Imagine the Enterprise, over again!

[Maxillius]

That's a nice idea, except it should be pointed out that in space, a collision hazard is more a matter of direction than distance. There's no atmosphere to slow things down, so the particles will maintain their velocity and intensity over just about any distance.

So maybe the safe thing to do would be to overshoot the populated portion of a star system and come out of warp pointing away from it (while making sure you weren't pointing at any other inhabited system you knew of), then loop around and come in at sublight.

Come to think of it, though, I believe the particles would not be particularly hazardous to inhabited planets. After all, Earth gets bombarded by relativistic particles all the time -- cosmic rays -- and they're safely absorbed by the atmosphere. Not to mention all the meteoroids and bolides that burn up in the atmosphere on a regular basis. The atmosphere is a pretty effective deflector shield for the planet. So this would really only be a danger to other ships and stations, which are much smaller targets and much less likely (though not impossible) to be hit accidentally.

True, the planet's occupants are quite safe, but any orbiting habitats and satellites wouldn't be. Overshooting would be a good idea, but dropping the rings which would be a good 2/3rds of the vessel's mass would still be prudent for intrasystem mobility. Think of it like a semi truck dropping its trailer.

Why does it need to pop up? Having a bridge on the top of a ship is a custom from old naval vessels where the commanders needed to have a high vantage point to see what was going on, but it's just an affectation for a spaceship, and a very unwise one, since putting the command center on the surface of the ship makes it vulnerable to attack, radiation, meteoroid impacts, etc. As long as you've got sensors and viewscreens, there's no good reason to expose your command center like that. Heck, even submarines use periscopes. Ideally the vital areas like the bridge should be fairly deep inside the ship.

Strictly speaking it doesn't *have to* pop up, but it's there to keep the designers happy. The ship's core is basically just a big can with a couple windows and some ring support pylons. Engineers like to put little flourishes in designs and the least I could do is give them a bridge module that elevates 4 feet to give an outside view to the bridge crew. In a battle situation, it goes back down and the bridge egress lift locks out in the event of an intruder alert. By the way, the lift is added security due to it being the only way in or out. Also, in the event of an emergency, the bridge module can eject and keep the bridge crew alive long enough to dock with a shuttle.

As for the rings that are left behind, I thought about leaving them under computer control or having a minimal crew stay behind in a pod just in case they need to be moved. Maybe a computer can be trusted to move it to where it's asked, but if hostiles are around, I wouldn't want to park my car with the windows down and the keys in it. So, if needed, a habitat/control pod will drop from the center ring on a scissored pylon that will sustain a small engineering crew for 2 weeks. This pod will be about twice the size of a large tour bus and will get its power from the shuttle that docks with it. This shuttle will also be the source of power for the rings while the ship is away. Obviously the range of this situation will be limited but it should be sufficient to get out of harm's way. But usually, in a non-hostile situation, the pod's computer can handle monitoring and stationkeeping duties.

 

[largo]

firstly, orbiting habitats and satellites get hit by the same near-c cosmic rays that planets do. so if they're good for that, they're good for whatever.

otherwise, the whole system is likely to lie in a single plane, right? including habitats and the like, because anything not in the same orbital plane is a large and probably pointless delta-v. so just come in over or under that plane by a bit, and you're in like flynn.

 

[darrenw]

has Dr white and nasa ever look into antimatter and matter power yet to give warp drive extra power i no we need negative vacuum energy to get the warp drive to work but it be idea i no we dont have Dilithium Crystals to help aswell but it doesnt exist. But i no that Deuterium is real they can be found in our oceans

 

[USS Triumphant]

I was thinking about this thread on the ride home, yesterday, and just like with all of MadMan1701A's art threads, I'm really looking forward to seeing his design here finished. (I'd say 33% of the reason I visit the Fan Art forum is MadMan1701A's threads. 34% is everyone else's stuff. And the final 33% is watching to see if Kaiser will ever tell someone that their art just plain sucks out loud. )

And I have a suggestion/request for MadMan1701A for after this ship is done. No hurry, no pressure, and if you want to work on some other ideas you've got first, I'm sure I'll like those, too. But can we please see a lineage for the Ent-A through Ent-E, assuming this ship as the 1701 that they evolved from?

