The reminds me of the ISSCV from Space: Above and Beyond. Just goes to show you that solving the same problems results in similar solutions. looks good, I like the cockpit design.
Ty mikey. I said earlier that this is an ISSCV style drop ship. The one you point out from space above and beyond is very much the inspiration. This is my version. ISSCV (Inter solar system cargo vehicle) is a great design for a multi purpose space craft. The major difference compared to mine is that mine is strictly meant for low orbit to surface operations and would not work for carrying a squad of space marines from Earth to Mars. I started this thread wanting something that was more realistic. Sadly, realistic doesn't look very cool so I have dropped the bar down to realisticish lol. I know my design would never really work but I would like to be able to imagine it could. I guess the best thing to do would be to add a really huge fuel tank like the one the shuttle uses to the belly, but that wouldn't look cool. Hmmmm? Maybe.
Front landing skids and there operation. 1.) Retracted position. 2.) Main shock arm is lowered as the main control arm's hydrolic piston releases. 3.) Main control arm has fully released droping the main shock arm into landing position. Secondary control arm releases droping the landing skid into place. 4.) Hydrolic motors release the landing toes. Landing gear is fully deployed.
The more I'm working on it the more I don't like the landing strut design. I've decided to go with a more conventional design. Just finished working on the front gear's shock strut mechanics. Here's a pic from inside sketchup. I should earn a degree in engineering by the time I finish lol.
The model itself is great. What is bugging me, is a position of thrusters. This thing supposed to be able to fly in space, right? But, As far as I understand, with such thruster layout, the ship will spin around it`s "X" axis. I mean ALL thrusters are located "above" the center of mass. I`m currently in the middle of similar shuttle design (I mean 4-thruster layout) and have the same problem in front of me The only "work around" I can think of for the ship of yours is that in space it moves "upward", not "forward".
Actually you can resolve that problem by angling the thrusters upward. Just look at the Space Shuttle OMS engines. They're angled up to offset their position on the body.
Well, not exactly, since in space there is no atmospheric friction. Also, the shuttle do not travel in the direction it`s nose facing in space.
Below it the rough sketch of supposed movement of the craft at different thruster positions. Lower one is the only idea I`ve come so far.
Actually, you can solve the problem completely, by placing either main wings or tail wings bellow the center of mass. But this will cause serious rebuilding of the model.
Don`t you think that would be too complex and money/service time consuming for a military dropship? Also, the gyro have to be massive enough for such counter, and that`s an extra mass, this bird have to carry.
err, why exactly does it need a redesign? whats wrong with it flying at an angle, or straight up eh? AOA is not important in space as we've established... It's just a cliche that it should have to fly as an aircraft does in space. In fact its maybe better that it does boost upwards then you get some free artificial gravity.
This thing would never make it into space in reality without a fuel tank roughly 3-4 times it's size. But, for this arguement, some simple fixes are I can make the main wings tilt down at the ball joint in the middle to place the 2 front rockets under the center of gravity, or point the engines in different directions, see pic. This is awesome, my first sci fi meshes model debate woot! Love feedback thanks guys.
Actually now that I think about it, pointing two different directions like the pic below shows would probobly make the ship pitch up constantly as both engines are pointed at the center of gravity. I guess the wings tilt down solution would work the best. I'm not opposed to the ship flying up though. That would be kinda cool and add some new cool cockpit designing to the mix like a Boba Fett Slave II. Although, there is probobly a way to angle the engines in different directions so as to lessen the angle of attack such as pointing the rear rocket backwards and the front motor down from backwards about 22.5 degrees. In any even, an AOA of about 15 degrees or less is cool by me.
What would happen if we only use one set of rockets while in space? The second set are only for VTOL?
lol. yeah your ship would just fly in loops like that.
sounds like really you have a bigger issue with your propulsion, why not choose something with more energy, like a fusion rocket rather than chemical? then you can get away with smaller fuel tanks.
lol. yeah your ship would just fly in loops like that.
sounds like really you have a bigger issue with your propulsion, why not choose something with more energy, like a fusion rocket rather than chemical? then you can get away with smaller fuel tanks.
Most of my military grade ships are using one form of fussion or another so I could use it on this one. I'm still not happy with the rockets on this model at the moment. The ship is going way off base from my drawing lol. I wanted to use a chemical that would work both as remass and jet like fuel for a ramrocket style ship, but I suppose using fussion to expel hydrogen would work in an atmosphere and in space. Maybe I'm just over engineering it. Or maybe I just need to go back to when all of my ships were powered by micro magnetic fussion.
Hm. Foldable wings could solve the problem. Dropship from "Aliens" with its foldable wings comes to mind. That will also save a lot of storage space after docking with mothership. If you want to use only one set of thrusters for space propulsion, wich is, actually quite wise idea (conserving propellant is a main issue here). then you have to put the thrusters on the line with the center of mass of the ship. No idea, where it is, but visually, looks like it should be just above the half of the main fuselage`s height.
As for the thrusters - addition of air intakes could help. Using atmosphere as a propellant is usefull to conserve onboard resourses for orbital flight.
Couldn't you just keep the aft engines pointing horizontal and angle the front ones upward? You wouldn't flip that way, but you'd still need a rocket on the top to counteract the upward motion... As for reaction mass, a nuclear powered jet engine wouldn't need to burn fuel to heat air to get said air to expand and generate thrust... the nuclear pile could heat the compressed air to expand said air instead. Then you'd only need reaction mass while in space. Of course at some point you might fly too high for the engines to inhale enough air to generate thrust, at which point you'd switch over to your reaction mass.
angling the front engines so the thrust is directed upwards? no, you'd just pitch over.
if you mean angling the front engines so the thrust is directed downwards, slightly, so the centre of thrust for those engines is just below the centre of mass... and i'd expect the centre of mass to be higher up than middway on the fuselage with this ship btw... you could add a small pitch up component to counteract the aft engines and trim out the pitch over, you would be flying slightly nose down vs your thrust vector... but it would look ok.
Its actually preferable to having all engines pointed straight back and offsetting the pairs on the vertical axis, because then your losing efficiency as the thrust from the front engines is washing over the back ones, if you're using fusion then you might also make them radioactive via neutron activation, and you're also heating the spacecraft, which is baaaad.;) of course any time you're using one engine to counteract another, this is also inefficient - so you could also angle the front engines out laterally but this loses efficiency again.. really the best, most realistic way of having this configuration imho is to have all the engines thrust down. no efficiency losses on the hull or heating or nasties... though its worse if you lose an engine and dont compensate quickly.
At the end of the day though, you're not really flying it for real and you can depict it flying however you want... if you were making a TV show say, you probably wouldn't bog down the production with things like this that only a tiny fraction of the audience is going to appreciate and just have it flying like a plane;)
I'm going to change the engine design to more reflect one of my fighter's magnetic fussion engines so expect some cool fold out radiators and the like. I think to best meet the flight criteria we are setting out here the engines should angle at about 15 degrees down from straight back. The ship would be traveling up and forward in a similar AOA of an apache at full tilt. It will be fun to align the RCS thrusters for that angle but may end up looking alot cooler. What do you guys think?
you dont need to align the thrusters to any particular angle i guess, your primary consideration should be aligning them around the centre of mass, and as far from that centre of mass as possible, then having as few thrusters as possible.
however, you'll probably want to translate along its normal / parked axes to make dockings and landings easy, so if you align them to thrust the ship at a particular attitude it should be that same resting attitude, imho. Otherwise for example you might want to thrust up, but find that you're thrusting up and backwards
Anyway, I think It'll look real nice flying along at a tilt. Satisfies the nerdy impulses of realistic design, and also doesn't look too strange to a less, umm, discerning audience.
they look good, were they taken from an older model, did you engineer these yourself? I ask because i'd normally make a basic model that i can quickly change to fit a particular design of wheel well, rather than jump in with a fairly highly detailed model.
They are based on a real set of rear gear. I had to change the design several times so they fit the way I want them. All the little parts are in groups so I can reuse this part here or that part there later. I made this set for this model but hope I can reuse much of it in later models if the configuration fits. The other design I liked didn't take up as much space inside the ship when retracted but it was very difficult to get all the angels and lengths right. I put it away for later use. The original gear I had intended for this ship would come out of the bottom and go roughly 22.5 degrees to the sides. Once I modeled it, it didn't look like the gear would support the weight of the ship and a full container so I shifted to landing skids. They looked silly to me the more I looked at them so I started with the more traditional design.
Closed one looks too smooth to me. I know, that`s for the better (aerodynamicaly), but it is smoth almost to the state of solid surface. Maybe, you can angle the covers a bit? Also, some sort of little details around intakes could make it look less toy-like. Aerial speed or angle of attack sensor, position light, or something even more minor. Other than that - looking good.
