Tug Vessels in Science Fiction
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- Опубликовано: 2 окт 2024
- Spacedock delves into the little-remarked space tugs of certain sci-fi franchises.
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I would also say that space tugs would have oversized powerplants, so as a hero ship, they could add heavier shields or weapons than would be expected for a vessel of that size.
I'm surprise you didn't mention the og of the tug boat world, Little Toot. When it comes to the hero ship being a tug craft I mean.
I'd add in EVA pods like the pods in 2001 or the Worker Bee from Star Trek as overlooked and extremely handy. Maybe someday you could do a video about them as well?
I'm imagining a scene where a group has to move a gigantic fortress bristling with weapons so that it can get into position to destroy its enemy, but can't do so on its own, so it has a tug pulling it while all weapons on the fortress are firing at all of the enemies around it.
I could also see tugs being used to move small debris in an asteroid field. Asteroid fields are really poorly portrayed in sci fi though. An asteroid field would be a cool place to have a battle if your ships were running at high impulse though
We definitely need more leaving port scenes in sci-fi.
Babylon 5 really nailed space traffic for the time and budget.
@@jtjames79yes
The sci-fi story I'm writing actually introduces the hero ship for the first time while in port. Its an old cargo ship that has been made obsolete by larger and newer cargo vessels, so now it has basically specialized in delivering luxury goods in record times in order to remain competitive.
Oh AGREED.
These are some of my all time favorites and they're so relatively rare.
@@mitwhitgaming7722 I like that, that's cool
Infrastructure and commercial vessels are VASTLY underrepresented in sci-fi.
Unfortunately they're not considered sexy enough sci-fi to be more visible. That's like ignoring the importance of logistics while gushing over technical details of military equipment.
In my story, i'm designing my hero ship to be a commercial passenger transport, Helps with income and passport visa while in foreign ports. i love the idea of having a merchant/mall deck for traveling passengers and locals while docked.
@@IN-tm8mwThat's neat. I see a lot of ST:TNG style "which guest alien has done it THIS time" episode potential here.
@@twandepan I got the idea by combining Startrek with a game called Suikoden. I wanted the ship to start off relativity empty but fill up with shops and crewmen as the plot advances. This way, each "Guest" could be potentially a new friend or foe.
If I didn't know any better I'd think every ship in the Star Trek universe was some super advanced warship, and normal things like freighters, cruise lines, and personal craft don't exist.
One of my favorite instances of a "tug" inspired vessel was the shield ships from Star Wars Heir to the Empire that were specialized to protect other ships from the intense radiation of a particular star.
So basically Icarus from Sunshine
Shield ship is best waifu fite me
@darkleome5409 Basically, but Heir to the Empire came out 15 years earlier.
I kinda always imagined them looking a bit like those giant ships from Eve online. Basically an umbrella.
I agree that this counts. Working vessels in sci-fi FTW!
I love the idea that the Millennium Falcon is a kind of barge tug, because it explains so much that otherwise doesn't make sense. It's a small ship with massively overpowered engines designed to push huge pallets of freight around the galaxy. Now that is something you could turn into a speedy blockade runner while making it continue to look like a tramp "freighter" (really a freight tug).
Also, and more importantly, explains why there is no cargo space on a "freighter".
@@steemlenn8797 Exactly!
@@steemlenn8797 My thoughts exactly.
The off-centre flight deck is also a big give away to aid the view ahead passed the containers. The view to the left sucks, though.
@@toxictony4230 which is why the sensor dish is over there
The Salvage Corvettes and Resource Harvesters of the Homeworld games fit in here perfectly and deserved a mention. Several missions use them as integral to the plot.
Also for their shocking combat effectiveness. What's that, an attack fleet? It's mine now te he he.
If we're looking at Homeworld, the Junkyard Dog needs a mention. They made a tug something to be feared.
Another example from videogames could be the Trains from Freelancer. They're just a tug with a pair of engines hanging out at the sides and an attach point at the back for cargo units. As the name implies, you'd have a long train of cargo units with a single tug at the front used to move bulk cargos around in a system. Their appearance was reflected in gameplay as well - instead of destroying the tug itself, you could smash the cargo units it was pulling to loot them without killing the crew.
Edit to add: Just remembered another one from Homeworld 2 - the Progenitor Movers. The 'hero' fleet didn't have a dedicated tug ship anymore, but their mining ships had small multi-purpose arms that could be used for repair work or pulling other ships around.
