Daily Archives: September 3, 2023

Jake Nichols

Published: 2023-09-02T00:55:34

Updated : 2023-09-02T00:55:47

Starfield players are voicing their frustration over the games lack of manual space flight, arguing that the fast travel system severely limits the sense of exploration and freedom.

Some Starfield players are just now finding that the only way to travel between planets is by simply selecting the destination from your menu.

While the game makes it easy to fast-travel between areas, it wont allow you to fly seamlessly from space to planet.

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The discovery has become a huge letdown for space explorers hoping to fly between planets rather than simply using a fast-travel system.

Players have taken to Reddit to express their disappointment with the space travel system, or lack thereof.

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Thoroughly disappointed with the flying, one Starfield player shared on Reddit. I was willing to compromise on the take-off and landings, but the fact that flying to every location is literally fast travel is utterly gutting. Theres no feeling of exploring or traveling for that matter. I would love at least the ability to manually travel to other planets and moons.

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Players were quick to compare Starfields travel mechanics to those in games like No Mans Sky and even Lego Star Wars. The latter, despite being a Lego game, offers a more immersive travel experience, as pointed out by the community.

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The space part of this game is disappointing, another player said. Its almost entirely menus and fast travel. The short amount of time you do spend in space is really lacklustre too, doesnt even feel like youre moving. I wasnt expecting NMS, but damn.

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However, Bethesda had clarified its design philosophy well before the games release. In an interview with IGN in June 2022, Todd Howard stated that the feature of seamless travel between space and planets was really just not that important to the player.

Howard explained that Bethesda decided to focus on making the on-surface and in-space experiences as good as they could be. If you try to really spend a lot of time engineering the in-between, like that segue, youre just spending a lot of time [on something] thats really just not that important to the player, Howard explained.

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Despite the disappointment, some players have found workarounds or are hopeful for future updates. One Reddit user even discovered that by powering up the ships gravitation drive, you can travel without a menu between systems, although the screen still goes black for a bit.

While Starfield has much to offer, the lack of seamless planet landings has proven to be frustrating for players who were hoping for a more immersive space flight experience.

Read more here:

Starfield players outraged over missing space exploration feature - Dexerto

Highlights

One of the greatest criticisms that Starfield faces in Early Access concerns the game's space exploration, but one method may help players looking to make interstellar travel more immersive. While Starfield's major Factions are every bit as interesting and expansive as its marketing implied, fans have been less keen on the way Starfield functions as a space simulator. Mired with constant loading screens, this lack of seamlessness in the experience of driving their starship from planet-to-planet has soured some Starfield players on what is otherwise a deeply engaging Bethesda sandbox.

Though many players have praised Starfield's ship customization, citing it as the best feature of the game, actually getting to fly that ship in space is uncharacteristically restrictive from what the community has come to expect from a Bethesda title. The confusing world map and unsettling background NPCs in Starfield are all issues that will likely be fixed by modding in the coming months, but its approach to space exploration is a compromise that Starfield players will ultimately have to accept.

RELATED:Starfield Players Are Not Happy About the Game's Maps

There are ways to eliminate the most annoying aspect of interstellar travel, as contrary to common belief, Starfield doesn't require the player to go through the UI in order to travel from one planet into the other. As demonstrated by Huggan00 on Starfield's official subreddit, making use of the ship's scanner and pointing at the player's potential destination offers up an option to make the grav jump without needing to open the menu.

Moreover, landing on a planet can be done entirely outside the menu as well. By using Starfield's scanner tool inside the ship, players can point at any of the planet's key areas, whether it's a barren world or New Atlantis, and complete the landing near-seamlessly. Though it may not offer the kind of experience seen in No Man's Sky or Star Citizen, this method helps in funneling the players towards the content that Bethesda excels at: pillaging dungeons filled with loot, joining memorable factions, and getting on random adventures.

Being able to build and customize ships in Starfield, smuggle contraband items, and taking on powerful pirate fleets shows that space travel can still be enjoyable in the game. Despite its limitations, Starfield players can still live out their fantasy of being an interstellar explorer so long as they accept that the majority of that exploration will be on foot, whether in story-heavy zones or one of Starfield's many procedurally generated worlds.

