Editing Spaceship (section)

=== Things your spaceship needs ===
* '''Propulsion''': You want some means of propulsion to get from Point A to Point B. Some variety of rocket is the usual way of doing this, but other options include solar and laser sails. There might be other options as well such as ion engines or nuclear ignited hydrogen. Note that sails and ion thrusters only work in the vacuum of space; if your ship will be doing any travel to or from a planet surface, you'll need to use something else. If FTL is involved then the non-FTL component is usually referred to as the "sublight" propulsion.
** '''Maneuvering Thrusters''': To turn your spaceship around, you need systems. Almost always the thing sci-fi ship designers forget to put. Another is reaction wheels (basically glorified gyroscopes to keep the craft  pointed steady instead of tumbling end over end with no structure in sight to manually correct it)
* '''Superstructure''': the chassis that keeps everything together. Usually you'd want this to be as light as possible, as every kilogram you can spare is one less to spend fuel moving about.
* '''Life Support''': Space is not a kind place to carbon based life-forms such as yourself. If you want to get around in your spaceship, you'll need some consideration towards maintaining a habitable environment for your crew. This can be as simple as spacesuit, but you'd probably want something a bit more substantial. If you want a habitable compartment where someone can survive without a spacesuit want some oxygen tanks, CO2 scrubbers and some means of regulating the temperature.
* '''Cooling''': Since there is no air in space you can't remove heat by convection and need to radiate it. Less advanced spaceships will require large extensible radiators. More advanced ones can either use very high-capacity heat sinks or some new hull alloy that's both very resistant and very good at radiating heat.
* '''Power System''': Something needs to keep the lights on. Spaceships today can't afford to carry large amounts of fuel that isn't used in propulsion, so either they use Solar as a means to keep the batteries topped off if they're in range of Mars, or they may use more exotic long-term solutions like an RTG (Radioisotope thermoelectric generator) if they're beyond the asteroid belt. Sci-Fi spaceships may be large enough to house something like a fusion reactor, which can harvest space-borne hydrogen and use it for both power generation and thrust.
* '''Hull''': With space being a completely empty vacuum, you'll need a hull for your spacecraft that's strong enough to resist damage from stray meteorites or debris (which can travel at the speed of a bullet) from without and to ensure no atmosphere leaks out or causes the craft to explode outward from within. It's even harder than pressurizing a jetliner cabin and could require a double hull like submarines and bulkheads to seal off damaged sections if shit hits the fan. The hull is also very useful for protection against cosmic radiation, which is a danger to both your squishy organic crews and to your electronics (you ''reeeeeally'' don't want your navigation computers to flip a bit when making the all-important vector calculations).