Given how rarely they're given as examples, Spacedock must have to pay a fee or something for each mention of a ship or concept used in Homeworld.
How long have you tried to salvage the Turanic Carrier before you realized you can't?
Don't forget the trusty Ramming Frigates from Cataclysm. Designed probably for bumping around asteroids and other ships, but later pressed into a combat role.
Leaving port/docking scenes definitely have a special place in my heart!
Nothing beats leaving port scenes. The adventure calls, the pilots and engineers are checking their departure lists. Space Controls acknowledge starting request, hangar doors open/unlocking docking clamps... Glorious.
The Star Trek scenes I never skip.
Mine would be, the ones similar to 1979 movie, mysterious and spooky. With semi/pseudo realistic designed ships.
I like the concept of an orbital tug basically being a small vessel with a very big engine whose whole purpose is to ferry cargo between the ground and orbit
My guy... You just described rockets...
My setting has something similar, orbital barges. Though they're not tugs, rather they're optimize for lobbing huge amounts of cargo down and up from a gravity well, and are basically just huge platforms with powerful antigravs but not so great engines - just good enough to achieve orbital speeds once they're in space, but that's about it.
@@csweezey18 😂
@@csweezey18 Yeah but orbital tugs sound better...
@@csweezey18
I mean, most space craft are rockets.
Plus, carrier rockets usually only go one way, up.
Orbital tugs deliver cargo from planetside to orbit and vice versa, to my mind.
You can't forget the action potential of the grappler ships from Outlaw Star. It was like watching a mecha battle between lanky mermaids.
I wish giant robot arms on spaceships was more of a thing, that has so much potential.
An interesting take on this is in the Honorverse. Since any large vessel that can get up to a decent speed is a potential weapon vs. stations or planets, and the universe has some mind control shenanigans going on, ships have to power down their engines and wait for a tug WAY out. The tugs have dual pilots and the pilots are very highly cleared and screened.
This was the kind of purpose I was thinking of. On a related note, tugs might be helpful since engine exhaust (or even thruster exhaust) could damage parts of a station or docking craft. The space shuttle, for example, had to select specific thruster groups to dock with the ISS.
Tugs could offer a way to temporarily add thruster groups in strategic locations to spacecraft in areas where they avoid damage. It could be interesting to see how different cultures might circumvent the need for tugs in a universe like that.
@@f38stingray In the case of the Honorverse, there is the complication that the main engines of most ships are powerful gravity warping devices (gravity manipulation being the main applied phlebotinum of the Honorverse) that would shred any other ship within a range of a few (dozen maybe? EDIT: looked it up, hundreds for large ships) kilometres of the main ship. Ships have reaction thrusters as backups of course, but their main drives would destroy the space station (of course invoked in one book where the heroes use the gravity drive of a shuttle to destroy a battlecruiser).
For this trope of space tugs, the idea that while ships COULD dock on their own, they would have to use secondary drive systems which might be weak, etc., would be super relevant. A writer could then use this as a plot point. A random dramatic idea I just had while writing this might be something like the Honorverse example, where bringing up the main drive would destroy the station and kill your friends onboard, but might be necessary to get going in time to stop the ship on a kamikaze run towards the main planet. Of course, this is kind of a forced sacrifice and an engineering/planning idiot ball a la Cold Equations. You'd hope in your universe people would be smart enough to have some sort of rapid (but dangerous and semi-destructive) emergency undock and "push clear" system, or just picket ships ready to deal with such things.
@@ParanoidMarvinMk2 The Honorverse has tugs to move around things around the planets too; in addition to pulling ships to the scrappers and occasionally things out of the shipyard (the ones we see get out are getting out on reaction thrusters, like the second Fearless and the Nike if I remember right) we see the perspective of a tug during the destruction of Hephaestus station where the tugs turn on their own wedges and use it to intercept large pieces of debris from falling onto Landing and other cities.
I assume you mean they must come to a stop long before reaching their destination. You described this as "turning their engine off", but it would be the opposite, they'd have to turn their engine on full throttle to decelerate. Without drag, either the whole of cruise is zero thrust for efficiency, or the entire second half of cruise is decelerating (first half accelerating)(perhaps 1G for comfort). It takes as much effort and time to safely slow down as it does to speed up. An interstellar ship could accelerate to relativistic using laser sails over a century, still be a small fraction of the way to its destination, and be without thrust the rest of the way, and wipeout life on the planet it strikes, even though it had been essentially derelict for a millennia.