Starfield is now available on PC and Xbox Series X/S.

MORE:Starfield: Every Companion (& How to Get Them)

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This Alternate Method of Space Travel in Starfield is Way More Immersive Than Menus - GameRant

Starfield is a GIANT game, and that is putting it as mildly as possible. For such a huge game, Bethesda did a great job of balancing the hand-holding and allowing independent observations for the player to figure on their own. Two of those are space travel and planet scanning. Below, our handy walkthrough talks you over the basics.

There are over 1,000 planets in Starfield with just over 100 of them fully populated. Traveling from one to another is easy, but thats once you get used to it. You can see each individual star system and the planets within it, but also zoom out in order to see the entire universe. The visual is similar to Mass Effect, but the travel is much different. Once you find the system you need to travel to, you must plot a course to jump at light speed. This is done utilizing your Grav drive on board your ship.

Plotting your course will sometimes see you going through multiple systems to arrive at your destination due to the distance between them. You will notice in the right hand side a fuel consumption gauge. As long as it does not use all your fuel, you can travel there. The dots that indicate the systems show up blue if you can reach them and red if you cant. When you find the one you need, hit the jump button to begin. Normally, games would just start your course of travel. Starfield, however, is a bit different. You need to manually activate your Grav drive, which the game doesnt tell you.

In order to do so, youll need to press down on the D-pad in order to highlight the ships controls. You will have to make sure at least 1 bar of power is in the Grav drive, which will be taken away from another aspect of the ship. Once this is done, a timer pops up on screen and counts down to your jump. I didnt realize this at first, and I spent about 5 minutes trying to boost my way through space not realizing I was standing still.

Once at the planet, of course you cant just land there. It would be too easy. Youll first need to scan the planet from orbit in order to reveal its POIs. These are landing spots, mining zones, etc. Resources such as metals and minerals are also revealed. Many missions require certain resources to complete, so you can pin their locations in order to land at the nearest spot. Pressing LB on the surface brings up your scanner and allows you to see the items highlighted for retrieval. I recommend upgrading your scanning and surveying skills a well. These let you scan items without being right next to them (saving you much travel) as well as revealing rare materials from space.

There are many other skills that let you acclimate to crazy environments and have more Oxygen to let you run farther. Theres no limit on levels so you can earn every skill if you take the time, but the scanning and surveying will help greatly at the start of the game.

Starfield is out on September 6 on Xbox and PC, with early access available now. Get out and explore!

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Starfield: How to space travel and scan planets - App Trigger

In 2019, India attempted to land a spacecraft on the Moon and ended up painting a kilometers-long streak of debris on its barren surface. Now, the Indian Space Research Organisation has returned in triumph, with the Chandrayaan-3 lander successfully touching down near the south pole of Earths rocky neighbor.

Indias success came just days after a spectacular Russian failure when the Luna 25 mission tried to land nearby and ceased to exist as a result of a collision with the lunar surface.

These twin missions remind us that, close to 60 years after the first successful "soft landing" on the Moon, spaceflight is still difficult and dangerous. Moon missions, in particular, are still a coin flip, and we have seen several high-profile failures in recent years.

Why were these missions unsuccessful, and why did they fail? Is there a secret to the success of countries and agencies who have achieved a space mission triumph?

The Moon is the only celestial location humans have visited (so far). It makes sense to go there first: it's the closest planetary body to us, at a distance of around 400,000 kilometers.

Yet only four countries have achieved successful "soft landings" landings in which the spacecraft survives on the lunar surface.

The USSR was the first. The Luna 9 mission safely touched down on the Moon almost 60 years ago, in February 1966. The United States followed suit a few months later, in June 1966, with the Surveyor 1 mission.

China was the next country to join the club, with the Chang'e 3 mission in 2013. And now India too has arrived, with Chandrayaan-3.

Missions from Japan, the United Arab Emirates, Israel, Russia, the European Space Agency, Luxembourg, South Korea, and Italy have also had some measure of lunar success with fly-bys, orbiters, and impacts (whether intentional or not).

