91
votes
Accepted
Why didn't the Normandy crew experience time dilation?
Let's figure out how much time dilation they might have experienced.
To begin with, we need the mass of the black hole. Generously assuming it's Sagittarius A* and not some other (most likely ...
- 9,383
69
votes
Accepted
Huge trees in an "air belt" in space
This is Niven's The Integral Trees (1984), or possibly its sequel The Smoke Ring (1987). The stories are set in orbit around a neutron star that has a zone of atmosphere in orbit around it at the ...
- 103k
68
votes
Why aren't there any nebulae in Star Wars?
Star Trek does not represent nebulae at all accurately. Real nebulae are nowhere near that dense - they'd constitute a hard vacuum by our standards. They're also big, typically hundreds of light-...
- 17.6k
66
votes
Accepted
Why didn't Jupiter becoming a star kill everyone on earth and cause all kinds of problems for the solar system?
This is explained in the novel 2010: Odyssey Two. Jupiter's mass hasn't changed.
It follows that there's no need to reconfigure the solar system to accommodate it:
Do you have any idea what ...
- 652k
64
votes
Accepted
Short satire about a comically upscaled spaceship
That sounds like a meme from Star Wars about the continually increasing size of the Star Destroyers.
It's called the 'SDSD Freudian Nightmare' and ticks all of the boxes.
Maiden Flight, SDSD Freudian ...
- 1,050
51
votes
Accepted
Do they really watch Firefly on the International Space Station
They can. Firefly and Serenity DVDs are on the ISS
I don't know if they have actually been watched by people living on the ISS, but those photos are legit. The pictured astronaut, Steve Swanson, ...
- 476
49
votes
Accepted
What was the first instance of a fighter spacecraft
1930: The Black Star Passes, a novella by John W. Campbell, Jr. in his Arcot, Morey and Wade series, first published in Amazing Stories Quarterly, Fall 1930, available at the Internet Archive. (The ...
- 153k
49
votes
Accepted
Novel about incompetent space pirates
It sounds like you're think of Consider Phlebas (1987), Iain M. Banks' first novel of the Culture.
The protagonist is Horza, who is actually fighting for the Idirans against the Culture; he is a ...
- 103k
41
votes
Accepted
A novel (or maybe a whole series) where a weird disease infects men and machines
This could be the novel, Revelation Space, by Alastair Reynolds, published in 2000. It features a disease called the "Melding Plague" which causes nano-machines to go haywire. Many humans use nano-...
- 3,480
39
votes
Accepted
Identify a (French?) comic series about a female adventurer
This is almost certainly Yoko Tsuno, a franco-belgian comic series that features a young female electronics engineer from Japan. A Google image search shows many comic covers that I think match your ...
- 15.6k
38
votes
Accepted
Book about a boy whose tribe is separated from another tribe by a swamp and taboos. It turns out they're all living aboard a spaceship
Captive Universe (1969) by Harry Harrison...?
The synopsis on the Wikipedia page indicates that the main character is Chimal, a member of one of two tribes living within an isolated valley, and ...
- 87.9k
36
votes
Accepted
Young boy saves research expedition to another planet by being "fact connector"
This sounds a lot like Sucker Bait, a short story by Isaac Asimov. It deals with a scientific expedition to colonize a world called "Junior" - a previous attempt to colonize the planet had ...
- 55.5k
36
votes
Accepted
Why don't we see the Milky Way out the windows in Star Trek?
You may note technically the view of the milky way looking out of a window would be not so great assuming the room lights are on. This is distantly related to why stars aren't in NASA photos because ...
- 9,219
36
votes
Accepted
TV series episode about using oxygen in space suit helmet to fire gun
This is the Firefly episode "Our Mrs. Reynolds" as per this entry about Jayne's gun Vera:
In the TV series' episode "Our Mrs. Reynolds", "Vera", Jayne's powerful ...
- 207k
36
votes
Time distorted space exploration
This is Charles Sheffield's Between the Strokes of Night (1985).
Time is not distorted, it's just people's perceptions that are changed by being greatly slowed in a metabolic state derived from the ...
- 103k
35
votes
Accepted
What is the meaning of the ending of "A Darkling Sea" by James Cambias?
