left. Clearly that kind of attrition rate is going to be unsustainable on any kind of long term exploratory voyage and captains are going to go to great lengths to keep as many of the crew alive and healthy as possible (unless there's an absolutely dire food shortage, but then things have *really* gone tits up!)
Makes me think of Master and Commander. The opening battle and the final battle both have a pretty heavy casualty rate, but that's just the nature of battle. Outside of battle there are three casualties; the doctor gets shot by a marine who was aiming at a bird, one midshipman takes his own life throwing himself overboard, and the third is a man who fell overboard when the mast came down during a storm. For how long the events go on for, three men is a pretty high rate outside of battle but the events surrounding it are exactly how you put it, things had really gone tits up in each circumstance. Granted the hunting accident was just one guy being a fucking idiot and not looking where he was aiming.
While any exploration ship must necessarily carry a ton of supplies, it just as if not more important that it have the capability to restock itself via ISRU far from the reaches of civilization. That it have the ability to harvest raw materials, process the, and manufacture every spare part it might need, up to and including creating a duplicate of itself if necessary and sufficient time can be spared, because that's the only way you can get as close as possible to a guarantee that the ship won't break. Now, this might suggest that the ideal exploration ship is a gigantic mining mothership and mobile factory that just happens to carry as many scientific probes as it does asteroid tugs, and that is entirely correct. And if it happens to run into trouble of the shooty kind rather than garden variety equipment failure then the same facilities than produce industrial and sensor craft can also make combat drones or missiles.
That checks if money is no object, but it could be more practical to just send out a larger number of smaller, cheaper ships. Maybe step one is going over telescope data to see if a system looks promising, step 2 is sending a handful of automated ships there to do a preliminary survey, step 3 is sending the hulking exploration/colonization ships you describe if step 2 finds a potentially habitable or just extremely interesting planet.
Definitely what I loved about Enterprise was that is was the first Trek series where the crew felt wholy out of their element and beyond their capabilities when compared to what they were facing. So much of the conflicts early on were resolved either finding a way to run away or having to talk their way out of sticky situations by necessity (as opposed to Picard talking his way out of a situation he could just blast his way out of for the sake of being a good person).
fun fact the fourth aliem movie while it was a failure it did show a solid cube that could be turned into liquid of whiskey or alcohol using a high power laser to melt it into a liquid form and keep it I think something like that is pretty possible
In Voyager they immediately started with hydroponics. As they were short on energy. In fact it was one of the things I hated was the reasoning for it. Janeway stated they wouldn’t normally need to ration, but they were over due for maintenance at a space dock. It was a new ship! One designed for exploration. I would have preferred her saying the ship is fully equipped. But with an expected 70 year voyage, I have already begun rationing.
Dangers for exploration should be running out of supplies, ship being damaged, getting lost or stuck, hostile natives and hostile other explorers and any other random ideas.
"Ships getting damaged" makes me think of the song "Sam Jones" and how simply getting hit by tiny particles managed to cripple the ship and the outside repair work cost the lives of both engineers but would have otherwise resulted in the ship hurtling into a star. Remember that in space you are moving at extremely high velocities relative to other objects and even the tiniest of dust can deal a fatal blow.
James Alan Gardner had a good novel (or series) about an Explorer Corps. They were deemed expendable (often because of physical defects) - in fact that was the name of the novel.
In my setting I treat space essentially how oceans are, lawless and borderless. Anyone can become a space pilot with the right training and most often either travel alone or in groups due to work. Being a space pilot means knowing the dangers of space such as solar flares, rouge asteroids, or even pirates. But dozens of people still travel it in some capacity. Being an astronaut or space pilot in my setting is analogous to being a privateer or conquistador back in the day, you know its dangerous, but the opportunities for fortune are too great to decline.
@@RorikH No, more like a resource that's dwindling in numbers each year that, without it, nations can't travel between stars. Rendering trade and exploration completely extinct 😂😂
A principle I’ve thought of is that the solar system is the fundamental unit of the galaxy. Space is like an unfathomably enormous ocean with tiny islands far apart. Travel within solar systems and atmospheres is on a microscopic scale compared to inter-solar travel and the technologies and resources used for each would be vastly different.
It makes more sense to me that you'd be setting up observation equipment. Like satellites and automated drones or scientific stations. Like we do with irl weather stations now.
There is an interview by Adam Savage was interviewing Chris Hadfield the astronaut and Andy Weir the author of the Martian, after watching the movie. And Chris said the hardest things in sci-fi for him to believe is the crew dynamics. Like you are trained for all these scenarios, you have a job, a hierachy, a methodology of breaking down and solving problems... and the moment something happens, NO ONE KNOWS WTF TO DO!!! or how toxic the working relationships seem to be. (Like why are trained NASA astronauts picking on the Botanist specialist)
What could also be very useful are linguists and possibly military personnel. The former to establish a means of communication with the other intelligent species, should you encounter any, to clear up any misunderstandings if the other species has caught you unwittingly breaking their laws. (An example would be the first contact war from Mass Effect) and the military personnel (of course the ship should also be equipped with at least a few weapons at best), in case diplomacy fails.
@@RorikH Conversely: A surprise encounter with an alien culture that require military personnel on board all ships in keeping with an old honorable tradition and yay, somehow the most heavily armed but friendly first contact the galaxy has ever seen.
The world if full of wonders and horrors. Of all kinds. Space is stupidly vaste, and thus an excellent medium to show plenty of wonders, horrors, and anything in-between. That’s why I like sci-fi movies/shows with space exploration. And I like exploration starships because I think they are the most versatile kinds of starships. Ideal for independent heroes (my favorite kind of heroes).
What if you combine techs. The brain VR to make you think your eating a great meal. But in the real world your IV is feeding you. So every day 3 times a day you plug in, go into the VR world, have a great meal, interact with your friends wherever they are, unplug and be fully fed and happy?
I believe In todays world with whatever tech we have now, should we go explore deeper into space with man missions at any distance past our moon should be equipped in a way of a generation style ship configuration. Meaning a ship that could be self-sustaining long term should the worst happened despite being close to home. If an accident accrues that causes a change in original plans, danger could at least be minimized on the crew side of things. Allowing time for a rescue attempt to be permitted or self-resolving itself.
Funnily enough, for a _Transhuman Traveller_ setting I'm working on, exploration is a major job in of itself. Like the _Traveller_ IISS, the IEB (Imperial Exploration Beureau) has dedicated *_FLEETS_* of ships ranging from semi-'short' range 'seekers' to battleship-sized deep-exploration vessels where they do Star Trek-style Starfleet exploration cruises. Those of the IEB can opt, at the end of their career, to undertake the 'final exploration' retirement package, which is basically given a long-range 'seeker' type vessel, and as long as they keep in touch with the Mandate, they can do their own exploration. Then there are the various corporations that specialize in planetary and system exploration and surveying, which is usually made up of IEB retirees that don't take the final exploration retirement package. However, if the IEB or someone on their 'final exploration' retirement discovers a world where there are humans/a species that the Mandate has under their aegis, they have the unenviable task of blending in (which sometimes necessitates that at least one person 'swaps' into a 'morph better suited for the situation, like if the planet has a pre-FTL Feiresi on it then the 'scouts' would need to slot into Feiresi 'morphs of the required sophistication) and investigating on how to uplift and integrate said world. The IEB is one of the few exceptions to the 'rule' within the Mandate that civilians can't possess Mil-Spec weaponry because they deal with Grandfather's (i.e., the Ancient that basically caused the setting; everyone calls him 'Science Cuthulu' because of his shenanigans) leftovers. So an IEB ship can be armed with modified battledress armed with *_GASER (gamma ray lasers) AND FUSION RIFLES_* and weapons that wouldn't be that far off from an equivalent weight regular spacy warship if you account for the larger fuel tanks for the jump drive.