@@JWQweqOPDH This was specific to a particular fictional universe, as I said, where the main engines of ships are capable of destroying everything within a hundred kilometers or so, because reasons. They are also very powerful, so ships generally travel at high speeds (0.6-0.8c) for cruise, and can accelerate up to those speeds quickly. The point was that those cruise speeds and powerful engines give a role for tugs. If you ever read the Honorverse, you would know that David Weber is VERY VERY aware of the scale of space and the role of coasting to get somewhere.
Space Truckers, both from the Movie said name and from Cowboy Bebop. They are essentially barges with tugs. They would be useful for within star systems for bulk cargo. Either between stations and orbital mining platforms and fabrication factories. Delivering bulk cargo to interstellar ships. You'd also have the rough and tumble subculture of space truckers/tuggers. A bar room brawl aboard a space station adds flavor to your story. Or the occasional weird eyewitness story over too many beers and shots of rotgut.
Heavy Metal Queen.
In a similar fashion, I always love seeing industrial ships in sci Fi as well like the ishimura in dead space, or the mining vessels and barges in eve online. So many cool ways to take the concept!
Now I'm nostalgic for the TV show Tugs. That was a wonderful show, really.
With a killer theme tune!
@kaitlyn__L The tugboat, for it's size, is the most powerful vehicle alfloat.
They have them in Star Wars: Tie fighter. Tiny little tugs that moved cargo containers and recovered ships during capture missions.
Yeah and also got concussion missiles or proton torpedos launched at them
@@ravneiv And, of course, YOU gotta stop them.
I remember in the clone wars republic medical stations had tugs to help the medical frigets dock with the station
And funnily enough, those tugs are built by MandalMotors. Don't ask me why.
In KOTOR 2 there is, surprisingly, an example of maneuvering thrusters being used by a large Republic warship as it docks with a fuel station. Only time I've seen that visually represented in Star Wars.
Saw the title and thought, "Tugs? Not sure how they would be interesting, but hey, it's Spacedock, so this is probably still worth the watch." I'm glad I didn't skip this one as it has so many cool ideas. Definitely an untapped area of worldbuilding.
Glad you liked it!
- hoojiwana from Spacedock
You know what, I really like this idea. So many hero ships are either small freighters or ex-military, so one that's a tug is pretty neat.
Imagine a small ship, with a pair of small high-efficiency engines rigged beside the huge main thruster that's like 50% the entire thing. The crew goes around doing jobs for various organizations to salvage ships and clean up convoy lanes, while doing some off the book jobs on the sides. If there's an active conflict in the area that they can operate around, all the better. Imagine all the stories you can tell without even getting into stuff that's personal to the crew!
The Nostromo in Alien (of the Alien franchise), started with a Tug and it was everything you could want in a sci-fi horror tug. (Also a call out to the novel of the same name).
Ahem. "A call-out to the ship of the same name in Joseph Conrad's novel 'Heart of Darkness.'"
@@seanbigay1042 Yes that too.
I heard, Nostromo were executive craft but become
obsolete in it's role and been customly repurposed as tug ship for various cargo, from space stations to space factories and installations.
Wish there's were fan redesign of original ship that takes that idea, it's really interesting to see Nostromo with other drives and more fancy equipment and look.
In the old Independence War space sim games. Several of the Indies ships were explicitly tugs repurposed as Space Technicals. Also, it was one of the early games that used Newtonian physics.
The Kushan Salvage corvette fits the bill very well. it was made to move around stuff while the mothership was being built and in combat, They can yoink enemy capital ships to be retrofitted, or salvaged.
Don't forget about the movers or the “raming” frigate
@@Thepissheadman aye.
Hippity hoppity, we take your property!
You should do one on ship tenders. A lot of modern navies have scaled them back or phased them out for being less useful or necessary. It would be interesting to see what space tender ships would be like in the far flung reaches of the universe.
Capital size ship that is 50 percent massive engines for speed and the other half is all cargo and cargo handling for supporting. Minimal weapons and only basic armor and defenses.
Alternatively if you want to up the scale even more you can start blurring the line between tender and mobile dock yard as well.
I was thinking of this as well. In settings where it's impossible or impractical to tow crippled vessels to a repair station, for example you can't tow through hyperspace, you need to bring the repair station to the ship. It could also be used to constuct space stations or other space infrastructure in situ.
