The Hard Sci-fi thread

[Charistoph]

Start [URL="http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Lost-Fleet-Dauntless-Book/dp/0857681303"]here[/URL]

I'd also recommend David Weber's Honor Harrington series, starting with On Basilisk Station. While it isn't as hard sci-fi as some, he tries to be consistent. But more importantly, he describes the basis for in-system interceptions and describes some ways of getting in to inter-spatial conflicts. A lot is dependent on huge scan ranges relying on ship drives, and how interstellar travel operates which narrows the volume of predictable traffic.

Keep in mind that no matter how much you try, FTL drives and capabilities, along with sensor capacities, will be a huge factor in how getting the fleets to face each other work, especially for setting up intercepts. STL drives will be a factor in where and how they meet up as well once they find each other.

Maybe is right, i really liekd The Expanse minus the sound in space gaffs as iv always wanted to see something set in the Kuiper belt, and they did a good job on it.

I think it's only difficult if you aren't a physicist or scientist or some kind with the knowledge. You know, like me.

It can still be difficult if you are in the know. New discoveries happen all the time. Each discovery alters our view of the universe. And people are always willing to come back and mock earlier concpets that were made without prior knowledge.

Pick an FTL drive from your favorite classic sci-fi show. How many would fall apart with known physics today? How much would today's standards be laughed at in 30 years from now? 100? If we don't end up killing ourselves, how would those discoverers of real world FTL travel mock Star Trek, Star Wars, Babylon 5, and so on?

[Morgrim]

Damn, that site is AWESOME morgrim, have bookmarked it for myself. Excellent stuff!!

You will want the "Weird Astronomy" page.

[CoffeeGrunt]

If you're not already familiar with it, take a browse through [url=http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/]the Atomic Rockets[/url] website. It started as a few notes put up by someone in the industry that wanted more hard scifi novels, and it's become a one stop reference site for almost anything one needs to create hard scifi works. Want to know how big a planet needs to be to retain certain gases in its atmosphere? It has that. Need any rocketry equation? There, with automatic calculators for the major ones. Want tips on writing alien trade languages? Got it.

I LOVE this site, it's brilliant.

I stumbled across that site when looking into nuclear warheads and how they would perform in space, (poorly.) They did give me the idea for Fission Shaped Charges, though.

[Asymmetrical Xeno]

Weird cosmic sh1t is where it's at for me for sure. I wish there was more stuff like Stapledons "Star Maker" especially, by far the best SF novel of all time imo. The end always blew me mind especially, especially when you discover all the other weird universes that are all simply the star makers past experiments like a universe of sound.

[Asymmetrical Xeno]

watched ep1 of "childhood's end" last night, it was okay until the end. the alien design totally ruined it for me, I havent read the book so I do not know how true it is but that put me right off.

Well, still got that space odyessy mini series to look forward to yet...