In the setting I write, the faction of humanity is slow but steady to expand. Long range exploration is done only with probes and unmanned equipment, while more in-depth exploration of the fringes is done by small specialist teams on highly automated vessels. Those operate within range of the nearest station so that they can fall back or communicate with command if things go south.
cant remember if it was retconned or changed. but iirc star trek replicators are not energy to matter converters but simple matter to matter assemblers. think of them more like advanced 3d printers the ship keeps a central store of different matter and then it gets accessed by the different replicators on the ship to create whatever. when something is thrown away it gets turned back into its basic elements and stored in the correct storage bank. this includes fecal matter.
I've been writing my alternate history space adventure novel series "From the Earth to the Stars" with a sub-series called "Sawyer Space Saga" where the commander of the Earth's first warp ship explores a Milky Way galaxy where simple life is abundant but intelligent life is exceedingly rare. The ship and crew run into increasing problems. The mobile games Seedship and Out There were very helpful with creating random events that reduce the crew's access to conveniences. The TV show The Terror was also very informative. Seeing space as a version of Polar exploration helps a lot.
Awesome use of a Townsends video. One of my biggest issues with long duration space travel is food and water; both necessary for life- but both require a lot of space and weight. Either; we must find a way to hypersleep- with bare necessities pumped into us. Or, make space travel fast enough that breaks the laws of physics…. Either options are long shots, and why I think we’ll only be a single system species- if we ever get off this rock without blowing ourselves to pieces. Edit: The other option is to upload our consciousness into a computer… again, a long shot.
Personally, I think that in a setting with FTL travel and communication, a safer way to explore the universe would be to send an FTL probe to get real-time data on the state of the system. Sending people there could be hazardous because due to the limited speed that light tavels, a star you observe through telescopes from thousands or even millions of lightyears away could actually be in the process of or already going supernova and you wouldn't be able to tell. Instead, just send a probe to at least make sure the star isn't gonna vaporize the ship on arrival and send people to explore the surface of the planets there if it looks safe.
7:24 ; 7:41 THANK YOU! 🙏 I always *loved* the 3rd Season of Enterprise, but so many fans love to bash it just because of the Xindi! But the Enterprise was _on the edge of blowing up_ almost every episode because of their isolation, so every episode really felt tense! If they got found out by the Xindi, *they were dead!* The crew just had no means to fight with the ship on that state!
I published my first space adventure novel this year and made sure to inject as much danger in space travel as I could, but because of the needs of the story the characters don't spend that much time in transit from planet to planet so I made the hero ship a proverbial bucket of bolts that could fall apart at any moment.
Makes me think of Macross, in which it isn't really about exploration most of the time, but where they send out these large colonization fleets with specialised ships for agriculture, mining and manufacturing coupled with a military escort.
4:08 - Townsend has come such a long way on RUclips. It seems like we all follow him. Gamers, Sci-fi geeks, non-nerds alike ^^ Always a joy to see him pop up.
Well, in concept this admittedly sounds like taking a battlecruiser as a basis for a exploratory model. Long range, relatively thin armour in exchange for speed and operative range. Strip out some of the armament, and one could make space for additional sensors and equipment, while retaining some armament that allows you to punch up if necessary, and punching down quite easily as is the traditional role of a battlecruiser.
Mine is. In my sci fi novel they use drone ships to explore unchrted territory and chart the data back. In the early human allinaces this is how humanity began expanding to multiple planets. The machines did the rough building and sent back data to earth. An ark ship aka a colony ship would then land the colonists and they'd populate the planet. They still use them but upgraded them massively. But on one world the chaos legions found one and came to earth. Attacked it but somewhat succeeded. They attacked cities but were forced to retreat. The galactic peacekeepers were formed as multiple intelligent species joined the human colonies against the chaos legions and many relationships were formed and earth became the central central system for the alliance.
It should be rare with planets that planets have a earth like atmosphere. finding someone with any kind of civilization even rarer. that makes trips in space even more dangerous.
another important thing to have is weapons, its unknown if we'll find alien life and if their hostile or not, but its best to be prepared just in case. it also depends on the crew of the ship, not everyone can be trusted and depending on the size of the ship will determine how many problems there would be, even though the uss enterprise is used for space exploration and diplomacy the ship and crew were armed, which through the series came in handy. if not phasers lasers would be the next best thing, ammo can be recharged, cause less damage to the ship itself, and easier to train with since lasers don't have recoil and not make a lot of noise so the crew wont have to damage their hearing if using it in self defense.
Day 2 of asking mr spacedock to to make videos on macross ships and mecha . Please sir you gotta do a video on the yf 19 or the sdf1 macross. You already made a video on the space battleship yamato, we need 2 legendary anime ships on this channel
I loved Stargate Universe because of how dangerous it felt constantly. The ship wasn’t a safe haven because there were no Ancients to show them how to work everything. They had to figure it out with trial and error. They could visit planets but there was always a ticking clock. Aliens were actually alien and scary. If that show would have gotten two more seasons I think it could have been something really amazing.
I think the Dark Forest (part of the three body problem series) nails the deadliness of long term space exploration. In the book when the trisolarians wipe out Earth’s defense fleet, three ships manage to escape, they make it far enough away that they decide humanity is lost and that they are the last chance for human survival. Each ship independently comes to the conclusion that there aren’t enough parts and resources for all three of them to survive the long journey to a new planet, so they try to kill each other. This perfectly encapsulates the sheer scale of space and just how empty it is, unless you have FTL travel, there’s almost a zero percent chance you’re going to encounter any usable material outside of star systems.
That’s why I LOVED SGU! The first couple episodes were literally called “air” and “water” because they get stranded on a (literal) ancient ship that’s falling apart in which if mistakes are made, everyone dies. Totally gave me perspective of how dangerous space travel is
Probably one of the best, more recent depictions of what real space exploration could be. Is shown in the Netflix reboot of LOST IN SPACE. Exploration came as a necessity for survival.
My personal pet peeve is Sci-fi where the deep space explorer ships are smaller unarmed or lightly armed ships. Especially after encountering other intelligent life. Either arm up or have a proper self-destruct.
Check out X4: Timelines and support Spacedock!
Steam: store.steampowered.com/app/392160/X4_Foundations/?
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Love seeing some X on Spacedock
Do you know the short show "Earth 2"?
I think, that's a good example for exploration!
By the way @spacedocks. Have you done a video about emergency solutions on SF ships ? Like escape pods from SC, life boats from 5th element, or even suits like in lockout. Or armored shelters on the center of ships like in the gurvan trilogy.
7:00 speaking of- after season two they completely abandoned the idea of rationing the replicator allowance ( food rations ) I still not sure how there supposed to explain how they suddenly got the energy to negate that .
Are you ever going to cover the ships of For All Mankind? The Mars 94 race was very interesting.
Things to keep in mind for Space Exploration in sci-fi:
- Spaceships can be made to be self-sufficient. In other words, the crew can grow food, rely on different forms of power generation to last forever, replace its own parts, and recycle water.
- If the spaceships don't have the ability to generate gravity, there are realistic ways to induce it, such as centripetal force and turning exploration ships into mobile space stations that can orbit a new world.
