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3Dgeneric base for realistic spaceship
I.g.(.0
Posts: 0Member
I really don't know why in this period of my life i'm getting more and more attracted by "hard" sci-fi.. could be the age, could be the life itself that's telling me "HEY! take a look at the real world!"
Whatever.. I left my "long range attack frigate" project to see how could it be a "real" spaceship.
Maybe some of you will agree with me that it's early to post, yes, the project is far away from anything "finished".. it's just a sum of extruded cylinder without detalies but due to the fact that I'm going to work a lot for school [last year, exams.. work!] I'm not sure I'll continue with this so I'll leave it to your comments.
Description:
The ship is really simple: it's just a huge rocket with a gravity centrifuge and a laser turret on the top. It should be a good civil ship used for rescue/police missions of some months with a crew of 10 [max].
I've Imagined that in a near future [150-200 years] our solar system could be colonized with mining stations on the asteroids and on the moons of jupiter and saturn, and maybe the terraforming process on mars could be started. In that solar system many people would travel in space .. some of this could be criminals..
That was my silly idea ^^
Whatever.. I left my "long range attack frigate" project to see how could it be a "real" spaceship.
Maybe some of you will agree with me that it's early to post, yes, the project is far away from anything "finished".. it's just a sum of extruded cylinder without detalies but due to the fact that I'm going to work a lot for school [last year, exams.. work!] I'm not sure I'll continue with this so I'll leave it to your comments.
Description:
The ship is really simple: it's just a huge rocket with a gravity centrifuge and a laser turret on the top. It should be a good civil ship used for rescue/police missions of some months with a crew of 10 [max].
I've Imagined that in a near future [150-200 years] our solar system could be colonized with mining stations on the asteroids and on the moons of jupiter and saturn, and maybe the terraforming process on mars could be started. In that solar system many people would travel in space .. some of this could be criminals..
That was my silly idea ^^
Post edited by I.g.(. on
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Posts
The ship, I like it so far. It's always nice if someone tries to create a near-future ship that actually looks possible. Looking forward to see how it's going to evolve.
Rocket... That`s good as far as it isn`t chemical. Since chemical rockets are damned inefficient for a long range space travel. If we are talking about nuclear rocket here, then the frame of the ship should be somewhat different, as far as I understand.
1) Exhaust. Yes, it could be built that way. But it also could be magnetic nozzle (since it is more efficient heat-vise).
2) Distance from the manned hull section. The best choice (to keep the ship light) is to make skeletal structure from engine/reactor section to the main ship. Propellant tanks could be attached to this skeleton too.
3) Shadow shield. engine emites tremendous amount of radiation, and crew and electronics should be shielded from it. Of course, you can make the whole hull "armored", but this raise the weight of the ship too much. So - the "shadow shield" is our savior. If you place a metal plate just after the engine and large enough to provide "shadow" to all required parts of the ship - it will do the trick.
4) Too many main thrusters. "This is no gundam, boy..." I mean, it is better to go with single-thruster design. It is easier to align, easier to shield and to cool down. More then that - 2 thrusters won`t give you any boost to the "top speed".
5) "Radiators, radiators everywhere!" Self-explanatory, I think
6) Dual centrifuge design. If you spin something around the ship, you will fall to gyroscopic effect, that will render your ship unable to maneuver other then accelerate or decelerate. To avoid this, you should have an adequate mass spinning in the opposite direction around your ship. So, why not another gravity ring? The trip will be long and boooring any way
Any way, the universe settings seems to be interesting. Any background info?
BTW, I suggest you leave the pirates out of it. Simply because "you can`t hide in space" (c) and the "pirate ship" will be notised months before the interception.
Or, alternatively, you should think the reason for them to exist.
Engines: The Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket (VASIMR) drive might be what you are looking for.
Setting: Always love those Hard Science settings.
http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/enginelist.php
Also, I`d better opted for AIM - (Antiproton-initiated Microfusion/Inertial Confinement Fusion) for prolonged travel.
At the moment it looks like those 3 secondary thrusters(+fuel storage?) are connected to the main hull only by that tiny cross section of a tube - I'm no expert on anything hard scifi, but that just seems like a weak spot to me.