The spider class tug of IW edge of chaos comes to mind when talking about tug space ship. And it is interesting how a tug ship turned to combat ship idea feels odd for space combat yet somehow fit the space pirate trope.
This just reminded me of the Planetes anime, where the main job of the main cast is to clean up space debris. The ship was called the Toy Box and was set up as EVA craft but also had armatures to pick up debris. It's style very much reminded me of how tugs can fill in many roles beyond just move things.
I always appreciated how its little skeletal “skiff” craft was named the Fishbone. (I translated the show, BTW.)
How did you watch Planetes? I've been trying to find it for years! In the US, that is.
@@Vinemaple I found a copy at an anime convention a long time ago. It is under the Bandai publishing, but seeing as it is hard sci-fi its likely hard to find in print.
@@Vinemaple I had to search for a bit, but I finally found a fairly viewable version here on RUclips.
@@Vinemaple There are literally dozens of sites for anime watching these days. Animension and wcofun are among the most accessible. Probably want an adblocker before going to either but I've been using both for a long while and they're fine.
Yes! I remember using tugs to knock enemy electro-magnetic gun ships out of alignment in the first "Homeworld" game.
IDK why I never thought of using the salvage corvette for disrupting aimed ion frigate fire. nice!
I know you can capture those frigates but how would you use them to disrupt fire?
@@Thepissheadman The salvage corvettes physically move the Frigates. The Ion Frigates, are fixed-mount bow-aimed. So, move the frigate, move the gun's POI.
@@labrat810 Exactly. If memory serves I had two recovery corvettes vs three pirate ion frigates. I kept bouncing back and forth between all three, misaligning them from shooting Homeworld 1 (or whatever the main vessel was named) until I got the upper hand with my other ships and won the scenario.
This is one time that I not only agree with you but Ive actually implemented this in my setting! A modified workbee/tug is the hero ship and such things are useful in the setting for a number of roles including the construction of the massive gates that allow long distance travel across the galaxy, kind of like an oversized stargate but for spaceships. hauling large pieces of a space born mega project like that calls for a lot of things including large tug boats!
Hardspace Shipbreaker had a few Tug and Salvage Vessels. Those were always fun to break apart.
On the topic of barges and tugs, I really love the "detachable head" concept where the majority of a ship's mass is skeleton structures for housing containers and the cockpit is the only fully capable vessel. This is a perfect main character vessel because you got the home base and the adventure ship. The cargo section has limited mobility and controls, but the cockpit section contains the hyperdrive and more powerful engines. It's not really a "barge and tug" but not a single continuous ship either.
I appreciate the heck out of how you put the credits for each shot at the bottom of the screen.
I think there's even MORE case for tugs in space than on the sea. In space there's lots satellites or other space infrastructure which needs to be placed in long term orbits. Giving each sat their own drive is costly and wasteful. A tug is basically a freighter whose cargo is on the outside.
It's something I started appreciated heavily once I made huge spacecraft in KSP. They tend to dock awkwardly, so having a pod with extra large RCS thruster assist them during docking help a lot.
You missed Cowboy Bebop. Jet, who seemed to be the owner of the primary ship seemed to run a salvage gig. His personal flight craft was specifically a salvage vehicle with a huge claw for grabbing onto things. Whether they wanted to be grabbed or not.
I recently watched Cowboy Bebop for the first time. I couldn't get into it. Interesting universe, funny characters, acceptable dialogue even through the (absolutely fantastic translation), but abysmally plotted. I've rarely watched a "tightly plotted" show like this one was suppose to be where I ended up thinking the entire story was just filler. Like, if the whole thing is just going to be a character drama, and you're not going to have a worthwhile plot, then don't keep dangling the existence of one in front of the audience! Just do the character drama and use straight up filler plots! But if you want to be a tightly plotted show, then actually put the effort in.
I also didn't like the fact that it was depressing as hell, but that's a personal preference. There was nothing wrong with that choice, I just didn't appreciate it.
@@jasonwalker9471 The show was designed with Jazz as a guide. Not everything follows the way you expect it to. Its not for everybody. But it is highly regarded. No laws saying you have to like it though. Not everyone likes Jazz.
Awesome ship, really fits him
One of my favourite sci-fi spaceship ever is definitely the largely forgotten Tug-314 interstellar tug from Star Wars. Instead of using mechanical arms, it uses two massive powerful tractor beam projectors mounted on each side of the vessel. It also comes in two different flavours, the standard small variant and the large variant. The standard variant is the most commonly used around space stations and posts used to move around light cruisers and frigates, while the large version is utilized on major space ports used to move around star destroyers. Not only is this ship so damn gorgeous, it also serves several other roles such as search and rescue(literally saved R2-D2 and the universe as a result), firefighting, and salvage operations.