- Germs, diseases, and bacteria are ever-present threats, not only to us but to the places we bring them to. Make sure you address on how that's resolved.
- There's no shame in having an exploration ship or crew that can defend itself.
- Exploration ships can be as big as you want. Space doesn't care. The bigger the ship, the more resources you can bring.
@@brandonquist8394 Not to consider the amount of ships needed to maintain the logistics of a gigantic Astro-Federation like the UFP would be numerous
Which is why i tend to think long distance exploration missions are best done with automated space probes rather than crewed vessels. Likewise, initial landings on foreign planets, done with drones and automated lander's rather than living crew.
Other details about how to handle exploration are more tech dependent. In settings with no FTL, years long missions just to reach nearby stars are largely unavoidable. however contact with aliens is also pretty unlikely.
But in a more star trek esque setting with FTL capability and who knows how many potential uncontacted alien civilizations are out there, long range missions greater than a year really should be avoided for crewed ships. In situations like that, probes are cheap, crews are not, so you absolutely want to take every possible measure to ensure crews return, and this includes making sure they dont get too far from friendly ports, again leave the really long duration charting missions to automated probes.
this both makes sure that if an exploration ship is in trouble, help is not too far away, or they have a better chance of being able to limp home on their own if something forces them to abort the mission. Likewise its also a good idea to make sure that an exploration ship has a buddy ship as well, that these ships just aren't going it alone, that they always have at least one partner ship in a similar capability range.
And it would be really bad if one of your exploration ships ventured out too far, got into serious trouble, then had to resort to space piracy to survive, only in the process to accidentally provoke a war with a larger power. Probes aren't going to do that.
Of course even under these circumstances larger ships still make better explorers than smaller ones for pretty much the reasons you stated.
Moreover, it’s more realistic to have self sustainability especially in more hard scifi settings. Colonies and other planets can and will trade, but for surplus and improvements to quality of life. Not growing food on an entire planet is a death sentence.
I think if we're being realistic, spacesuits are going to be worn on all manned planetary expeditions, even if they've got a breathable non-toxic atmosphere at earth like pressure. At least something that filters the air coming in and creates a protective barrier around the explorer. Any planet with life, or even the potential for life, is a serious biohazard risk to humans. God knows what an alien bacteria, virus or parasite might be able to do.
One way to deal with the whole diseases thing is to completely sanitize the ship and make sure your crew have no germs on them when they enter the ship. Just like that you have a realistic way to not deal with diseases.
The effect of food on morale is something that needs to be seen more in SF. I remember being amused in Dark Matter (not the Apple one) when the crew came into possession of a 'pleasure android', and were singularly unimpressed by her ability to sing, dance, tell jokes and, er, perform the most intimate functions of a pleasure bot, but were overjoyed when it turned out that the thing was a great cook.
I'm currently reading a sci-fi series and a couple of times in universe ship captains have emphasized the need for fresh provisions, because while recyclers and stuff can generate basic protein/food rations, any ship that has to use them immediately suffers as morale tanks because everyone knows where the stuff is coming from and hates it.
Plesure? What other things could it do?
@@brianjamesward2150 Even today's wet navy pays attention to morale via food choices.
And thus you get things like taco Tuesday, ice cream, and more.
@MonkeyJedi99 and even above that submariners get the best of the best because of how morale crushing being stuck in one of those things is
@@MonkeyJedi99
Bro you have no idea.
Nothing prepared me for how quickly morale collapsed during my first deployment, when we completely ran out of normal food and ate MRE's for a week or two.
Got so bad even the Captain was openly talking about how one more delay and he would ram our ship into the pier if he had to lmao.
Like how pretty much every story set in the age of sail involves getting stranded on a deserted island at some pont, space travel would likely be the same... except you can't just build a simple raft to escape.
Thats where our industrial entrepeneur comes in, lets call him Jimbo the space engineer
It would depend on the size of your ship.
One pulp series had often ships in the 1-2 mile range and some of them were carrying a flotilla of smaller, but fully functional spaceships themselves.
To compare it to Star Trek, they would carry at least 20 Voyagers with them.
However the writers have used that size to great effect. Yes, here the Hero Ship has the usual Plot Armour, though often they send out smaller ships which don't have Plot Armour. Sometimes the writers are extra cruel. They let us get used to the crew of such a smaller ship and then destroy it, killing the entire or most of the crew. I always worry when there isn't a main character on board of such a ship.
@@Dreamfox-df6bg it was a joke based on the game space engineers XD
So....Factorio in a nut shell.
heck, you're not supposed to build a raft IRL, you're supposed to stay in place and call for help (or await search parties)
probably a great deal more critical to do so in space, given Space = Huge and the search-and-rescue teams have a lot more volume to cover
Space should, narratively, be treated like the open sea. Terrifying, highly lethal, but irresistible to that segment of people who will never be truly happy in one place.
Well, that would depend on the setting's mode of FTL
Unless there is only STL, then the analogy would be more apt.
FTL or not, the original civilization, might already plan ahead with failsafes to terminate the colonists in case they declare independence and have the AI make the life support fail so that everyone on board dies. The abandoned ship could act as supplies for future more loyal colonists who have no idea such AI existed.
@@RainbowDevourer that is completely unrelated to what I was talking about.
It will definitely be full of Americans, not because of tech but because of the American spirit and mythology
Also, ideally, full of whales.
Shoutout to the use of Townsends for the bit about hardtack and pemmican, and the bit about morale assisting foods.
There's nothing more perfect for this topic and food than Townsends.
- hoojiwana from Spacedock
I certainly didn't expect the Townsends to be featured in space exploration video! 😂
Hardtack? *clack clack!*
The poor space captains feast
@@HailHydra27 I now must wait until Townsend's publishes this video. Thanks and I hate it.
Even when you have replicators, you'd want at least a bare minimum of supplies kept on the ship for when those replicators aren't available. Redundancy saves lives.
Better having more spare replicators and the parts to build more as well enough power backups.
Very-long-shelf-life MREs? Yum...
I'd like to think that the ship's arboretum isn't just for having a natural space but also to keep living back up foodstuffs in addition to hydro and aeroponics labs.
Are you an engineer? You sure sounds like one.
You can replicate a back up replicator. Unless something goes wrong with the holodeck, then you f-d 😂
It's not sci-fi, but I really enjoyed Pokemon Legends Arceus' approach to studying wildlife, which was to give every Pokemon it's own set of tasks associated with it that you needed to complete to fill out its dex entry, from just fighting a bunch to catching them in a specific way to having them use their signature move a certain number of times. Felt way more like doing actual field research than just clicking things with a camera.
I was literally thinking of exactly this. PLA really made the research feel like research, right down to the whole "catch, examine, release" routine that so many biologists do in the field.
Pokemon definitely is sci-fi. Have you seen the kinds of tech in that series?
@@operator-chan1887 Sonething like Black and White 2 is sci-fi, Legends Arceus is more just Fantasy with one additional smartphone. (Also broadly meant it wasn't about space exploration like the other examples.)
Turning a red fruit, a magnetic rock, and a bit of iron into a pokeball seems like the kind of thing you'd only be able to do in a fantacy setting. And I'd imagine the future versions are basically the same functionally.
It always breaks my heart a little to read about what might have been for Star Trek Voyager. You can see bits and pieces of it in the earlier seasons when they were talking about rationing and Neelix's kitchen and that one line from the pilot which said they only had 36 torpedoes and no way to replicate more. But the higher ups wanted more Next Generation-type stories and so we got what we go. Episodes like Equinox and Year of Hell show glimpses of what later seasons might have been like, and that they had another shot at doing those kinds of stories with Enterprise is also a bit of a sore point for me.