I meant to suggest that Ilmatar has been visited before, presumably by some spacefaring civilization unknown to either humans or Sholen. But if the story you make up in your head is better than mine, ...
- 366
35
votes
Story: space colonization with sentient/telepathic spaceships, also genocide and reincarnation
"The Reality Dysfunction" by Peter F. Hamilton.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Reality_Dysfunction
The alive spaceships match the Edenists and their living starships "voidhawks". Most of your ...
- 8,867
35
votes
Accepted
A short story about a shipwreck in space
"Marooned off Vesta", a short story by Isaac Asimov (his first published story); first published in Amazing Stories, March 1939, available at the Internet Archive; the reprint in Amazing ...
- 153k
34
votes
Accepted
Short story about two guys on a spaceship, but one of them doesn't believe he's on a spaceship
The Yellow Pill by Rog Philips.
it starts in a psychiatrist's office where the psychiatrist is about to see a patient called Jerry Bocek who shot and killed several people claiming they were aliens. ...
- 87.1k
33
votes
Accepted
1980s paperback about a man who traveled on a spaceship made of ice
Gallagher's Glacier by Leigh Richmond and Walt Richmond.
Gallagher is a revolutionary trying to break the monopoly the corporations have over starships and the company planets where the colonists are ...
- 14.1k
33
votes
Accepted
Star Wars ripoff from the 2010s in which a Han Solo knockoff is sent to save a princess and fight an evil overlord
This is Star Raiders: The Adventures of Saber Raine (2017).
A prince and princess are abducted from their planet. Saber Raine, a soldier of fortune is hired to bring them back. Along with three ...
- 87.9k
31
votes
Accepted
Why is explosive decompression a guideline?
OK, enough with the comments, let's forge an answer. ;-)
Quill's nature and equipment left aside, the vacuum of space is not as immediately lethal as you might expect.
You will not "explode". ...
- 2,435
31
votes
Accepted
Story about aliens nicknamed 'Eechees' who have created a network of tunnels on Mars
This corresponds to both Gateway (La Grande Porte in French), by Frederik Pohl (1977, winner of the Hugo and Nebula awards, as well as its first sequel, Beyond the Blue Event Horizon (1980). These ...
- 91.5k
30
votes
Accepted
Sole survivor of attack on mining vessel, abandoned by his employer, has ability to teleport
That sounds like The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester (1956):
"man lives in space for months/years, ignored by the company he worked for and never rescued."
[Foyle] is marooned in space when ...
- 25.3k
30
votes
Why aren't there any nebulae in Star Wars?
Most of the shots within Star Wars are taken next to planets. Whereas far more action within Star Trek happens in deep space.
Nebulas do not tend to appear next to planets, or within planetary ...
- 14.5k
30
votes
Sci-Fi book about female pilot in the distant future who is a linguist and has to decipher an alien language/code
This is probably Samuel Delany's Babel-17 (1966). The hero is a linguist and captain named Rydra Wong, recruited by the military to decode an enemy language called Babel-17.
During an interstellar ...
- 103k
30
votes
Identify a science-fiction novel… key points: space travel, immortality drug, main characters stranded on distant planet, they eventually escape
I'm pretty sure this is World Without Stars (1966) by Poul Anderson.
It's set in a future where an "antithanatic" drug has made people effectively immortal, though people can still be killed ...
- 103k
29
votes
Why don't we see the Milky Way out the windows in Star Trek?
Out of universe answer only, it's a continuity nightmare.
Scene #1 we see the milky way out of Janeways ready room window, She
walks out to the bridge.
Scene #2 Janeway on the bridge, the view screen ...
- 13.1k
29
votes
Accepted
30 or more years old short story about a creature that kills at distance
Could this be The Callistan Menace by Isaac Asimov; published in 1940, but republished in 1972?
In this story a young stowaway hides on a spaceship, which he doesn't know is headed for the as yet ...
- 3,584
27
votes
Why didn't Jupiter becoming a star kill everyone on earth and cause all kinds of problems for the solar system?
I meant catastrophic in the sense that the orbits would be thrown into chaos. Everything would want to orbit both the sun and the new star
No, they wouldn't.
Planets orbit a star because the star is ...
- 2,239
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible