Questions tagged [space-exploration]
Space Exploration is the idea of traveling through space, beyond a home planet's orbit to discover things unknown to the explorer. Use this tag for questions about space exploration in science fiction or fantasy, not for real life questions. For real life questions, visit our sister site Space Exploration at space.stackexchange.com.
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Illegal aliens, the string and little fruit?
In “Illegal Aliens” the assasin’s weapon of choice is a string and a little fruit. My question is this: how does the assasin use the fruit/string combo or even what the little fruits name is, if it’s ...
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Short story about interstellar travel gone wrong
Trying to find a story I read a couple of years ago in an anthology, not sure when the story dates from but likely to be recent - the last decade or so.
The story has passengers travelling between ...
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How do Starfleet comm badges know how to connect between personnel?
How do Starfleet comm badges work as far as connections? One user taps their badge and says “me” to “receiving person”.
It’s obviously heard as an inter-comm on the ship, so I can understand how ...
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Sci Fi book about xenoarchaeology and a beetle like culture
Circa late 60s, 70s, or early 80s, written in English.
A group of Xenoarchaeologists are exploring ruins on a distant planet. The inhabitants were beetle like. One researcher (mentally unstable?) ...
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Pre-1990 short story, Earth space probe (NASA?) lands somewhere like Titan and is found by a female alien
As the title says, this would have been pre-1990. A short story in which a space probe from Earth, presumably NASA, lands on a world like Titan and is found by a female member of the local species. I ...
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80s or 90's science fiction book series
I'm trying to remember the name of the author and/or books in a science fiction paperback book series I read years ago. There were at least 2 ships that left earth, but due to a disagreement about ...
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Which sci-fi movie/episode had bleeding rocks on a planet?
I'm trying to find a long lost movie/series that I saw as a child in the 80s.
The only scenes I can remember is that they are on a planet with no vegetation, only dust and rocks. When using their ...
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Series where Earth kicked out of alien club, then invited back because we are savage
Copying from a Reddit post last year where someone looked for the same:
"...book where the human race made contact with a galactic race, part of a group of civilizations in the galaxy. Earth wanted ...
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60's or early 70's movie with a man and a women left behind on a planet
I saw only the last part of this movie years ago. A spaceship lands on a planet that has a hostile environment (volcanoes, dinosaurs) and the ship must leave. Two of the crew get left behind, one man ...
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Looking for 50s or early 60s juvenile book about boys 13 and 15 going to other side of moon and saving a civilization there
I am looking for a juvenile scifi published no later than 1961 (when I read it) about two boys--aged 13 and 15--traveling to the far side of the moon. Their father is part of a planned mission to the ...
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Old comic book, war with the moon, Pan-ku Chinese first man
Back in the 1960s, I once read an old, second hand, comic book about relations between the Earth and the Moon. In some television messages from the Moon, the hero saw a beautiful Moon woman, while ...
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Novel where moon is dead because of time warp
An old science fiction novel, originally published or reprinted in paperback in the 1960s, in the English language.
The first expedition to the moon eventually discovers that the reason why it is ...
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YA Australian based flight to moon from area near meteor craters
Back in the 1960s I read a young adult novel where a teenage Australian boy at a remote sheep station investigates strange goings on at the local meteor craters.
He discovers a secret rocket base and ...
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Old book about space travel c. 1930-1960
It was technically a nonfiction book hardbound about space travel, but the author suggested a lot of imaginative little science fiction stories.
I read it during the 1960s so it was at least that old,...
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What were the lights that Leslie Gillis saw in the book Coyote?
In Allen Steele's book Coyote, Leslie Gillis sees some strange lights on his way to Coyote.
Is it explained anywhere in the book or any of its sequels?
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Short Story with Starfish-shaped Starships
I remember reading a story back in the 1960s where it was said that all faster than light starships carried only a single man and were shaped like starfishes - not necessarily with five arms each. ...