I'm not saying it had to be grim dark, but Deep Space Nine is still my favourite Star Trek series simply because it took the Star Trek formula and did something different with it. I just think Voyager could have done the same, and might have been better (or possibly worse) for it.
Truly :( twice missed and ib recall thinking in such detail back then role playing it online so frustrated thru couldn't even incorporate basic elements even though they had millions of dollars!
Berman was always a corpo shill and classic Hollywood corrupt culture that we see so evident now. and he constantly ruined the potential with his ego. He was running his own little empire. Just look how many times we had to deal with mind-grape stories. Both him and mr. Blue-beard used the show as a vehicle to push their political agendas too. We were all complaining online back then how frustrating it was especially the lack of serialization & evolution combined with
This country wouldn't be so bad if we didn't let Holly woods takeover our gaming industry as well...
I wonder when ppl will realize the connection between progressives and communists & anti-man bs & cancel culture/ political-correctness the past 30years. It's in all of our
Basically, the suits wanted to sell the show in syndication, and there's no guarantee the stations picking it up would show episodes in order. So they were worried that an ongoing storyline would turn off viewers. That's why they insisted the show mostly stick to one-off stories and not build up a grand overarching plotline, which led to all the repetitive scripts and having any consequences reset at the end of the episode.
Stargate Universe was cancelled too early... the potential it had was massive
Yah, it was getting very good. At first i wasn't "sold" on the main cast but over time, i fell in love with Nicholas Rush.
Not canceled fast enough ZZZ
@@IN-tm8mw I feel like love might be a reverse emotion i had for that guy lolol, kudos to the actor of course!
@@OneSocaJumbie ah typo, I'll correct it. Yah his character was up and down with emotions, he was on explorations and everyone else was on survival. Since i value both, i was able to admire his dedication.
It got cancelled just when it was about to get good , if they had not had the " communication device" until season 2 or 3 and had a main enemy like the berserker after them most of the show it would have been better.
Your hardtack comment requires the scene from Tasting History of Max smacking two pieces of hard tack together. At least you got Townsends!
*Clack! Clack!*
I remember a friend of mine in reenactment making hardtack and debating whether we should use it for armour or not because it would break your teeth if you tried eating it.
That said, I believe if you go back to the medieval era that stuff similar to hardtack was more used as a "filler" in stews and the like because it would thicken the water and make it more energy-dense.
TV seldom captures that because we sort of sense the reset coming. Moments where it felt dangerous and scary that I remember:
1) The Doomsday Machine
2) the first time EntD encounters the Borg and that entity, Nacquilim(I think).
3) The moment when we saw Vala catch fire and realized she was going to die (even though she didn't).
4) Eli looking out from the Destiny after he put everyone else in stasis.
5) The Shadows
6) The Krell thing from the Id.
I'm sure they are more, but those are mine.
7) The space slug from Star Wars.
the Borg and Shadows had a continuous grip on me. Cant forget that first time with the Borg neither the movie. The Shadows could be reasoned with later, but always gave me the feeling of futility, a real inevitable bogeyman.
I had to chuckle when I saw a clip from the film Pandorum with Dennis Quaid and Ben Foster because ironically that movie is not about exploration... If you've seen the movie, you know what I mean 😄
IIRC the Voyager writers wanted to have many episodes about collecting resources and with Voyager damaged, but the chefs didn't want that. We only get a glimpse of that in Year of Hell
Yeah best part actually testing all the high ideals of the federation when there is no one to judge. I still never liked all the time travel stuff makes it to easy to do a reset button like with the imperium
Why I maintain that the first season is truest to the original idea: a ship stranded far from safe space and the Federation, having to survive. Shame they abandoned that premise so early on. Then BSG picked it up and I truly enjoyed that aspect of that show; constantly having to hunt for resources and just stay alive, not just because of the Cylons, but because of your own inability to renew your stores.
Year of hell and when they where stuck in that pocket space with no resources where such good episode and showed what Voyager truly should have been.
Its a shame they never really went that direction in voyager.
I really love the first season of Stargate Atlantis because they were cut off from earth. I don't think they went quite far enough in exploring the consequences of that but it was still better then most other shows.
Its a shame they never really went that direction in voyager.
I really love the first season of Stargate Atlantis because they were cut off from earth. I don't think they went quite far enough in exploring the consequences of that but it was still better then most other shows.
Thank you for the Shadow vessel in the final shot. The true horror of finding something out there.
Who are you but more importantly what do you want
\*screams in your mind\*
Shadows were not as scary as the Vorlon.
@@boxhead6177 in the end you certainly were right, though the first couple of seasons set the vorlons up as benevolent and the shadows as malevolent, only to later reveal they were two sides of the same coin.
I fondly remember long exploration trips in Elite Dangerous with my rather well equipped exploration ships. I could explore all I liked, refuel as I went, resupply on planets or in orbit, and manufacture the various supplies needed for repairs and the like. And for added fun I always made it a point to land on a planet for the night rather than just logging off wherever. Only made sense to land, shut down most systems, conserve fuel, etc. I also had a technically not needed but still important for realism first class passenger cabin for myself plus good life support. Didn't exactly need to feed yourself but still. Good times. :)
One thing to keep in mind especially for realistic settings is the lack of infrastructure while exploring. For example: In a realistic setting where the ships themselves are unable to land they need to use landers. On a colonised world the ship may just dock to an orbital station and than the landers will be provided by the station. But when exploring this is not possible. Also making your landers arodynamicly dependant (something like the valkyrie shuttle from avatar) than every time you go to explore a new planet you have to make some modifications or get a new one. Or what do you do when exploring an airless planet? Infrastructure-less planetary interface is perhaps the most difficult thing to get right in a realistic sci-fi setting.
Oh, I like the idea of a modular lander that just comes with a variety of different pieces and attachments for different gravities, air pressures, surface compositions etc.
@@RorikH I’ve been thinking about how to make realistc planetary interface without the need for some crazy modular landers and this is what I came up with: In most realistic scifi the main problem with landing a ship is that the engine exhaust is increadibly hot to reach crazy ISP (fusion, antimatter, etc…). This means that it would just melt the landing zone into glass (which is a feature with the avatars ISV’s and copletely ignored in the Expanse). So to make a universal lander that doesn’t rely on aerodynamic lift you will need some colder less efficient engines. But this would also mean that the lander would need to carry insane amounts of fuel. So the solution for my setting is what I call “neutrino jet engines”. This bassically replaces the good old fusion/antimatter drives on every ship. It is based around a fictional forcefield that can interract with neutrinos. Since neutrinos are everywhere the engine can use them as reaction mass sucking them in and shooting the out of the back. And since neutrinos rarely interract with other matter you don’t instantly glass the LZ. I should peobably get checked for autism.
@@mirochlebovec6586 That's genuinely a really cool idea. I dig it.
@@mirochlebovec6586 It's a really intruiging idea, because depending on what sort of systems you need to manipulate the field it could act as a substitute for contragravity or repulsor systems. Sure, it may be that it needs an engine-like structure to draw in and accelerate the neutrinos, but then I imagined "what if it was a field spread across the underside of the vehicle?" Neutrinos would pass through the body of the vehicle with ease, and then get accelerated out of the underside to make thrust, so it could effectively appear to levitate?" Or if the field could be easily redirected to change the vector of thrust, you have something similar to a reactionless drive allowing incredible maneuverability? it all depends on how you describe the field operating, but there's an interesting range of possibilities in the idea...
