What material would a starship be made of

Stars

stars, I guess?

crystalized virgin neet anguish

Ships

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Transparent Aluminum

it depends on the ship's purpose, there is no wonder material that would suit all its needs, assuming we already had the electromagnetic shielding around the ship we would probably just need something resistant to space corrosion and heat resistant if the ship was designed to enter a planets atmosphere.

>>58151964
>space corrosion
Tell me more

>>58151992
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrosion_in_space

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Polarized_hull_plating

Duranium alloy

>>58151828
Titanium

http://www.halopedia.org/Titanium-A_armor

>>58151828
Graphene because fuck you it's the future and all crew members are herms because yeah/

Unobtanium

Lead

If i had to build a spaceship from something, it would be some material that regenerates with infused energy or fuel.
Some kind of crystal hull outer layer, or some organic outer layer which is resistant enough to regenerate faster than it is being destroyed.

Space is a bitch.

The corpses of all the aliens you've conquered.

>>58151828
Alien jizz

>>58152250
waterbears?

>>58151828
Carbon if you can manage its structure at the nano level.

>>58152250
Organic-metal hybrid alloy?

>>58152695
No. The point is to protect the metals.
You use metals to defend against more major physical impacts and for structural integrity,
but the main point is protecting the metals themselves from shit like corrosion and micro-influences such as radiation, solar winds, etc. Replacing metals is a bitch and the cost of manufacture, extraction, refinement, application, nano-tech, is simply not worth it.

That's where the "sunscreen blanket" comes in.
Something you can afford to constantly lose which doesn't exactly siphon more relevant resources.
Which brings me to organic materia or some silicate crystals or some such that spread and grow by themselves with an infusion system of something from underneath.
Kind of like those crystals that you grow in elementary chem class.
Maybe even artificial bone growth so you get a ship with a literal exoskeleton.
Or maybe all 3 at once with 3 layers of protection.

Point being, something cheap which is capable of self-growth, which spreads by itself, which uses something affordable to lose and easy to extract as a kind of fuel.

plasteel

Titanium-polymer alloy.

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>>58152790

Or paint. Ideally, robots that paint.

>>58153877
Robots will break down. Paint will break down.
More shit to fix, more shit to waste time on, more shit to track, paint is not thick enough or dense enough to protect the metal underneath completely.

Listen. You want a literal tree.
What's a tree? It's an organism which has an outer layer of dead cells that keep piling on and protecting the inside.

Why not just pile all the garbage / waste onto the outside of the ship as a sacrificial layer? So by the time the ship reaches it's destination it's gone from a sleek cruiser to a hairy meatball covered in breadcrumbs.

Realistically we need to think about radiation, so I'm thinking cheap sacrificial layers of garbage collected along the way.

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>>58154354
And how do you plan to maintain that shit. Much easier to fix metal damage than to fix tissue damage. Not to mention several orders of magnitude less complex

>>58154731
Cover your ship in 2 meters thick water shield that goes all around the ship. That will block most of the radiation.

>>58151875
>That product placement

>>58154736
That shit maintains itself, just like a tree, it is self-expanding so long as there is an input via pipe or wire or whatever.

Metal, does not fix itself. Metal, requires external input. This is the fucking problem.
Eliminate external input, and eliminate waste of precious resources when you can waste something which isn't.

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Ice

>>58154956
You're making your system way more complex and you're increasing complexity. Your solution is bad and you should feel bad.

>>58155005
Fuck, what I meant to say is you're reducing efficinecy and increasing complexity and I imagine energy required to maintain your contraption would be 10 times as much as something more sane, like, you know, a good old alloy, maybe even a metamaterial

>>58155005
>eliminating processes translates to increasing complexity
>creating a self-growing static system and completely removing repair processes is increasing complexity
I suggest you go to Google, search up reengineering, and learn some shit son.

>>58151828
If the synthesis of superheavy elements succeeds, there should be a few stable ones at the atomic number of ~140-145. (See island of stability) These elements would probably be a very good barrrier for the radiation in space and could make some usuable alloys with titanium for example.

Graphene.

>>58155078
You:
>fantasy
Me:
>plausible in reality

Imagination.

>>58155107
You
>i'll ignore reading something assembled by many people smarter than myself which is a combo of engineering and business thinktanks
Me
>i'll give him something to read, but if the fool thinks he is 2cool4books, then let him keep soiling himself

>>58151828
Common materials might be enough if humanity could invent those fancy shields :P

>>58155149
Please explain how you're gonna grow a living tissue around your ship

And also explain what it is you're smoking

>>58154956

What if we just covered the ship in a tank of electroplating solution in water, and periodically energized the electrodes to re-plate the experior metal skin?

>>58155166
The equilibrium between tissue regeneration and dead tissue pileup above protecting it which keeps being shaved off by external factors, is something that already happens in nature.
Besides, organic tissue isn't the only thing i named, no?

So long as it doesn't involve using robots,
and so long as metal or whatever plating is never allowed to rust and require replacement,
it's a system that works better.

Besides that, there are also free-moving rocks out there that pile up new layers around them as they move through nebulas and attract specific elements. It wouldn't be the first in many of solutions science has thought up to minimize ship maintenance in space as much as possible.

>>58155338
The radiation in space or the vacuum or the temperatures would kill the organic tissue in no time.

>>58155360
And you would need to feed it.

>>58155338
>>58155360
Metamaterials is the only way

Make a material that autoregenerates and win

>>58155338

What if the robots regenerated themselves? Is it elephants all the way down?

>>58155360
And science works to negate those effects by either winning over the speed or winning in resilience.
That's what science exists for.
There is no impossibility. Even our biggest enemy, cancer, has an application since it is a case of out-of-hand replication.

>>58154975
>Ice
Why not pycrete?

>>58155413
Imagine reentering the earth's athmosphere with such a ship. You would have a nice crispy space tumor :D

>>58155488
I don't think ships of the size required for longer distance travel will be allowed to mingle in Earth's atmosphere.
Shuttles are for that.

>>58155518

True. Cruise ships are now so large that can no longer enter some ports of call. Tenders are required for this. And it's an apt metaphor.

But dealing with the radiation of travel near stars is still the show stopper.

apples because they just work

>>58155166
>Please explain how you're gonna grow a living tissue around your ship

Do you even watch sci fi? Bioships are a staple in Babylon 5 Star Trek, Lexx, Andromeda, etc.

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>>58156419
>not mentioning farscape

Gundanium

>>58152452
Underrated post senpai

>>58152057
>you will never be a futanari space elf having sexy adventures across the galaxy

Feels real fucking bad, man

>>58151828
Starships like that aren't possible

>>58156517
That would be an etc. I also didn't mention Stargate Wraith ships. Hell that one even showed some construction methods.

>>58151849
we should start building fleets why the resources are plentiful

Mud and bricks

solidified sperm with anime plastered over it

>>58158838
Everything is impossible until it isn't, Commander Data.

>>58158900
The construction of a Wraith ship is fucked up. They grow them from people.

>>58158838
They're entirely possible. We could build one today with current technology given enough resources (which, all things considered, wouldn't even be that much. just more than the toenail clippings governments currently allocate to space programs).

The main problem is that you've gotta get that fucker into space after you build it. Once again, we could do it, but it'd take a ridiculous amount of fuel and absolutely perfect launch conditions to work. The way to fix this is to first establish offworld extraction, refinement, and manufacturing facilities. Many advocate for this to happen on the moon or in the asteroid belt, and while that is a good idea eventually for now this environments are too harsh and low gravity for any humans staffing these facilities.

>>58159602 (count)
The best place to build our first shipyards is undoubtedly Mars, which is resource rich, comparatively temperate, and (probably) high enough gravity for our physiology while being-low gravity enough to make getting massive structures off the surface and into space. We don't have to worry about aerodynamics there, either, since the atmosphere is so thin.

