How to Create a Space Ship

Now that we've discussed how to create a fictional space ship based on ships that exist today, let's review.


Engineering Department makes the ship move by an engine of any number of possible technilogies as well as electrically powered and maintained by various divisional workshops.

Operations Department keeps the ship on the correct course, manages the weapons on ship, and maintains traditional entrance procedures.


The smaller departments may seem easy to overlook, but each has its use. The Air Department would maintain and run any small craft or fighter crafts used by the main ship. Deck Department is the one that gets all the painting, preservation, and docking jobs so the other departments can afford to be specialized and focus on their job. The Administration Department keeps up the crews' records and makes sure they get all the awards they're entitled to.



The other set of departments on ship are also important. The Health Department keeps everyone healthy and out of pain while the Communications Department keeps the ship connected to the outside world and keeps communications running smoothly inside the ship. The Supply Department keeps everyone fed and makes sure they have all the repair parts and supplies they need for however long the ship is away from its homeport.


The next set of posts on what the crew needs on a ship may not fit in any department but moral lifters are a huge part of ship life and should not be overlooked if your crew is to be happy, or at least content, on ship. Some more things to keep in mind when creating a space ship are how your crew will advance and what currency your ship uses.

But what if you decide to have family or civilians on ship? The last set of posts discuss the idea and are interesting to read if you plan to have families on board. Families need different sleeping quarters, healthcare, and specail conciderations for the schooling of children and young adults as well as having a laboratory on ship to teach science correctly. You will also need to think about an area kids can have physical activity to build coordination, what sports are encouraged on ship for older children, and how many sports can be played on one field or court to save space on ship.

One last thing I want you to think about when creating your space ship is that there are many types of ships out there. Just because exploration or military ships are most often depicted on movies and television doesn't mean that there aren't cargo ships, cruise ships, transportation ships, colonization ships, ships the rich keep as private homes, and scientific ships people don't see or hear of for years on scientific expierements or studies that may change the way life is or may never amount to anything. If you can dream up a type of ship and make it work with the facts and rooms I've presented here, your stories are limited only by your imagination.

Currency in Space

Something I should have spoken about at the beginning of the crew area, especially when I spoke of the ship store and vending machines was what currency your ship has. Most futuristic shows, movies, and books suggest that people will pay by a chip in their hand or a version of the modern credit card that they merely hand to the vendor and the money is automatically taken out of their account. The US Navy uses a similar concept on their ships where cash is rarely used and no longer necessary. Another idea is in the Star Trek series where money seems to have no use inside parts the Federation but they use Lithium as cash outside the Federation. However you decide to handle money on ship you can be sure that it will come up at least once in your story, unless your culture is very non-materialistic or never trades with other cultures.

Advancement on Ship

Now that we’ve gone through the basics of creating a ship for the crew and families, let’s talk about something more to do with ship life than the ship itself and that is promotion. In modern naval ships promotion comes by a variety of things to include semiannual performance evaluations from the boss on things like work done, teamwork, leadership, and classes done. One of the easiest ways to stand out from the other people across the navy is to have finished college or in-job classes in the last quarter. Education is considered an effective way to judge ambition and the ability to handle responsibility, even though many people focus more on their education than their actual job.
What you should really consider before planning your ship and story further is how your people will get promoted and what jobs or titles do they want to get promoted to? What are your officer ranks? What are your enlisted ranks? Do you have both on ship or just one system? If you have both, what is the distinction? In the modern military the basic distinction is that officers have a college degree or filled out papers as an enlisted and was chosen to be an officer. Many enlisted people also have degrees but they got them while enlisted or chose to be enlisted instead of officer.
Something else to think about while creating your fictional space ship is how your crew were trained. Were they forced to go through a special school to be allowed too work in the job they want or were they trained through working their way from newbie to boss in their chosen job? If they were trained at a school, where was it?
Some examples on how people could be trained would be the Star Trek shows where everyone is trained at the massive Academy above Earth or the modern military which trains people all over the states depending on what their chosen rating is. Training is often a fond memory of the person, more for the carefree atmosphere of students than for the actual classes. How many times have you heard people recounting their college experiences? Such stories can create instant bonds or cause massive rifts that can bring interesting side stories to the main plot.