@@bouncymischa What would be pretty cool to do is give different versions of this neutrino jet drive to different factions in a setting. More low tech factions have to use something like engines but the more advanced ones can use that levitation pseudo-reactionless approach. Or you could make normal ships use the engine approach and that pseudo-reactionless approach for something like ultra advanced prototypes or extremely expensive luxury ships.
This is why Starsector does space exploration justice. You not only have to worry about fuel and supplies, but also have to bring a big enough fleet to scare away potential hostiles, who probably want to take away your hard earned loot.
And incentivizes building a fleet that is big enough for defending itself, but absolutely no bigger than that.
Ehh with enough salvage ships and skill you can get most of what you need off of derelicts and battles against smaller hostile fleets anyway, i've done an entire exploration cycle covering a third of the outer system maintaining my fleet that way. Sometimes you get unlucky and have to limp back to the core worlds but that adds to the fun of it
One exploration story that sticks with me to this very day, is Freelancer.
After the story finishes and thr sandbox opens up, you can go pretty.much anywhere. Use the gates, or brave jump holes.
I used a jump hole to get out into the unknown and found a system with two planets. One of animal people one of robots.
The space was infested with Nomad ships too. (They're the big bad of the story mode. Energy amoeba things.)
Freaky place couldn't repair at the planets, or resupply or anything.
The Evochron games are interesting like that as well, you have a map of charted space, with trading and space stations, but outside of that there's a vast uncharted space as well, sometimes hinted at in communication with other ships that may give you coordinates to check out, but there's a lot more out there for you to explore on your own, build refueling stations and explore deeper and deeper into the unknown.
On the topic of ice harvesting, might be cool seeing a more in depth video cover the topic of space resource extraction in general.
Remember the Cant.
I've not looked into the actual science of it but I do wonder how resource-rich most asteroids actually are.
Because to me it could either swing anywhere from "having to harvest hundreds if not thousands for minimal gain" to "a single asteroid can set you up for life".
One other good example of the feeling of being stranded in space is the book, “Project Hail Mary” by Andy Weir. He writes hard sci fi, and that book is about being alone in space.
Or The Martian by the same author... Same theme.
Any recommendation for a story involving outer space version of Noah's Ark? Something like Arthur C Clarke's Rama, but updated to modern sensibilities.
Also, if there's an equivalent to ocean going Ark such as in the movie 2012.
@@simpletongeek Try "Children of Time" by Adrian Tchaikovsky. It's about a crew on a generationship trying to survive to the next planet after the original goal has turned out to be uninhabitable.
That could fit your theme. Not easy reading by any stretch, but if you like challenging sci-fi try it.
@@Myria83 That one is a bit different since it is on a planet.
@@simpletongeekalso "a deepness in the sky" by Vernor Vinge. Not the ark per se, but still there are people on a STL starships stranded in a remote star system and attempting to influence the local civilization throughout decades for it to develop enough industrial base to repair their vessela
This is one reason I love Stargate Universe so much.
In its short run, it used far more of the potential of the "stranded far away from home without backup" scenario than Star Trek: Voyager ever did.
You've got food shortages, a damaged ship you can't magically fix between episodes, external threats like the Nakai, the drones and the Lucian Alliance.
Also, many of the characters didn't get along very well at first, which took a long time to overcome, with the best example being Colonel Young and Dr. Rush.
Compare that to the Starfleet crew and the former Maquis members: There was lots of wasted potential regarding conflicts between characters.
They started to get along far too quickly in my opinion.
Imagine for instance Captain Janeway and Commander Chakotay being at odds more often and slowly over many seasons building trust.
Or Voyager accumulating exterior damage and welded on hull plating (like the original Enterprise in TSFS or the reimagined Battlestar Galactica) over time.
Stargate Universe got screwed, Like its first season was kinda bad but the second it was finding its footing and then they canceled it. Infinite money Amazon does own MGM now so they should restart it on Prime.
Another great vid from Spacedock. I think Event Horizon does the 'search and rescue far from home' theme really well, with an added dose of horror for good measure.
What's really interesting about Event Horizon is that the search and rescue mission is going to a planet in our solar system but it still feels really far away. It's rare to see that!
- hoojiwana from Spacedock
@@hoojiwana Absolutely. I was going to refer to it as 'search and rescue in deep space' and then remembered where they actually were.
Although its more of a background role in Stargate Atlantis, getting supplies atleast in the earlier seasons was also big obstacle. they were always on a hunt for food, zpms or nukes.
I like to think that the dangers associated with exploration is the reason why Starfleet's ships are so robust, adjacent to a warship.
If you need a great example id like to reccommend the AMC miniseries "The Terror"
It's a phenomenal show that fits sci-fi in all but aesthetics and hits every single beat mentioned in this video.
Exploration for a purpose, bad food stores, malfunctioning experimental technology, complete isolation in an inhospitable environment, emergency survival measures and plans, everything you could ask for is executed extremely well here.
Yeah but most of that is based on real history
The maintenance and repairs was my favorite part of some HFY story involving "break ships". The concept was that to travel instantaneously across the universe, you needed to transfer across between locations in the univese with the handwavey "similar energy state". However even at the best of times, this transfer where they "break" physics by instantaneous travel also means that the entire ship is very slightly warped, to screws are no longer perfectly circular, and so much else, effectively breaking the ship, and forcing a severe overhaul while underway.
If something was warping even the ships screws, I wonder what it'd do to people's *bodies* ...
@@randlebrowne2048 yeah, that sounds horrible. Like soup like homogenate horrible.
Exploration vessels should be always sent out as pairs.
The pair of ships should perform survey on different sites but always close enough to rescue the other one if needed.
It's even better it you can have them in a fleet/fleets in that regard.
In my own setting I'm trying to keep this in mind. Like why is the ship over 5km long, cause it needs space for foundries and workshops, and hydroponic/aeroponic farms, and the odd chicken coop. On a mission that will take them decades to complete, beyond the Rim to chase that Ever Distant Horizon they have to take everything they can to survive
Yeah, I've been having to deal with this for a while, as I've been putting together an interstellar mission in modded Kerbal Space Program. It's rapidly becoming clear that I'm not going to hit my preferred mass ratio, so the ship is going to rely on lots and lots of staging, better fuel, and going slower than I initially wanted to.
I recently finished the Revelation Space books and the amount of von-Neumann-level self repairing machinery somewhat bugged me, especially when the large narrative is one of recent and sudden technology decay.
The issue of course is that such shortcuts are typically in service to the main storyline, otherwise the technical problems just become the storyline.
That's why I love Andy Weirs Books and I'm hyped for the Project Hail Mary Movie.
In his books you know that stuff is going to get wrong, everything around the protagonist is trying to kill them at one point or another and only skill, ingenuity and plot armor can make a difference of life or death.
Kudos on including clips on almost every single known space game and show I've ever seen or heard of, that in itself was cool as hell
and in relevant sections of the video too. Firefly for spare parts, matrix for food morale
Zathras never get much, but at least Zathras get this...
_Star Trek_ has the interesting issue where replicators will fail 'safe', but holodecks will fail 'deadly', whereas I'm inclined to believe that the opposite is more likely to be true. It certainly wouldn't take much tampering for a replicator to produce food that is apparently fine, but is actually, at least foul-tasting, if not actually toxic. Meanwhile, I'm expect the first _actual_ failure on most holodecks would be generated shapes being wrong, in the sense of them being weird or amorphous.
