The Look of Spaceships - Page 2

01101001 · #31 (**permalink**) 12-December-2004, 05:47 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Edymnion

Yes, spheres have maximum volume in minimum surface area. But the sphere is also one of the WORST shapes in nature for stacking. If you've got a given volume, and you have to fill it with smaller units, more than half of the volume will be wasted if you fill it with spheres (about 51% waste).

Spheres don't pack really well, but it's more like 26% waste.

darkhunter · #32 (**permalink**) 12-December-2004, 04:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Humots

Quote:

Darkhunter, I believe the title is "Raiders From The Rings". A great, fun book, I wish that I could find a copy.

Actually, I believe it was "Scavengers in Space" by the same author.

AHA!! That sounds like it... Thanks!

novaderrik · #33 (**permalink**) 13-December-2004, 08:36 AM

wouldn't a ship with gentle, organic curves be stronger- like how arches used in old churches and bridges are really strong for their weight?
ships like use by the federation in Star Trek have plenty of curves that make them look more aerodynamic- and also might actually make the hull stronger for pulling off all those warp 9 90 degree turns and what not that they are so fond of doing. also, they almost disappear as you look at them directly from the front- which would seem to be beneficial for deflecting debris encountered in space or avoiding phaser or photon torpedo fire with less power used for the shields and what not. altho, if a torpedo gets within 10 miles of the ship, half the consoles on the bridge explode in a cool shower of sparks, so the benefits might be non-existant,,
the Borg cubes seem to be pretty easy to hit, but difficult to damage. and they also seem able to do all the stuff the federation ships do, but look more menacing while doing it.
so, maybe shape doesn't matter..

John Dlugosz · #34 (**permalink**) 13-December-2004, 10:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SSJPabs

But for "alien" spaceships, what are some of the more inventive looking designs you've seen of thought up yourself?

I wrote a story where the protagonist's ship was brick-shaped. I was a kid and wasn't thinking about space dust at high speed. Rather, just make it with many identical floors like a building (it was to have 1G constant boost).

Later, as a fun project, I thought about a serious design for an interplanetary ship based on known physics with slightly more advanced technology. It was a ring of individual compartments suspended from long cables from a hub. The whole thing would spin at a suitable rate based on its acceleration along the axis. Under no boost, it would be a flat wheel, and under acceleration the cars would "hang" down from the top of the central cylindar at an angle.

papageno · #35 (**permalink**) 14-December-2004, 11:17 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Edymnion

Yes, spheres have maximum volume in minimum surface area. But the sphere is also one of the WORST shapes in nature for stacking. If you've got a given volume, and you have to fill it with smaller units, more than half of the volume will be wasted if you fill it with spheres (about 51% waste). Rectangular filler, however, will have 0% waste all the way out to the edges. And if the outside is rectangular as well, no space at all needs be wasted.

Plus, any life form reasonably similar to us is going to have evolved on a planet, which means gravity. Which means it is going to be used to flat surfaces to move on. Flat walking surfaces pretty much automatically mean that it will get broken up into rectangular sections inside, meaning wasted space that has to be packed with filler around the edges of a sphere.

You do not have to fill with rectange-like rooms. I think you can get away with exagon-like rooms.
Also, filler spaces do not necessarily need to be rectangle-like.

If the ship is big enough, you might even build decks in concentric shells. In this case you can have gravity towards the center.
(Alright, I am thinking of the Death Star here...)

SSJPabs · #36 (**permalink**) 14-December-2004, 04:57 PM

So say you're going to build a shield to protect from random space junk etc. what kind of material are we looking at besides ice (which is pretty damn clever I think)? Something incredibly dense?

darkhunter · #37 (**permalink**) 14-December-2004, 06:25 PM

What about rubble--wouldns it spread the energy of any impact out better? Assuming you could find a way to keep it in place....

SkepticJ · #38 (**permalink**) 14-December-2004, 06:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SSJPabs

So say you're going to build a shield to protect from random space junk etc. what kind of material are we looking at besides ice (which is pretty damn clever I think)? Something incredibly dense?

I'd think a magnetic field(or force field if they're possible) would be really good because it's not made of matter which can be destroyed.

Why must the space other than the rectangle rooms inside a sphere ship be wasted space filled with foam or nothing? Dome homes on earth use the space as places to put water heaters, storage etc. In a ship it would be used for hardware of varying sorts, storage and other things. A zero gravity ship would be even better because not only are the floors used but walls and ceilings become living space. You need only be engineered to live in zero g.

