On the Taxonomy of Sci-Fi Spaceships 90
An anonymous reader writes: Jeff Venancio has done some research that's perfect reading for a lazy Saturday afternoon: figuring out a coherent taxonomy for sci-fi spaceships. If you're a sci-fi fan, you've doubtless heard or read references to a particular starship's "class" fairly often. There are flagships and capital ships, cruisers and corvettes, battleships and destroyers. But what does that all mean? Well, there's not always consistency, but a lot of it comes from Earth's naval history. "The word 'corvette' comes from the Dutch word corf, which means 'small ship,' and indeed corvettes are historically the smallest class of rated warship (a rating system used by the British Royal Navy in the sailing age, basically referring to the amount of men/guns on the vessel and its relative size; corvettes were of the sixth and smallest rate). ... They were usually used for escorting convoys and patrolling waters, especially in places where larger ships would be unnecessary."
Venancio takes the historical context for each ship type and then explains how it's been adapted for a sci-context. "Corvettes might be outfitted to have some sort of stealth or cloaking system for reconnaissance or spec ops missions; naturally it would be easier to cloak a smaller ship than a larger one (though plenty of examples of large stealth ships exist). In some series they are likely to be diplomatic vessels due to their small size and speed, particularly seen in Star Wars, and can commonly act as blockade runners (again; their small size and speed makes them ideal for slipping through a blockade, where a larger ship presents more of a target)."
Venancio takes the historical context for each ship type and then explains how it's been adapted for a sci-context. "Corvettes might be outfitted to have some sort of stealth or cloaking system for reconnaissance or spec ops missions; naturally it would be easier to cloak a smaller ship than a larger one (though plenty of examples of large stealth ships exist). In some series they are likely to be diplomatic vessels due to their small size and speed, particularly seen in Star Wars, and can commonly act as blockade runners (again; their small size and speed makes them ideal for slipping through a blockade, where a larger ship presents more of a target)."
What's in a word? (Score:5, Funny)
This is a whole new level of naval gazing.
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This is a Star Trek/Star Wars/Firefly/etc thread. No superhero movie references allowed.
somebody is trying too hard. (Score:2, Insightful)
There is no consistent approach and due to various changes, even the historical usage varies considerably.
Besides, sometimes the authors make their ships less dense than smoke.
Re:somebody is trying too hard. (Score:5, Funny)
There is no consistent approach and due to various changes, even the historical usage varies considerably
No kidding. My Corvette is usually only manned by me, and occasionally one other person. It has no armament, and scares the hell out of me when it gets off the ground, let alone leaves the atmosphere. And it might as well be parked, even at top speed, when compared to the slowest space faring vehicles.
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There is no consistent approach and due to various changes, even the historical usage varies considerably
No kidding. My Corvette is usually only manned by me, and occasionally one other person. It has no armament, and scares the hell out of me when it gets off the ground, let alone leaves the atmosphere. And it might as well be parked, even at top speed, when compared to the slowest space faring vehicles.
James, did you take your stepfather's car again? You'll wreck that thing some day. It's over 250 years old, so it's a real classic, and he'll be pretty upset if you ruin it.
Re:somebody is trying too hard. (Score:4, Interesting)
I am working on a space-based MMO strategy game. In my game, the taxonomy... well, it's player-specific. Each player can name his ship classes any way he wants.
There are 5+1 types of ships by size: tiny, small, medium, large and capital. A separate type is Organic ships, which also have 5 size types.
Then you have specializations, e.g. scout ship, command ship, gunship, shield ship, repair ship, transport ship, etc.
Then you have ship generations, each generation becoming available based on research of a standard ship blueprint. An initial blueprint, once researched, allows you to assign extra points to certain ship attributes (e.g. speed, hitpoints, available power, available processing power, fuel bay size, etc) from a point pool you're getting from that research. This allows players to create unique ships all day long (some would suck more than others, that's for sure but hey, it's freedom to do stupid things).
Then you put modules on the ships, and those modules use up mounting points from the attributes. Some modules would only fit certain specializations and ship sizes (you can't fit a capital command room on a tiny scout ship because you don't have enough space, processing power or room).
No classes. Classes are so... yesterday's jam.
