Check out X4: Timelines and support Spacedock! Steam: store.steampowered.com/app/392160/X4_Foundations/? GOG: www.gog.com/de/game/x4_foundations?

Space should, narratively, be treated like the open sea. Terrifying, highly lethal, but irresistible to that segment of people who will never be truly happy in one place.

Things to keep in mind for Space Exploration in sci-fi: - Spaceships can be made to be self-sufficient. In other words, the crew can grow food, rely on different forms of power generation to last forever, replace its own parts, and recycle water. - If the spaceships don't have the ability to generate gravity, there are realistic ways to induce it, such as centripetal force and turning exploration ships into mobile space stations that can orbit a new world. - Germs, diseases, and bacteria are ever-present threats, not only to us but to the places we bring them to. Make sure you address on how that's resolved. - There's no shame in having an exploration ship or crew that can defend itself. - Exploration ships can be as big as you want. Space doesn't care. The bigger the ship, the more resources you can bring.

Like how pretty much every story set in the age of sail involves getting stranded on a deserted island at some pont, space travel would likely be the same... except you can't just build a simple raft to escape.

The effect of food on morale is something that needs to be seen more in SF. I remember being amused in Dark Matter (not the Apple one) when the crew came into possession of a 'pleasure android', and were singularly unimpressed by her ability to sing, dance, tell jokes and, er, perform the most intimate functions of a pleasure bot, but were overjoyed when it turned out that the thing was a great cook.

Even when you have replicators, you'd want at least a bare minimum of supplies kept on the ship for when those replicators aren't available. Redundancy saves lives.

Shoutout to the use of Townsends for the bit about hardtack and pemmican, and the bit about morale assisting foods.

IIRC the Voyager writers wanted to have many episodes about collecting resources and with Voyager damaged, but the chefs didn't want that. We only get a glimpse of that in Year of Hell

TV seldom captures that because we sort of sense the reset coming. Moments where it felt dangerous and scary that I remember: 1) The Doomsday Machine 2) the first time EntD encounters the Borg and that entity, Nacquilim(I think). 3) The moment when we saw Vala catch fire and realized she was going to die (even though she didn't). 4) Eli looking out from the Destiny after he put everyone else in stasis. 5) The Shadows 6) The Krell thing from the Id. I'm sure they are more, but those are mine.

The maintenance and repairs was my favorite part of some HFY story involving "break ships". The concept was that to travel instantaneously across the universe, you needed to transfer across between locations in the univese with the handwavey "similar energy state". However even at the best of times, this transfer where they "break" physics by instantaneous travel also means that the entire ship is very slightly warped, to screws are no longer perfectly circular, and so much else, effectively breaking the ship, and forcing a severe overhaul while underway.

Although its more of a background role in Stargate Atlantis, getting supplies atleast in the earlier seasons was also big obstacle. they were always on a hunt for food, zpms or nukes.

It's not sci-fi, but I really enjoyed Pokemon Legends Arceus' approach to studying wildlife, which was to give every Pokemon it's own set of tasks associated with it that you needed to complete to fill out its dex entry, from just fighting a bunch to catching them in a specific way to having them use their signature move a certain number of times. Felt way more like doing actual field research than just clicking things with a camera.

Thank you for the Shadow vessel in the final shot. The true horror of finding something out there.

It always breaks my heart a little to read about what might have been for Star Trek Voyager. You can see bits and pieces of it in the earlier seasons when they were talking about rationing and Neelix's kitchen and that one line from the pilot which said they only had 36 torpedoes and no way to replicate more. But the higher ups wanted more Next Generation-type stories and so we got what we go. Episodes like Equinox and Year of Hell show glimpses of what later seasons might have been like, and that they had another shot at doing those kinds of stories with Enterprise is also a bit of a sore point for me. I'm not saying it had to be grim dark, but Deep Space Nine is still my favourite Star Trek series simply because it took the Star Trek formula and did something different with it. I just think Voyager could have done the same, and might have been better (or possibly worse) for it.

Stargate Universe was cancelled too early... the potential it had was massive

One other good example of the feeling of being stranded in space is the book, “Project Hail Mary” by Andy Weir. He writes hard sci fi, and that book is about being alone in space.

This is one reason I love Stargate Universe so much. In its short run, it used far more of the potential of the "stranded far away from home without backup" scenario than Star Trek: Voyager ever did. You've got food shortages, a damaged ship you can't magically fix between episodes, external threats like the Nakai, the drones and the Lucian Alliance. Also, many of the characters didn't get along very well at first, which took a long time to overcome, with the best example being Colonel Young and Dr. Rush. Compare that to the Starfleet crew and the former Maquis members: There was lots of wasted potential regarding conflicts between characters. They started to get along far too quickly in my opinion. Imagine for instance Captain Janeway and Commander Chakotay being at odds more often and slowly over many seasons building trust. Or Voyager accumulating exterior damage and welded on hull plating (like the original Enterprise in TSFS or the reimagined Battlestar Galactica) over time.

In my own setting I'm trying to keep this in mind. Like why is the ship over 5km long, cause it needs space for foundries and workshops, and hydroponic/aeroponic farms, and the odd chicken coop. On a mission that will take them decades to complete, beyond the Rim to chase that Ever Distant Horizon they have to take everything they can to survive

Captain Pike from SNW definitely knows the morale value of a good meal.

I like to think that the dangers associated with exploration is the reason why Starfleet's ships are so robust, adjacent to a warship.

This is why Starsector does space exploration justice. You not only have to worry about fuel and supplies, but also have to bring a big enough fleet to scare away potential hostiles, who probably want to take away your hard earned loot.

On the topic of ice harvesting, might be cool seeing a more in depth video cover the topic of space resource extraction in general.

One thing to keep in mind especially for realistic settings is the lack of infrastructure while exploring. For example: In a realistic setting where the ships themselves are unable to land they need to use landers. On a colonised world the ship may just dock to an orbital station and than the landers will be provided by the station. But when exploring this is not possible. Also making your landers arodynamicly dependant (something like the valkyrie shuttle from avatar) than every time you go to explore a new planet you have to make some modifications or get a new one. Or what do you do when exploring an airless planet? Infrastructure-less planetary interface is perhaps the most difficult thing to get right in a realistic sci-fi setting.

Even in space engineers I have to do a test orbit to make sure my route is clear of asteroids

Kudos on including clips on almost every single known space game and show I've ever seen or heard of, that in itself was cool as hell

If you need a great example id like to reccommend the AMC miniseries "The Terror" It's a phenomenal show that fits sci-fi in all but aesthetics and hits every single beat mentioned in this video. Exploration for a purpose, bad food stores, malfunctioning experimental technology, complete isolation in an inhospitable environment, emergency survival measures and plans, everything you could ask for is executed extremely well here.

The TTRPG Traveller has some pretty good rules, tech and gameplay for exploration. There are several types of sensor suites and probes you can bring along on your ship to make things much safer depending on the level of survey you're doing. Also I love that Townsends has made an appearance on this channel.

In my Guardians of the Stars setting, the fairly rare 'light cruiser' class tend to be the explorers. Bigger than the next step down (Frigates) which are usually purpose focused, but smaller than Cruisers which are the 'do everything' heart of larger fleets. So they have the size/mass to go out to the fringes of the known and still carry all the gear and supplies one might need to do that job. However, their size/mass also make them expensive to run and as they usually lack the firepower greater than the frigates it can be fairly dangerous when the pirates have gotten there first.

I recently finished the Revelation Space books and the amount of von-Neumann-level self repairing machinery somewhat bugged me, especially when the large narrative is one of recent and sudden technology decay. The issue of course is that such shortcuts are typically in service to the main storyline, otherwise the technical problems just become the storyline.

Yeah, I've been having to deal with this for a while, as I've been putting together an interstellar mission in modded Kerbal Space Program. It's rapidly becoming clear that I'm not going to hit my preferred mass ratio, so the ship is going to rely on lots and lots of staging, better fuel, and going slower than I initially wanted to.

One exploration story that sticks with me to this very day, is Freelancer. After the story finishes and thr sandbox opens up, you can go pretty.much anywhere. Use the gates, or brave jump holes. I used a jump hole to get out into the unknown and found a system with two planets. One of animal people one of robots. The space was infested with Nomad ships too. (They're the big bad of the story mode. Energy amoeba things.) Freaky place couldn't repair at the planets, or resupply or anything.

I think most series, but particularly Statgate Universe, missed the opportunity to have an episode based around making the crews food more tolerable. I can easily imagine a couple of episodes where an accomplished military chef is investigated then snatched to the other side of the universe to use their expertise to stop the crew going insane due to the horrible rations they're forced to live on.

I like the how they portrayed the NX-01 as a utilitarian ship instead of a space station pretending to be a starship like in the TNG and Voyager. The only thing that I always find lacking with NX-01 is the documentation process during explorations. They have so much computational processing and sensor power at their disposal but the crew only carries a space DLSR for their planetary trips. They don't even take videos, only photos. I guess NX-01only can only afford one license to Photoshop.

Having learned so much about eras of exploration, yes, space travel should be dangerous, but unless one is looking to make a tragedy, it can't be too impossible for the characters to survive

Your hardtack comment requires the scene from Tasting History of Max smacking two pieces of hard tack together. At least you got Townsends!

Would love to an exploration far from home and supply story that shows how innovative the crew had to be to keep things running, salvaging and jury rigging often ad hoc replacements etc

I was thinking you could have a 3D printer that is able to use basic materials to create food for the crew. You could also have a store of freeze dried food alongside that. Since that might be more practical and also serve as a backup in case the 3D printer breaks

1:55 bees are anything but simple

Definitely what I loved about Enterprise was that is was the first Trek series where the crew felt wholy out of their element and beyond their capabilities when compared to what they were facing. So much of the conflicts early on were resolved either finding a way to run away or having to talk their way out of sticky situations by necessity (as opposed to Picard talking his way out of a situation he could just blast his way out of for the sake of being a good person).

That's why I love Andy Weirs Books and I'm hyped for the Project Hail Mary Movie. In his books you know that stuff is going to get wrong, everything around the protagonist is trying to kill them at one point or another and only skill, ingenuity and plot armor can make a difference of life or death.

Yeah, bringing up realistic logistical problems and trapping through space could be an interesting plot line. Also, I wanted to talk about the subject in a high-tech way of preserving food like stasis machines that can preserve foods for long periods of time on starships.

_Star Trek_ has the interesting issue where replicators will fail 'safe', but holodecks will fail 'deadly', whereas I'm inclined to believe that the opposite is more likely to be true. It certainly wouldn't take much tampering for a replicator to produce food that is apparently fine, but is actually, at least foul-tasting, if not actually toxic. Meanwhile, I'm expect the first _actual_ failure on most holodecks would be generated shapes being wrong, in the sense of them being weird or amorphous.

The Expanse is by FAR my favorite story with actually deadly space. ONE character purposefully spaces themselves to go between two ships and it was like, a feat talked about even on Earthe

There is an interview by Adam Savage was interviewing Chris Hadfield the astronaut and Andy Weir the author of the Martian, after watching the movie. And Chris said the hardest things in sci-fi for him to believe is the crew dynamics. Like you are trained for all these scenarios, you have a job, a hierachy, a methodology of breaking down and solving problems... and the moment something happens, NO ONE KNOWS WTF TO DO!!! or how toxic the working relationships seem to be. (Like why are trained NASA astronauts picking on the Botanist specialist)

Dangers for exploration should be running out of supplies, ship being damaged, getting lost or stuck, hostile natives and hostile other explorers and any other random ideas.

Babylon-5 Had the Earth-Force Explorer ships, which were massive, being a couple of miles long and the vast majority of it seemed to be storage for supplies and equipment, as well as to support a massively powerful jump drive.

In Voyager they immediately started with hydroponics. As they were short on energy. In fact it was one of the things I hated was the reasoning for it. Janeway stated they wouldn’t normally need to ration, but they were over due for maintenance at a space dock. It was a new ship! One designed for exploration. I would have preferred her saying the ship is fully equipped. But with an expected 70 year voyage, I have already begun rationing.

Space is violence and darkness.... but less frightening than divorce - Bones

I was not expecting to see clips from Townsends on this channel, but it fits.

