Hard Science Fiction

Wherein I post and reblog scientifically plausible fictional spacecraft. (Header image by Theo Bouvier; avatar by VolusRus)

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The "official" purpose of this blog is to encourage the creation of hard sci-fi in art and such

The *real* purpose is to curate a collection of kickass hard sci-fi art so I can keep it all in one place

Feel free to recommend creators (read: pleasepleaseplease I'm so normal about this I swear).

You can ask me anything related to hard SF through my inbox. I like reviewing spaceships.

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The KSNS "Ievan Polkka" by @sir-blackthorpe-ravenscairne

Source

(This is a hydrogen steamer, which is one of, if not the only way to achieve a proper stealth spacecraft while adhering to all known laws of thermodynamics)

[sir-blackthorpe-ravenscairne]

The Kalopsia Whisper, a cutting-edge space warship.

The Kalopsia line of ships, produced by the renowned Ymir Aerospace firm, was designed to outcompete even the great dreadnoughts of yore despite its relatively puny size through sheer speed alone. Its unique drive allows it to burn the antimatter ammo of its main gun in case something goes terribly wrong with the fusion reactor.

Typically crewed by teams of 5-8 sailors, Kalopsias are also known for their high degree of autonomy, with the S.S.D. Kalopsia Valkyrion once having been reported to taking a direct shot to her cabin, losing all of her crew, taking down 5 enemy frigates while on autopilot, and pulling into port all on her own. This is likely an exaggerated voidhand's tale, however.

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The asteroid mining ship Konstantin and the asteroid 162173 Ryugu, from the novel Delta-V by Daniel Suarez.

Art by Mac Rebisz

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ГЕРОЙ. (GEROY)

SOVIET PROPAGANDA POSTER FIRST SEEN 1984. ГЕРОЙ TRANSLATES DIRECTLY TO THE WORD "HERO", SHOWS IMPLICATION OF PERCEIVED ROLE THE “FRANCO-II” CLASS DESTROYER BOMBARDMENT PLAYS IN ADVERSARY DETERRENCE. -TREATY COMPLIANCE COMMITTEE EXECUTIVE ANNEX 4.

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Fujian-714 and Shilin-164, the Taskforce that was to precipitate the Jovian L4 crisis, depicted here in a propaganda poster with anti-reformist slogans. It can be translated as: PEOPLE'S LIBERATION ARMY NAVY SPACE FORCES THE PARTY'S LINE SHALL NOT BE CHANGED IRON DISCIPLINE SHAKES THE NINE HEAVENS A clear, Neo-Maoist sentiment is evident.

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USS Richard E. Byrd, namesake of her class. Here pictured post 1982 refit.

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Heya! I guess I'm another person asking about their own setting here! I've got a somewhat hard setting but one of the two main concessions I'm giving myself is with the engines like The Expanse. Here there is a highly energetic, but extremely reactive (and therefore dangerous) fuel compound which is used in most warships and other vessels desiring high thrust and efficiency, but can take the tradeoff of oxygen leaks into the fuel lines causing a full hull loss. A number of cargo ships and slow, inner system craft craft prefer plain DFD drives as they are much safer and provide enough power while under thrust to put their reactors on minimal power or completely shut them off. And of course if you are utterly insane and have no budget a Nuclear Salt Water Rocket is also there but their use is highly discouraged outside of completely unpopulated areas of space. Anyway, the hyper fuel. The main issue I have is the most reasonable engine type to use the fuel with to make low grade torch drives that works as a light explanation hand wave. Considering that it can also be used as a chemical fuel (No need for separate RCS or shuttle fuel). So far I have them use NTRs but I'm aware of the radiation exposure for the crew, which would get pretty bad I feel if retrograde engines are also included. The other alternative I think would either be some electro-nuclear system or a fusion based drive with the heavier hyper fuel heated and expanded by the plasmified fusion fuel. I know this might be a little too soft for your liking but I would still like to get your thoughts, as outside of my free cards I'm trying to make the setting fairly hard.

We're talking about ✨unobtanium✨, which means anything goes as long as we don't get caught up in the causes of your fictional chemical.

Unless you plan on consulting with actual chemists/rocket engineers (of which I am neither) to work out precisely how you are breaking physics to get what you want, the first thing you want to do is shove your hyper-chemical into a black box, where nobody can see why it does what it does. It just works.

With that out of the way, let's focus on effects.

From what you described, you have a fictional chemical that can be used as both chemical rocket fuel and fission/fusion propellant. This is reasonable, since hydrazine has been used/tested in similar ways, as both the Space Shuttle's RCS propellant and DRACO's NTR propellant.

Fusion drives already exist in your setting, so you can therefore invent a military-grade fusion torch that uses this high-density-yet-high-efficiency chemical as propellant.

Everything else is a matter of determining torchship performance, and so I will direct you to Atomic Rockets for the mathy bits.

Basically, the level of performance you want from your torch should be based on how quickly you want your ships to get from point A to point B. 0.3g will get you most places in our solar system within weeks, 0.03g within months.

Also, by having your drive "shift gears" between, say, 0.3g and 1.5g, you can have a "cruise mode" and a "combat mode"

Anyways, the difference between handwavium and unobtanium is that we can model the effects of unobtainium using real-world physics. As long as you're focusing on effects instead of causes, you can get away with a lot more implausibility.