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Sounds good, and that's more or less the way ships are really designed. Instead of a points pool, there's the budget and resources. Whether or not they're called classes, you're going to have a largest and a smallest. Once you have that, you can have something in the middle. With more fine tuning one ends up with a small-medium group, and a medium-large, for certain mission types or budgets. So I think your 5 groupings is spot on.
Regarding designers doing dumb things, history is littered with "classes" of o
Neglected the Rule of Cool (Score:2)
Most authors pick their class names because they sound cool, not because they feel it accurately describes the tactical/operational role of the ship design in question. Which they probably wouldn't get correct anyway. It's not like these authors commonly employ professional military consultants to harden up the details of their in-universe militaries. And in most cases scrutinizing how a ship should be employed would also lead to scrutinizing th
Re:Neglected the Rule of Cool (Score:4, Informative)
The only SciFi franchise I'm familiar with that has sensibly designed ships is the Honor Harrington series by David Weber. This is because it's a book series (so there's no graphic artist trying to make the good guy ships a beautiful white fleet with wings like birds, and the bad guy ships industrial contraptions that are some hideous shade of orange), but it's mostly because he specifically designed the physics of his universe around the military tactics he wanted.
Re:Neglected the Rule of Cool (Score:5, Informative)
The only SciFi franchise I'm familiar with that has sensibly designed ships is the Honor Harrington series by David Weber.
That is because Honor Harrington IS 17th to 19th century naval warfare dressed up as sci-fi. You can also see exactly the same thing going on in his Safehold series, where he is basically retelling the history of warfare as a backdrop to the story.
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You fire clouds of anti-matter at them, at relativistic speeds. You shine powerful lasers at them. The blast from a laser will be about the same at 100M miles as 10 miles in space (presuming you have perfect optics). So long distance shots with a laser will form the minimum combat distance. Any closer, and you'll fry. So you need to be 5 light minutes out to be able to maneuver around the laser blasts. Tho
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In one of Larry Niven's books, a small group of protectors have a space battle that takes months, as they don't have FTL. He compresses the hell out of the timeline and makes it interesting, of course, including a slingshot maneuver around a neutron star.
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I've always been impressed with Niven and Niven/Pournelle descriptions of ships and space combat. The generation ship of the fithp in Footfall, and the "Michael" nuke-pulse ship used to defeat them.
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I'm going to have to look up my old copy of that. That story stirred a few dregs of xenophobia in me. A ring of rocks around the solar system; just perfect for flinging onto a world. In a few centuries, we may have that ability.
Now i'm really scared...
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That is the second half of Protector with Bussard Ramjet based warships and minimum ranges of light minutes.
The Gripping Hand and Footfall come to mind as other Niven books with relatively realistic space battles and they do not involve relativistic speeds.
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HH uses light seconds and minutes for range when delivering their broadsides.
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The series doesn't stop there. By book nine ("Ashes of Victory") he's advanced them to WW2-style carrier combat. He's also added some things that have very little modern real life analogue (pod-laying dreadnoughts, for example).
But a big part of the series appeal is to folks who are interested in military history. I sincerely doubt that anyone else has based an entire Star Empire on references to a mid-18th century monarch of a country that does not currently exist, yet he turned Frederick the Great of Prus
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so there's no graphic artist trying to make the good guy ships a beautiful white fleet with wings like birds, and the bad guy ships industrial contraptions that are some hideous shade of orange
That's what I loved about the original Star Trek. While, sure, the good-guy ships are white (you need to clue the audience in somehow), the Enterprise was the awkward-looking bunch of parts stuck together to get the job done. It somehow managed a certain elegance, but so can an oil rig. Meanwhile, the Klingon and especially the Romulan warbird were elegantly crafted, sleek warships.
But then, Honor Harrington is just Horatio Hornblower in a different uniform. Most of the naval culture, ship types, and so
Re:Neglected the Rule of Cool (Score:4, Interesting)
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So is wood, but it makes decent hulls...I would suspect some air-pocketed ceramics and metals might be less dense than water, also...
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An amusing irony since all the sailing ships were by definition less dense than water.. In reality the larger something that 'flys' in space is, the less dense it will tend to be. :)
Reaction mass rockets are different - when full around 70 to 90% of their mass tends to be fuel - they are pretty useless at combat anyway except as missiles..
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Read that series and let me know what you think about space combat.