 

[Christopher]

Strictly speaking it doesn't *have to* pop up, but it's there to keep the designers happy. The ship's core is basically just a big can with a couple windows and some ring support pylons. Engineers like to put little flourishes in designs and the least I could do is give them a bridge module that elevates 4 feet to give an outside view to the bridge crew. In a battle situation, it goes back down and the bridge egress lift locks out in the event of an intruder alert.

Four feet below the hull is hardly a sufficient depth in a battle situation. Ideally you want your most vital areas as deep in the core of the ship as possible. Also, it's not just about battle. The hazards of micrometeoroids and cosmic radiation are constants.

I can see the aesthetic value of having some kind of detail on the hull, but does it have to be the bridge? Why not an observation gallery or rec room? Or an outboard science lab that can be easily isolated/jettisoned in case something hazardous to the ship is activated/unleashed/created? (Better than all those Voyager episodes where they examined unknown and potentially explosive alien devices two meters from the warp core.)

By the way, the lift is added security due to it being the only way in or out.

Only one way out of the bridge? Sounds like a bad idea to have no emergency exit. There's a reason why every Trek bridge design since 1973 has had at least two exits.

firstly, orbiting habitats and satellites get hit by the same near-c cosmic rays that planets do. so if they're good for that, they're good for whatever.

It's a matter of degree. Being hit by the occasional stray relativistic particle is one thing, but being hit by a whole concentrated storm of them at once is another -- like the difference between getting hit by a pebble and getting hit by a cannonball.

otherwise, the whole system is likely to lie in a single plane, right? including habitats and the like, because anything not in the same orbital plane is a large and probably pointless delta-v. so just come in over or under that plane by a bit, and you're in like flynn.

Mostly, but not entirely. In our own system, that's generally true of the planets, less so of the Main Belt asteroids and Jupiter Trojans, while Kuiper Belt objects are at all sorts of inclinations. And exoplanet studies suggest that other planetary systems are mostly coplanar, but there could be exceptions.

But of course space is 3-dimensional. You seem to be thinking in terms of a ship whose trajectory is pretty much parallel to the orbital plane but ducking below or rising above it, like a jet trying to avoid a cloud bank. But there's no reason a ship's trajectory coming into a system couldn't be at a very steep angle to the orbital plane. For instance, a ship coming to Sol system from Polaris would be coming in almost perpendicularly to the orbital plane from galactic north. Similarly, a ship from Alpha Centauri would be coming in at a steep angle from galactic south.

We're conditioned to think of the orbital plane as "flat" and to define things as "above" or "below" it based on our planetary instincts, but that's a misleading habit in space. In a planetary system, "down" is toward the star. Period. (Or if you're close enough to a single planet or other object that its gravity dominates, then "down" is toward that object.)

 

[Maxillius]

Four feet below the hull is hardly a sufficient depth in a battle situation. Ideally you want your most vital areas as deep in the core of the ship as possible. Also, it's not just about battle. The hazards of micrometeoroids and cosmic radiation are constants.

I can see the aesthetic value of having some kind of detail on the hull, but does it have to be the bridge? Why not an observation gallery or rec room? Or an outboard science lab that can be easily isolated/jettisoned in case something hazardous to the ship is activated/unleashed/created? (Better than all those Voyager episodes where they examined unknown and potentially explosive alien devices two meters from the warp core.)