Exploration vessels should be always sent out as pairs. The pair of ships should perform survey on different sites but always close enough to rescue the other one if needed.

I fondly remember long exploration trips in Elite Dangerous with my rather well equipped exploration ships. I could explore all I liked, refuel as I went, resupply on planets or in orbit, and manufacture the various supplies needed for repairs and the like. And for added fun I always made it a point to land on a planet for the night rather than just logging off wherever. Only made sense to land, shut down most systems, conserve fuel, etc. I also had a technically not needed but still important for realism first class passenger cabin for myself plus good life support. Didn't exactly need to feed yourself but still. Good times. :)

"Space is like a huuuuuge box of chocolate. You never know what you're gonna find in it." - James T. Kirk's mom, allegedly

fun fact the fourth aliem movie while it was a failure it did show a solid cube that could be turned into liquid of whiskey or alcohol using a high power laser to melt it into a liquid form and keep it I think something like that is pretty possible

A principle I’ve thought of is that the solar system is the fundamental unit of the galaxy. Space is like an unfathomably enormous ocean with tiny islands far apart. Travel within solar systems and atmospheres is on a microscopic scale compared to inter-solar travel and the technologies and resources used for each would be vastly different.

4:08 - Townsend has come such a long way on KZfaq. It seems like we all follow him. Gamers, Sci-fi geeks, non-nerds alike ^^ Always a joy to see him pop up.

8:17 there’s also the sg commander who posed as a god, but that was on planet side

James Alan Gardner had a good novel (or series) about an Explorer Corps. They were deemed expendable (often because of physical defects) - in fact that was the name of the novel.

Now that's an interface I never expected to see - footage from Townsends in a Spacedock video 😄

While any exploration ship must necessarily carry a ton of supplies, it just as if not more important that it have the capability to restock itself via ISRU far from the reaches of civilization. That it have the ability to harvest raw materials, process the, and manufacture every spare part it might need, up to and including creating a duplicate of itself if necessary and sufficient time can be spared, because that's the only way you can get as close as possible to a guarantee that the ship won't break. Now, this might suggest that the ideal exploration ship is a gigantic mining mothership and mobile factory that just happens to carry as many scientific probes as it does asteroid tugs, and that is entirely correct. And if it happens to run into trouble of the shooty kind rather than garden variety equipment failure then the same facilities than produce industrial and sensor craft can also make combat drones or missiles.

The problem I have with some science fiction (and even some historical dramas), is deciding to bump off a redshirt or two nearly every episode to show how dangerous the voyage is, to the point where you wonder how much of the lower ranks, without their protective plot armour, are left. Clearly that kind of attrition rate is going to be unsustainable on any kind of long term exploratory voyage and captains are going to go to great lengths to keep as many of the crew alive and healthy as possible (unless there's an absolutely dire food shortage, but then things have *really* gone tits up!)

What could also be very useful are linguists and possibly military personnel. The former to establish a means of communication with the other intelligent species, should you encounter any, to clear up any misunderstandings if the other species has caught you unwittingly breaking their laws. (An example would be the first contact war from Mass Effect) and the military personnel (of course the ship should also be equipped with at least a few weapons at best), in case diplomacy fails.

It makes more sense to me that you'd be setting up observation equipment. Like satellites and automated drones or scientific stations. Like we do with irl weather stations now.

Another great vid from Spacedock. I think Event Horizon does the 'search and rescue far from home' theme really well, with an added dose of horror for good measure.

5:07 Boy that rootbeer, it's VILE!

Depends on technology level. Ours, dangerous. Star Trek, fairly safe.

Makes me think of Macross, in which it isn't really about exploration most of the time, but where they send out these large colonization fleets with specialised ships for agriculture, mining and manufacturing coupled with a military escort.

HEY! Shoutout to our boy Jon at Townsends!

A wild X4 Foundations appears, I did not expect that at all. Egosoft usually doesn't do this kind of sponsoring outside of the community.

Would love a ship breakdown (in story) of the X4 ships. X4 is [at least one of] the best single-player space sandbox games out there.