One Court, Many Games

Once children get into high school they have probably tried a lot of sports and have decided which ones they want to focus on and be really good at. However, it’s hard to be good at sports now a days just by playing the sport. Most high schools and colleges have developed a program which combines running, playing the sport to learn the techniques, and weightlifting in order to stay competitive. Having a weight room on ship is a good idea because not only will the high school and college age young adults use the room but most adults don’t do any exercise outside the modern membership gym which is often just machines and weights. Having a weight room would keep the testosterone down on ship which could keep down tensions that could lead to fights and disciplinary problems among the crew as well as help the children develop a lifelong habit of fitness so everyone benefits.

Sports for Children

When children get out of kindergarten they still need to learn coordination but they now get to the age where their hands and feet obey their mind. Now they need to build strength, speed, and do more detailed things to develop better coordination. That is where sports come in. The different sports give children a reason to run, throw things, and kick things without getting in trouble. As they grow up children learn to aim with their feet and hands to earn praise from their parents. As they grow older they learn to be the fastest and most precise in order to be the best and earn praise from everyone as well as have a sense of pride in their actions.
As ship and culture creator, you need to decide what sports your ship and culture emphasis. Here is a list of sports recognized by most people. True, many of these sports can’t be done very easily in the confines of a space ship, unless you count virtual reality rooms, but there are a lot of sports for you to chose from or adjust your own sport from a few already around. After all, kids are always trying new things and trying to be cool by thinking up a new sport. Bear in mind that one court or field can hold a lot of sports. Things like soccer and American football have the same lines on the field and often volleyball and basketball are played on the same court, just at different times. Many sports stadiums are designed to hold a concert one day, a football game the next, and a basketball tournament the next day. You could always have one large room with adjustable stadium seating and storage rooms with different mats. That way you could allow the children on your ship to learn a large number of sports and not get focused on one sport out of boredom.

Kid's Area on Ship

Every parent knows that children need somewhere to play and run off energy. Most apartment buildings in developed countries have their own jungle gym of some sort for the young children living there or are very close to a park with a jungle gym for them to play on. Young children need to be able to move and climb and swing and play in order to develop full use of their limbs and coordination. If you plan to have young children on your ship, even for a little time, you will need to have a place for children to crawl or walk around to various toys and structures with other children near their own age while their parents watch nearby or a babysitter does.
This may also be a good time to mention that many of the children that work on ship will likely have parents that work at least a few hours a day. Those children will need somewhere to go and you should probably have some sort of daycare plan set up or a network of parents that have it set up so someone is always awake enough to watch whatever children are unsupervised while their parents work. It may be easiest to set up a room where the younger children are watched by the older children and the older children have some incentive, such as money or computer access, to not wander off and leave the children alone.

Having a Laboratory on Ship

No matter how you decide to do your schooling on ship if there is any version on board you need some sort of laboratory. Schools, especially high schools and colleges, will not accept science credits without a laboratory part of the class. How you do your laboratory on ship is up to you. You could have a room on board that is extra insulated in case of explosions or other mishaps or you could have some sort of virtual reality rooms or goggles that mimic what should happen. There are two things to keep in mind when you think about how to create your laboratory though. The first one is that children rarely listen and they love to play around. Even if you have the room securely insulated, you may still want to position it next to the hull. That way if the room does explode for some reason it can be quickly sealed without causing too much damage to the rest of the ship. The second thing to keep in mind is that not only will the children be using the room for schooling but the doctors and scientists on ship will likely want to do experiments in there as well. You should also figure out how the room will be scheduled. I would recommend that during school hours the room is reserved but other than that there is a first come first served in non-school hours or if there are just a few scientists on board maybe they will be content with a fixed schedule. If they have a fixed schedule than they can always switch hours or loan out their hours if they have more research to do before doing an experiment.

Independant Study on Ship

The good thing about high school and college students are that they are mare capable of studying on their own. That means there are a lot more options for their schooling than the younger children may have in the future. Ships that stay close to the ruling government or near large civilized areas can have a version of modern online courses where the teacher chats for an hour or two a week with a class of people on any number of ships before assigning the weekly assignment and the students can ask each other questions through email or the forum. There is also the option that the teacher merely sends out the textbook and the students are expected to email their assignments by the due date each week with a forum for questions. Another option is that there are yearly tests with bibliographies sent out to everyone that passes the last test. The students are expected to read the textbooks and keep up on current events at their own pace in order to pass the tests. If the students pass the test they go on to the next grade level test, if not they don’t pass their test and stay in the same grade. That may work best if the ship will be far from regular culture or if the communications are difficult to get working on the ship but it puts a lot of pressure on the parents to be sure their child id actually studying while the parents work instead of playing games all day. You may also choose to just have a teacher for each age group on ship and a regular school day with homework afterwards. You may even decide to send the students old enough to go to high school or college off ship to an actual school house planetside somewhere. The choice is yours as you create your own fictional space ship but remember that even the smallest detail can make the setting believable and how school is done can effect memories your character may have.