I really like the look of a utility/industrial craft the multi-purpouse nature allows for some well justified little stories (distress call there, salvage here etc.) while being sufficiently small to feel like home to its crew
Hey Great video! I've been saying this for years, that we need to see more of the "mundane" utilitarian and logistics and worker craft that would be plentiful as hell in a full-on space-going economy and civilization! Tugs, and cargo ships, and tankers, and all sorts of other utility craft.
I agree this is a real missed opportunity with so much SciFi that we don't get to see these craft.
Tugs are immensely cool little vessels, there's a certain charm IMO to something like a harbor tug
I've been playing Starsector recently, and it has a ship class called the "Ox" which is labelled as a "tug" and gives your fleet a small boost in its travel speed at the cost of very high fuel use when you use it in FTL travel. Really cool if you have the fuel supply to run it, and helps keep your bigger ships moving more like smaller ones do.
you can have multiples of the ox to stack the speed bonus.
penalties stack too, but just get another prometheus for the fleet to solve that.
@@nobody8717 Thanks, I thought that would probably work, but never tried it!
I’ve seen concept art of the Corellian Freighter being used as a tug but it’s something else to have Spacedock cover it
Speaking of the game where you fly around and salvage stuff, we played an RPG once where we flew around in a light freighter. One day we found an attack ship with a huge railgun that we didn't have enough fuel to even fire, let alone fly. So, we hauled it around the solar system for a few months using it's own inertia to keep floating beside us and only intervened when we needed to stop it or start it moving.
The bit about using tugboats as barge engines instantly got me thinking about the DCS (Department of Commercial Shipping) light freighters shown in the novel Halo: Contact Harvest, these are basically the same thing, but in space. The whole thing is just a small control cabin with hydrazine rockets (I'm assuming it also has a fusion drive despite the book implying otherwise) and a slipspace drive that clamps onto a cargo containter the size of a small house. Cheap, reliable... and ultimately responsible for saving upwards of 200,000 innocent lives.
I like the idea of Space Tugs, but for Long Range instead of short so a bunch of smaller craft can 'piggyback' on a 'commuter tug' that is just a MASSIVE engine with fuel tanks & a cockpit - or maybe running constantly on eliptical orbit between planets/gates/etc.
The La Vie en Rose from the Universal Century Gundam timeline deserves a mention as a repair & salvage vessel.
Expeditionary force has a class of ship called Star Carries which are specialist star ships meant to attach to smaller ships via several hard points so that eh star carrier can use its superior FTL drive (a wormhole generator in this case) to transport the smaller ships (up to and including battleships) to where they need to go. While the small ship also have FTL drives they don't have the same range and efficiency as that of the star carrier's drive. That is somewhat similar to a tug.
A star carrier also gets converted into a "hero ship" in the series receiving several modifications, and a few complete overhauls, particularly after it kind of breaks, a couple times. Unfortunately it doesn't get used much in its intended role, the hard points being removed until they have to be reinstalled do to need.
Have you looked at the Solar Clipper series by Nathan Lowell? It's mostly industrial hauling ships. There are small 'tractor' class ships with an officer with a crew of 8 that haul cans. There's also a barbell class ship that has bulk undiversified freight that clips on to a very large single can. And there's a number of other ships too - just those are the two most tugish... well, aside from the actual tugs (but those aren't hero ships in the story).
The Spaceship Hunter-Gratzner from Pitch Black is a sorta modular ship / tug where the back and the front are detachable and cargo / transport pods are carried in the middle
This was a semi-common use for Al'kesh's in Stargate. The most notable example of one is the Lucian Alliance Freighter, which was really just a bunch of cargo modules linked via tractor beams to the back of an Al'kesh that was pulling it.
One of the things I loved about Homeworld were the salvage ..I think frigates…..not tugs but ship stealers
Salvage Corvettes... 90% of how you won the first game is how many enemy ships you could steal.
Ahh, the line of turned Tiidani Ion Cannon frigates marching out past the render distance. Fun times 😊
I know you don't really cover ships in anime but I highly recommend the hero ship in outlaw star. A lot of ships in that series have arms to maneuver weapons and other things and even though the ship is not set up to be a salvage ship the owner has it classified as one to use it as a cover.
