thanks spirit. I like how they made sure you accept no substitutes, by blowing up the word "substitutes". I won't accept any, thanks! Far too dangerous to do so. 

im looking at spaceship designs (the realistic scifi stuff) atm for level design inspiration - why are spaceships always designed in a way that the surface is so rough and uneven, but still has some sort of hull? http://www.artships.com/2005/rbr_top_quarter.jpg http://www.artships.com/2005/exelon_front_side.jpg

this freighter seems to make some sense: http://www.artships.com/2002/truck_front.jpg

im trying to look at things this way: how would large scale invasion spaceships work and look? 

one thing that real spaceships already use and will need in the future is radiators to get rid of the waste heat that is produced. For example, when you generate electricity, there will be waste heat. And usually, the bigger the ship, the less surface area it has in relation to mass so more of the surface must be covered in radiators.

ISS has radiators protruding from the trusses, they are somewhat smaller and more "cranked" than the solar panels and have fluid flowing inside them. Shuttle has the radiators on the back side of the payload bay doors, so the doors have to be opened on orbit. 

the boiler-plate detailing is intended to imply functional, mass-production manufacture and construction that belies deeper technology beneath all those panels and stuff. fancy slick things that are all one smooth shape don't feel so real and accessible - they're more fantastic. 

you need to open up places to exchange components... Like in ships. Yet the hull that is in the water is quite smooth, for obvious reasons. The changes have to be done from the other side. For spaceships there can or then perhaps can not be reasons for that. Heat or micrometeoroid shielding comes as one that would facilitate building a big smooth continuous shield on one side and having all the greebles and hatches etc on the other side... 

Shuttle has the radiators on the back side of the payload bay doors, so the doors have to be opened on orbit.

So how do they keep the bats out? 

http://environment.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn10826 

why didn't anyone else notice that, I guess spaceship conceptual design has been completely wrong for forty years, good call bamz! 

they wouldn't look as cool. That's why Star Wars et al >>> Star Trek. 

If there are magical force fields then you don't need any physical shielding on the ship. Or if the ship stays in space and doesn't go to atmospheres. Or doesn't move very fast so debris isn't a problem. One of the problems is that when you move at significant fraction of light speed, even tiny debris hits will destroy you unless you have some shielding. Probably everybody knows about Arthur C. Clarke's idea of flying a disk of ice far in front of the craft's flight path. This all is for interstellar journeys of course. Also you might want to minimize the frontal area so make the craft long and thin.

But if you assume some jump / teleportation technology, then all that doesn't matter, as it's possible that you never have to physically move that fast.

So before looking at what the spaceships would be like, you have to look at what they are used for and what technology is available.

And metl's moths: if someone had made that up, everybody would dismiss it as impossible. Who would have thought?! 

great, exactly the kind of stuff i wanted =D

The scenario would be as realistic as possible in my case. 

The scenario would be as realistic as possible in my case.

That rules out artificial gravity, except as created by centrifuge. 

You don't need centrifuge if you're ship has a constant acceleration of 1g, just gotta turn the ship around at the midway point, or walk on the ceiling for the second half of the trip! 

I'm interested in this stuff so come to irc if you wanna discuss... 

if you're only accelerating at 1g, you're in for a looong ride. :P 

really? by my calculation it would take 350 days to reach the speed of light, which means you'd roughly have travelled 0.5 light-years after one year. The next year you'd travel 1.5 light-years, for a total of 2 light-years in two years, with your speed at the end being 2x the speed of light. Then you turn around, decelerate for 2 years, and it takes a total of 4 years to reach alpha centauri which is about 4 light-years away.

How long should it take? :) 

You don't need centrifuge if you're ship has a constant acceleration of 1g, just gotta turn the ship around at the midway point, or walk on the ceiling for the second half of the trip!

That only works if your journey is one way. For a ship that can dock, orbit, and manoeuvre you'd need something other than constant acceleration. 

i don't have 4y to sit around in a tin can. :( 

Years are but seconds when talking about interstellar travel. =)
Kell for a ship that can dock, orbit, and manoeuvre, you just don't bother with gravity I'd imagine. 

also, we don't know anythng about these aliens.. they might be highly intelligent bacteria, or something, so maybe they don't really NEED gravity as much as we do. 

then you might be able to drop from orbit without a parachute or anything, just a pressure suit. You'd be so small you would decelerate at high altitude already and gently float to earth... or be carried around by winds.
:P 

we don't know anything about these aliens

So the spaceships are for invading aliens? If we don't know much about them, how are we supposed to know what would then be realistic?

Also: they might be highly intelligent bacteria

is itself unrealistic. Bacteria could not be intelligent in any meaningful use of the word. Intelligence isn't some vague, abstract property with which one can endow any speculative entity. Intelligence requires, by definition, the capacity to store and process vast amounts of information. Bacteria can't do that, at least not on a level challenging to us.

Very small organisms might theoretically be intelligent, but I suggest they would have to be something more than bacteria.

Anyway, how realistic do you want? Why do you need it to be that realistic? 

... can of course display intelligent behaviour if three conditions are met:

1. there is a very large number of them
2. they can exchange information in a meaningful way
3. they can process that information

A single bacterium can not be intelligent however. I'm not a biologist, so I don't know whether it's possible at all for bacteria to meet all of the above criteria. 

Once you are travelling at a significant fraction of c you won't experience the years it'll take you to travel anywhere (relative to a "stationary" observer back on Earth, that is). That makes really long term travel more attractive.

Slightly. 

Relatively, you wouldn't age as fast. And you could probably get some great mapping done in four years in a can with nothing better to do. Unless it has a pool, of course. Or a Wii.