The world if full of wonders and horrors. Of all kinds. Space is stupidly vaste, and thus an excellent medium to show plenty of wonders, horrors, and anything in-between. That’s why I like sci-fi movies/shows with space exploration. And I like exploration starships because I think they are the most versatile kinds of starships. Ideal for independent heroes (my favorite kind of heroes).

In the setting I write, the faction of humanity is slow but steady to expand. Long range exploration is done only with probes and unmanned equipment, while more in-depth exploration of the fringes is done by small specialist teams on highly automated vessels. Those operate within range of the nearest station so that they can fall back or communicate with command if things go south.

Born too late to explore the world. Born too early to explore the galaxy

I believe In todays world with whatever tech we have now, should we go explore deeper into space with man missions at any distance past our moon should be equipped in a way of a generation style ship configuration. Meaning a ship that could be self-sustaining long term should the worst happened despite being close to home. If an accident accrues that causes a change in original plans, danger could at least be minimized on the crew side of things. Allowing time for a rescue attempt to be permitted or self-resolving itself.

Another note about ice harvesting equipment: If your ship requires fuel of some variety, water-ice can be very quickly and easily electrolyzed into hydrogen and oxygen, refilling your ships' cryogenic tanks with vital propellant, or being recombined in fuel cells to produce power, heat, and clean water to drink, or being used to refill your supplies of coolant. In a moderately hard sci-fi I'd say asteroid-harvesting equipment is practically mandatory for any exploration ship worth it's salt, or even in some of the softer ones; you never know when something's going to break, and money is always the limiting factor (You can always add bigger tanks, better engines, make the ship bigger etc etc but that stuff costs money. A *LOT* of money), so it's almost always better to have in-situ processing equipment for producing your own supplies than it will be to have those supplies on-board

For the first time ever, the sponsor is actually relevant to me. Got X4 recently, still addicted 😊

1:47 see, Columbus did discover America.

Nice overview. And both BSG and SGU show how a premise of a ship and crew on their own could have worked instead of what we got with Voyager (which I still like). So upset they cancelled SGU. Strong cast and setting, even though we had some characters that felt ... off. :)

We are born in the cradle of Earth, but were meant to die among the stars 🚀✨️ --Live Long & Prosper 🖖🏻👽🛸✨️ 🌌🔭

Funnily enough, for a _Transhuman Traveller_ setting I'm working on, exploration is a major job in of itself. Like the _Traveller_ IISS, the IEB (Imperial Exploration Beureau) has dedicated *_FLEETS_* of ships ranging from semi-'short' range 'seekers' to battleship-sized deep-exploration vessels where they do Star Trek-style Starfleet exploration cruises. Those of the IEB can opt, at the end of their career, to undertake the 'final exploration' retirement package, which is basically given a long-range 'seeker' type vessel, and as long as they keep in touch with the Mandate, they can do their own exploration. Then there are the various corporations that specialize in planetary and system exploration and surveying, which is usually made up of IEB retirees that don't take the final exploration retirement package. However, if the IEB or someone on their 'final exploration' retirement discovers a world where there are humans/a species that the Mandate has under their aegis, they have the unenviable task of blending in (which sometimes necessitates that at least one person 'swaps' into a 'morph better suited for the situation, like if the planet has a pre-FTL Feiresi on it then the 'scouts' would need to slot into Feiresi 'morphs of the required sophistication) and investigating on how to uplift and integrate said world. The IEB is one of the few exceptions to the 'rule' within the Mandate that civilians can't possess Mil-Spec weaponry because they deal with Grandfather's (i.e., the Ancient that basically caused the setting; everyone calls him 'Science Cuthulu' because of his shenanigans) leftovers. So an IEB ship can be armed with modified battledress armed with *_GASER (gamma ray lasers) AND FUSION RIFLES_* and weapons that wouldn't be that far off from an equivalent weight regular spacy warship if you account for the larger fuel tanks for the jump drive.

The Blindsight did it all with exquisite taste , that book is like a rockstar of the genre.

I published my first space adventure novel this year and made sure to inject as much danger in space travel as I could, but because of the needs of the story the characters don't spend that much time in transit from planet to planet so I made the hero ship a proverbial bucket of bolts that could fall apart at any moment.

Probably one of the best, more recent depictions of what real space exploration could be. Is shown in the Netflix reboot of LOST IN SPACE. Exploration came as a necessity for survival.

