iPedia Free Information Center

Information about Starship

This article is about a vehicle for interstellar travel. For other uses, see Starship (disambiguation).


A starship is a theoretical spacecraft designed for traveling between the stars, as opposed to a vehicle designed for orbital spaceflight or interplanetary travel.

The term is mostly found in science fiction, as humanity has not yet constructed such vehicles - while the Voyager and Pioneer probes have traveled into local interstellar space, they are not generally considered starships, mainly because they are both unpowered and unmanned. However, exploratory engineering has been undertaken on several preliminary designs and feasibility studies for starships that could be built with modern technology or technology thought to be available in the near future. For examples of such studies, see Project Daedalus, Project Orion, and Project Longshot.

Fictional types

A common literary device is to posit a faster-than-light propulsion system (such as warp drive) or travel through hyperspace, although some starships may be outfitted for centuries-long journeys of slower-than-light travel. Other designs posit a way to boost the ship to near-lightspeed, allowing relatively "quick" travel (i.e. decades, not centuries) to nearer stars. This results in a general categorization of the kinds of starships:
  • Sleeper ships, which put their passengers into stasis during a long trip.
  • Generation ships, where the destination will be reached by descendants of the original passengers.
  • Relativistic ships, taking advantage of time dilation at close-to-light-speeds, so long trips will seem much shorter (but still take the same amount of time for outside observers).
  • Faster-than light ships, which can move between places very quickly (transcending current understanding of physics or using interdimensional 'shortcuts').

Fictional elements

Different authors and different stories will, of course, imagine different kinds of starships. Certain common elements are found in most fiction that discusses starships.

Slower-than-light

Main article: Generation ship
  • Fiction that discusses slower-than-light starships is relatively rare, since the time scales are so long. Instead of describing the interaction with the outside world, those fictions tend to focus on setting the whole story within the world of the (often very large) starship during its long travels. Sometimes the starship is a world, in perception or reality.

Faster-than-light

Main article: Faster-than-light
  • Such starships are typically large, multi-passenger vehicles (comapred to starfighters). They range in size from small personal yachts and courier ships, up to vast bulk containers (used for intersystem shipping) and enormous warships.
  • Starships are usually depicted as operating under laws and guidelines similar to real-world seagoing vessels. The primary reason for this concept (beyond artistic license) is that deep space is an even more hazardous environment than the open sea, and so extreme caution would have to be taken in all starship operations. A side effect of this is that spacegoing fleets, especially space militaries, are usually described as being organized similar to modern Earth navies.
  • A starship may be fitted with a wide variety of engines, weapons, equipment, and internal compartments. Small freighters used for smuggling are typically fast, modified to avoid detection, are often heavily armed, and may have secret holds for hiding contraband cargo. Large container ships usually have little in the way of shielding or weaponry, but have huge, powerful engines necessary for moving vast quantities of cargo through (or between) star systems.
  • Passenger vessels, are often described as being similar to modern ocean liners, containing luxurious passenger cabins, gambling halls, showrooms, restaurants, and lounges. Warships contain crew quarters, extensive weaponry and shielding, massive engines, sophisticated sensor and communications arrays, and usually a detachment of non-naval Marine-like soldiers trained in assaulting and capturing enemy spacecraft, targets on planetary surfaces, or both.

Exceptions

  • Exceedingly large spacegoing craft (for example the Death Star of the Star Wars universe) are typically not referred to as 'starships' (but see 'slower-than-light ships' above). Terms like (artificial) planetoid may be considered to be more accurate.
  • Space stations and other structures intended to orbit a celestial body or serve as a point of contact / maintanance / docking station for other ships are not usually called starships, even if they can move under their own power.

Fictional examples

The following is a listing of some of the most widely known vessels in various science fiction franchises:

Individual ships

Groups of ships

See also

External links

Starship may mean or refer to:
  • Starship, a vehicle for interstellar travel (still fictuous as regarding manned travel)
  • Beechcraft Starship, a Beechcraft airplane
  • Starship

..... Click the link for more information.
spacecraft is a vehicle or device designed for spaceflight. On a sub-orbital spaceflight, a spacecraft enters outer space but then returns to the planetary surface (such as Earth) without making a complete orbit.
..... Click the link for more information.
This article or section uses citations that are either broken or outdated. This article or section uses citations that link to broken or outdated sources, and are deemed unreliable. Please [improve the article] or discuss this issue on the talk page.
..... Click the link for more information.
orbital spaceflight (or orbital flight) is a spaceflight in which a spacecraft is placed on a trajectory where it could remain in space for at least one orbit. To do this around the Earth, it must be on a free trajectory which has an altitude at perigee (altitude at closest
..... Click the link for more information.
By definition, interplanetary travel is travel between bodies in a given star system, especially the solar system.

Reasons for interplanetary travel

The costs and risks of interplanetary travel receive a lot of publicity — spectacular examples include the
..... Click the link for more information.
worldwide view of the subject.
Please [ improve this article] or discuss the issue on the talk page.