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That's a very interesting-looking series, sadly I will not have the time to read it before this discussion is archived. But it will go in the to-read list. The concept of humans as race with drawbacks is fascinating to me, because in every SciFi universe I've read we are by definition average and the point of the aliens is to talk about whichever exaggerated human characteristic they're supposed to represent.
And Slashdot will certainly have more stories like this in the future, so we'll be able to talk abou
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I'll have to dig it up. It's been so long, I can probably put it in the re-read pile.
I don't remember races,
Starfleet Battles (Score:2)
Starfleet Battles [wikipedia.org] is an excellent example of well defined ships & roles - it expands (and branches away from) the original series and does a good job of representing classes of ships from a multitude of different races.
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As a creative type who's done the research and who's intentionally let military history and physics inform (and "correct") their storytelling and vehicle design, you do not speak for all of us.
Though that is speaking as a writer. Speaking as an artist, sometimes the function winds up being deduced from the design as opposed to the other way around.
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The OP may be right that most sf writers don't care about the science, but most sf authors (That is, writing is their day job.) do, because that's part of being a professional.
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C.J. Cherryh has a universe of space stations and ships. While reading one of them, I enjoyed the realistic depiction of life aboard a corvette. I eventually came to realize that it was a lot like the books I've read about life aboard sailing man-o-wars. Which makes sense, as the parallels are there, and she's just describing how a lot of humans react in the same situations.
Shitty cover art (Score:1)
Just a moment's thought is needed to realize that space ships will be guided
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And how about a battleship in space? Or a train in space? It reminds me of our patent office, where any everyday thing "but on the internet" gets you a shiny new long number.
ship and trains ... in space (Score:1)
The Japanese have done that, in anime:
Space Battleship Yamato
and
The Celestial Railroad
for example.
--
Of course that's just my opinion...... you could be wrong.
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This was lamp-shaded in "The Lost Fleet" series. IIRC two characters are talking about writing memoirs, and on says how the idiot publishers will most likely make them appear all heroic on the cover of the book wearing marine battle armor even though they are naval officers and have never worn battle armor let alone fought in it.
too much text (Score:1)
I'm missing a simple reference sheet.
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I'll find you a link to a video of the posting.
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The TARDIS is not a warship, it is a time and space travelling device. Maybe you can group it with the time machine from Orson Welles. Also they missed the heart of gold the that ship with the bistro-matic drive. However, all these ships do not have lame weapons which somehow correspond with weapons we had or have seen on ships.
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Orson Welles? Christ wept.
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Are you kidding? The TARDIS has more firepower than just about any science fiction ship, but the Doctor prefers to use diplomacy or his sonic screwdriver instead. For example, there is no question who would win in a TARDIS vs Death Star battle.
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And right next behind the power of the TARDIS is the wormhole weapon [wikia.com].
Re: TARDIS? (Score:2)
The problem with the tardis is that it's always breaking down. Both Death Stars performed flawlessly first try.
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well, it was a fully armed and operational station
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What do you mean? An African outside or European inside?
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Frankly, the Death Star was even too big for its own in-universe fiction. As something a fraction of the size of a moon, covered entirely in guns, in a universe where that's a pretty overwhelming strategy, the fact that it would obliterate a fleet is entirely given- hence the "send the little ships in" thing being the only hope.
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A moon station covered in guns and they couldn't find room or budget for a few thousand tie fighters to defend it.
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They probably contracted the building of the station to the lowest bidder - and it wasn't in the initial specs.
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The Death Star had numerous squadrons of TIE Fighters. It just so happened they were all under the command of Tarkin who didn't believe the rebel snubfighters to be any concern. The TIE Fighters that were deployed against the Rebels were under Darth Vader's personal command as part of his bodyguard.
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I bet Cable Hogue could take the Death Star any day.
Been there done that ... (Score:1)
Here is the classification: common ship types (Culture) [wikipedia.org].
Corf or Korf(basket) (Score:1)
Most dutchies would recognize korf, meaning basket.However that word is also a bit ancient. There is also a sport korfbal which looks a bit like basketball but is a bit older. For the ship the word korvet is propper dutch. http://nl.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korvet
Piffle (Score:1)
Space belongs to the AI's that will rise, not to humans.