On August 19, 2023, the Russian space agency Roscosmos announced that "communication with the Luna 25 spacecraft was interrupted" after an impulse command was sent to the spacecraft to lower its orbit around the Moon. Attempts to contact the spacecraft on August 20 were unsuccessful, leading Roscosmos to determine Luna 25 had crashed.

Despite more than 60 years of spaceflight experience extending from the USSR to modern Russia, this mission failed. We don't know exactly what happened but the current situation in Russia, where resources are stretched thin and tensions are high due to the ongoing war in Ukraine, may well have been a factor.

The Luna 25 failure recalled two high-profile lunar crashes in 2019.

In April of that year, the Israeli Beresheet lander crash-landed after a gyroscope failed during the braking procedure, and the ground control crew was unable to reset the component due to a loss of communications. It was later reported a capsule containing microscopic creatures called tardigrades, in a dormant cryptobiotic state, may have survived the crash.

And in September, India sent its own Vikram lander down to the surface of the Moon but it did not survive the landing. NASA later released an image taken by its Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter showing the site of the Vikram landers impact. Debris was scattered over almost two dozen locations spanning several kilometers.

Space missions are a risky business. Just over 50 percent of lunar missions succeed. Even small satellite missions to Earths orbit dont have a perfect track record, with a success rate somewhere between 40 percent and 70 percent.

We could compare uncrewed with crewed missions: around 98 percent of the latter are successful because people are more invested in people. Ground staff working to support a crewed mission will be more focused, management will invest more resources, and delays will be accepted to prioritize the safety of the crew.

We could talk about the details of why so many uncrewed missions fail. We could talk about technological difficulties, lack of experience, and even the political landscapes of individual countries.

But perhaps its better to step back from the details of individual missions and look at averages to see the overall picture more clearly.

Rocket launches and space launches are not very common in the scheme of things. There are around 1.5 billion cars in the world and perhaps 40,000 airplanes. By contrast, there have been fewer than 20,000 space launches in all of history.

Plenty of things still go wrong with cars, and problems occur even in the better-regulated world of planes, from loose rivets to computers overriding pilot inputs. And we have more than a century of experience with these vehicles in every country on the planet.

So perhaps its unrealistic to expect spaceflight whether its the launch stage of rockets or the even rarer stage of trying to land on an alien world to have ironed out all its problems.

We are still very much in the early, pioneering days of space exploration.

If humanity is ever to create a fully-fledged, space-faring civilization, we must overcome monumental challenges.

To make long-duration, long-distance space travel possible, there are a huge number of problems to be solved. Some of them seem within the realm of the possible, such as better radiation shielding, self-sustaining ecosystems, autonomous robots, extracting air and water from raw resources, and zero-gravity manufacturing. Others are still speculative hopes, such as faster-than-light travel, instantaneous communication, and artificial gravity.

Progress will be little by little, small step by slightly larger step. Engineers and space enthusiasts will keep putting their brainpower, time, and energy into space missions, and they will gradually become more reliable.

And maybe one day, well see a time when going for a ride in your spacecraft is as safe as getting in your car.

This article was originally published on The Conversation by Gail Iles at RMIT University. Read the original article here.

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Why Do Almost Half of Moon Missions Fail? Here's Why Space Is ... - Inverse

New research shows that space travel slowly kills you due to the effects of zero gravity on the immune system. Engineers that plan future human space missions already mitigate a range of known hazards from traveling in space, including things like radiation and bone loss, so this latest research only adds to the growing list of things that make space travel particularly dangerous to humans.

As humanity travels deeper and deeper into space, including upcoming missions to the moon and Mars, technological advancements will be needed to keep these astronauts safe and healthy. Some of the worst effects of radiation in space have been somewhat mitigated by shielding during flight, but fears of long-term exposure may force would-be space colonists to live underground.

Gravity is another issue. More specifically, the lack of gravity experienced by humans in space has proven to be particularly challenging. Some exercise and resistance training have helped, but over time, astronauts tend to lose significant bone and muscle mass. There are also deleterious effects on human eyes, hearts, and other organs from long-term exposure to zero-g environments.

Now, a research team says that a weakening immune system may also result from time on zero-g, with the worst effects resulting in a decreased resistance to infection, latent viruses, and even cancer.

To evaluate the effects of zero-g on T-cells, a key component of the human immune system when it comes to fighting infections and tumor growth, Lisa Westerberg, principal researcher at the Department of Microbiology, Tumor and Cell Biology, Karolinska Institute, and team recruited volunteers to undergo a simulated zero gravity experiment. Called dry immersion, the technique involves having volunteers spend long periods of time each day in a type of water bed that has been custom-built to trick the body into thinking it is in a zero-g environment.

For their experiment, Westerberg and the research team exposed volunteers to this simulated zero-g for a total of three weeks. Blood analyses were performed before the study began and then again after 7, 14, and 21 days of simulated zero-g exposure.

Those tests revealed that the zero-g environment seemed to change the way genes were expressed by the T-cells, resulting in a less effective infection and tumor fighter.

The T cells began to resemble more so-called nave T cells, which have not yet encountered any intruders, explained Carlos Gallardo Dodd, Ph.D. student at the Department of Microbiology, Tumor and Cell Biology, Karolinska Institutet. This could mean that they take longer to be activated and thus become less effective at fighting tumour cells and infections.

In effect, the result of the zero-g exposure revealed yet another way that space travel kills you.

Published in the journal Science Advances, the new study seems to indicate that exposure to zero-g weakens T-cells by making them less effective. Fortunately, learning this now offers researchers the opportunity to look for treatments and mitigation strategies before astronauts start dropping dead from the common cold.

If astronauts are to be able to undergo safe space missions, we need to understand how their immune systems are affected and try to find ways to counter harmful changes to it, said Westerberg. Weve now been able to investigate what happens to T cells, which are a key component of the immune system when exposed to weightless conditions.

Dodd agrees, noting that Our results can pave the way for new treatments that reverse these changes to the immune cells genetic programme.

Christopher Plain is a Science Fiction and Fantasy novelist and Head Science Writer at The Debrief. Follow and connect with him on X, learn about his books at plainfiction.com, or email him directly at christopher@thedebrief.org.

Originally posted here:

Researchers Discover Yet Another Way That Space Travel Kills You - The Debrief

Dave Owen - aka Space Dave - at the control centre of Te Awamutu Space Centre looking at footage of India's Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft seconds before its successful landing. Photo / Dean Taylor

Proving the Earth is not the centre of the universe, the James Webb Space Telescope, man on the Moon and the successful moon landing of the Indian Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft these are all once in super blue moon events that spin the wheels of Te Awamutu Space Centre owner Space Dave Owen.

In terms of observations and theories from our planet, he says when man proved the planets and stars did not revolve around Earth it changed the way we thought about everything. More recently the James Webb Space Telescope gave us the ability to see the earliest known stars and galaxies in the universe.

In terms of flight exploration, Owen says it is hard to beat NASAs manned Moon landings.

This proved that humans are not forever limited to living on Earth, he says.

Owen doesnt suggest Indias successful unmanned Moon landing is in the same league as the 1969 mission, but he is impressed that India has become the fourth country to go to the Moon and on a relatively shoestring budget.

He says Russia was first to land on the Moon albeit a planned hard landing, or crash landing. They were also first to succeed with a soft landing, or touchdown, but the USA was famously the first and only to put a man on the Moon.

Russia and China have followed with successful Moon landings and now India.

But Russia, China and India are joined by Israel and Japan on the unsuccessful side of the ledger with five failures in the past decade.

Overall, there have been 50 Moon landing missions man is losing 23-27.

Owen says Indias success, especially in a race with Russia which failed just a few days earlier, has rekindled interest in space exploration.

And it is a big business. As well as the named players, England, Japan and New Zealand have space programmes, as does the European Space Agency.

There are at least a dozen private programmes. Work that used to be part of government agencies is now being contracted by governments and private and commercial concerns.

