The Whole Solar System Catalog

Okay so it actually involves lots of things from other star systems too, but I really wanted to name this post that. It's about SF equipment.

• The book Colonies in Space, by T. A. Heppenheimer, one of the people who came up with the Stanford Torus, is mostly a must-read for the SF aficionado of any description. Sure, he falls prey to the Malthusian fallacy—he invokes apocryphal population apocalypses, albeit with qualifications, as an incentive to space colonization—but by and large, he knows what he's about.
  
  'Course, the book does date, and not just in its over-optimism about the pace of space development (Heppenheimer scoffs at James Strong's prediction that it wouldn't be till 2140-2210 that there would be consistent in-system travel, but subsequent events have borne Strong's time-frame out). But it dates in, for instance, its assertion that plastics won't be used, because they're made from hydrocarbons. Maybe those plastics won't, but silicone rubbers aren't derived from hydrocarbons—and silicon and oxygen are in bountiful supply in space, in things like asteroids. Similarly he said wood wouldn't be used as a building material, and he's probably right: but what about bamboo? You can use bamboo for all the things wood's good for, and it's a lot more renewable. And which is more likely, that everything will be fiberglass and metal, or that people will use bamboo in place of wood and silicone rubber instead of hydrocarbon?
• You know how ships in SF usually have "USS" or "UNSC" or, generally, naval-type prefixes of the "whoever's ship" pattern? Tsk, tsk. Gentlemen, space is not an ocean: it is aviation, albeit in the sun's atmosphere rather than a planet's. So aircraft registration should be the model.
  
  In my book, for instance, all the Peacekeeper ships use the UN's "4U" prefix, followed by 5 digits, while the villain's ship, being registered in America, starts with an N. One of the characters, who's Japanese, has a ship named JA4775 Onmyoji—he specifically requested that number, because it's lucky ("4775" can be read "shi-na-na-i", i.e. "not going to die"). They don't really count as "private" spacecraft; the villain has the licenses for nuclear reactors—which implies a certain level of security clearance—while the Japanese guy is a semi-governmental contractor-spy.
• Speaking of "space is not an ocean", you know what my books don't have? Carriers. Destroyers. Cruisers. Etc. Nope, I have a ship that launches parasite craft, but it's a "mothership"—and it carries its embarked craft on four big struts, an X-shaped rack they attach to. I think the struts have elevators inside them, for the little ships' crews, although I've never had a scene from the point of view of PK space forces. Those parasite craft are "battle spacecraft", essentially manned missile platforms, and they work more like tanks than like airplanes. The other ships are "heavy patrol ships", "light patrol ships", "escort ships", etc., rather than cruisers, destroyers, frigates, etc.
  
  As for the felinoids' ships, they mostly call them after the size of their metric-patching engines; the two smallest are thirties and fifties, and then doubles, triples, quadruples, and quintuples, which have the same size engine as fifties, but multiple units. The quadruples and quintuples, which are their "capital" ships, are also called "castleships", because they conceptualize space forces as fortifications (they didn't really have much seafaring). Similarly the small "fighter" ships the castleships embark are called "Siege-Breakers", because their main purpose is to defend their mothership. The equivalent of a "flagship" in their space force is a "palace ship" (palace means "seat of government"), and the equivalent of a bridge (which the human space force actually calls a command deck, because it's not a damn boat) is "keep", as in the command center of a castle.
• So I'd been having the damnedest time coming up with a shape for the felinoids' ships. At first, when I still had them landing, they looked a bit like submarines, and then I thought octagonal prisms would be groovy. In both configurations, they'd project a spherical plasma bubble, since stress-energy tensor metric-patching requires spherical matter shells to work. But then I thought, dude, bite the bullet: so now they're spherical.
  
  Which was no end of trouble, lemme tell ya. First I had to come up with an appearance for them that wouldn't just be dull—it was tough going until Samus Aran's morph ball gave me some inspiration. Then I had to change it so their guns are recessed into the hulls; I eventually figured out a turret design that'll work. And I was at a loss for what their deckplan would be like, but then I remembered the Discovery I from 2001: A Space Odyssey.
• Speaking of round things and metric patching propulsion, I was having trouble coming up with a way for my felinoids' bullets to not have crappy range. See, they're spheres (again, they have to be), and the sphere is the worst shape for aerodynamics. Unless, of course, it's dimpled, like a golf ball—especially if the dimpling is irregular, like in these babies:
  Unfortunately it still needs a way to impart spin, and I was at a loss for how to do that. But then I thought, "gyroscope". Specifically, vibrating structure piezoelectric gyroscope, under the dimpled skin of each bullet.
  
  I know, seems crazy complicated. But we got people talking about putting muscle-wire in our bullets, and we don't have space resources to play with.
• Remember how I said it's silly to think people will have computers installed in their heads? Or computer watches, etc? Yeah, I came up with something I haven't encountered before (though I admittedly haven't read any really recent SF, mostly because it's crap): everyone just carries handhelds. They use them for phones, email, taking notes, all of that. The actual computer technicians have full-sized desktop computers...but they're servers, because 24th century computer tech, y' know? I mean hell, my brother's Wii sometimes hosts a game of Goldeneye.
  
  Something that came up in a part I was writing recently is, space computer networks. Since FTL only works at a distance from major gravity wells in my book (because otherwise it creates topological defects), the FTL-comm satellites act as servers for interstellar communication...and space on them is crazy expensive. There's also a certain unavoidable lag, 'cause, uh, relativity.