Yes, it is really strange that it is always this one specialized system that fails. Not like the "people" repeating themselves or get stuck in a door...
@@steemlenn8797 And there also seems to be no way to turn the power off from outside. Like seriously, there was (I think) only one episode, in Voyager where the ability to cut power to the holodeck wouldn't have fixed the issue immediately.
Space is violence and darkness.... but less frightening than divorce
- Bones
Spock: And that, Jim, is why we never ask about Dr. McCoy's ex-wife.
Having learned so much about eras of exploration, yes, space travel should be dangerous, but unless one is looking to make a tragedy, it can't be too impossible for the characters to survive
I think most series, but particularly Statgate Universe, missed the opportunity to have an episode based around making the crews food more tolerable. I can easily imagine a couple of episodes where an accomplished military chef is investigated then snatched to the other side of the universe to use their expertise to stop the crew going insane due to the horrible rations they're forced to live on.
In my Guardians of the Stars setting, the fairly rare 'light cruiser' class tend to be the explorers. Bigger than the next step down (Frigates) which are usually purpose focused, but smaller than Cruisers which are the 'do everything' heart of larger fleets. So they have the size/mass to go out to the fringes of the known and still carry all the gear and supplies one might need to do that job. However, their size/mass also make them expensive to run and as they usually lack the firepower greater than the frigates it can be fairly dangerous when the pirates have gotten there first.
The Expanse is by FAR my favorite story with actually deadly space. ONE character purposefully spaces themselves to go between two ships and it was like, a feat talked about even on Earthe
Wait was there? What episode was that? I must've forgot about it.
Babylon-5 Had the Earth-Force Explorer ships, which were massive, being a couple of miles long and the vast majority of it seemed to be storage for supplies and equipment, as well as to support a massively powerful jump drive.
Yeah, and didn't that end poorly for the one we saw?
A lot of that size (almost as big as Babylon 5 herself) was also due to their secondary mission as construction ships for Jumpgates. They had to carry the construction materials/parts along with them.
I was not expecting to see clips from Townsends on this channel, but it fits.
I like the how they portrayed the NX-01 as a utilitarian ship instead of a space station pretending to be a starship like in the TNG and Voyager.
The only thing that I always find lacking with NX-01 is the documentation process during explorations. They have so much computational processing and sensor power at their disposal but the crew only carries a space DLSR for their planetary trips. They don't even take videos, only photos. I guess NX-01only can only afford one license to Photoshop.
The TTRPG Traveller has some pretty good rules, tech and gameplay for exploration. There are several types of sensor suites and probes you can bring along on your ship to make things much safer depending on the level of survey you're doing.
Also I love that Townsends has made an appearance on this channel.
Yes, I was a bit surprised but also happy to see Mr. Townsend in this context. It would have been even better, if there was the Max Miller clack-clack scene after the word "hardtack" 😁
@@VoodooMcVee lol I would have loved to have seen that Max clip.
@@Jebbis I mean, it's kinda a law of nature by now 😀
Yeah, bringing up realistic logistical problems and trapping through space could be an interesting plot line. Also, I wanted to talk about the subject in a high-tech way of preserving food like stasis machines that can preserve foods for long periods of time on starships.
Captain Pike from SNW definitely knows the morale value of a good meal.
I was thinking you could have a 3D printer that is able to use basic materials to create food for the crew. You could also have a store of freeze dried food alongside that. Since that might be more practical and also serve as a backup in case the 3D printer breaks
I honestly don't know how useful 3D printed food would be. You still need to store the materials and at that point you may as well just store actual food or a nutrient paste.
Now that's an interface I never expected to see - footage from Townsends in a Spacedock video 😄
Nice overview. And both BSG and SGU show how a premise of a ship and crew on their own could have worked instead of what we got with Voyager (which I still like).
So upset they cancelled SGU. Strong cast and setting, even though we had some characters that felt ... off. :)
Even in space engineers I have to do a test orbit to make sure my route is clear of asteroids
What kind of boat are you on that can't stop between you seeing an asteroid and you hitting it?
@@VoxAstra-qk4jz I've found that unlimited speed mods are considered "essential" to many players.
A wild X4 Foundations appears, I did not expect that at all. Egosoft usually doesn't do this kind of sponsoring outside of the community.
Another note about ice harvesting equipment: If your ship requires fuel of some variety, water-ice can be very quickly and easily electrolyzed into hydrogen and oxygen, refilling your ships' cryogenic tanks with vital propellant, or being recombined in fuel cells to produce power, heat, and clean water to drink, or being used to refill your supplies of coolant. In a moderately hard sci-fi I'd say asteroid-harvesting equipment is practically mandatory for any exploration ship worth it's salt, or even in some of the softer ones; you never know when something's going to break, and money is always the limiting factor (You can always add bigger tanks, better engines, make the ship bigger etc etc but that stuff costs money. A *LOT* of money), so it's almost always better to have in-situ processing equipment for producing your own supplies than it will be to have those supplies on-board
In one of John Ringo's sci-fi series, the hero ship was created using a modified Ohio-class submarine (retrofitted with some experimental alien tech). At one point, the ship has to mine ice from a deep-space comet to resupply oxygen and water after losing a bunch due to some damage.
This ice mining winds up having an unexpected side-effect: the comet *also* happened to contain trace amounts of helium (giving everyone aboard unexpectedly high-pitched voices for a while). The captain was *not* amused with the XO/Science Officer!
@@randlebrowne2048 A submarine in space? Well, I suppose if you can plug all the holes meant to keep water _out_ instead of _in_ and reworked the reactor to run regardless of orientation I can see it working. Don't suppose some of that alien tech included a new power and propulsion system though?
@@williamnixon3994 Specifically, the new tech was an alien FTL drive (which also generated shipboard gravity and antigrav propulsion.
Interestingly, the ship remained a fully functional sub (though *extremely* noisy). The propellers were replaced with rocket thrusters; and, a long spike was added to the bow. The spike's purpose is to force air through holes along it's length, lowering the density of the surrounding water, allowing higher speeds underwater.
The reason for maintaining it's capabilities as a sub was secrecy. The series has a lot in common with Stargate, including actual Higgs-Bosun portals to other worlds (Stargates without the mechanical rings). The ship, through most of the series, is a secret project (in the same way that the Prometheus, and other human ships, are for Stargate).
The enemy in the series is a sentient fungus (think slime mold) that spreads across the galaxy through these portals, taking over other species and enslaving them as resources and slaves. Think of it a bit like the Zerg or Tyrranids.
The reason for the ship was to find the enemy borders and detect the enemy's invasion ships (crewed by slave races/bioweapons) before they can approach Earth.
The series is called "Through the Looking Glass", if you're interested.
Would love to an exploration far from home and supply story that shows how innovative the crew had to be to keep things running, salvaging and jury rigging often ad hoc replacements etc
The problem I have with some science fiction (and even some historical dramas), is deciding to bump off a redshirt or two nearly every episode to show how dangerous the voyage is, to the point where you wonder how much of the lower ranks, without their protective plot armour, are left. Clearly that kind of attrition rate is going to be unsustainable on any kind of long term exploratory voyage and captains are going to go to great lengths to keep as many of the crew alive and healthy as possible (unless there's an absolutely dire food shortage, but then things have *really* gone tits up!)
Makes me think of Master and Commander.
The opening battle and the final battle both have a pretty heavy casualty rate, but that's just the nature of battle.
Outside of battle there are three casualties; the doctor gets shot by a marine who was aiming at a bird, one midshipman takes his own life throwing himself overboard, and the third is a man who fell overboard when the mast came down during a storm.
