Young Writers Society

Hello fellow YWSians, I am currently conducting research for a Science-Fiction Novel series involving interstellar travel between two star systems that are approximately four light years apart.

I've been developing the methods for certain scientific aspects of the story itself, like space warfare and interstellar travel. I'd like to make it realistic, but still maintain a grip on the unknowns of space and the majesty of it all.

I plan on using a Bussard Ramjet design for the propulsion system of the starship or starships. I was interested in making the interstellar mission more than just a mission of travel, but also of scientific exploration and research. The mission is essentially the final attempt of mankind to travel to a star system that has a planet capable of supporting human life after the discovery of the impending doom of their own solar system.

My question to any Sci-fi aficionados is, a cost and benefit/pros and cons analysis of making more than one ship that utilizes the same propulsion system. Much like a militant fleet or early pilgrim vessels. For a mission of this scale, would it be more practical and cheaper to build one enormous vessel in orbit to house all of the mission instrumentation including scientific research probes, vessels, human habitats, cryo-chambers for long-term stasis- blah blah blah. Or would it be in better interest to create several medium sized ships that all house different parts of the mission. Of course, all smaller ships would share a similar system, life-support and back up plans, same energy methods and habitats for humans, but each one would serve a different purpose. One would be the scientific vessel housing a scientific crew and probes to explore deep space, another would perhaps be dedicated as a cryo-vessel to house selected human beings that will help in creating the new human society on this distant planet, so on and so forth.

So, I'm searching for opinions and analysis on this matter, uneducated and educated alike are welcome. Tell me which methods you guys think would be better.

First off; though it is cool and very admirable to try and write your science fiction story as realistic as possible, it would definitely stunt your writing. You'd keep second guessing yourself and would keep returning to research in order to get things as right as possible. Instead of this you could just write what you would want to read in a science fiction story. Keeping it realistic is hard.

In this case, you're also writing about Interstellar travel. And while that is obviously a realistic idea, it is just that; an idea. Interstellar travel won't be availiable for a while. The spacecraft design you're planning to use it apparently conjured up in the 1960s? That's cool...I guess. In the end tho, I'd really rather just write fiction. Keep the characters and story realistic, but refrain from doing that to the science, because it's very hard.

Science Fiction is my favorite genre, and I've rarely read any novels that are grounded in reality. Those select few that I have, have been written by authors with extensive backgrounds in their fields. A couple of examples could include 'Robopocalypse', written by Daniel H. Wilson, who has a PhD in robotics, which as you can imagine did a lot for his writing in this book. Another example could be 'The Martian' by Andy Weir. Weir also has a scientific background and the novel was hailed for it's realistic portrayal of space travel and technical details. ('The Martian' is also currently being adapted to screen by Sir Ridley Scott, yay)

Yeah, so in short, I'd keep the characters and story realistic, but skip the science.

Anyhow, your specific question.

Putting all your eggs in one basket. That's an expression, right? I think it works well here. Though I can definitely see the appeal of making one huge starship to carry all this stuff in, woudln't it be a big risk as well?

If you did spread it up into a bunch of smaller starships, then it wouldn't be a done deal if something happened to one of them.

Then again, I don't know too much about your story. I don't know how bad things are. Is Earth completely doomed and the clock is ticking down? Or is it just looking very bad? Who is behind this 'expedition'? Is it the US alone? Is it a worldwide effort?

When I read your proposal of one giant starship, then I sort of picture some sort of ark. Like, this is humanity's last ditch effort to survive. If that was the case, I'd think the resources avaliable for this mission would be vast. For example, right now, I think that the largest space programmes currently going is the American and the Chinese. Imagine if both these teamed up for such a mission. Then, imagine the rest of the world pitching in.

And if you did break the starships up into smaller vessels, would there be enough energy, power or fuel or whatever it is you need to propell these things? Earth does have limited supplies to fund these things. Maybe there only is resources for one giant rocket and they would be forced to only create one giant ship?

There's a lot of questions, as well as a lot of reasons as to keep science a minor aspect within your story.

As I'm thinking of your story here, I actually thought of something which would be cool to read. I'd want there to be a smaller exploration mission (which you sort of mentioned) to be sent out before the main one. And this way, you follow two POV. A lot of interesting potential.

But then again, science fiction is all full of potential.

ignore me i'm a stupid

@Jumpyspot What Birk's pointing out is that hard sci fi is incredibly difficult to write.

Hard sci fi relies on an in depth knowledge of the science so other scientists in the field are nodding along and saying that's, indeed, plausible. Hard sci fi involves enough knowledge that you don't get a glaring fact wrong.

You also have to account for the fact most people who read sci fi aren't scientists, and are looking for stories, not long explanations of science. So hard sci fi also walks the line between being a science textbook and being a story, which is difficult to manage.

On top of this, science can become outdated extremely quickly, which will in turn date your work the more you rely on theories that can be completely shattered with the next groundbreaking discovery (which are more common than you think, especially in the realm of space exploration).

As for the original post, I'd like a little more situational information to know what the circumstances are like on earth to do a better pros and cons analysis.

Thank you all for your inputs, I am aware of how writing hard-science-fiction works. Research is useful in two phases, the idea phase, and the rewriting phase.

You don't need to be in the top of you field or even have a degree in the science your using for your story, but research is necessary, in the idea forming phase. Glaring factual inaccuracies can be fixed in re-writes, I'm not concerned about the difficulty of writing hard sci-fi or how too much research can stunt my writing, I'm aware.

After further analysis, I believe it would make more sense to develop multiple vessels for this interstellar mission.

To answer some of your questions, yes, the entirety of Earth would be involved in this mission to seed new life on a distant planet and give hope to the human race. In the story, Earth is more technologically developed than it is now, and although they haven't mastered interstellar travel, colonies on planets and moons have been created within their own solar system. One could equate it to the 1500s, when Europeans could travel to the Americas to start a new life, but that life would be hard and involve lots of work.

Again, thank you all for your inputs.

I have no idea if you're still in need of feedback on this, but you're getting more anyway because I adore hard sci-fi, and while it may be a real pain in the posterior to write, it's so worth it.

If you ever need a beta reader for this, I AM SO IN.

(You had me at Bussard ramjet. It's sad how few people go into writing sci-fi without knowing/bothering to learn any of the physics behind the conventions. I'm so glad you're not one of them.)

Anyways, the outline of your story sounds a lot like a story of mine that I've been poking at for a few years now. I went in a different direction with the drive (dark matter and time dilation make for interesting combinations and possibilities), and there are no space battles in my story, but we have the shared aspects of scientific exploration and colonization.

I went the route of all the eggs in one basket. However, there are multiple baskets so that if one basket falls apart and all the eggs break, it's not the end of humanity. I'm kind of wondering what your justification for having only one expedition is, rather than having multiple expeditions, with staggered outsets. Even if one expedition fails, the others coming behind still have a chance to succeed, whereas if earlier expeditions succeed, they pave the way for later expeditions to have an easier time of settling the new system. Even if earlier expeditions fail, the remains they leave behind can still be used by succeeding expeditions to make their work a little bit easier.

The one downside to having the expedition split into such specialized ships is that if one ship goes down, the expedition on a whole loses that entire branch of specialization. If you do go the route of each ship has a specialization, it would be worth considering having each ship with a main purpose and basic resources allocated to the other specialization branches, so that if the specialized ship goes down, there would still be (limited) access to the benefits of the specialization. Especially for integral specializations like engineering and medicine, there should be facilities for those on every ship, even if those facilities are nowhere near as sophisticated or complete as on the specialty's ship.