No windows on Future starship/spacecraft???

BTW, that transparent aluminum - it's not as far-fetched as you might think. However, it is hideously expensive and difficult to obtain in the quantities needed...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium_oxynitride

Do a search. There's more than one source for ALON. There's also another version (the one I was thinking of originally) that is functionally an artificial gemstone as I recall.

Reading about aluminium oxynitride and then transparent ceramics, I'm seeing the possibility of going entirely the opposite direction. You could build large parts of the ship out of a far-future version of the transparent ceramic armour that's supposedly in development. Then we'd have the possibility of something that could be more like a spaceborne city building.

RichardGarfinkle said:

I need to address the vast darkness idea. It's not true. There's starlight everywhere. Any point in space would see a huge number of distant stars. Whether the ship designers consider this imporrant is a different matter.

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There's starlight, but it's passing through lightyears of empty void. Not very bright (remember, the 'twinkling' of stars comes from Earth's atmosphere. No atmosphere, you just get steady pinpicks of light...if that. I'm thinking of moon landing pictures, where the stars never struck me as particularly impressive).

Some of my spaceships have viewscreens that show, among other things, magnified, colored-in images of the starfields and nebulas around them. Like the fancy Hubble telescope images that wind up on screensavers everywhere--now they're screensavers, in spaaace.

Although I also have a space cruise ship with an exercise field on top that's completely transparent to the void. Just to remind people they're on a space ship, which they paid good money for.

[Space office building--my inner agoraphobe screams at just the thought. Why would you?]

MumblingSage said:

There's starlight, but it's passing through lightyears of empty void. Not very bright (remember, the 'twinkling' of stars comes from Earth's atmosphere. No atmosphere, you just get steady pinpicks of light...if that. I'm thinking of moon landing pictures, where the stars never struck me as particularly impressive).

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Forget about the moon landing videos and photos - nowhere near enough exposure time to show all of the stars, and with the sun high in the 'sky' during those shot during the moon's daytime, the glare will be too bright for you to see many stars anyway. When you look at all of these Hubble photos or amateur astrophotography photos, the instruments have been pointed at whatever it is they're showing for some time, they didn't just take a picture. Exposures are the key to all of those amazing photos, and the moon landing videos and photos are not exposures (even the Human eye does a better job).

So, in space you may not get twinkling, but it'd still be damn impressive when not caught in the glare of the sun or another star.

Kaidonni said:

Forget about the moon landing videos and photos - nowhere near enough exposure time to show all of the stars, and with the sun high in the 'sky' during those shot during the moon's daytime, the glare will be too bright for you to see many stars anyway. When you look at all of these Hubble photos or amateur astrophotography photos, the instruments have been pointed at whatever it is they're showing for some time, they didn't just take a picture. Exposures are the key to all of those amazing photos, and the moon landing videos and photos are not exposures (even the Human eye does a better job).

So, in space you may not get twinkling, but it'd still be damn impressive when not caught in the glare of the sun or another star.

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Okay, but that raises another question: how much steady exposure can you get when you're in a pressurized tube travelling near the speed of light (to say nothing of exceeding the speed of light), as many fictional spaceships are?

MumblingSage said:

Okay, but that raises another question: how much steady exposure can you get when you're in a pressurized tube travelling near the speed of light (to say nothing of exceeding the speed of light), as many fictional spaceships are?

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No idea what it'd look like to the naked eye or any instruments set up to take exposures while the ship is travelling near the speed of light. When the ship is travelling relatively slowly, along a constant path and not turning, you might be able to get a decent photographic/video exposure excepting the effects of pointing your instrument through whatever it is that your windows are made of. On the Earth, motorised mounts are best for astrophotography because none of the objects are in a static position, they are moving constantly across the night sky; you might get away without any motorised mounts on your ship, but it'd be better if your instrument was on the outside to avoid the effects of light refracting through the windows, such as ghosting.

There probably wouldn't be any windows due to the necessity of radiation shielding. Given that light is a form of radiation, it would be far more difficult to develop a substance that would be strong enough to withstand impacts from micro-meteoroids and cheap enough to justify its cost while also letting in the visual spectrum of light and filtering out harmful cosmic radiation.

It would probably be easier to simply have camera ports on the outside and give each passenger a display to view them. They could even flip to different cameras, that way no one is missing the view from being on the wrong side of the craft. That seems more practical.

I think it depends how fast your ship is going as to whether there is anything to see outside or not. Anything close to light speed and everything redshifts anyway, doesn't it?

PeteMC said:

I think it depends how fast your ship is going as to whether there is anything to see outside or not.

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What about above lightspeed? in my Epic, someone describes the view of hyperspace as an "amorphous murk" but she still stares out the ports, in preference to staring at the bulkheads, while there's nothing better to do.

I did submarines for 5 years in the US Navy. So I can say with certainty that windows aren't a necessity as far as operations goes. Nor screen doors.

But, there's another consideration. Ergonomics. After an extended time in an enclosed space, everything starts to feel a bit cramped. I don't know the science the behind it. But we (on the submarine) all agreed that by about 30 or 40 days in, every space felt even smaller.

Reziac said:

What about above lightspeed? in my Epic, someone describes the view of hyperspace as an "amorphous murk" but she still stares out the ports, in preference to staring at the bulkheads, while there's nothing better to do.

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There is no speed above the speed of light (as far as we know). Consequently you can say hyperspace, or whatever you choose to call it looks like whatever you want it to look like.

SianaBlackwood said:

Reading about aluminium oxynitride and then transparent ceramics,

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Are you aware of the high level of technology of transparent materials we already have, in the form of a compound of silicon and oxygen?

caw

Hmm. What's the best fracture resistance achieved with silicon dioxide?

[If you've never seen tempered silicon dioxide decide to come completely apart, that's an experience not to be missed. Never has so little material made so many shards!]

AVS said:

There is no speed above the speed of light (as far as we know). Consequently you can say hyperspace, or whatever you choose to call it looks like whatever you want it to look like.

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Well, mine apparently looks like an 'amorphous murk'. What does yours look like?

Reziac said:

Well, mine apparently looks like an 'amorphous murk'. What does yours look like?

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You've passed the object by before light can reflect to you, so I'd say any travel above c would be pitch black.

Not all light is from reflected objects -- what about the light you "hit" ?? [Strange notion: at such speeds, light behaves as a solid; bad things happen if you run into enough of it. Discuss.]

Since in my universe we don't run into things in hyperspace, apparently it's not contiguous with realspace anyway, so the concept of light may be meaningless.