There is also a huge rise in space tourism, says Owen. It is getting pretty routine.

When asked if he would go if money were no object, he replied Definitely.

Owen says the Indian Space Research Organisation is doing a great job on about one-third of the budget of other national space programmes.

They have great engineers and scientists and are making good progress, he says.

And while it is expensive, there is great prestige to being a successful player in the space industry, which Owen believes is attractive to some of the new players.

There is also commercial benefits to providing space-related services, says Owen.

It can be a lucrative export market.

He says Chandrayaan-3 landed near the Moons south pole where there is the possibility of frozen water.

The craft has launched a rover which is on a short-term pathfinder mission to look for that water.

It is a nuts-and-bolts mission, so dont expect too much, he says. But they are doing real space research and real science, so it is impressive.

It is exactly that kind of research that Owen promotes at the Te Awamutu Space Centre.

Based at Kihikihi in a modest church building, it is a bastion of one of the most technologically advanced branches of science we undertake.

The centre has real artefacts from space missions and the space industry, lots of monitors looking at different aspects of space exploration and study and various displays related to all and everything space-related.

The centre is always evolving, but post-Covid, as visitors start to return, Owen is especially concentrating on the Virtual Reality experience.

School visits play a big part in the business, but the centre is open to the public and VR is available to everyone as part of the self-guided, interactive museum.

Owen says when he started to work towards VR, he thought he would be able to source experiences. Not so.

There was nothing out there, so I have created bespoke VR material that takes the viewer on a tour of space, says Owen.

Im pleased with it so far but am trying to improve it all the time and refine it.

Viewers get a tour of the solar system that I have tailored for a Kiwi audience.

In fact, Owen believes his Space Centre is unique in New Zealand. He doesnt want to make the same claim for the entire world, but admits it is possible.

Many other centres are bigger and have specialised experiences, but I seem to cover more of the entire realm of space travel and exploration, he says.

It is certainly the only place in New Zealand where visitors can see such a substantial collection of space-related artefacts.

Te Awamutu Courier claims to be the first newspaper in the world to print news of the first lunar landing in 1969.

The plates were on the press when news came through, so two paragraphs were cut from another story and journalist Ted Hunwick wrote the news which hit the Te Awamutu streets just two hours later.

A copy of the clipping is in Te Awamutu Space Centre and the claim is supported by Space Dave.

I have not been able to find any evidence of the contrary.

Owen said it was a fluke of timing that the Te Awamutu Courier was the first to print the news.

There was a small window of opportunity that Ted Hunwick took as the paper was nearly going to print.

For more information about Space Dave, opening hours and events check out spacecentre.nz

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Moon landing rekindles interest in space exploration - New Zealand Herald

Keisha: We've already heard so many people that are telling everyone you've got to take care of your planet, so many people are advocating for this. Even me, here on our island [of Antigua], I help with beach clean-ups and all of that kind of stuff. But being outside and looking back at our planet, I feel even more of a connection with it. And knowing that the small things that we take on in this life, it really doesn't matter, because we're just a speck of nothing in this huge Universe.

I thought that would have been scary, but it was very peaceful. Anything out there in the beyond, I feel has to be of a peaceful energy because it's just peace that you feel out there. We're the ones that bring fear and all kind of stuff that is not necessary. We have our own confusion within ourselves, and we spread it with each other.

Given that this was such a spiritual, life-changing experience for you both, do you wish space tourism was something that was accessible to everybody?

Ana: I definitely do. It's something that seems so crazy, but it's so meaningful. You find yourself being a lot more emotional and open than you think you would. It's so much deeper than you might think that it is. And I think that other people, if they're given the opportunity to do this, it'll be a very mind-opening experience, and I definitely think that that is a huge positive for the future.

I know you've said it's pretty indescribable. But if there were any one word you would use to describe the experience of seeing Earth as you looked back on it, what would that word be?

Ana: One. It really makes you one. It makes you feel very connected and involved and just borderless.

Keisha: My word was going to be unity, but now I'm changing it. It's peace.

