Editing Spaceship (section)

== 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.
===Spacecraft in [[Warhammer 40,000]]===
Unlike most other sci-fi spacecraft, [[Imperium of Man|Imperial]] ships in the WH40K universe have some special requirements. Instead of traveling faster than the speed of light, they enter an alternate dimension known as the [[Warp]] where the laws of physics are altered, and serves as the basis for most FTL travel in the setting. Because the Warp is basically hell and is full of [[daemon]]s that want to eat your soul, ships also carry Gellar Field generators to keep the ship safe inside a bubble of realspace. The liberal use of religious iconography also helps to ward off unwelcome visitors. In addition, Imperial ships make use of a [[Navigator]], a special strain of mutant that uses his psychic abilities to locate the [[Astronomicon]] found on Earth, and use its location to plot a course to their destination.

All that being said, the Warp is still quite treacherous and unpredictable, and a single accident can cause a ship to become irrevocably lost. Sometimes however, a ship returns to realspace as part of a [[Space Hulk]], which can house all manner of nasty threats to nearby planets. Other factions thus sometimes use slower but more reliable means of travel, such as the Ether Drives of the [[Tau]] which merely dip into the Warp. A phenomenon called “Warp Storms” can make large swaths of space closed off to space travel, as the storm creates an impassable barrier (generally speaking; sometimes a route through the storm may exist such as the [[Cadia|Cadian Gate]], making it a frequent target for chaos attacks). The most famous example is the [[Eye of Terror]].

For other means of travel that do not rely on the Warp, when they don't use [[Dolmen Gate|Dolmen Gates]], [[Necron]] ships use Inertialess Drives which removes all inertia from a ship. The [[Tyranid]] don't make use of the Warp at all to travel, though their ships are not individually capable of FTL. Instead, they have a specialized bio-ship called a [[Narvhal]], which senses distant systems and warps spacetime to create tunnels toward them for their fleets, similar to a wormhole. The tunnels break down in the presence of strong gravity wells, however, forcing the fleet to slow down as they approach their target and reach planets through more conventional means.

===[[BattleTech Spacecraft|Spacecraft in BattleTech]]===

More grounded in hard science fiction (outside the KF drive and HPG communication network), BattleTech Spacecraft (both as transports and as combat assets) are modestly explored in the universe. The downside is they tend to take a backseat compared to other BattleTech like BattleMechs. Don’t dismiss them completely though as any Aerospace Fighter or Assault DropShip will wreck your Mech if you underestimate them. More detail can be found in the page linked above.

===Spacecraft in [[Star Wars]]===
Ships in Star Wars typically come with an FTL system called "Hyperdrive," usually rated for different speeds; the smaller the number, the faster the engine. The main hyperdrive is rated at 3 for civilian ships, and 2 or 1 for military ships, and most ships will carry a backup drive rated in the double-digits so that a damaged ship can limp to the nearest system for repairs. A class rating of less than 1 is possible but rare; the Millennium Falcon was modified to have a rating of 0.5, but this drive was prone to malfunction. It's possible to pull a ship out of hyperspace with an artificial gravity well, triggering the failsafe on a hyperdrive to immediately stop its jump and thereby blocking a ship from leaving.

In addition, starships require sophisticated computers to perform navigation calculations before every jump, to avoid slamming into any celestial bodies in transit. This is why ships tend to stick to well-plotted "hyperspace routes," where the pathway is known to be clear of obstacles and can accept a high volume of traffic. Much lesser-known routes tend to be closely guarded secrets for strategic purposes (clandestine smuggling, top secret building projects, a shortcut to important hub worlds, etc). Being able to guard a hyperspace route effectively from outsiders, or else discovering a new route to land your forces right on top of your enemy's capital, can make a huge difference in an interstellar war. That said, you can cross the galaxy in at most a matter of days.

===[[Star Trek Starships|Space craft in Star Trek]]===
Spaceships in Star Trek use antimatter reactors called "warp cores", meaning that any breach from battle damage will destroy the ship as antimatter and matter get along worse than pretty much everything in existence. Weapons are also very immensely powerful, in the TOS era a single ship being able to destroy a planet with enough time and by the time of the TNG era an entire fleet is able to do it in a few seconds. Because of this every time you hear the shields fail completely means the ship will be destroyed within the next 2 hits or so. Star Trek created the trope of consoles exploding during battles, as hearing "shields down to 60%" alone just doesn't show tension well.

While small shuttles exist and were used for combat a few times, you almost never see a dogfight. Gene Roddenberry asked his NASA advisor about space fighters and was told the boring truth - that there's nothing a space fighter can do that a guided missile (Torpedo in Star Trek's case) can't do.

===Spacecraft in [[Setting:Halo|Halo]]===
Like in 40k, both Human and Covenant ships enter an alternate dimension for FTL travel, here called Slipspace, an 11-dimensional space that is thankfully absent of demons (the demons just stick to normal space, unfortunately). Human ships traditionally are much slower than Covenant ships, clocking in at 2.625 light years per day vs 1,368 light years per day. The reason for this discrepancy is that humans have only scratched the surface of Slipspace’s potential, and can only really skim through it (so like the [[Tau]]). In addition, human-made FTL tech is also less precise, so jumps are only made to locations just outside of a system and then use sublight drives to reach their destination. Forerunner tech, meanwhile, is so advanced that they can cross the galaxy in a matter of hours, and so precise that they can easily do point-to-point jumps on a local level. Forerunner gates likewise can send entire ships from one point to another, such as the gate connecting Mombassa, Africa to the Ark located outside the galaxy. All that being said, the whole process is still dangerous; an improperly installed or damaged drive can rip the ship apart, high radiation levels and static electricity need to be shielded against, and sometimes ships can just straight-up disappear.

===Spaceships in [[Dune]]===
One of the granddaddies of Sci-Fi, Dune is where the concept of the Navigator is shamelessly ripped off from. In this setting, Navigators are humans of the Spacing Guild, who have been sufficiently mutated by a drug called Spice that they cease to be human at all; their consciousness has been expanded to such a degree that they now have limited precognition, and use it to determine the vector for their destination. They then fold spacetime to be able to cross the galaxy faster than the speed of light. While it is possible to build a computer that can also navigate across space, such computers have been forbidden since the Butlerian Jihad against thinking machines.