I once imagined a war-time scenario in space of a repair and refit station. It would have these external docking bays with smaller tug vessels flying out and clamping on and guiding the larger ships as they come in for repairs, as in many cases they may be too damaged to safely navigate themselves into the space dock. They would also grab and yank off loose parts or catch debris to prevent it drifting into the station or other ships. A very hectic environment where in some cases you have limited time to fly out, grab a ship and safely guide it in before it collides with the station.
One of my favorite tugs was from a TV series the ABC here in Australia ran on it's free to air channel. It was called "Escape from Jupiter" and there may have been a series called "Return to Jupiter" as well. They featured a space tug that was not much more than rocket propulsion systems and a swivel mounted maneuvering system for adjusting travel in other directions. I'm not sure if it was on both series, but it was quite literally a basic space tug. I quite liked the design, very simple and elegant to animate. It might not have looked like much but it got the job done.😁👍👍
This was from before they figured out that Jupiter was a gas giant. I think back then everyone thought Jupiter was a massive planet with lots of atmosphere.
So, first off, just to address the elephant in the room... the YT-1300 is a _very_ multi-purpose vessel and playing tugboat is just one of the many things it can do. I wouldn't even be surprised if CEC didn't even originally design it to be able to do that (the section in between the mandibles is primarily used as a magnetic loading system) and it was actually "discovered" use for the vessel, especially since the YT-1300 is the only YT series model with those mandibles.
Anyway, I really like the idea of space-tugs, space-trains and space-trucks for moving heavy, stationary/orbital equipment around and for moving large amounts of cargo along secured trading lanes cheaply and efficiently.
Legit, a fun idea for a sci-fi (or even modern) TTRPG campaign is to have functionally a space truck (or a tug type vehicle or something) and then do space trucking + salvage (use boats for a modern take on it). Give the players a ship of some kind that has a small crew compartment but tons of cargo room, and you can have all sorts of fun. Bonus if you can ditch the cargo container sections for a quick getaway via powerful engines, letting you force the group to choose between risking lives or losing profits.
If you’ve played the old x-wing series of pc games then you may remember that star wars has tugs; specifically the Phylon freight CT-11 space tug. There are also cargo ferriers and heavy lifters, to move cargo containers to and fro. There are also a slew of other support ships like the combat utility vehicle (used to resupply fighters mid mission), the Delta 9 stormtrooper transport (used to transport storm troopers around); it’s bigger brothers the beta-class ETR-3 escort transport, and the Gamma-class ATR-6 assault transport and the Delta-class JV-7 escort shuttle; an up-gunned and up armored version of the Lambda class shuttle used by han and Co to sneak onto Endor.
Well now I'm curious about your thoughts on mobile bases too. Though I agree that tug-like craft don't get as much love as they could.
Salvage corvettes from Homeworld, or Homeworld 2’s resource collectors are great examples of utility ships that aren’t given enough love
Tugs are so versatile story setting! You could have small old ship or you can have huge ship with all types of machinery like a huge menupulator arms that can do precise work or be capable to snap ships in half.
Cheers for the X4 reference. A great game for those willing to put up with some indie studio jank and the steep learning curve with a big modding scene.
seconded
Some say, jank is the spice of life.
One of the big reasons they would still be needed in a lot of space station situations would be the hazard of using most high-energy STL engines. You wouldn't want a ship using a giant fusion torch, antimatter drive etc. Anywhere near a habitat
I like how in the X series of video games you have to dock the ship yourself using a similar HUD landing guidance display. Or you can get yourself a landing guidance computer that does it for you. Which is why only small manoeuvrable ships dock internally whereas freighters and large warships dock on docking spires held clear of the station.
I have a feeling the Cerritos/California class from ST:Lower Decks is something of a "hero tug." The designers have stated that it's design is for a "certain something" we haven't seen yet, and it's a smallish work ship with a massive engine and power system.
Freelancer PC game had space train ships, carrying exposed containers on a rack behind them. It also had odd cool transports that carried containers in their "sort-of-ribcages".
Wall-E had a short, but in my opinion nice, docking scene using two tug vessels.
When the landing ship arrives at the Axiom and the tug vessels push the lander into the hangar docking clamps.
I always liked the scene. And one of few examples of tug vessels in fiction.
5:36
In Nebulous Fleet Command, tugs are actually one of the ships you can outfit and bring into combat.