Actually, The bridge module *extends* 4 feet above the surface, and that's only the roofline. I just wanted to let a bit of starlight into the bridge. It's purely aesthetic since the exterior windows are right up next to the ceiling on the bridge and only anyone on the upper ring by the entrance or on the command riser would be able to see out. I'm actually thinking of something very similar to Destiny's bridge, but without the half-million years of rust and with Star Trek computer interfaces. When it retracts, it's flush with the rest of the ship without even orange warning paint marking off where it is. The only way anyone would know it does that is to see it up or see it coming up.

As for making other parts of the ship do that, hey, why not. Heck, a retractable roof over the hydroponics bay and a pop-out observatory section for entertaining visiting dignitaries could be neat additions.

Only one way out of the bridge? Sounds like a bad idea to have no emergency exit. There's a reason why every Trek bridge design since 1973 has had at least two exits.

I'm going to nitpick this part. In TOS, we never saw the bridge taken over by anyone that wasn't allowed in. It was never stormed and even in TMP when the order to clear the bridge was given, everyone made for a single lift. In TNG, there were a couple times when both bridge entrances were used to take the ship (Or was that Voyager?). Also, the majority of intruders to the bridge BEAMED in, so even having one door wouldn't've helped in those cases. Having one entry/exit point provides a security bottleneck. And as I mentioned previously, the bridge module can separate in an emergency. Which would you prefer, two entrances into the bridge so that your marines can storm the place to take the ship back or a detachable bridge that can be jettisoned with the invaders aboard and just run the ship from auxiliary control after the bridge module is disabled/destroyed?

Kirk could've let the Klingons beam right into the bridge, jettisoned it, then blew *that* up instead of scuttling the whole ship.

 

[Christopher]

Actually, The bridge module *extends* 4 feet above the surface, and that's only the roofline. I just wanted to let a bit of starlight into the bridge.

Which is problematical if the star happens to give off a lethal radiation flare...

One thing that science fiction rarely acknowledges, and that's hard for us ground-dwellers protected by dozens of kilometers of atmosphere to grasp, is just how intense the radiation in outer space is. It's a constant hazard, and judging from what the Voyager probe that recently left the heliopause has reported back, it's even more intense in interstellar space. So having a window to look at the stars is a rather more problematical matter in a spaceship than it is on the ground. That window would have to have pretty good radiation shielding.

It's purely aesthetic since the exterior windows are right up next to the ceiling on the bridge and only anyone on the upper ring by the entrance or on the command riser would be able to see out.

Would they? Have you ever been in a lighted room and looked out the window at the night sky? What do you see? You see a reflection of the inside of the room, because it's a whole lot brighter than the stars. Not to mention that if your eyes are acclimated to the light, the stars would be too dim for you to see anyway even if the reflections weren't there. So the sci-fi conceit of visible stars out the window of a brightly lit room is a complete and utter lie. You might as well have mirrors there instead of windows. The only way you can see the stars through the window is if you turn out the lights inside and wait a couple of minutes for your pupils to dilate -- which is not something you're going to want to do in a spaceship command center.

One can rationalize the impossible windows in film and TV SF by assuming they're using some advanced technology to amplify the starlight and damp reflections -- but in that case, why not just use viewscreens that simulate windows?

As for making other parts of the ship do that, hey, why not. Heck, a retractable roof over the hydroponics bay and a pop-out observatory section for entertaining visiting dignitaries could be neat additions.

I'm not sure why a ship needs moving parts, unless there's some reason to have a component that extends out beyond the radius of the warp rings. It's the same problem with Voyager's hinged nacelles -- why not just build them at that angle to begin with?

I'm going to nitpick this part. In TOS, we never saw the bridge taken over by anyone that wasn't allowed in.

So? A second door would surely have the same security in place as the first door.

even in TMP when the order to clear the bridge was given, everyone made for a single lift.

Actually, no, they didn't:

http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/tmp2/tmphd2435.jpg

(If that link doesn't go through, it's the top right image on this page of thumbnails.)

Also, the majority of intruders to the bridge BEAMED in, so even having one door wouldn't've helped in those cases.