For how long the events go on for, three men is a pretty high rate outside of battle but the events surrounding it are exactly how you put it, things had really gone tits up in each circumstance. Granted the hunting accident was just one guy being a fucking idiot and not looking where he was aiming.
While any exploration ship must necessarily carry a ton of supplies, it just as if not more important that it have the capability to restock itself via ISRU far from the reaches of civilization. That it have the ability to harvest raw materials, process the, and manufacture every spare part it might need, up to and including creating a duplicate of itself if necessary and sufficient time can be spared, because that's the only way you can get as close as possible to a guarantee that the ship won't break.
Now, this might suggest that the ideal exploration ship is a gigantic mining mothership and mobile factory that just happens to carry as many scientific probes as it does asteroid tugs, and that is entirely correct. And if it happens to run into trouble of the shooty kind rather than garden variety equipment failure then the same facilities than produce industrial and sensor craft can also make combat drones or missiles.
That checks if money is no object, but it could be more practical to just send out a larger number of smaller, cheaper ships. Maybe step one is going over telescope data to see if a system looks promising, step 2 is sending a handful of automated ships there to do a preliminary survey, step 3 is sending the hulking exploration/colonization ships you describe if step 2 finds a potentially habitable or just extremely interesting planet.
Definitely what I loved about Enterprise was that is was the first Trek series where the crew felt wholy out of their element and beyond their capabilities when compared to what they were facing. So much of the conflicts early on were resolved either finding a way to run away or having to talk their way out of sticky situations by necessity (as opposed to Picard talking his way out of a situation he could just blast his way out of for the sake of being a good person).
HEY! Shoutout to our boy Jon at Townsends!
fun fact the fourth aliem movie while it was a failure it did show a solid cube that could be turned into liquid of whiskey or alcohol using a high power laser to melt it into a liquid form and keep it I think something like that is pretty possible
In Voyager they immediately started with hydroponics. As they were short on energy. In fact it was one of the things I hated was the reasoning for it. Janeway stated they wouldn’t normally need to ration, but they were over due for maintenance at a space dock. It was a new ship! One designed for exploration. I would have preferred her saying the ship is fully equipped. But with an expected 70 year voyage, I have already begun rationing.
"Space is like a huuuuuge box of chocolate. You never know what you're gonna find in it."
- James T. Kirk's mom, allegedly
Dangers for exploration should be running out of supplies, ship being damaged, getting lost or stuck, hostile natives and hostile other explorers and any other random ideas.
"Ships getting damaged" makes me think of the song "Sam Jones" and how simply getting hit by tiny particles managed to cripple the ship and the outside repair work cost the lives of both engineers but would have otherwise resulted in the ship hurtling into a star.
Remember that in space you are moving at extremely high velocities relative to other objects and even the tiniest of dust can deal a fatal blow.
James Alan Gardner had a good novel (or series) about an Explorer Corps. They were deemed expendable (often because of physical defects) - in fact that was the name of the novel.
For the first time ever, the sponsor is actually relevant to me. Got X4 recently, still addicted 😊
In my setting I treat space essentially how oceans are, lawless and borderless. Anyone can become a space pilot with the right training and most often either travel alone or in groups due to work. Being a space pilot means knowing the dangers of space such as solar flares, rouge asteroids, or even pirates. But dozens of people still travel it in some capacity. Being an astronaut or space pilot in my setting is analogous to being a privateer or conquistador back in the day, you know its dangerous, but the opportunities for fortune are too great to decline.
Are they on the hunt for El Platino, the legendary asteroid made of pure Platinum?
@@RorikH No, more like a resource that's dwindling in numbers each year that, without it, nations can't travel between stars. Rendering trade and exploration completely extinct 😂😂
A principle I’ve thought of is that the solar system is the fundamental unit of the galaxy. Space is like an unfathomably enormous ocean with tiny islands far apart. Travel within solar systems and atmospheres is on a microscopic scale compared to inter-solar travel and the technologies and resources used for each would be vastly different.
It makes more sense to me that you'd be setting up observation equipment. Like satellites and automated drones or scientific stations. Like we do with irl weather stations now.
There is an interview by Adam Savage was interviewing Chris Hadfield the astronaut and Andy Weir the author of the Martian, after watching the movie. And Chris said the hardest things in sci-fi for him to believe is the crew dynamics. Like you are trained for all these scenarios, you have a job, a hierachy, a methodology of breaking down and solving problems... and the moment something happens, NO ONE KNOWS WTF TO DO!!! or how toxic the working relationships seem to be. (Like why are trained NASA astronauts picking on the Botanist specialist)
What could also be very useful are linguists and possibly military personnel. The former to establish a means of communication with the other intelligent species, should you encounter any, to clear up any misunderstandings if the other species has caught you unwittingly breaking their laws. (An example would be the first contact war from Mass Effect) and the military personnel (of course the ship should also be equipped with at least a few weapons at best), in case diplomacy fails.
Plot twist: Having a heavily armed ship in another species' territory is that law that you're breaking.
@@RorikH Good point
@@RorikH Conversely: A surprise encounter with an alien culture that require military personnel on board all ships in keeping with an old honorable tradition and yay, somehow the most heavily armed but friendly first contact the galaxy has ever seen.
The world if full of wonders and horrors. Of all kinds.
Space is stupidly vaste, and thus an excellent medium to show plenty of wonders, horrors, and anything in-between.
That’s why I like sci-fi movies/shows with space exploration. And I like exploration starships because I think they are the most versatile kinds of starships. Ideal for independent heroes (my favorite kind of heroes).
I never realized how many cheat codes Star Trek was playing with until you highlighted how they have food and drinks magically appear in the kitchen.
What if you combine techs. The brain VR to make you think your eating a great meal. But in the real world your IV is feeding you. So every day 3 times a day you plug in, go into the VR world, have a great meal, interact with your friends wherever they are, unplug and be fully fed and happy?
I believe In todays world with whatever tech we have now, should we go explore deeper into space with man missions at any distance past our moon should be equipped in a way of a generation style ship configuration. Meaning a ship that could be self-sustaining long term should the worst happened despite being close to home. If an accident accrues that causes a change in original plans, danger could at least be minimized on the crew side of things. Allowing time for a rescue attempt to be permitted or self-resolving itself.
star trek enterprise is my absolute fovorite star trek show for the reasons you mentioned, it was different, but in a good way
I liked it better than the other trek series too. Except for the last season. Just rubbed me the wrong way for some reason
The Blindsight did it all with exquisite taste , that book is like a rockstar of the genre.
Funnily enough, for a _Transhuman Traveller_ setting I'm working on, exploration is a major job in of itself. Like the _Traveller_ IISS, the IEB (Imperial Exploration Beureau) has dedicated *_FLEETS_* of ships ranging from semi-'short' range 'seekers' to battleship-sized deep-exploration vessels where they do Star Trek-style Starfleet exploration cruises. Those of the IEB can opt, at the end of their career, to undertake the 'final exploration' retirement package, which is basically given a long-range 'seeker' type vessel, and as long as they keep in touch with the Mandate, they can do their own exploration. Then there are the various corporations that specialize in planetary and system exploration and surveying, which is usually made up of IEB retirees that don't take the final exploration retirement package.