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Redheaded scout educates backwater isolated planet of humans on how to use paperwork to avoid exploitation [duplicate]
I recall reading a short story, novella, or novel of a crash-landed (?) redheaded scout who educates a backwater isolated planet of humans on how to use paperwork to avoid exploitation by an expanding ...
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Story by Marion Zimmer Bradley about a damaged spaceship that took 75 years to repair [duplicate]
For once, I'm asking for help in identifying a story I've never actually read. Many years ago, I read an essay by Marion Zimmer Bradley in which she talked about a story she wrote, fairly early in her ...
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Sci-fi book about a small sea-cucumber like alien that made humans go insane and/or die [duplicate]
I don't remember anything about the title or author of this book. I think it was a relatively simple title. It was a fairly short book, the cover was a silver-blue (I think?), and I think it had a ...
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Scifi anthology containing stories about fighting glass aliens and a boy who becomes a vampire
I assume you guys get thousands of these. Well here goes. 'Several' stories in 1 book, read in the early 80's, dating at least as far back as the 70's and 60's maybe.
Story one is some kind of ...
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A kids' fiction book about a space explorer who sketches what he sees [closed]
I'm looking for a kids' book with a space explorer who sketches the animals and plants he encounters. His space ship looks like a glass bubble but that's all I can remember.
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Looking for a short story about a fossil found on Mars
An early (first?) expedition to Mars finds a fossil and the geologist dies trying to get it back. The story is told by a survivor of the expedition many years later after Mars has been colonized, ...
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Title of space travel movie with undersea diving
I have a dim memory of seeing a movie on a TV channel in the USA in or before 1968. My impression is that it was a space travel movie, but I also remember the characters using aqua lung equipment for ...
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Short comic about space explorers visiting an abandoned alien world with giant statues that turn out to be alive but in a slower universe [duplicate]
Possibly an educational illustrated short story written as part of a sci-fi genre example, or even an actual comic/story that was adapted for that purpose. This was in 1993, and I was in third grade, ...
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Science fiction short story where explorers land on planet inhabited by humanoids who eat algae
A short story where:
Two explorers land on a planet which has almost nothing except barren ground, oceans covered with thick algae, and humanoids whose only food source is the algae. Since there is ...
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short story about astronauts who enter a black hole and witness the death of the universe [duplicate]
I was listening to a podcast called Exploration, which is hosted by Professor Michio Kaku. He mentioned a short story about astronauts who fall into a black hole and live long enough to witness the ...
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short story about seeding a planet with humans
A family travels to another planet in order to seed it with humanity. Meanwhile earth's technology surpasses that of the ship and gets to that planet before the ship. There's also a subplot involving ...
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Lost SF Short-Story, Solitary Human Explorer, too powerful to act. Alien POV
This is ultimately a rather dark story.
It involves a solitary human explorer on an alien planet.
The human has an alien as an assistant, or he is helping the alien to travel
somewhere through tunnels....
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What was the first written Russian-language story featuring travel to another inhabited celestial body?
What was the first written Russian-language story, whether a novel, play or poem, that featured travel to another inhabited celestial body, such as a planet, satellite or comet?
user75632
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Funny short story on man and insect that land on new planet and irritate war-loving inhabitants
I read the really funny story about 30-40 years ago, probably around the 1970's to 1980's. It was a short that tells how 3 races (one human, one insect-like and one ???) land together on a new planet ...
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Old story about space exploration program with young adult crew
I read this a long time ago so it is at least 20 years old but quite probably older. I'm rather foggy on the details.
I believe it was either a novella or novel and had distinct chapters on different ...
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Scifi anthology - Contains terraforming robots story
I took a Science Fiction class in college a few years ago (2005 or 2006) and one of the stories we read in a collection really struck me and I don't know how to track it down. The professor who taught ...
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How does traveling between Spaces work in "Folding Beijing"?