After all, what's the worst place an AI could be? The bottom of a gravity well...
Or, for you visual folks... (Score:2)
Interesting read, but imo he missed the mark by not including a size chart for a frame of reference.
Starship Size Comparison Chart [huffingtonpost.ca]
Because a picture is worth 1000 words. Or in this case, more.
Re:Or, for you visual folks... (Score:4, Informative)
Do you work for the Huffington Post? Why not link directly to the DeviantART [deviantart.com] page of DirkLoechel?
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Missing the most famous spaceship ever, The Death Star...
That's because this is about science fiction, not children's fantasy.
Oh, I'm trying so hard to keep a straight face.
Plagiarism? (Score:3)
I suppose it might not necessarily be plagiarism. Those classes are pretty similar to how most naval fleets are strategically divided.
Wait a minute! (Score:1)
We can tax starships? What a great idea! Especially since none of the owners are likely to be humans, so their vote won't count - even Norquist should be good with that
Back on real universe ... (Score:2)
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No, that's a space station.
As indicated by the presence of that word in your search for international space station .
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yes, this is a spaceship.
https://www.google.com/search?q=lunar+module&safe=off&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=FPBXVdXaHJH5yQTUnYHIDw&ved=0CDAQsAQ&biw=1143&bih=869
Missing banks (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sorry but any article on ship naming that doesn't include GSVs, GCUs, ROUs and Very Fast Pickets is severely lacking in gravitas.
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Especially if they are followed by 'dM', like ROU dM Zealot or sometimes(usually?) written (d) ROU Zealot ...
Not to forget that VFP is usually an euphemism for (d) ROU, which is often enough only demilitarized in function, not in weaponry nor in spirit.
Biased by 20th century tech (Score:2)
While this claims to be about Sci-Fi ships, it's really about 20th century naval ships, and the SF inspired by 2th century navies.
The article is interesting for its historical perspective, but if you pay any attention to that historical perspective, you can't help but come to the conclusion that the taxonomy has been turned upside down several times over the past 200 years. For centuries, sea battles were about a big line of ships delivering massive broadsides, with just frigates in a support role. Then sud
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Yawn (Score:1)
This was all done decades ago, complete with illustrations and back story...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Space will have a drone carrier carrier (Score:3)
This combat technique sends drones out to attack. But they will be too far away from the main ship directly communicate soon enough. So you have a slower, hidden super carrier that transports drone carriers most of the way. Say, from Earth to within 20 light seconds of the target (Mars for example). When combat arrives, it launches smaller drone carriers while the super carrier goes dark for the duration of the battle. It never sends any electrical or heat signal, after launching the drone carriers.
The drone carriers will do the final approach, within a couple of light seconds of the target (Earth's moon is 1.5 light seconds away from the earth). Then they launch a bunch of attack drones, which are directly controlled by the drone carriers. Assuming an equal opponent, the drones will attack their opponent's drone carriers. Once all your opponent's drone carriers are taken out, you re-task your remaining drones as scouts looking for your opponent's super-carrier. Unless of course they surrender.
This allows the majority of your military support crew to be a safe distance from the battle until you have won/lost. It minimizes your own losses, while maximizing your opponents.
TFA is Wrong on Frigates & Destroyers (Score:5, Informative)
If the answer is "we want to deploy as much firepower as possible from that hull", then a destroyer is what you get. You have less space for propulsion systems and fuel, hence you can be on the spot less soon and operate not so far away from home - but each and every ship present makes a relatively large impact upon the scene. This is the current choice of the German Navy, which has to patrol the East and North Seas, relatively close to naval bases.
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And then there is Japan where everything is a Destroyer. Looks like an Arleigh Burke, Destroyer. Has a flat top carries 18 aircraft, Destroyer.
A bit of history (Score:2)
A few notes on the chronology of the names I've seen often used.
Superdreadnought: about 1910, applied to the larger British dreadnoughts with a broadside of 10 13.5" guns as opposed to 8-10 12" guns in the earlier dreadnoughts. Fell out of favor fairly soon.
Dreadnought, about 1906, applied to a new sort of battleship with lots of big guns instead of a combination of big and intermediate. Used for the rest of the century. IIRC, although the last time I'm aware of a dreadnought doing anything was sho
Corvette? (Score:2)