I'm not talking about repelling intruders. I'm talking about the need to evacuate in an emergency. If the bridge is on fire and the turbolift is damaged, then you're going to desperately need an alternate exit route.

 

[FatherRob]

I've long felt that the bridge, properly situated in the heart of the ship (saucer, in the Trek case) would be best. You can always create the equivalent of a pilothouse or flying bridge on an upper deck or forward compartment for use if you genuinely needed windows.

 

[MadMan1701A]

Interesting discussion, guys.

All of this is making me think about windows. Originally I was going to have a bunch on the outside of my habitation area, but I think I might just do a few banks of large windows that would be like dark observation areas. 2 on each side of the ship would be plenty, I would think.

About the bridge... I'm going to go with the idea that it's right about in the center of the habitable part of the ship.

Going to start modeling some more tonight...

-Ricky

 

[MadMan1701A]

I was thinking about this thread on the ride home, yesterday, and just like with all of MadMan1701A's art threads, I'm really looking forward to seeing his design here finished. (I'd say 33% of the reason I visit the Fan Art forum is MadMan1701A's threads. 34% is everyone else's stuff. And the final 33% is watching to see if Kaiser will ever tell someone that their art just plain sucks out loud. )

And I have a suggestion/request for MadMan1701A for after this ship is done. No hurry, no pressure, and if you want to work on some other ideas you've got first, I'm sure I'll like those, too. But can we please see a lineage for the Ent-A through Ent-E, assuming this ship as the 1701 that they evolved from?

Thanks.

That's an interesting idea... I would think that as technology advances, it would start to look more like the Enterprise that we're used to. I'll be thinking about that.

-Ricky

 

[darrenw]

Interesting discussion, guys.

All of this is making me think about windows. Originally I was going to have a bunch on the outside of my habitation area, but I think I might just do a few banks of large windows that would be like dark observation areas. 2 on each side of the ship would be plenty, I would think.

About the bridge... I'm going to go with the idea that it's right about in the center of the habitable part of the ship.

Going to start modeling some more tonight...

-Ricky

i wanna ask about habitation does it have gravity

 

[MadMan1701A]

Yep, they've got artificial gravity. The decks are oriented perpendicular to the direction of travel, like Christopher had suggested earlier. The idea was that older ships would have relied on their thrust/acceleration for gravity.

With the FTL Warp Drive, I thought that maybe the tech for real artificial gravity might be an offshoot from that.

Modeling some things now... pics in a while.

 

[darrenw]

Yep, they've got artificial gravity. The decks are oriented perpendicular to the direction of travel, like Christopher had suggested earlier. The idea was that older ships would have relied on their thrust/acceleration for gravity.

With the FTL Warp Drive, I thought that maybe the tech for real artificial gravity might be an offshoot from that.

Modeling some things now... pics in a while.

oh awsome i heard that on this http://www.st-v-sw.net/Obsidian/Martin/gravity.htm about Early human-built interstellar ships used rotating centrifuges to mimic the effects of gravity but Starfleet vessels used antigravity and Daedalus Class used antigravity generators given the absence of rotating centrifuges in their hull geometries.

 

[largo]

otherwise, the whole system is likely to lie in a single plane, right? including habitats and the like, because anything not in the same orbital plane is a large and probably pointless delta-v. so just come in over or under that plane by a bit, and you're in like flynn.

Mostly, but not entirely. In our own system, that's generally true of the planets, less so of the Main Belt asteroids and Jupiter Trojans, while Kuiper Belt objects are at all sorts of inclinations. And exoplanet studies suggest that other planetary systems are mostly coplanar, but there could be exceptions.

space is big. pull back far enough from the solar system, and its a disc. everything you'd care about is in that thin little disc. everything outside that disc is so sparse and so separated by vast distances as to be inconsequential.