Schooling in the Future

We’ve talked about a ship with children needing family sized living quarters and more medical and dental facilities than a ship without children. The next thing to think about is how long the children will be on the ship. For ships that plan to house children fulltime, some sort of schooling system is needed, but for ships that only transport children and people don’t stay on ship for more than a month or two, a schooling system isn’t necessary.
For those that decide they need schooling they should start with the lower grades, such as kindergarten to 8th grade. There are a few ways you could set up to give them schooling. You could set up a few school rooms for certain ages with a number of teachers or if you have only a few children on ship you could set up one teacher to teach all ages. However, remember that younger children learn at a slower pace and need more guidance than older children. Years ago in the pioneer era all the town children were taught in the same room by one teacher. However the children didn’t start attending the schoolhouse until they were about six and the older children were given reading assignments to do while the teacher worked with the younger children, teaching them to read aloud and do math while checking the older children’s work every once in a while.
Another way to do schooling is by independent study courses set up by a centralized board of education and done on computers. However, younger children will find it hard to learn by staring at a computer screen and pressing buttons. If you’ve been to an American toy store lately you may have noticed a trend that suggests eventually kids will have toys aimed more at education than fun, although the children won’t realize it.

Family Healthcare on Ship

If we are going with the assumption that you’ve decided to put families and children on your fictional ship, whether it’s a colonization ship, a school ship, or a deep space exploration ship such as the Enterprise in Star Trek: The Next Generation, you need to think about medical and dental care. While a ship carrying just a crew of adults could get away with the minimum amount of healthcare a ship carrying children needs more. Not only do children get hurt more due to their natural curiosity, lack of experience on how to soften a fall, thinner bones, and weaker immune systems but they also need different specialty doctors and equipment at different ages. It would probably be best to have an OBGN on board for growing girls, healthy wives, and pregnant wives or girlfriends as well as a pediatrician and pedodontist for the children on board.

Sleeping Quarters for Families

If you choose to have families on your ship, (whether it’s a colonization ship, a cruise ship, or just an exploration ship like the Enterprise in Star Trek: Next Generation) you need to think of adding a few more rooms to your ship. In addition to more storage space and a bigger ship store, if you decided not to have a replicator, you need to think of different things when considering sleeping quarters. For quarters with one or two individuals sleeping in it all you need to think about are things like where the beds are, how the bathroom is organized, what colors everything is, and which storage area belongs to whom. When you have quarters assigned to accommodate families, you need to think about a separate sleeping area for the parents than where the kids sleep, even if you decide to create the separation by cloth hung up or moving walls that could turn a single room by day into a number of small sleeping areas by night. Most quarters assigned to families have a bedroom for the parents, a bedroom for each child, a living room area with a couch and chairs for guests and a slightly disconnected area for the kitchen. When you have a replicator you don’t need a place to store and prepare food or do the dishes, you just need to make sure your crew knows how they stand with rations so that everyone gets the same amount of nutrients. A good way to do that would be to have a counter near the replicator saying what has been used for that month and what has been returned so it can be reused.

How to Create a Basic Space Ship

Well, that brings us to the end of the rooms you need to at least consider when planning out your fictional space ship. Let's review the departments:

Engineering Department makes the ship move and keeps it in one piece through a variety of mechanic and repair shops as well as an engine and power plant of your choosing.

Operations Department keeps the ship on the correct course and manages the weapons on ship.

The smaller departments may seem easy to overlook, but each has its use. The Air Department would maintain and run any small craft or fighter crafts used by the main ship. Deck Department is the one that gets all the painting, preservation, and docking jobs so the other departments can afford to be specailized and focus on thier job. The Administration Department keeps up the crews' records and makes sure they get all the awards they're entitled to.