Folding Beijing just won the 2016 Hugo Award for Best Novelette.
When I read the story, I have trouble visualizing how the three "Spaces" are physically located relative to each other, so the ...
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Archeologists exploring dead planet find room where they commited suicide by asphyxiation
I am trying to find the title of a science fiction book/story that I read many years ago (about 40!).
All that I can remember is that it involved explorers (I think they may have been archaeologists) ...
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1980s YA Sci Fi book series about youth becoming immortal
In the early 80s I read two YA novels with the protagonist an adolescent who, along with all the other children on earth, had been made immortal by a plague or experiement run amok. Plot of the ...
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Dangerous Planet
A while back I read a soft cover book, I have looked around and found similar titles but not it exactly. The first part is about a colony on a dangerous planet covered in forest. The second part in ...
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Comics about an octopus-like alien parasite that attaches to astronauts' heads
I remember reading this short story that I hope you can help me identifying. It was a short story in a comic book, Dark Horse Comics if my memory doesn't fail me.
It starts with some explorers in an ...
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In The Martian, how were the crew in the Hermes shielded from radiation?
I have not read the book of The Martian, but there was one glaring omission in the movie that struck me.
How were the crew in the Hermes protected from radiation?
In space, especially ...
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One-way journey to another star boosted by mirrors [duplicate]
A book about a group of people travelling to another star on a one way trip. They are boosted out of the solar system by re-purposed military mirrors. They have a robotic helper that looks like a ...
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How does Miller's planet in Interstellar have such huge time dilation yet such a small gravitational force? [duplicate]
In Interstellar, the crew of the Endurance experience extreme time dilation (7 years to an hour) on Miller's planet, due to its proximity to a black hole. However, they only feel 130% of Earth's ...
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Could You Portkey To Other Planets in the Potterverse?
As far as I can tell from my own research and from reading official sources, there are no physical or theoretical limits on the distance a portkey can take you, unlike brooms, which seem to have a ...
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Science fiction story or novel where alien plant erupts from under ice
I was told about a science fiction story in which humans have landed on an ice-covered planet or moon and a gigantic plantlike organism bursts out from under the ice due to the humans' lights ...
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Book title pre-1988 about first earth warp-drive ship design
I read a book in 1988/89 about a team building Earth's first warp drive space ship. The protagonist is involved in a crash of an early design and is horribly burnt. Experimental treatments keep him ...
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Which book about relativistic space travel am I thinking of? [duplicate]
I'm trying to remember the title of a book I read years ago.
I think it was "the travelers" or "the journeyers" or something like that. It was about a group of human scientists that go on a long trip ...
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Short story about a woman who is about to leave on an interstellar trip to search for non-human intelligence
I read this short story years -- decades -- ago.
A young woman is spending her last day at home before joining an interstellar expedition to search for non-human intelligence. She lives on a sheep ...
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Male and female astronaut fall in love on a mission and fall into the sun
I am looking for the title of a SF book about a male and female astronaut that are to go to the sun and back. They fall in love, missing the key moment to brake, which causes them to fall into the sun ...
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Story about a man and an alien exploring an alien world
I think the story took place on Mars, and it had a feel like Eric Frank Russell or someone similar. The story starts with the man reporting on his return to base to explain the adventure he just went ...
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Mankind prepares for a war with aliens by warring among itself [duplicate]
I am looking for the title or author of a atory I read back in the 90's, no idea when it was written. The plot goes something like this:
Humanity has gained access to space travel and sends 9 or 12 ...
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Where is LV-223?
In the movie Prometheus, we hear an exchange of dialogue which proceeds roughly as follows:
Janek: You know, if you wanna get laid, you really don't have to pretend to be interested in the pyramid ...
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Science fiction series where humans (from another world) find the Earth
The plot had humans from a different system that suffered a catastrophic event on their home world, if I remember correctly.
It was implied that their ancestors seeded life in other planets too (or ...