4:27 Thats some serious product placement.

"Scanning can be a boring and time-consuming task." That basically is the description for that game mechanic in Starfield. ....... Oh sorry, I meant "Fallout 4 in space". 😁😜

"Harvesting resources isn't as easy as zapping it with a magical laser and vacuuming up the debris" No Man's Sky: "And I took that personally."

In my setting I treat space essentially how oceans are, lawless and borderless. Anyone can become a space pilot with the right training and most often either travel alone or in groups due to work. Being a space pilot means knowing the dangers of space such as solar flares, rouge asteroids, or even pirates. But dozens of people still travel it in some capacity. Being an astronaut or space pilot in my setting is analogous to being a privateer or conquistador back in the day, you know its dangerous, but the opportunities for fortune are too great to decline.

star trek enterprise is my absolute fovorite star trek show for the reasons you mentioned, it was different, but in a good way

Unexpected external hazards in space exploration are certainly well and good for stories, but most of them wouldn't be much of an issue realistically. Space is very transparent and there's no horizon blocking vision or comms, so almost every location will be imaged by telescopes and probed by robots long before anyone goes there in person, as has been the case so far. Of course, space exploration also requires that the crew be utterly dependent on a tremendously complex machine simply to reach new places alive; that's a dangerous situation in real life and in sci-fi.

When "consumables" were being discussed there was no mention of Redshirts in Star Trek 🙂

What if you combine techs. The brain VR to make you think your eating a great meal. But in the real world your IV is feeding you. So every day 3 times a day you plug in, go into the VR world, have a great meal, interact with your friends wherever they are, unplug and be fully fed and happy?

Hardtack: “Clack Clack”

One thing Stargate Universe got right was the danger factor in traveling to new worlds. Its something the SG franchise always did well, but universe taking place on a ship kicked it up a notch by adding in the hazards of space. Its a lot more rare in ST because they tend to have better sensors so they avoid most natural spacial hazards like pulsars.

Day 2 of asking mr spacedock to to make videos on macross ships and mecha . Please sir you gotta do a video on the yf 19 or the sdf1 macross. You already made a video on the space battleship yamato, we need 2 legendary anime ships on this channel

7:24 ; 7:41 THANK YOU! 🙏 I always *loved* the 3rd Season of Enterprise, but so many fans love to bash it just because of the Xindi! But the Enterprise was _on the edge of blowing up_ almost every episode because of their isolation, so every episode really felt tense! If they got found out by the Xindi, *they were dead!* The crew just had no means to fight with the ship on that state!

cant remember if it was retconned or changed. but iirc star trek replicators are not energy to matter converters but simple matter to matter assemblers. think of them more like advanced 3d printers the ship keeps a central store of different matter and then it gets accessed by the different replicators on the ship to create whatever. when something is thrown away it gets turned back into its basic elements and stored in the correct storage bank. this includes fecal matter.

Awesome use of a Townsends video. One of my biggest issues with long duration space travel is food and water; both necessary for life- but both require a lot of space and weight. Either; we must find a way to hypersleep- with bare necessities pumped into us. Or, make space travel fast enough that breaks the laws of physics…. Either options are long shots, and why I think we’ll only be a single system species- if we ever get off this rock without blowing ourselves to pieces. Edit: The other option is to upload our consciousness into a computer… again, a long shot.

Townsends making space foods.

In stellaris most explore ships live betwen 10-20 yers, but it go down whem you take look at erly game where they not fly to much on our space

Trek is a safer galaxy because most folks either have similar tech levels, and generally don't want to get inyo a fight because it would be devastating to noth sides, or are so far above the average nothings a threat to them. Star Wars is broadly similar, with its absolutely ancient galaxy-spanning governments dotted with the occasional space monster. Most settings, the protagonists are either the new kids on the galactic block, or just part of the crowd, kept in check by everyone else and keeping everyone else in check. Either way, the part of the galaxy they're in is usually pretty well known.

Really thought we would have seen the EAS Cortez Explorer ship for B5 instead of the Shadow Crab on Mar. Showing how dangerous it can be out there when your tech lets you down far from help.