That part of the ship is necessary if I'll keep this configuration [Y]
I could erease them by using a cross configuration for the storage section.. but I found it boring..
Then it comes to you, my dear Stonecold ^^
I got your points about propulsion. I'll make it more "evident", I understod, you want to see the vacuum through the "skeletal" structure.. ok... I like those structures too..
But.. I've seen a lot of spaceships with just one centrifuge.. why? How could they do?
For the silly criminals idea.. well.. YOU said "pirates".
I'm surely not going to talk about "real" pirates.. they could just be criminals travelling for some reason form earth to somewhere, or just travelling form an orbital station to another one on a ryan-Space flight; they could be terrorist or just simple robbers.. they could steal a landing module and escape on earth in the middle of nothing.. there could be several situations..
Maybe enought for a season of a TV show ^^
Not that I like to see the background through the ship, but if I were the crewmember on it, I`d like to keep the damned nuke (thruster + reactor) as far from living quaters as I can. Space radiation is bad enough without our technological help.
Quite easy. As far as you are performing ballistic flight, or orbiting the planet, it realy doesnt matter, how your ship is positioned. The difference shows up in combat or during active maneuvers. If you have only one centrifuge, you have to stop it, and only after that, you can maneuver.
Well, you`ve got armed ship with criminals. What does it looks like?
ehh?? whaat?? ??????? NAAh
This is not a future of vaste-scale war and that's not a war ship
It's a generic civil ship equipped with a laser turret, and it's property of the earth united govern.
Think "little":
The earth has been finally unified under her first World Govern. The moon had been colonized and there are several cities and industrial complex. One of those complex is the Unified Earth's Arsenal were a simple vessel is beeing armed with the last generation of laser turret:
This tiny simple ship with just one laser turret is actually the most powerfull and most dangerous ship surfing the space.
A space were all the other ships must follow their route to reach their target.
A space were all the other ships are Unarmed.
A civil space.
Relying on its independence this ship could deviate from its patrol-route to intercept the other ships, and, if it's necessary, strike them down.
Here comes trouble. Frankly speaking, I doubt that humanity will ever begin the expansion to the solar system without such stimul as a "rival" (think about cold war situation).
Just remember - what we got during the cold war? Unmanned survey of the Moon, Mars, Venus. Manned space stations, thruster and re-entry technology perfected to extreme. Expeditions to the moon. Unmanned stations for deep-space exploration. Development of re-usable transatmospheric vehicles (shuttles). Manned flight to Mars planned by both sides, nuclear thrusters are in the prototype stage...
Tremendous technological and skientific burst. And why? Because both sides feared, that the opponent will be the first to place missiles/lasers, or whatever weapon they have an the strategic location - space. And cost-efficiensy was almost forgotten.
And what do we have now? Thee world is mostly monopole, with former, and possible future rivals are currently no match for the US. At least not in the way, USSR was. And what do we have in our space programs? Moon exploration program - closed. Flight to the Mars delayed on the unknown amount of time. Nuclear thruster program halted. Shuttle program canceled. Space stations program almost canceled and barely kept afloat by the collective efforts of all nations. USA purchaise the outdated (technology-wise) thrusters from Russia, to launch their sattelites...
And why is all this happening? NO PROFIT. It is much cheaper to incite wars in third world countries to obtain their resourses, then to develop complex program for asteroid mining, HE3 mining on Moon, or colonization of Mars.
Actually, I doubt, that on this technological level, ANY ship (this one included) can widely deviate from ballistic path. It takes too much propellant, that should be reserved for braking maneuver too. So, my guess was that such "interceptor" waits in orbit for the data on enemy ship, then calculates interception trajectory and then accelerates for a few months to get there in time. Somewhat like that.
P.S. And yes, after some thoughts, in realistic time scale, stopping the centrifuge before the maneuvers won`t be a problem.
The Earth have more then enough resourses. And the cheapest way to prolong them - is to reduce the Earth`s population. And that`s a good reason for a war.
By the way, I said MOST of the outposts were mining operation. Not all of them. Highlighting the bit about Mars does nothing to deter my opinion.
