Spaceship

A Spaceship is a fully reusable manned vehicle capable of traveling through space. A Spaceship which can cross interstellar distances is a Starship. A Staple of Science Fiction since the days of Jules Verne.

History of Spaceflight

Serious speculation of manned spacecraft began in the 19th century. Initially, the ideas were with launching people into space in shells by means of a giant cannon. But that would have the disadvantage of turning anyone aboard the projectile into anchovy paste after firing, to say nothing of deceleration.

On October 8th, 1957 the Soviet Union launched the first man-made object into space, on April 12th 1961 they followed this up by sending Yuri Gagarin into space on Vostok 1. This sparked a Space Race between the US and USSR.

So you want to build a Spaceship

Lets say have the means to get into space and you want to build a vehicle to get around in. Well it's going to need a few things.

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.
• Superstructure: what keeps everything together. Usually you'd want this to be as light as possible, as every kilogram you can spare is one less to move.
  • Maneuvering Thrusters: To turn your spaceship around, you need systems. Almost always the thing sci-fi ship designers forget to put.
• 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 enviroment 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.

Things your definitely want on your spaceship

• Sensors: You'd want some means of knowing your surrounding. Cameras with telescopes, RADAR, LIDAR and other such mechanism are all pretty useful.
• Computers: Technically you could operate a spaceship with a sextant and a slide rule and a set of valves and switches, even so things are a hell of a lot easier with a computer monitoring systems.
• Airlocks: A means of getting in and out of the spacecraft without letting all the air get out.
• Cargo Capacity:
• Toilets: Unless you plan on traveling for at most a few hours a day in your spaceship at most, you'll need some way to deal with the inevitable fact that living humans tend need to relieve themselves.

Things you might want to have on a Spaceship

• Artificial Gravity:
• Food Production: People gotta eat and
• Landing Gear: If you want to land on a planet's surface, you need gear to do so.
• Parasite craft: Smaller spaceships in your spaceship.

Spaceships in Science Fiction

Right now there are few things as iconic of Sci-Fi than Spaceships, from Steampunk ballistic shells to pulp era rockets, UFOs, mechanisms inspired by NASA and the recent wave of machines inspired by Big-Tech companies like SpaceX.

Spaceships in Fantasy

Needless to say, Spaceships are far less common in Fantasy than in Sci-Fi.

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