Science fiction (abbreviated SF or sci-fi
..... Click the link for more information.
visit the outer planets and achieve velocity to escape our solar system]]

The Voyager program consists of a pair of unmanned scientific probes, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2.
..... Click the link for more information.
Pioneer program of unmanned space missions was designed for planetary exploration. There were a number of such missions in the program, but the most notable were Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11, which explored the outer planets and left the solar system.
..... Click the link for more information.
Exploratory engineering is a term coined by K. Eric Drexler to describe the process of designing and analyzing detailed hypothetical models of systems that are not feasible with current technologies or methods, but do seem to be clearly within the bounds of what science considers
..... Click the link for more information.
feasibility study is a preliminary study undertaken to determine and document a project's viability. The term feasibility study is also used to refer to the resulting document or artifact.
..... Click the link for more information.
Project Daedalus was a study conducted between 1973 and 1978 by the British Interplanetary Society to design a plausible interstellar unmanned spacecraft. A dozen scientists and engineers led by Alan Bond worked on the project, and settled on proposing a fusion rocket as its drive.
..... Click the link for more information.
Project Orion was the first engineering design study of a spacecraft powered by nuclear pulse propulsion, an idea first proposed by Stanisław Ulam in 1947. The project, initiated in 1958, was led by Ted Taylor at General Atomics and physicist Freeman Dyson, who at Taylor's
..... Click the link for more information.
Project Longshot is a design for an interstellar spacecraft, an unmanned probe intended to fly to Alpha Centauri powered by nuclear pulse propulsion. Developed by the US Naval Academy and NASA, Longshot was designed to be built at the Space Station Alpha, the much larger precursor
..... Click the link for more information.
Faster-than-light (also superluminal or FTL) communications and travel refer to the propagation of information or matter faster than the speed of light. "True" FTL, in which matter exceeds the speed of light in its own local region, is considered to be impossible by
..... Click the link for more information.
Spacecraft propulsion is any method used to change the velocity of spacecraft and artificial satellites. There are many different methods. Each method has drawbacks and advantages, and spacecraft propulsion is an active area of research.
..... Click the link for more information.
In the fictional universe of Star Trek, the warp drive is a form of faster-than-light (FTL) propulsion. It is generally portrayed as being capable of propelling spacecraft or other objects to many multiples of the speed of light, while avoiding the problems associated with
..... Click the link for more information.
Hyperspace is a fictional plot device sometimes used in science fiction. It is typically described as an alternate region of space co-existing with our own universe which may be entered using an energy field or other device.
..... Click the link for more information.
century (From the Latin cent, one hundred) is one hundred consecutive years.
  • In all dating systems, centuries are essentially numbered ordinally. Thus, the first century of a time frame is "The First Century" and not "Century 0".

..... Click the link for more information.
A sleeper ship is a hypothetical type of manned spaceship in which most or all of the crew spends the journey in some form of hibernation or suspended animation. As there is currently no known technology that allows for long-term suspended animation of humans, the term is usually
..... Click the link for more information.
Stasis (IPA: /ˈsteɪsɪs/), or hypersleep, is a science fiction concept akin to suspended animation.
..... Click the link for more information.
A generation ship is a hypothetical starship that travels across great distances between stars at a speed much slower than that of light (see interstellar travel). Since such a ship might take from as little as below a hundred years to hundreds or even tens of thousands of years to
..... Click the link for more information.
Time dilation is the phenomenon whereby an observer finds that another's clock which is physically identical to their own is ticking at a slower rate as measured by their own clock.
..... Click the link for more information.
Faster-than-light (also superluminal or FTL) communications and travel refer to the propagation of information or matter faster than the speed of light. "True" FTL, in which matter exceeds the speed of light in its own local region, is considered to be impossible by
..... Click the link for more information.
This article or section is written like a personal reflection or and may require .
Please [ improve this article] by rewriting this article or section in an . (, talk)


“Authorship” redirects here.

..... Click the link for more information.
A generation ship is a hypothetical starship that travels across great distances between stars at a speed much slower than that of light (see interstellar travel). Since such a ship might take from as little as below a hundred years to hundreds or even tens of thousands of years to
..... Click the link for more information.
Faster-than-light (also superluminal or FTL) communications and travel refer to the propagation of information or matter faster than the speed of light. "True" FTL, in which matter exceeds the speed of light in its own local region, is considered to be impossible by
..... Click the link for more information.
Starfighter" is a science fiction term used to describe small, fast, usually one-manned craft designed for armed combat (cf starship).

The appearance and use of fictional starfighters is often modeled on fighter aircraft, with little regard for the actual physics of space
..... Click the link for more information.
An energy shield is a form of technology commonly found in science fiction, but also in development for real-life space travel [1] .

Reality

A number of efforts to design defensive energy fields are occurring in real life, most notably the efforts to design a
..... Click the link for more information.
ocean liner is a passenger ship or passenger-cargo ship that transports people and often freight from one port to another along regular trans-oceanic routes according to a schedule.
..... Click the link for more information.
sensor is a type of transducer. Direct-indicating sensors, for example, a mercury thermometer, are human-readable. Other sensors, such as a thermocouple, only produce an output voltage or other electrical output which must be interpreted by another device (such as a computer).
..... Click the link for more information.


This article is copied from an article on Wikipedia.org - the free encyclopedia created and edited by online user community. The text was not checked or edited by anyone on our staff. Although the vast majority of the wikipedia encyclopedia articles provide accurate and timely information please do not assume the accuracy of any particular article. This article is distributed under the terms of GNU Free Documentation License.
Herod_Archelaus


page counter