>>58159602
>current technology
Are we even sure what "current technology" is when it comes to starships? I've seen a lot of concepts for ships NASA and others want to get funding for. Hell, didn't they generate a warp field in a lab at NASA?

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>>58151828
Star Trek ships were made with a magic space metal called Duranium alloy.
http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Duranium

IRL, interstellar ships will probably be made of some kind of self healing composite material. Probably some kind of resin impregnated carbon nanotube filament sandwiching a kind of non newtonian ferrofluid.

>>58159672
"Current technology" would certainly be a lot more if funding for space hadn't dried up decades ago, and private involvement had happened earlier. The fact that we're mostly still making tiny tweaks to 60s technology and barely do anything beyond our own orbit is disgusting.

NASA hasn't created a warp field in their labs, however. There are a couple theories on how to do that, but they take so much energy that we'd have to be capable of harnessing the power output of an entire star to even attempt them.

>>58151875
>hello computer
>a mouse, how quaint
Fucking love this movie to this day

>>58159743
>NASA hasn't created a warp field in their labs, however.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive#Experiments
>In 2013, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory published results of a 19.6-second warp field from early Alcubierre-drive tests under vacuum conditions.

>>58159757
A lot of people say Wrath of Khan was their favorite but I still prefer Voyage Home to this day.

>>58159825
Both movies are good examples of how to do a Trek movie. Either take it seriously and do it justice (Khan) or embrace the sillier side while still conveying a message and staying consistent with the storyverse (voyage home).

The newer movies (both TNG and JJ) do too much of the mass-appeal something-for-everyone approach and it makes them mediocre and forgettable. I never expected much from the JJ movies, but given how good the TNG series was the movies were a disappointment.

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ask elon musk. he knows everything.

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>>58155518
Star Trek had plenty of ships capable of planetary landings, they have landing struts and the structural integrity field is adjusted to match with the planet's gravity.

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>>58159614
Doesn't need to be on mars, it just needs to be in space.

>>58155037
And it would be even more energy efficient if we were to only catapult ourselves in plastic containers, but that doesn't make it a better idea.

>>58151828
same material used for satellites, rockets and shuttles.

ThinkPads.

>>58159687
so basically some shit covered with magic flux?

>>58159757
>a keyboard, how quaint
Ftfy and yeah that movie was the tits

>>58161972
Or Nokia 3310s

>>58151828
by the time we're flying between stars we'll probably be doing it in some kind of immaterial form

Super inorganic crystals
Tantalum hafnium carbide
Molybdenum jacketed tripphase wave generator

crustaceans

>>58151828
Duct tape and love, shit's indestructible.

Liberal tears and butthurt

We have an unlimited supply of them now.

>>58151875
Goddamn I love that movie...

>>58159602
Well you sure as fuck aren't getting to a star with current technology

>>58151828
you mean materials, best that are to get, space industry aloys, memori/inteligent materials etc
main problem how do you want to power it? and what do you want to do with missing technology like - shields, long distance comunications, long distance weapons and most important FTL drive and sub light drive

Depleted Uranium

Some alloy of adamantium and mithril

>>58161779
>Suggesting that technological solutions in Star Trek amount to anything more than hand-wavy space magic suited to meet their plot requirements for that week

There are plenty of insights to be found in hard sci fi, but Star Trek absolutely does not qualify

>>58161798
I'm all for an orbiting drydock, but for now getting materials up there is prohibitive.

>>58166011
Star Trek style warp where the ship can hop from system to system in a matter of weeks or days isn't feasible with current tech, but accelerating to a fraction of the speed of light high enough to get to a neighboring star system within a person's lifetime (20-30 years) is absolutely possible. To do that you don't need crazy powerful propulsion, just constant acceleration, which can be done with a nuclear engine (among other options).

The bigger problem is getting permission to build a nuclear starship in today's political climate. The only way I can see anything like that ever being approved is if it's built far away from the earth-moon system.

jew bones