Yeah, too many people on this planet, lets just go and kill as many civilians as it takes to maintain our lifestyle. Politics are beyond the scope of this forum but I can't see anyone justify that kind of war.
As for rare elements, as Juvat suggested - well, that`s a plausable excuse, but still, I doubt that it will be enough to revive space programs. Also, Mars was highlighted, because it do not fit into the "cost effective" exploration. It`s too hard to retrieve materials from the gravity well, for the colony to be plausable. The only way I see it - as a skientific research facility or as military outpost. Both are meaningless in "global peace" scenario.
Well, that`s just my opinion and the choice is up to author.
Right now there are several companies that in a year earns more than lots and lots of states. The only way the states could survive is beeing united.
Take a look at the world: the process is started: we have the USA and the UE, and actually there are voices about the creation of a new huge Islamic formation..
Now think to the point of view of a multinational company: it could be an affair to place a base on Callisto if they found out any important element there. Also as far as I know there aren't laws about mining the space right now... They could say "Callisto is our own property. Keep Out!"
Isn't it nice?
And there is another point: A multinational company wouldn't be happy if the population decrease. It will mean less consumers.
Then there could be stories of Industrial spying, and maybe some episode of violence, terrorism and whatever
Second thing:
This ship is tought to be indipendent for long periods but it's primal use will be patrolling the flights form/to/between orbital stations-earth, orbital station-moon. And there will be several patrols.
The interceptions will take MAX some hours.. maybe, at Extreme conditions and In case they're not too late, the ship could be send to intercept a flight from earth to another planet.. but I've imagined that such a long travel requires a huge spaceship.. something like a real space station with hundreds of people and, naturally, a police office/security staff to catch the criminals. So they won't need the help of a patrol ship...
For Mars I have a lot of dobuts.. firstly because scientists said that it's moons, phobos and deimos, are going to fall..
Anyway if the resources on earth are finished they will pay ^^
Inferior conjunction for Venus (closest approach to Earth) is around 41 million kilometers, and occurs approximately every 584 days. See the Wikipedia article on Venus to confirm this data. If Earth were to wait that long between visits, it would only take 2 days to travel there at 0.5g (constant acceleration halfway there, then flip over and decelerate), which is actually fairly doable even with today's tech. Chemical rockets could do this, although the tanks would have to be fairly large. Even at it's farthest from us, Venus is about a week away at 0.25g, doing the same thing. The same is nearly true of Mars, although it would probably be a bit longer, and I couldn't find information on how often it occurs. But travel between our closest neighbors is not necessarily a long process. Now if you're talking about using slow acceleration and using it in bursts as we have been doing, then yes, the Solar system is a huge friggin place. But I don't think that is something we will be doing for the next 100 years. Advances in the creation of antimatter could significantly alter how we use energy, for example.
Anyway I tought that in this near future an ideal traver Earth-Mars would take less than 6 months.
Actually I know that going on Mars at the right time takes something more than 6 months but then it would take 18 months to come back.
Thinking to a "buisness" flight 3-6 months is quite good, If you say me it could be done in less than a month, well, that's fantastic.
And just so's you knows: Venus's atmosphere is not just a giant cauldron of hot gasses. Reference my thread as well as InvertedVantage's thread, both of which deal with Venus as a habitable environment.
LockeFP, it looks like you are forgetting that the rocket do not travel in the straight path.
http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/mission.php
Take a glance at how the trajectory will look like. I doubt, that even nuclear rockets of near future will be able to use pure brachistochrone trajectories.
Yeah. On my last trip to Venus I couldn't see my hand in front of my face.
what?
Explain better pls.
Updates:
Following Stonecold's advices on the engine...
Tought it were obviously, that's the shadow shield ^^
I'll try to get something like a reaction chamber.. I found some usefull references at atomic rocket...
I'm really busy right now.. today I've worked a lot on PS for the new graphic of the school's website and on a logo manual and on a lettering for an elementary school... too much projects
I've chosen the VASIMR in the end of the day, it sounds less fictional then AIM system and I think it fits better with my background.