Postscript: I'm a writer, not an engineer, so advice I give is geared towards what I call "plausibility," not realism. I don't measure the sizes of the radiators on the ships I post to make sure they're big enough to cool the MICF drive, I just check to see that they're there. If I can tell that the creator cares about presenting a high-plausibility ship/setting, then I'm happy.

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Ryland-class Exploratory Cruiser

Original concept art by Sir_Lazz

Model by u/DOOMSIR1337

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What r ur toughts on "Aether" from the midnight sky? It looks really cool, and some clips of it shows it have lots a feature in and out of it

Let's see what this movie is abou-

Ok, so I read the phrase "habitable moon of Jupiter" and briefly blacked out due to dangerous levels of "what" (also, apparently one of the astronauts is pregnant? Who let that happen?!?)

But I'm going to muster all of my willpower and only focus on the spaceship.

The Aether!

(Art by Jonathan Opgenhaffen)

First things first: This is another example of Hollywood building ships in modules like the ISS. Nothing newsworthy, apart from the fact that they did some really cool design work on the various bits.

We also get this:

(Art by Jonathan Opgenhaffen)

This is extremely helpful for people like me! I get to nitpick in much greater detail!

Ion engines, plus xenon tanks. Good. Also, hydrazine tanks for the maneuvering thrusters. However, those radiators are clearly based on the ISS EATC system. I'm not an expert, but I'm pretty sure those aren't designed to bleed off the heat from two nuclear reactors.

Speaking of which, as cool as the solar panels look, they are A.) uneccessary in the face of said nuclear reactors, and B.) not going to be worth much for a mission to Jupiter, where solar panels operate at 4% efficiency.

Now, uh, all that being said, there's one thing that is absolutely baffling to me.

What in the world is that "shield" supposed to be, and what is it doing right in the middle of the payload section? I genuinely can't think of its purpose. Is it protecting the stuff behind it? From what? Why isn't it in front of the spin hab? Is it supposed to protect the hab from the reactor's radiation? That would make sense (and I would give it extra points) if it was situated all the way at the back of the ship, behind the radiators. Also, it's transparent? I really don't know what it is.

I might do a post someday about "hard-aesthetic" SF vs "hard-setting" SF vs "hard-genre" SF, but the Aether is 100% built for a realistic aesthetic, with a minimal amount of actual realism involved. I like the style, but I wish it made more sense.

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your blog is a treasure trove, thank you. also thoughts on the phoenix from for all mankind? if you haven't rated it already.

(also got any hard sci fi media faves to rec?)

I'm currently reading Exodus: The Archimedes Engine by Peter F. Hamilton, which is the tie-in novel for the upcoming Mass Effect spiritual successor Exodus. It's way better than a video game tie-in novel has any right to be, and somehow features a space opera setting with no FTL at all. I'm having a lot of fun with it so far.

My favorite hard SF novel of all time thus far is 2001: A Space Odyssey. I've only recently started reading more SF, so it might be a minute before I have something to recommend that isn't already well-known.

If you play TTRPGs, though, I endorse 2300AD and Orbital 2100, which are both built on the bones of Traveller.

2300AD features an interstellar setting where Earth hasn't unified under one world government, which is a surprisingly rare development. Also, the speculative biology of the aliens is very good.

Orbital 2100 is a plausible mid-future "rocketpunk" setting like The Expanse, but with nuclear rocket engines and an alternate future history beginning in the 1980s.

Anyways, on to the Phoenix:

Honestly, not much to say about this one. According to the wiki, it uses methalox engines, which means they'll have to use a high-effiency-but-incredibly-slow trajectory.

No indication of a nuclear reactor on board, so while those two radiators feel... insufficient for a vessel of that size, the lack of big glowing fins isn't a problem.

Ideally, if you're going to be taking chemical thrusters to Mars, you'll want some propellant depots in place (one in LEO, one in Mars orbit) to make things cheaper. I can forgive the show for not going to that detail, especially since they're pressed for time, and the Phoenix stays put after going out there.

They have interface vehicles for landing on Mars, which is expected, but no indication of how they got on board in the first place. I understand they likely used the Polaris shuttle to get the astronauts up, but if they were planning on coming back to Earth in that thing, I would rather the Earth re-entry vehicle be on-board, both as a lifeboat and to cut down on potential points of failure.

Lastly, no heat shield. That's free delta-v you're leaving on the table! I won't penalize them for it, but it's a thing I want to see more often.

All together, pretty solid design. Nothing groundbreaking, but For All Mankind isn't really going for that.

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have you seen the runaway? https://jayeaton.site/RunawayToTheStars/Characters/Bip very nice ship

The Runaway, from the hard-SF webcomic Runaway to the Stars

Model by Lily Harper

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Art by @hailsanta.bsky.social

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Dusty plasma radiators by @shisurn.bsky.social

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What r ur advice in making a Hardsf setting or spaceships?

To start with, go browse Atomic Rockets. I can find no better repository for information pertaining to hard SF.

Besides that, are you creating a setting for a novel/game/art, or are you worldbuilding for its own sake? This will affect the choices you make, including what liberties you take.

That's all I can offer without knowing more.