SSJPabs · #39 (**permalink**) 14-December-2004, 08:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SkepticJ

I'd think a magnetic field(or force field if they're possible) would be really good because it's not made of matter which can be destroyed.

What kind of power would you need to generate a field that strong?

Or is it weak? Damn my lack of physics knowledge!

SkepticJ · #40 (**permalink**) 14-December-2004, 08:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SSJPabs

Quote:

Originally Posted by SkepticJ

I'd think a magnetic field(or force field if they're possible) would be really good because it's not made of matter which can be destroyed.

What kind of power would you need to generate a field that strong?

Or is it weak? Damn my lack of physics knowledge!

The ship's fusion reactor I'd guess. Could the waste heat be radiated kms out in front of the ship to deflect particles?

eburacum45 · #41 (**permalink**) 15-December-2004, 09:46 AM

The power can be calculated by taking the mass of the largest expected interstellar grain, and working out the energy required to move it the radius of the ship's forward cross-section in the time it takes for the grain to travel from the leading end of the magnetic field to the rear of the field.

This obviously depends on the speed of the ship, the expected grain size, and the forward extent of the magnetic field;
at 10% c, the ship would travel 29,979km every second, so if you had a magnetic field extending thirty thousand km in front of the ship it would have one second to move any dust out of the way (assuming the dust has been charged already in some way).
This would be a large magnetic field, similar in strength to a small solar prominence.

The suggestion has been made that this magnetic field could hold a trapped plasma which could intercept both dustgrains and hydrogen atoms; this might work, but would need at least as much energy as the deflector field.

captain swoop · #42 (**permalink**) 15-December-2004, 03:15 PM

I always liked the 'Liberator' from Blakes-7.

tracer · #43 (**permalink**) 15-December-2004, 10:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Maksutov

The folks who made the documentary Flying Saucers Over Hollywood: The Plan 9 Companion that is part of the deluxe Plan 9 DVD looked into this and found out the saucers were actually "flying saucer" plastic model kits. This of course contradicts a quote from Ed Wood about the saucers being Cadillac hubcaps.

Maybe Ed was just trying to make his movie sound ritzier that it actually was.

('Cause, you know, he claimed it was a Cadillac hubcap, and not just a common Ford or Chevy hubcap.

)

Edymnion · #44 (**permalink**) 18-December-2004, 10:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SSJPabs

Quote:

Originally Posted by SkepticJ

I'd think a magnetic field(or force field if they're possible) would be really good because it's not made of matter which can be destroyed.

What kind of power would you need to generate a field that strong?

Or is it weak? Damn my lack of physics knowledge!

Well, lets put it this way, there is already a ramscoop design for a traditional style space craft that would actually burn space trash for fuel. Well, more like it would use an atomic engine, a magnetic ramscoop to funnel space waste into the front of the ship, then propell it out the back as a self-replinishing propellent. So it can't be THAT difficult.

skwirlinator · #45 (**permalink**) 20-December-2004, 01:03 AM

The most likely extraterrestial spaceship I would suppose would be a hollowed out asteroid or like that. Even if it wasn't hollowed out when it started. The travellers could mine it to produce the sustaining and containment items they need. It would have some semblance of gravity if it were big enough.
Wouldn't mess with it tho, To make it controllable would take some pretty hefty tech. The propulsion system alone would be megascale engineering!

This, to me, is the most realistic.

skwirlinator · #46 (**permalink**) 20-December-2004, 01:07 AM

The most Koolest would be a nanosuit!

Quote:

Since nanotechnology lends itself to making small things, consider the smallest person-carrying spacecraft: the spacesuit. Forced to use weak, heavy, passive materials, engineers now make bulky, clumsy spacesuits. A look at an advanced spacesuit will illustrate some of the capabilities of nanotechnology.

Imagine that you are aboard a space station, spun to simulate Earth's normal gravity. After instruction, you have been given a suit to try out: there it hangs on the wall, a gray, rubbery-looking thing with a transparent helmet. You take it down, heft its substantial weight, strip, and step in through the open seam on the front.

The suit feels softer than the softest rubber, but has a slick inner surface. It slips on easily and the seam seals at a touch. It provides a skintight covering like a thin leather glove around your fingers, thickening as it runs up your arm to become as thick as your hand in the region around your torso. Behind your shoulders, scarcely noticeable, is a small backpack. Around your head, almost invisible, is the helmet. Below your neck the suits inner surface hugs your skin with a light, uniform touch that soon becomes almost imperceptible.

You stand up and walk around, experimenting. You bounce on your toes and feel no extra weight from the suit. You bend and stretch and feel no restraint, no wrinkling, no pressure points. When you rub your fingers together they feel sensitive, as if bare - but somehow slightly thicker. As you breathe, the air tastes clean and fresh. In fact, you feel that you could forget that you are wearing a suit at all. What is more, you feel just as comfortable when you step out into the vacuum of space.

The suit manages to do all this and more by means of complex activity within a structure having a texture almost as intricate as that of living tissue. A glove finger a millimeter thick has room for a thousand micron-thick layers of active nanomachinery and nanoelectronics. A fingertip-sized patch has room for a billion mechanical nanocomputers, with 99.9 percent of the volume left over for other components.

In particular, this leaves room for an active structure. The middle layer of the suit material holds a three-dimensional weave of diamond-based fibers acting much like artificial muscle, but able to push as well as pull (as discussed in the Notes). These fibers take up much of the volume and make the suit material as strong as steel. Powered by microscopic electric motors and controlled by nanocomputers, they give the suit material its supple strength, making it stretch, contract, and bend as needed. When the suit felt soft earlier, this was because it had been programmed to act soft. The suit has no difficulty holding its shape in a vacuum; it has strength enough to avoid blowing up like a balloon. Likewise, it has no difficulty supporting its own weight and moving to match your motions, quickly, smoothly, and without resistance. This is one reason why it almost seems not to be there at all.

Your fingers feel almost bare because you feel the texture of what you touch. This happens because pressure sensors cover the suit's surface and active structure covers its lining: the glove feels the shape of whatever you touch - and the detailed pattern of pressure it exerts - and transmits the same texture pattern to your skin. It also reverses the process, transmitting to the outside the detailed pattern of forces exerted by your skin on the inside of the glove. Thus the glove pretends that it isn't there, and your skin feels almost bare.

The suit has the strength of steel and the flexibility of your own body. If you reset the suit's controls, the suit continues to match your motions, but with a difference. Instead of simply transmitting the forces you exert, it amplifies them by a factor of ten. Likewise, when something brushes against you, the suit now transmits only a tenth of the force to the inside. You are now ready for a wrestling match with a gorilla.

The fresh air you breathe may not seem surprising; the backpack includes a supply of air and other consumables. Yet after a few days outside in the sunlight, your air will not run out: like a plant, the suit absorbs sunlight and the carbon dioxide you exhale, producing fresh oxygen. Also like a plant (or a whole ecosystem), it breaks down other wastes into simple molecules and reassembles them into the molecular patterns of fresh, wholesome food. In fact, the suit will keep you comfortable, breathing, and well fed almost anywhere in the inner solar system.

What is more, the suit is durable. It can tolerate the failure of numerous nanomachines because it has so many others to take over the load. The space between the active fibers leaves room enough for assemblers and disassemblers to move about and repair damaged devices. The suit repairs itself as fast as it wears out.

Within the bounds of the possible, the suit could have many other features. A speck of material smaller than a pinhead could hold the text of every book ever published, for display on a fold-out screen. Another speck could be a "seed" containing the blueprints for a range of devices greater than the total the human race has yet built, along with replicating assemblers able to make any or all of them.

Reference: http://www.foresight.org/EOC/EOC_Chapter_6.html

eburacum45 · #47 (**permalink**) 22-December-2004, 10:27 AM

This is the way I see human-built interstellar craft in a thousand years time or so;
http://tinypic.com/yijo9

the ice shield at the front shadows the whole ship to protect it from collision with the interstellar medium; most of the rest of the ship is fuel, probably using antimatter catalysed fusion to accelerate.
I'll add a few more hatches and access points before I make it available as a 3ds model, perhaps a temporary mast poking out beyond the shield to observe forward (although this mast would wear away quite quickly).

captain swoop · #48 (**permalink**) 22-December-2004, 01:07 PM

How do you renew the ice shield as it wears away?

SkepticJ · #49 (**permalink**) 22-December-2004, 02:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by eburacum45

This is the way I see human-built interstellar craft in a thousand years time or so;
http://tinypic.com/yijo9

the ice shield at the front shadows the whole ship to protect it from collision with the interstellar medium; most of the rest of the ship is fuel, probably using antimatter catalysed fusion to accelerate.
I'll add a few more hatches and access points before I make it available as a 3ds model, perhaps a temporary mast poking out beyond the shield to observe forward (although this mast would wear away quite quickly).

Hmmm, I see them more like this.--> http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/bpp/

Actually this is probably wrong to. Think about what people of 1850 thought the 21 century would be like. "What size would the trains be? How do you clean the streets of all that horse sh*t? How do your ship's hulls go across the Atlantic at such great speed without melting from the friction?