They're decently fast and maneuverable but have basically paper armor, but they can fit a pretty deadly 250mm autoloading main gun and punch up against heavier ships if you fit them with missile launchers or rocket launchers.
They can also fit a fully sized reactor and act as jamming, early warning, and electronic warfare platforms.
Star Citizen's ARGO SRV tractor beam tug ship should be in game in a few months. Very excited for that.
The hero ship in my trek fanfic is a converted heavy tug... this was super helpful. Thank you
1:14 They're used constantly. You just don't notice for reasons that are twofold: It would've been a _heavy_ cost in labor, budget, or both to add in the effects causing the ship to maneuver (considering CGI was a new concept), and it would've made the shots look too "busy" when completed. Take the impulse engines, for example. They're intentionally rendered without an exhaust plume, but that doesn't mean they're inactive.
The Vulture God in Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Final Architecture series is meant to be a space salvage tug of sorts, it’s described as having a grabby claw device underneath that’s used at least once as a way to piggyback other ships without power and so on
Extraordinarily well thought out, and underrated video.
The California-class from Star Trek Lower Decks has this as one of its major roles. Its engines are overpowered for its size, to help with tractor-beam hauling. It's also why the ship's name and serial number are on the back of the saucer - because that's the view other ships get of it, as it hauls them around.
In the Gundam Metaverse, Seed has the Junk Guild who are the closest to space tugboat crews, collecting scrap, repairing it & selling it off. Universal Century does have some Monks, but I think they mainly deal with the bodies floating around after a battle...
I did once design my own long distance recovery vessel. Had a ship roughly as large as the ships it works with, quite capable of pushing or pulling said ships around with ease. It also has several smaller, more traditional tug boats connected to it, acting as a Mother Ship to them. These tugs maneuver target vessels into position for the Mother Ship to connect with in either push or pull configuration, then either remain attached to the target vessel to keep it under control mid-journey, reconnect to their specially designed docking stations on the Mother Ship to become additional engines fully controlled from the Mother Ship Bridge, or swap between both as needed. The tugs can completely resupply while docked and are fully capable long distance travelers too, but generally remain with the Mother Ship. It's also not unusual during quiet times for sub-crews to take their tugs into places like debris fields or old battlefields to dig up some salvage on their own, but always return o their Mother Ship when called...
One of the cool tug-ships that come to my mind is the ARGO SRV from Star Citizen. It's basically two engines with a tractor beam, looks industrial, and is supposed to do exactly what real world tug-vessels do.
Actually in the Expanse there are tug ship/rescue ship. And it has been used as their 1st hero ship “Knight”. It was used as surveillance/rescue mission on 1st episode. I assume it would guide Canterbury as the ice hauler to berth in space station like Ceres as one of its duty.
Haha! The Pioneering Sprit is currently sat off the Fylde coat decommissioning the gas rigs out in the Irish Sea. It really is a big beast.
Sci-Fi tug hero ships for the win. The world needs more of these...
Love this one! I've always had a special place in my heart for tugboats.
There was an HFY story narrated on RUclips about a fleet of tugs used to latch onto asteroids and make their trajectories aim for the enemies. Cheap massive missiles.
At the end of Halo Reach, you can briefly see a bunch of automated tugs help the Pillar of Autumn lift off while docked on the planet's surface. Once the Pillar is airborne, the tugs detach and guide themselves back to the ground for reuse.
Most ocean tugs have quite long towing lines (hawsers) in order to absorb the energy of the ships moving relative to one another in waves. Since there's no (water) waves in space, you can probably use a much shorter hook. OTOH, a km's long towline could be used to create artifical gravity by spinning the two ships, or even used as a skyhook or slingshot.
I like the idea of say a capital system of your government has so much traffic and stations that it’s to crowded in places for capital ships to move themselves so you would have a tug ( maybe with tractor beams) to move them to docking bays or back into safer take off regions of the system to take off to ftl speeds
Tractor-trailers even have their own tugs, sort of like the sort planes do or shunter trains, for manipulating trailers in the yards with something smaller and more maneuverable than a full on truck.
Another interesting (and somewhat silly, in case of a sci-fi) real-life counterparts are the artillery tractors.
You have a vessel with strong engines and a hyperdrive as the "tractor" unit, and an orbital defense platform like "gun" unit. The latter also have some maneuvering thrusters and sublight engines, but it is slow. Imagine a Siebel-Fahre.... IRL, Rendel or flat-iron gunboats were designed to be towed at higher speeds than they were capable of making under their own power.