The last set of departments on ship are also important. The Health Department keeps everyone healthy and out of pain while the Communications Department keeps the ship connected to the outside world and keeps communications running smoothly inside the ship. The Supply Department keeps everyone fed and makes sure they have all the repair parts and supplies they need for however long the ship is away from its homeport.

The last set of posts on what the crew needs on a ship may not fit in any department but moral lifters are a huge part of ship life and should not be overlooked if your crew is to be happy, or at least content, on ship.

The Fun Rooms on Ship

Law Enforcement on Ship

Exercise on Ship

Library, Useful to Some and Useless to Others

Continued Education on Ship

Religion on Ship

Recreation and Relaxation on Ship

R and R on the Messdecks

Recreation Rooms

Fresh Air and Relaxation on Ship

Fresh Air and Relaxation on Ship

Many ships in television, movies, and books have an observation room of some sort. The idea is that it is a large room for people who need a break from work to sit and stare out at space for whatever reason. If the room is just an empty space with movable chairs or benches it could be used for ceremonies like reenlistments, changes of command, or government ceremonies at different planets. However, most observation rooms shown have at least some sort of garden in it. The garden not only helps with purifying the oxygen on ship, or creating it in many circumstances, but it also creates a place for people to relax away from the unrelenting gray of metal with softer greens and lovely flowers as well as cleaner oxygen than anywhere else on ship.
Having a garden on ship can provide extra food to the messdecks that is fresh daily or weekly. Fresh fruit or vegetables provide nutrients that may not be easily reproduced by replicators or whatever food your ship serves. One problem that having your vegetable and fruit garden in a public location like the observation room is that some people will always be picking it early or moving plants into their quarters to get better food and many in the crew will never get fresh produce. A good idea may be to create a room somewhere that is a hydroponics garden. The room would be secured so only a few people could take care of the garden. If the hydroponics garden is some distance away from the flower garden in the observation room, then the ventilation system wouldn’t have to work so hard to purify the air.

Recreation Rooms

While you’re thinking about amusements for those on your ship you should consider something similar to Star Trek’s halodeck room. There is science in use and currently in the works that could eventually create a nearly believable halogram to make a halodeck real, especially if it had television screens for walls and the ceiling combined with some sort of moving floor. The realism of halograms on the television show may be impossible in the future but virtual reality is growing more and more possible with videogame graphics getting as good as they are. A special room that interacts with a virtual reality headset could work just as well to seemingly transport the wearer light years away for a while. Otherwise you may want to think about would be an arts and crafts room as a release from the tension of the day. Art has the ability to let the creator block out the universe for a while so it’s just the worker and the work, which is just what some people need to deal with the problems in close quarters and distance from family members.

R and R on the Messdecks

Most people spend all day at work looking forward to getting off work and relaxing: going to see a movie, going on a date, playing videogames, or whatever they do to forget the rigors or brainlessness of their job. While out to sea there really isn’t much to look forward to. Constantly moving, with people on watch posts twenty-four hours a day while underway, the ship literally never sleeps and that constant movement and activity make it hard for some people to relax. If they can’t relax in their off hours the tension of the day will transfer on to the next day and continue on until the tension gets to be too much and people snap in various ways harmful to themselves and possibly others as well. In an effort to avoid the snapping, volunteers from every department and division get together to plan something for each night the ship is underway, or at least a few nights a week. Often they’ll set up a Guitar Hero or Halo tournament or dominoes or a popular movie on a projector or karaoke and ice cream for everyone after work hours. Usually the moral event is held on the messdecks but may be moved to a conference room with a bigger screen. I’ve noticed that some of the television shows comment in passing that they have weekly crew movies, they make little comments such as meeting at the movie or needing to miss the movie for work. Depending on the type of ship you are creating you should decide what amusements your crew will look forward to at the end of the day.

Recreation and Relaxation on Ship

Something to think about when creating your fictional space ship is where do the people on ship gather to relax after work? On a modern naval vessel the larger berthings have a small lounge attached with a large television for movies, videogames, and just general watching the basic channels. The military has a few networks of their own that pay to show popular television shows, such as CSI and ER, as well as a news channel and a cartoon channel that gets shows from both the Disney Channel and Cartoon Network. They also show movies on the main channel and when underway someone on ship can play requested movies on a separate channel.
As well as relaxing in their lounge they can sit and relax with people from other berthings on the messdecks, in the library, or sit and chat with their coworkers in their work spaces. Officers don’t have lounges in their stateroom but there is a medium sized lounge connected to the wardroom where they sit and chat or make decisions on ship board issues. Having someplace to relax and unwind from the workday, whatever part of the day it ends, is a major moral booster that brings a refreshed person back to work and able to deal with the same people day after day.