Closed one looks too smooth to me. I know, that`s for the better (aerodynamicaly), but it is smoth almost to the state of solid surface. Maybe, you can angle the covers a bit? Also, some sort of little details around intakes could make it look less toy-like. Aerial speed or angle of attack sensor, position light, or something even more minor. Other than that - looking good.
You are absolutely right! In the model the slats are overlapping and it looks really cool but in the render it all washes together. Here's an update with changes I made to correct this (The renderer still seems to wash away alot of the detail but it's not a high rez render). As far as little details like sensors, little whichits and whatsits, those will come later. Just getting the more important engineering parts developed ATM. As far as the engines go, I still have to do the retracting radiators and redesign the magnetic nozzels before I can start paneling and what not. Thanks for the input Stonecold, very helpful.
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Below it the rough sketch of supposed movement of the craft at different thruster positions. Lower one is the only idea I`ve come so far.
Actually, you can solve the problem completely, by placing either main wings or tail wings bellow the center of mass. But this will cause serious rebuilding of the model.
Actually now that I think about it, pointing two different directions like the pic below shows would probobly make the ship pitch up constantly as both engines are pointed at the center of gravity. I guess the wings tilt down solution would work the best. I'm not opposed to the ship flying up though. That would be kinda cool and add some new cool cockpit designing to the mix like a Boba Fett Slave II. Although, there is probobly a way to angle the engines in different directions so as to lessen the angle of attack such as pointing the rear rocket backwards and the front motor down from backwards about 22.5 degrees. In any even, an AOA of about 15 degrees or less is cool by me.
What would happen if we only use one set of rockets while in space? The second set are only for VTOL?
sounds like really you have a bigger issue with your propulsion, why not choose something with more energy, like a fusion rocket rather than chemical? then you can get away with smaller fuel tanks.
Most of my military grade ships are using one form of fussion or another so I could use it on this one. I'm still not happy with the rockets on this model at the moment. The ship is going way off base from my drawing lol. I wanted to use a chemical that would work both as remass and jet like fuel for a ramrocket style ship, but I suppose using fussion to expel hydrogen would work in an atmosphere and in space. Maybe I'm just over engineering it. Or maybe I just need to go back to when all of my ships were powered by micro magnetic fussion.
As for the thrusters - addition of air intakes could help. Using atmosphere as a propellant is usefull to conserve onboard resourses for orbital flight.
if you mean angling the front engines so the thrust is directed downwards, slightly, so the centre of thrust for those engines is just below the centre of mass... and i'd expect the centre of mass to be higher up than middway on the fuselage with this ship btw... you could add a small pitch up component to counteract the aft engines and trim out the pitch over, you would be flying slightly nose down vs your thrust vector... but it would look ok.
Its actually preferable to having all engines pointed straight back and offsetting the pairs on the vertical axis, because then your losing efficiency as the thrust from the front engines is washing over the back ones, if you're using fusion then you might also make them radioactive via neutron activation, and you're also heating the spacecraft, which is baaaad.;) of course any time you're using one engine to counteract another, this is also inefficient - so you could also angle the front engines out laterally but this loses efficiency again.. really the best, most realistic way of having this configuration imho is to have all the engines thrust down. no efficiency losses on the hull or heating or nasties... though its worse if you lose an engine and dont compensate quickly.
At the end of the day though, you're not really flying it for real and you can depict it flying however you want... if you were making a TV show say, you probably wouldn't bog down the production with things like this that only a tiny fraction of the audience is going to appreciate and just have it flying like a plane;)
however, you'll probably want to translate along its normal / parked axes to make dockings and landings easy, so if you align them to thrust the ship at a particular attitude it should be that same resting attitude, imho. Otherwise for example you might want to thrust up, but find that you're thrusting up and backwards
Anyway, I think It'll look real nice flying along at a tilt. Satisfies the nerdy impulses of realistic design, and also doesn't look too strange to a less, umm, discerning audience.
You are absolutely right! In the model the slats are overlapping and it looks really cool but in the render it all washes together. Here's an update with changes I made to correct this (The renderer still seems to wash away alot of the detail but it's not a high rez render). As far as little details like sensors, little whichits and whatsits, those will come later. Just getting the more important engineering parts developed ATM. As far as the engines go, I still have to do the retracting radiators and redesign the magnetic nozzels before I can start paneling and what not. Thanks for the input Stonecold, very helpful.