Let's crash a spaceship together! (A call to Sci-Fi enthusiasts)

[Aiden Pryde]

Hi, Escapists! I need a little bit of your help.

I'm working on a narrative project that tells a story of distant future and space exploration (think Star Trek, but with more guns and gruesome deaths). Now, I can do many things - create memorable characters, build tension, twist the plot, - but, unfortunately, my scientific knowledge is not as deep as I would like it to be, and that means working in a Sci-Fi setting is going to be a struggle.

That's where you come in, and by "you" I mean people who've read a lot of books in this genre or are just generally knowledgeable enough to formulate interesting scenarios.

Basically, there's this Enterprise-like ship travelling from point A to point B, and it needs to hit a few bumps in the course of the journey. I've no idea yet what those bumps are gonna be. I can devise a generic situation such as an asteroid going through the ship and people working desperately to fix the various stuff it has destroyed along the way, but, you know, it's too simple and obvious.

Remember how in Interstellar they went to that planet near the black hole, and time slowed down for them? Yeah, that's the kind of stuff I need. Something cool and science-y. Maybe a solar flare can screw the ship's systems up in some surprising ways? Maybe they land on a comet that they are then unable to pull away from? Maybe there's something wrong with their air purification system, turning oxygen into something else? Maybe an unstable gravitational field can mess their bodies somehow?

I need to give these poor guys a couple of interesting problems. These don't have to be something unique or original - I'm cool if you suggest an idea taken from a book. I just don't want to fill my story with tired cliches.

Lastly, just to clarify: you can crash-land the ship if you want, just don't turn it into scrap metal. All problems must be solvable - I need my characters to be able to live another day.

OK, fire away!

 

[Armadox]

They pass through an ionic storm, and their shields don't hold up. They have to flush the excess through their engines, or the build up will cause electrical bursts through out the ship that fries them. It's a race against time to get the ship free before they all die as the electricity threatens to ignite their artificial atmosphere....

 

[God'sFist]

I'm more fantasy oriented but I'll bite. They have a strange alien germ that made it onto their ship and they have to use the lab to create a cleaning agent to keep there ship from being eaten.

 

[TheVampwizimp_v1legacy]

I'm currently working on a story in which a man in a ship passes through a dust cloud that obscures all his sensors. While he is basically flying blind, he collides with a nebulous life form living in the cloud. Being a psychic alien, it draws my hero into a hallucinatory world, and as he tries to break out of the illusion, his sanity degrades little by little. If you like it, you have permission to use my general idea.

 

[Tatsuki]

Depending on quite how much fi you put in your sci.

Some primitive (yet intergalactic) space creatures do mass migrations planet to planet in their millions while food replenishes and they move like a flock of birds, the ship gets caught up in this flock and has to move with them or risk colliding with them and causing one major birdstrike. In my head I see them like manta rays, though that is a very commonly used look for such creatures.

If that doesn't float your boat, how about a static malfunction, the mechanisms in place to prevent the accumulation of static electricity (a huge issue in space) has broken down and a build up is occurring in the hull, the ship seems fine until they come close to some space debris and an arc of built up static shoots out causing hull damage, and potentially knocking out a few systems.

 

[Zontar]

If the ship has inertia dampeners, you could have them fail, forcing the ship to not change its speed or direction at all due to the risk of killed (re: liquefying) the crew if they where to accelerate or decelerate suddenly. Trek really gets this wrong, and it's something which would be 'shit your pants' level trouble.

 

[Thaluikhain]

If Point A an Point B are in different systems, then there's a whole lot of nothing in between. If they are on different planets in the same system, there is a lesser whole lot of nothing in between, less distance, and more things in between, but mostly empty and boring.

You're not going to run into unexpected solar flares, black holes, or asteroids. OTOH, things can go wrong with the ship, if people don't want it going wherever it is going, or it is done on the cheap.

One thing usually overlooked, you don't just put on a spacesuit and go out. You have to wait until the nitrogen is flushed out of your body, because you are at 100% oxygen at low pressure. So that's an hour or two in the airlock doing slow exercises.

Actually, just read this:

http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/

Lots of good stuff there.

 

[skywolfblue]

1) Something sweeps all the local stars out of place. Their starmaps and predictions for galactic drift are all messed up, they're lost, and need years (on a planet/base) to map out the new star positions.

2) HAL, the computer goes malevolent. Or alternatively, finds a message from a cryptic race that it wants to investigate.

3) The ship wanders into an area of the galaxy filled with Von-Neumann machines. The ship crashes into one of them.

4) Warp drive [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive] malfunctions can be pretty varied. Say the drive catastrophically fails, completely sterilizing a few nearby star systems filled with intelligent life (but leaving the ship itself intact). Nearby aliens declare war on the stranded vessel.