Religion on Ship

Religion is a major part of many peoples’ lives, even in the military. I don’t remember any time they made a big deal about it in the various Star Trek series, besides Deep Space 9 because religion was so important to the species on the planet below the station, but I do remember a scene in the original series where the captain performed a wedding in what looked like a chapel but could have been merely the messdecks with a podium moved there and decorated. Many of the small ships do that on Sundays for the various services, both chaplain-led and lay-led services the chaplain isn’t as qualified for. On any given Sunday away from homeport there can be a number of services ranging from Catholic to Protestant to Buddhist to anything with a big enough following on ship.
Many people don’t go to the services for various reasons, whether because they prefer their literature to the perspective of the chaplain or because there is no service for their religion. Those people find ways to worship on their own. There are also cultures where their very cultures could be considered a religion, such as the Vulcans who spend hours a day meditating to keep their emotions in check or the Klingons to whom honor is the most precious thing in the universe. True, they may not be traditional religion but those are examples of species that have strong obvious motivation. Just a thought on character development but having a place to worship, or at least a designated way a room can be altered to be fit for whatever religious ceremony is expected. The messdecks are the most versatile rooms on modern naval ships although the main deck is usually where huge ceremonies, such as change of commands, are held. In future times the cargo holds may be the easiest rooms to adapt.
One last thing to think about is that the chaplain is the official counselor on modern naval vessels. Although chaplains are ordained members of a church somewhere they are also trained in regular psychology. If a family member dies or someone is contemplating suicide they are immediately sent to the chaplain to talk it out so the service member can calm down enough to not endanger themselves or the crew members by destructive behavior until they can be gotten off ship to go to the funeral or get professional help. I know in Star Trek: Next Generation they had Troy as a professional therapist that could also do anything needed for official records and in Star Trek: Enterprise they said the cook was the unofficial ship therapist. Whether official or unofficial there is likely always someone on ship that everyone talks to for educated help. I don’t think any fully functional government would send a crew through space for long periods of time without a person at least partially trained to deal with the typical problems caused by long periods of time indoors around the same people and away from family.

Continued Education on Ship

One of the big things in the modern military is that there is a huge push to get everyone in some sort of class for higher education. A person can’t get into the military today without a high school degree or a GED and having more college courses on an advancement evaluation than other people means a higher ranking among those trying to get promoted and a more probable promotion. On modern ships there is often a professor on board for any long deployment. That professor teaches a class multiple times a day to accommodate differing work schedules. They meet in a smallish room with a long table that has a computer at each seat and a projector set up on the network to show on a touch screen for the professor to manipulate. When class isn’t going the room is open for those with internet courses or those who just want to get on computer to write their family or friends.
In the future there may be computers in everyone’s individual room but if you plan to have more than five people per room, you should consider having a room with a few public computers so people aren’t fighting each other for time. Also people will always be trying for a college degree for when they leave the military or for faster advancement in their chosen job. You should at least consider how your fictional crew would go about getting classes.

Library, Useful to Some and Useless to Others.

Another major moral booster is having a library on ship. On modern naval ships the library is a place to study in quiet, an excellent place for group study sessions for the next advancement exam or a class, and somewhere to pick up a book as a break from someone’s everyday life. Although the stereotypical military person would never willingly read a book, there are always those in every stereotype that break the mold and are rarely seen without a book nearby. Besides, a typical library has lots of reference books that can be used to look up information for classes or just for random facts that have been bugging that person for hours.
Of course, now a days all books are going digital so an actual physical room will likely be redundant in the future (although they may need a special server for all the books throughout history). In the future all anyone may do is download their book onto their electronic reader, such as the modern Kindle or the Sony version, and read it anywhere they want. In the television series Star Trek: Voyager they replicated books by choosing the book to put on the paper and a full book showed up in their replicator. When they finished their book, they just put the book back in the replicator and it was recycled into another book or anything else needed at the moment. There are many ways to handle a library on ship and it is your decision how you want to do it but you never know when it may come up in your writing so it’s best to have at least a basic idea of how it works on your fictional ship.