BWC_virgin
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all engineering problems i can think of
required for life:
oxygen: easily solvable
radiation: difficult to protect against, not a huge issue tho
food water: easy
temp control: easy to increase temp, hard to reduce (important)
pretty easy to make box that will keep somone alive in the vacume of space, space suits will even do this. very trivial engineering problem in theory, somewhat difficult in practice
requirements for navigation,
this is more difficult we take satalites for granted on earth however in space we dont have the same ability to triangulate our position. even instruments like gyroscopes and accelerometers only give a vauge estimate when it comes to the accuracy required for space travel.
possible to calcuate via an accurate model of the solar system/stars etc... probably requires a lot of instrumentation and specific software to process the moving positions of all the points referenced
propulsion, this can be broken into two parts
1.excape
this is by far the most difficult, a very high ammount of energy and thrust is required to break free of earths gravity. typical rockets use something on the order of liquid oxygen and karosine. by far the cheapest and reasonably effective for a liquid cooled rocket, or solid fuel for single use boosters (some throttlable solid fuels have been developed). hydrogen and menthane is also used but somewhat more complicated from an engineering perspective, any other fuel that delivers more delta-v is typically too difficult to engineer around to make it worth using, or cost prohibitive.
2.in space
easier as you dont need redicuous ammounts of thrust so things like ionic thrusters (which produce comically low ammounts of thrust) can be used
3.re entry, second largest problem along with excape, re entry can be measured in miles per second and its pretty much impossible to avoid these velocities, basically dumping all the energy you used to get into space directy into your spacecraft in the form of heat. if its not strong enough it will fall apart (not ideal) and if its not well shielded with things that will insulate and reflect heat it will melt and then fall apart (not ideal).
power source: power is critical and there are two main ways
1 solar: due to bieng in space, there is allways solar energy (if you are close enough to a star)
2 nuclear: small nuclear reactors can provide energy, however, the main issue besides radiation and radiation shielding (very heavy) is that it generates a lot of heat, normal heat exchangers rely on a atmosphere to dump their heat into, in space the only way is through radiation, this is very slow and would likely just heat up the spacecraft causing you to die (not ideal) if you tried to make any significant power.
3 battery/fuel cell: required anyway, could be used as standalone system without solar.
potential thrust solution, some sort of secret gravitational propultion/bending of gravity thing, whatever the aliens have everyone seems to think thats a thing now. who knows really but it solves the 2 actual problems (re entry and excape) everthing else is pretty trivial to deal with. also allows you to land on larger planets, as a typical fueled rocket is barely able to escape earth, its certainly not excaping a bigger planet. especially after using 80% of its fuel to escape earth.
if anyone knows how to build a magical alien tech gravity start trek thing then building a spacship should be pretty easy.