You see, they didn't, couldn't conceive of jet planes and gas cars.

eburacum45 · #50 (**permalink**) 22-December-2004, 05:41 PM

To repair the shield a simple spray of water every now and then should suffice; but there might be other good materials, like aerogel or even wood like the shields used by the Chinese space program.

Yes; advanced propulsion concepts are fun; see here in particular.
http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/bpp/TM-107289.htm

but many of these concepts will need shields too.

Darasen · #51 (**permalink**) 22-December-2004, 06:09 PM

A friend of mines dad is the guy who made the Mork & Mindy egg ship ![/quote]

ZaphodBeeblebrox · #52 (**permalink**) 22-December-2004, 07:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Darasen

A friend of mines dad is the guy who made the Mork & Mindy egg ship !

[/quote]

I'd say he was a Visionary, but I've Always Assumed he thought it up, while he was High and Eating a Hard-Boiled Egg.

A Little Bit of Both, perhaps ...

:wink:

JohnD · #53 (**permalink**) 23-December-2004, 12:11 AM

All,
Pah! Miniscule, Paltry, Small Beer!

The Ultimate Space Ships have to be the GSVs (General Systems Vehicles) of Ian M. Banks' Culture. Sentient and autonomous, they are measured in kilometers and contain millions of humans and sentient machines.

Dyson spheres and even Banks' Orbitals, that like GSVs possess Minds, do not count as 'space ships' as they are not designed for movement. So even though they are bigger than GSVs, they cannot be included in the count.

Anyone who has not read Banks is in for a treat. There is even a discussion of the Culture by Banks on the 'Net - it may be found in several places so just Google for "A Few Notes on the Culture".

John

AndrewGPaul · #54 (**permalink**) 23-December-2004, 01:56 AM

And most of those ships aren't even solid! the actual 'hull' of the ship is surrounded with atmosphere(s),and sometimes other, physically unconnected, bits of the ship. The whole thing is held to gether with forcefields, up to several kilometres out from the actual 'hull'.

captain swoop · #55 (**permalink**) 23-December-2004, 10:13 AM

Wasn't the STTNG Enterprise held together with forcefields?

Makgraf · #56 (**permalink**) 25-December-2004, 06:18 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JohnD

All,
Pah! Miniscule, Paltry, Small Beer!

The Ultimate Space Ships have to be the GSVs (General Systems Vehicles) of Ian M. Banks' Culture. Sentient and autonomous, they are measured in kilometers and contain millions of humans and sentient machines.

Dyson spheres and even Banks' Orbitals, that like GSVs possess Minds, do not count as 'space ships' as they are not designed for movement. So even though they are bigger than GSVs, they cannot be included in the count.

Anyone who has not read Banks is in for a treat. There is even a discussion of the Culture by Banks on the 'Net - it may be found in several places so just Google for "A Few Notes on the Culture".

John

The main thing I enjoyed about Banks' ships were their names. They'd have funny names like "Funny, It Worked Last Time..." or "No More Mister Nice Guy". I wasn't otherwise taken with the Culture novels, I just didn't grok them. If you're going to read them I'd caution highly against Excession and whatever the games one was named.

Togusa · #57 (**permalink**) 26-December-2004, 01:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by captain swoop

Wasn't the STTNG Enterprise held together with forcefields?

Yep. IIRC, the ship had an actual framework, but the frame members contained waveguides through which energy from the ship's structural integrity field coursed. The frame gave the ship its overall shape and structure at low speeds, while the SIF held the whole thing together under operational stresses, such as travelling under warp speed.

The Voyager (from Star Trek: Voyager) also used a structural integrity field, but there was an additional reason that the ship needed it: Voyager had the ability to land on planets, and it did so in at least a couple of epsiodes; without the SIF, the ship would have collapsed under its own weight the second it touched down and put weight on its landing pads.

SkepticJ · #58 (**permalink**) 10-January-2005, 10:54 PM

Here's two of my ships. The top one is an Idatonian Arcology ship(length 562+km) and the bottom one is an Idatonian Defender(length about 3.7km)

Can't wait until my drawing and painting classes.

AstroSmurf · #59 (**permalink**) 11-January-2005, 11:47 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JohnD

Miniscule, Paltry, Small Beer!

Incidentally, this would be a good name for a GSV.

SSJPabs · #60 (**permalink**) 11-January-2005, 12:10 PM

Hey SkepticJ, can you tell me what they are made of?

BTW, some of the greatest ship designs I've seen are from the video game RPG series Star Ocean. Tri-Ace's technological designs are mindblowingly beautiful. Just check out the opening movie of Star Ocean 3.

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