However, if the IEB or someone on their 'final exploration' retirement discovers a world where there are humans/a species that the Mandate has under their aegis, they have the unenviable task of blending in (which sometimes necessitates that at least one person 'swaps' into a 'morph better suited for the situation, like if the planet has a pre-FTL Feiresi on it then the 'scouts' would need to slot into Feiresi 'morphs of the required sophistication) and investigating on how to uplift and integrate said world.
The IEB is one of the few exceptions to the 'rule' within the Mandate that civilians can't possess Mil-Spec weaponry because they deal with Grandfather's (i.e., the Ancient that basically caused the setting; everyone calls him 'Science Cuthulu' because of his shenanigans) leftovers. So an IEB ship can be armed with modified battledress armed with *_GASER (gamma ray lasers) AND FUSION RIFLES_* and weapons that wouldn't be that far off from an equivalent weight regular spacy warship if you account for the larger fuel tanks for the jump drive.
"Harvesting resources isn't as easy as zapping it with a magical laser and vacuuming up the debris"
No Man's Sky: "And I took that personally."
In the setting I write, the faction of humanity is slow but steady to expand. Long range exploration is done only with probes and unmanned equipment, while more in-depth exploration of the fringes is done by small specialist teams on highly automated vessels. Those operate within range of the nearest station so that they can fall back or communicate with command if things go south.
cant remember if it was retconned or changed. but iirc star trek replicators are not energy to matter converters but simple matter to matter assemblers. think of them more like advanced 3d printers the ship keeps a central store of different matter and then it gets accessed by the different replicators on the ship to create whatever. when something is thrown away it gets turned back into its basic elements and stored in the correct storage bank. this includes fecal matter.
I've been writing my alternate history space adventure novel series "From the Earth to the Stars" with a sub-series called "Sawyer Space Saga" where the commander of the Earth's first warp ship explores a Milky Way galaxy where simple life is abundant but intelligent life is exceedingly rare. The ship and crew run into increasing problems. The mobile games Seedship and Out There were very helpful with creating random events that reduce the crew's access to conveniences. The TV show The Terror was also very informative. Seeing space as a version of Polar exploration helps a lot.
Would love a ship breakdown (in story) of the X4 ships. X4 is [at least one of] the best single-player space sandbox games out there.
Awesome use of a Townsends video. One of my biggest issues with long duration space travel is food and water; both necessary for life- but both require a lot of space and weight. Either; we must find a way to hypersleep- with bare necessities pumped into us. Or, make space travel fast enough that breaks the laws of physics…. Either options are long shots, and why I think we’ll only be a single system species- if we ever get off this rock without blowing ourselves to pieces.
Edit: The other option is to upload our consciousness into a computer… again, a long shot.
Personally, I think that in a setting with FTL travel and communication, a safer way to explore the universe would be to send an FTL probe to get real-time data on the state of the system.
Sending people there could be hazardous because due to the limited speed that light tavels, a star you observe through telescopes from thousands or even millions of lightyears away could actually be in the process of or already going supernova and you wouldn't be able to tell.
Instead, just send a probe to at least make sure the star isn't gonna vaporize the ship on arrival and send people to explore the surface of the planets there if it looks safe.
7:24 ; 7:41 THANK YOU! 🙏 I always *loved* the 3rd Season of Enterprise, but so many fans love to bash it just because of the Xindi! But the Enterprise was _on the edge of blowing up_ almost every episode because of their isolation, so every episode really felt tense! If they got found out by the Xindi, *they were dead!* The crew just had no means to fight with the ship on that state!
I published my first space adventure novel this year and made sure to inject as much danger in space travel as I could, but because of the needs of the story the characters don't spend that much time in transit from planet to planet so I made the hero ship a proverbial bucket of bolts that could fall apart at any moment.
Makes me think of Macross, in which it isn't really about exploration most of the time, but where they send out these large colonization fleets with specialised ships for agriculture, mining and manufacturing coupled with a military escort.
8:17 there’s also the sg commander who posed as a god, but that was on planet side
4:08 - Townsend has come such a long way on RUclips. It seems like we all follow him.
Gamers, Sci-fi geeks, non-nerds alike ^^ Always a joy to see him pop up.
Well, in concept this admittedly sounds like taking a battlecruiser as a basis for a exploratory model. Long range, relatively thin armour in exchange for speed and operative range. Strip out some of the armament, and one could make space for additional sensors and equipment, while retaining some armament that allows you to punch up if necessary, and punching down quite easily as is the traditional role of a battlecruiser.
Mine is. In my sci fi novel they use drone ships to explore unchrted territory and chart the data back. In the early human allinaces this is how humanity began expanding to multiple planets. The machines did the rough building and sent back data to earth. An ark ship aka a colony ship would then land the colonists and they'd populate the planet. They still use them but upgraded them massively. But on one world the chaos legions found one and came to earth. Attacked it but somewhat succeeded. They attacked cities but were forced to retreat. The galactic peacekeepers were formed as multiple intelligent species joined the human colonies against the chaos legions and many relationships were formed and earth became the central central system for the alliance.
1:55 bees are anything but simple
1:45 he says discovery right as the Discovery spore drives into an orbit.
@@1337billybob that is certainly a discovery
dude, your sponsor picks are the best.
It should be rare with planets that planets have a earth like atmosphere. finding someone with any kind of civilization even rarer. that makes trips in space even more dangerous.
another important thing to have is weapons, its unknown if we'll find alien life and if their hostile or not, but its best to be prepared just in case. it also depends on the crew of the ship, not everyone can be trusted and depending on the size of the ship will determine how many problems there would be, even though the uss enterprise is used for space exploration and diplomacy the ship and crew were armed, which through the series came in handy. if not phasers lasers would be the next best thing, ammo can be recharged, cause less damage to the ship itself, and easier to train with since lasers don't have recoil and not make a lot of noise so the crew wont have to damage their hearing if using it in self defense.
Day 2 of asking mr spacedock to to make videos on macross ships and mecha . Please sir you gotta do a video on the yf 19 or the sdf1 macross. You already made a video on the space battleship yamato, we need 2 legendary anime ships on this channel
Destiny in the thumbnail and the new expansion for X4 as a sponsoring. What's not to love? 😍😍😍
Born too late to explore the world. Born too early to explore the galaxy
I loved Stargate Universe because of how dangerous it felt constantly. The ship wasn’t a safe haven because there were no Ancients to show them how to work everything. They had to figure it out with trial and error. They could visit planets but there was always a ticking clock. Aliens were actually alien and scary. If that show would have gotten two more seasons I think it could have been something really amazing.
I think the Dark Forest (part of the three body problem series) nails the deadliness of long term space exploration. In the book when the trisolarians wipe out Earth’s defense fleet, three ships manage to escape, they make it far enough away that they decide humanity is lost and that they are the last chance for human survival. Each ship independently comes to the conclusion that there aren’t enough parts and resources for all three of them to survive the long journey to a new planet, so they try to kill each other. This perfectly encapsulates the sheer scale of space and just how empty it is, unless you have FTL travel, there’s almost a zero percent chance you’re going to encounter any usable material outside of star systems.
That’s why I LOVED SGU! The first couple episodes were literally called “air” and “water” because they get stranded on a (literal) ancient ship that’s falling apart in which if mistakes are made, everyone dies. Totally gave me perspective of how dangerous space travel is
Probably one of the best, more recent depictions of what real space exploration could be. Is shown in the Netflix reboot of LOST IN SPACE. Exploration came as a necessity for survival.
Townsends making space foods.
My personal pet peeve is Sci-fi where the deep space explorer ships are smaller unarmed or lightly armed ships. Especially after encountering other intelligent life. Either arm up or have a proper self-destruct.