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What's it like to win a trip to space? - BBC

College is a place where students can reach for the stars, so the saying goes. At UNLV, it's not just a phrase it's a possibility thanks to a pair of recent grants the university earned from NASA.

As part of NASAs Minority University Research and Education Project (MUREP), UNLV students will soon gain hands-on experience in NASA and partner labs nationwide, attend workshops and mentorship experiences with top scientists, and develop new technology that may one day improve the safety of NASAs space flight teams.

MUREP, part of NASAs Office of STEM Engagement, manages competitive grant programs to enhance research, academic, and technology capabilities at Minority Serving Institutions (including UNLV). UNLV earned funding this month through MUREPs research and curriculum award programs, both new this year.

"These awards help NASA reach students and institutions that traditionally have had fewer opportunities in cutting-edge spaceflight research," said Shahra Lambert, NASA's senior advisor for engagement. We want the Artemis Generation to feel excited and prepared to join us in tackling the scientific and technological challenges of space exploration.

UNLV psychology professor Ashley Blackwell earned a $1.2 million curriculum award through MUREP to strengthen student education and research opportunities, and bolster faculty training, through initiatives with NASA and a nationwide group of university partners. UNLV is one of only five universities to receive this new NASA award.

Everyone involved, from NASA to the partner institutions, are dedicated and motivated about the program and our goal to improve diverse representation and enhance research education for minority students at UNLV, said Blackwell. Were trying to engage students who havent been involved in science yet, and show them the path, and give them the resources they need to be able to succeed.

The project will include mentorship opportunities in robotics, engineering, and planetary science for students at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. Students will also tour the NASA Johnson Space Center in Texas where theyll work in a neuroscience lab and interact with astronauts or they could go to the University of Florida to learn about sensorimotor response to space flight and the intricacies of the NASA system.

All participants will attend virtual and in-person lectures and workshops with other NASA and partner labs. Participating students will also receive paid internships, stipends, and funds to support travel costs. The goal is to recruit more than a dozen students into the program each summer during its three-year term.

According to Blackwell, the program will also boost training opportunities in culturally relevant and responsive teaching practices for both university faculty and K-12 teachers, which will pave the way for greater diversity in STEM education programs and the workforce.

Chemistry professor Pradip Bhowmik was awarded $50,000 through MUREPs research program to adapt his longtime work on fire-retardant polymers for applications important to NASA, including clothing and other textiles that could survive in extreme environments.

Bhowmiks longtime research on these materials has wide commercial potential. It has already been applied to produce fire-resistant electric vehicle battery casings and other next-gen energy storage devices through a partnership with Las Vegas startup Quantum Copper.

Bhowmiks design allows for the polymers to be sprayed, brushed on, or blended into different materials in a manner thats both effective and far more environmentally friendly than currently used fire-retardant additives.

Human safety is at the core of why we began this work on fire-retardant materials, and Im encouraged to see its potential both with everyday applications and for needs as specialized as space crew clothing systems, said Bhowmik. Its also a great thrill for students working on the project, to know that their work here at UNLV could one day make it to space with NASA.

Both undergraduate and graduate students will partner with Bhowmik over the next six months to develop proof-of-concept materials that could be further refined through additional, and larger, NASA funding programs.

The recent MUREP grants continue UNLVs sterling and rising reputation in the field of space-related research.

UNLV researchers in physics and astronomy, engineering, geoscience, psychology, computer science, health physics, and more are hard at work uncovering the mysteries of deep space and unlocking clues to how stars, planets, and entire galaxies form. Theyre also helping to chart the course of NASAs Mars rover, developing new technologies, and studying risks and stressors associated with space travel. Learn more on UNLVs News Center.

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UNLV Earns NASA Awards to Bolster Space-Related Research ... - UNLV NewsCenter

Ships are at the core of Starfield's space exploration, with the best ones you can unlock taking your character from planet to planet while defending against interstellar dangers. Your vessel is responsible for carrying your gear and can even host crew members you recruit along your journey. Taking into account shields, weapon systems, and jump ranges, ships are diverse vehicles that can be tricky to choose from.