This reminds me of superlifters in The Culture series. They're carried by GSVs, whacking great and very fast ships, to help smaller ships carried inside the GSVs to slow down to speeds that their FTL fields can deal with.
Nice episode. And I realy like the idea of a salvage tug vessel as an hero ship. Although...we ALL know what scenario will sooner or later happen when you deal with lost/abandoned ships...😉
The space ship attached to the Millennium Falcon was probably an after market modification, converting the freighter for luxury travel.
Please do a video on *"Conjoined vessels"* in sci-fi, where multiple different vessels are connected to form a superior vessel, either made due to dire circumstances or as a massive power flex. An example of this is the ZZZ-0001 Andromeda, which is modified with 2 D-class battleships strapped to its side to gain a boost in speed, firepower, shielding, and overall survivability.
Working on a space industrial game and I'm way ahead of you. Tugs are going to be a thing because i love the idea of little chassis MASSIVE engine fit for one purpose.
Tugs could also be considered an economic choice in some settings; a setting high tech enough for tons of space-faring ships moving between points but below tractor beam tech could have ferry/tug ships moving crew and cargo to and from huge spaceships around a space station, then helping tow the ship from the space station to a designated "warp" area where they fan begin the burn to their destination. Similarly, you could have a setting where most spaceships have powerful, advanced engines that burn prohibitively expensive plot-onium fuel. That way, it could be cheaper for them to get assisted by short range tug ships that use cheaper standard engines around space stations or while orbiting a planet.
The first thing that comes to mind for me when I think scifi tug is Star Control II where the protagonist ship was intended to serve as a tug by her original designers.
"The Betty", from Alien Resurrection
deserves mentioning
I suppose the wiki calls it a "freighter"
but its small size (casts doubt on freighter angle)
and proportionally enormous gimballing engines
tells me its really meant as some kind of a Tug, pulling much larger items around.
In Star Trek, runabouts are often equipped with tractor beams to serve as tugs. In ST beta canon there are dedicated tug ships as well.
And Spacedock's favorite video game Battlezone II (AKA Battlezone: Combat Commander, which you use the music from) also has a dedicated tug vehicle.
There are a tonne of dedicated tugs in Star Trek, and they're often seen. DS9, the various TOS movies, and Lower Decks all feature tugs galore. Heck, in Lower Decks the main ship is an engineering support ship that often serves the roll of "large tug".
@@jasonwalker9471 Indeed.
The best use of tugs back in the day was in Star Wars: Jedi Starfighter game to recover the big honkin cannon. Hilariously, if any were lost, more would hyperspace in.
Now this creates a LOT of story/campaign seeds for starship-based TTRPGs
You should read Shards of Earth by Adrian Tchaikovsky, the hero-ship in that book series is a salvage-tug named Vulture God.
It has a big claw, so I think you'll like it 😉
You know what else a tugboat can tow?
A heavy weapons platform.
Two of my favorite tugs in sci-fi that don't get mentioned much. First is the Thames from Xenogears. Big floating salvage vessel. Second is Mission of Honor by Weber, where a bunch of orbital traffic control tugs are forced to be improvised planetary shields due to a massive attack on orbital platforms.
You might like some of the ships of Star Citizen. There is a ship being designed around a tractor beam to be a tug, called the Argo SRV.
For an episode dedicated to tugs and industrial salvage vessels, I'd have figured there would be at least one mention of the Homeworld setting. Salvage corvettes are your lifeblood in the first game, and the hero ship is an industrial deep-space mining platform in the semi-sequel HW Cataclysm. Oh well, can't reference all of them all the time, I suppose.
I still want them to make a decent Young Ashford series...
a tug could become a good tiny pirate ship, strong engines, grapple equipment, maybe weld some containers on to increase crew space...
theres a book series. tales from the golden age of the solar clipper. in this series most trade is carried out by electronic solar sail equipped ships that carry kilotons of material. depending on the ship it doesnt really have efficient/proper engines to get moving. tugs equipped with tractor beam analogues push and rotate the ship on its initial outbound leg according to its scheduled flight plan. it then coasts on this initial momentum until beyond the safe distance before activating its solar sails.
For the YT tug would make sense for it to dock at the front of the cargo rig to help pilot them when the destination is reached.
Played I-war 25 years ago. As I recall it had some tugs to fly in.