Propulsion Systems in Science Fiction

[Music] hey everyone hujuana from space doc here today i'm going to be talking about what makes a spacecraft a craft rather than a station the engines that said though the iss does have engines for maintaining altitude but is not going to be taking quick jumps to the moon for branch every ship needs a way to move be it solar sails or fusion drives or some other technology and they also largely have ftl drives to go with them the design and capabilities of the engines can be extremely important to the story and setting or just something there for flavor or convenience they are one of the many methods science fiction creators use to define their settings and the vessels within them helping to set audience expectations for example the millennium falcon is boastfully introduced by han solo as being exceptionally quick but in the empire strikes back its hyperdrive is temperamental at best the sublight engines are powerful but it's the hyperdrive that truly makes the ship characterful and its foibles directly impact the story the falcon flies around like an aircraft and fights in a similar manner to a world war ii bomber it is not in any way realistic but it doesn't matter whatsoever because of the setting contrary to this is the epstein drive in the expanse an extremely efficient and powerful but otherwise mostly realistic engine that fits into the archetype known as a torch drive this cuts down on travel time in the setting from what would otherwise be months or years between planets to mere weeks or days and the juice allows crew to withstand far higher acceleration than they normally would be able to there have been many studies into what levels and directions of acceleration the human body can withstand usually in relation to aircraft combat maneuvering broadly speaking a person is able to actively do things like push buttons on a control panel in front of them up to around 4g experiencing between 3 and 12g of downward acceleration can cause loss of consciousness depending on individual tolerance exposure time and whether the person is sitting or lying on their front or back higher forces than that especially for extended periods can cause injury or death though there are ways to improve a person's tolerance and reduce their chances of blacking out the simplest of these is just training by tensing their legs they can keep too much blood from pooling in them this is also how g-suits work by squeezing the legs and by doing a special breathing exercise sometimes called the hook maneuver that prevents too much blood leaving the brain this is what bobby draper was doing in season 5 when escaping from a torpedo these are all mitigating factors though and beyond a certain point loss of consciousness and injury will still happen this is where the juice comes in it extends that limit and allows for higher acceleration for longer times the expanse also uses thrusters for changing orientation these systems are commonly called acs or rcs standing for attitude control system or reaction control system respectively and can be found on basically every real space vehicle ever built this is not the only way to change the direction of travel when using realistic physics for spacecraft as you can simply tilt the main engines when they are running this changes the direction thrust goes in compared to the vehicle's center of mass which in turn makes the vessel rotate the thrust can be redirected with other methods and can even be used as full-on thrust reversers like on the razor crest may it rest in very many pieces thrust reverses and the reverse of them reverse thrusters are not a terribly common saying in sci-fi but they do show up now and then stargate sg1 has both the asgard mothership and the bc303 prometheus include deceleration drives for atmospheric entry and landing nexus the jupiter instant has some vessels with full-size drives mounted on their fronts used for deceleration a design feature that also shows up on many warships in the sojourn additional landing engines may also be on the ship unless it pulls the spacex and lands on its tail or if the vessel is just flat out incapable of landing this could be the rcs pulling double duty if it's powerful enough for the gravity of the planet being landed on as with the rosenante on ilis or separate landing engines like the belly thrusters on the eagle transporters in space 1999. the razer crest had veto engines built into its nacelles that seemed to be inspired by the real dornier do-31 there was a really neat moment in season two when the engine on one side failed while the other was still running causing asymmetrical thrust which then pushed the crest over into the water as a side note how amazing does the do-31 look like something straight out of flash gordon another way of landing is to have the entire engine assembly rotate as with serenity or the us css prometheus which i think does it better out of the two with that neat fulcrum system it is possible to combine these landing engine types as on the valkyrie shuttle from avatar the valkyrie uses a set of four jet engines for low-speed atmospheric flight which can rotate giving it veto capabilities this was needed because using the two big fusion engines would just not be viable or safe in atmosphere which is also why the rosinante used its rcs for landing big powerful engines have big hot thrust plumes this is one of the reasons why the real life proposed starship hls has additional landing engines higher up on its sides as the huge raptor engines could dig a crater in the lunar regolith the moon dust on the surface or throw rocks up that could damage the craft that is what standard chemical engines could do now imagine that with something more high tech this means the engines themselves are highly dangerous weapons in their own right get caught in the plume of an epstein drive and you'll have one hell of a tan the idea of weaponized propulsion is known as the kazinti lesson named for a short story by larry niven a war-like species called the cozenti invades the stellar system thinking that the apparently unarmed pacifistic humans would be a pushover what they didn't reckon on was humanity making wide use of laser cell propulsion and fusion rockets and turning those on the invaders the inverse of this is also true in that weapons also act as thrusters so guns firing would move the ship about unless counteracted though this can also be exploited by the characters in story at least in a setting with decently realistic physics going on engines can be weaponized another way as ships can just accelerate and ram into things either directly causing damage with the impact or forcing the targets to move somewhere it probably doesn't want to be weaponized engines were also mentioned in the armed civilian ships video so go check that one out if you haven't seen it already all types of propulsion can also be complemented by whatever hand-wavy technology the setting has like anti-gravity or inertial dampeners increasing maneuverability improving thrust or nullifying the effects of acceleration on the crew or even something else another one of the main ways engines and ftl are used is to set the scale of the world the expanse takes place on a solar system scale so its spacecraft have no fdl systems at all and travel between planets takes days or weeks or longer most popular sci-fi is much larger than this typically being galactic in scale with stories taking place in many different star systems that can be extremely far apart as travelling between stars the normal way would take years at best these stories simply couldn't happen on a relatable time scale which leads to having faster than light travel there are many different types of ftl but for spacecraft they generally fall into one of three categories a drive that takes a ship beyond light speed a drive that takes the ship into another dimension that is somehow compressed or an external device that does either of the first two to the ship there can also be a mix of the two such as in mass effect or babylon 5 and also instant teleportation but that can sort of be counted as the first one if you want a more comprehensive look at all the types of ftl please let us know in the comments below together with the sublight propulsion ftl engines provide opportunities for stories and events as with the millennium falcon mentioned earlier ideally the two should really be designed to complement each other and follow some sort of guidelines for consistency that said the more fantastical the world is the less this is required finally not having any apparent method of propulsion is a good way to show highly advanced technology in comparison to more normal spaceships something like the independence day city destroyers or egos egg ship thing from the marvel cinematic universe so next time you're watching playing or reading something with the spacecraft you like in it or even creating one yourself have a little think about the engines and how they are used thanks for listening this is huji from space talk signing off [Music] you

Channel: Spacedock

Views: 147,203

Keywords: Spacedock, spacedock, space dock, engines, ftl, drie, epstein, epstein drive, expanse, the expanse, warp, hyperspace, ftl drive, propulsion, technology, warp speed, wormhole, stargate, engine, spaceship, space, lore, star wars, history, star trek, review, breakdown, summary, retrospective, specifications, news, gaming, videogame, gameplay, trailer

Id: -9B6B2vvr60

Length: 8min 18sec (498 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 15 2022