 

[Thaluikhain]

1) Something sweeps all the local stars out of place. Their starmaps and predictions for galactic drift are all messed up, they're lost, and need years (on a planet/base) to map out the new star positions.

Er...something is throwing stats around? That's no small thing. Also, mapping them out would be impossible if you are sitting down looking at them, as you'd be seeing light from before they were moved.

 

[Aiden Pryde]

Yes! I love you, guys! A couple more scenarios would be very much appreciated, but I've already got some nice ideas to work with. Thanks!

 

[davidmc1158_v1legacy]

It might be a bit of a cliche at this point, but having the ship's air recycling systems fail and need to be repaired before toxic gas builds up is one I thought was always good for building tension.

In a worse-case scenario, the crew might need to get the ship to a planet with a breathable atmosphere quickly in order to keep from asphyxiating by cycling the old air out.

 

[Akjosch]

Here's a scientifically possible scenario, assuming they have FTL speed:

* "Hey, this DBV3 white dwarf some 120 ly from here looks interesting, let's check it out!"
* Jump into the system. "Look, it has an M4Vn companion star ... Wait, isn't it feeding the white dwarf?"
* The white dwarf goes over its Chandrasekhar limit and promptly explodes as a type Ia supernova.
* (Optional) Everyone is instantly vaporised
* (Alternative) The crew has first to escape the supernova's explosion, then jump to the nearest colony some 11 ly away and organise an evacuation, since the place will become very unpleasant in 11 years ...

 

[Thaluikhain]

It might be a bit of a cliche at this point, but having the ship's air recycling systems fail and need to be repaired before toxic gas builds up is one I thought was always good for building tension.

In a worse-case scenario, the crew might need to get the ship to a planet with a breathable atmosphere quickly in order to keep from asphyxiating by cycling the old air out.

There could be enough air for the crew to make it, provided they get rid of a few members right away.

 

[psijac]

1. It's a generational ship and too many children are born so they have to colonize the nearest planet.

2. A lover triangle goes wrong and the jilted lover sabotaged the engines.

3. Corperate/nationalist moles are hidden within the ships crew and are acting out of greed/political motivations. (Paul Riser in Aliens)

4. Anything from game of thrones, but in space!

 

[pearcinator]

Here are some things that have happened in other Movies/TV/Games/Books etc.

- Gravity malfuntions (ala Star Trek: Into Darkness)
- Oxygen system malfunction (countless of sci-fi, bit cliche)
- Mutiny (ala Star Trek and many others)
- Space Pirates (you know, Pirates...but in Space!)
- Steering malfunction and the ship is heading straight for a planet, black hole, trap etc. (Firefly, Futurama, Red Dwarf)
- AI has taken control (another cliche)
- Asteroid (Starship Troopers etc.)

Some gruesome deaths could include;

- Warp drive malfunction, turns people inside-out or only teleports half of them.
- Force Field generator activates and cuts people in half.
- Vacuum of space, head explosion.
- Heating system goes down, people with exposed limbs freeze and break off.
- Alien weapons, whatever you want it to do! (District 9 is a good one to watch)
- Black Hole turns everyone into a singularity, crushing people with it's immense gravity.

 

[Thaluikhain]

1. It's a generational ship and too many children are born so they have to colonize the nearest planet.

Generally, if it's a generational ship, the nearest colonisable planet is the destination. Of course, by the time they get there, nobody would have known what being on a planet was like.

 

[Akjosch]

- Steering malfunction and the ship is heading straight for a planet, black hole, trap etc. (Firefly, Futurama, Red Dwarf)

The interesting part of that "problem" is that in a hard-science setting, the usual answer to it would be "So what?"

In almost all cases you need very, very little delta-v to turn a "straight into a planet/star/black hole" trajectory into a "safely past that same mass, even gaining some speed" trajectory. To the point where even "throwing some useless junk from one side of the ship", "using compressed gas from your air supply as propellant" and "firing your weapons to one side" can all be valid solutions.

It's actually damn hard to fly into some specific object in space even if you're really, really trying to. See: Rosetta.

If you have the time, even "paint one side of the ship black, the other white" can actually give you enough delta-v via radiation to "miss" a planet or star.

 

[Dizchu]

The planet the ship is approaching has a ring system made of a really dirty kind of ice that isn't so easy to detect. Upon approaching the planet's equator the ship gets bombarded with ice fragments, rupturing the propulsion systems and necessitating a hasty landing.

The most awkward thing about this is that ringed planets tend to be gas giants. If this is the case you could make the ship land on one of the planet's moons. The gas giant's magnetic field could cause additional problems.