Human Technology

Spaceships

Atmosphere Flight Simulator

The Atmosphere Flight Simulator (or AFS) is a flight system, present in all modern spaceships. Only the first generation of spaceships had no such system integrated in their basic flight systems.

As the run for space demanded a lot of pilots being able to fly the sheer mass of newly built spaceships, there were simply not enough fully educated astronauts available. Engineers have therefore developed a system with which a spaceship in free space behaves similar to a small plane in the atmosphere. With this flight system any normal pilot could fly a spaceship after a short period of retraining. Those systems are still in place after many decades, because they proved to be very handy and many pilots have not even tried to fly without them. Skilled fighter pilots however are required to learn to fly without it. They learn to temporarily disable parts of the AFS or the whole system to allow them to perform risky maneuvers giving them the upper hand in combat. In fact it is pretty dangerous to disable and restart the AFS mid-flight as it can be a strain on the spaceships hull. There have been several bad accidents with disabled AFS so that the flight system can usually not been turned off.

Flying with the AFS uses more energy because control jets all over the spaceships need to stabilize the spaceship to give the impression to fly in an atmosphere. There are also things like maximum flight speed and other kinds of restrictions in place which are helpful to the beginner pilot, but bothersome for the skilled one.

Artificial Gravitation

In the early 21st century, scientists at the CERN in Geneva, Switzerland have found the source of gravitation in an experiment with their LHC. They were able to simulate strong gravitational forces without the presence of large masses. As this technology has been refined and commercialized over the years, newer spaceships and space stations could afford to use it to build artificial floors without having to rely on centrifugal forces as artificial gravity. Newer spaceships and space station are therefore not built like cones or cylinders, but rather like planes or houses.