Characters can only take control of ships if they have a high enough Piloting Level, so make sure to gain XP in this area beforehand. While there are some ships that you earn for free by completing specific missions, most of the vehicles seen in the game are bought for a large amount of credits. Building an Outpost and harvesting resources for easy money in Starfield is a great way to earn funds for a new ship.

The Rambler II may not have much offensive or defensive prowess, but it remains one of the fastest ships money can buy. Sporting a jump range of 30 Light Years, this vessel is quick and light for zipping around enemies above planets. A decent cargo capacity and average crew size combine with a fairly cheap price to make the Ramber II an excellent choice for those looking for something more than The Frontier in Starfield.

Explorers looking for a larger ship might connect with the Dragonfire, a vehicle designed to host 7 total crew members during travel. With above average Shields and jump range, the Dragonfire also has an incredibly large cargo capacity at 2790, making it a vessel that can carry a ton of items in Starfield. However, there are no shields for the cargo, making it nearly impossible to carry contraband through specific zones.

Another reason to get the Dragonfire is due to the large value of Fuel the ship can hold, reaching up to 1550. This will help you from having to refill the vehicle constantly during your travels like many other starcraft.

A sleek medium-sized ship, the Narwhal can also hold up to 7 crew members and protect them even better than the Dragonfire with an astounding Hull strength. A powerful Reactor and large Shield size combines with a 30 LY jump range to create a formidable home for any space adventurer in Starfield. Despite the high price of the Narwhal, it can be more than worth it with strong offensive weapons ready to vaporize anyone who dares to attack.

Make sure to sell every item you aren't using to one of the many vendors in Starfield so that you have enough credits to buy starships that cost the most in the game like the Narwhal.

The Star Eagle is a ship you can obtain for free, sporting balanced stats across every category in Starfield. From one of the largest cargo capcities you'll see on any vessel to decent Shields, crew size, and jump range, the Star Eagle comes with an outfit that can be useful outside space travel. The XP you are able to gain while doing the quests for this ship can also help level up your character enough to actually fly the starcraft.

The legendary ship known and feared by the galaxy's Spacer criminals is called the Razorleaf, another of the few ships you can actually earn for free in Starfield. Boasting a cargo capacity with shields to prevent your contraband from being spotted, this vessel once belonged to the mysterious hero known as the Mantis. With the Razorleaf, you assume the title of this warrior of justice, taking a ship with an amazing balance of different stats.

Related: Starfield: How to Unlock The Mantis (Ship, Suit, & Backpack)

The reason why the Razorleaf can be such a great ship is its hidden ability tied to Spacer enemies, the bandits that constantly attack you while traveling in Starfield. The mere sight of the newly crowned Mantis and their ship strikes fear into the hearts of all evildoers, making Spacers flee from fights. Being able to earn a ship that gets you out of battles for free can be too good of a deal to pass up.

Nothing speaks louder in the vacuum of space than offensive might, with the Abyss Trekker being the ship with the most firepower to speak of in Starfield. Absolutely ridiculous weapons with larger-than-life stats will make sure that no enemy will stand a chance against you in combat. Despite the low cargo capacity, this ship is surprisingly fast with a 25 LY jump range that can hold a 6 member Crew.

Weapons on ships in Starfield are divided into different categories based on the type of vessel your character pilots. The Abyss Trekker's stats for its firepower are categorized into PAR/MSL/BAL, whose scores are 38/96/192.

The Stronghold is likely the best ship in Starfield for the sheer value behind its defensive abilities, starting with an impressive 1600 Shield stat. The 6 Crew size, 2360 Cargo Capacity, and 30 LY jump range are all among the greatest of any starship in the galaxy. Enemies will not only have a hard time keeping up with this ship, but they will struggle to even make a dent into its 1047 Hull if they make it past the Shields.

The weapons on the Stronghold may not be as extensive as the Abyss Trekker, but it may be better to have more chances to fight back instead of just the most potent weapons. The best ships to unlock in Starfield excel in every quality, a fact that the Stronghold can prove over and over again.

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7 Best Ships To Unlock In Starfield - Screen Rant