But of course space is 3-dimensional. You seem to be thinking in terms of a ship whose trajectory is pretty much parallel to the orbital plane but ducking below or rising above it, like a jet trying to avoid a cloud bank. But there's no reason a ship's trajectory coming into a system couldn't be at a very steep angle to the orbital plane.

and you seem to be thinking that warp travel is all straight line. you're going to need to be able to adjust course to come into a system anyway, so why not optimize your arrival trajectory?

really, its a manufactured tempest. don't drop out of warp in the sky over a major city, and it'll be fine. if you collected all the free atoms in a column a hundred meters wide between here and sirius, it'd mass about a thousandth of a gram. unless deliberately focused and directed towards a target at relativistic velocity, that's just not that dangerous. and if you assume it *is* focused by the warp effect, its trivial to point it somewhere harmless in a volume as large as a solar system.

 

[Christopher]

space is big. pull back far enough from the solar system, and its a disc. everything you'd care about is in that thin little disc.

Yes, but we're not talking about being far away from the system, we're talking about the safest way to arrive in the system given the hazard of the particles ejected forward from a ship coming out of warp. So this is a close-range sort of conversation.

and you seem to be thinking that warp travel is all straight line. you're going to need to be able to adjust course to come into a system anyway, so why not optimize your arrival trajectory?

First off, I've already explained that if we're talking about current Alcubierre-based warp theory, then it probably would be a straight-line sort of thing -- the direction in which a warp bubble propagates is the same as the direction the ship was moving when it initiated the warp bubble. In order to change course, you'd have to drop out of warp and reorient yourself.

Second, optimizing your arrival trajectory is exactly what we're talking about here. But in order to know how to optimize it, you need to know what the hazards are. The first step is defining the dangers, the second is determining how to minimize or avert them. And I have already offered at least two clear suggestions on how to do so: One, come in at a steep enough angle to the system's disk that your "particle forewash" (to coin a term) will only intersect it at a narrow point, minimizing the chances it will hit anything, and two, overshoot the system and neutralize warp pointing away from it. So I don't know what gave you the impression that I wasn't already talking about optimized trajectories.

really, its a manufactured tempest. don't drop out of warp in the sky over a major city, and it'll be fine. if you collected all the free atoms in a column a hundred meters wide between here and sirius, it'd mass about a thousandth of a gram. unless deliberately focused and directed towards a target at relativistic velocity, that's just not that dangerous.

But that's the whole point: it would be at relativistic velocity. The longer your travel, the more the energy of the particles caught in the warp builds up.

http://www.universetoday.com/93882/warp-drives-may-come-with-a-killer-downside/#ixzz2FaZsXDuM

“Any people at the destination,” the team’s paper concludes, “would be gamma ray and high energy particle blasted into oblivion due to the extreme blueshifts for [forward] region particles.”

In other words, don’t expect much of a welcome party.

Another thing the team found is that the amount of energy released is dependent on the length of the superluminal journey, but there is potentially no limit on its intensity.

“Interestingly, the energy burst released upon arriving at the destination does not have an upper limit,” McMonigal told Universe Today in an email. “You can just keep on traveling for longer and longer distances to increase the energy that will be released as much as you like, one of the odd effects of General Relativity. Unfortunately, even for very short journeys the energy released is so large that you would completely obliterate anything in front of you.”

It sounds like this is the same kind of runaway feedback loop you get in wormholes if you don't have exotic matter to stabilize them -- the potential for the energy of the particles to ramp up without limit. So hell yes, we are talking about a very, very dangerous effect here.

and if you assume it *is* focused by the warp effect, its trivial to point it somewhere harmless in a volume as large as a solar system.

Not necessarily. The article continues:

So how to avoid disintegrating your port of call? It may be as simple as just aiming your vessel a bit off to the side… or, it may not. The research only focused on the planar space in front of and behind the warp bubble; deadly postwarp particle beams could end up blown in all directions!

So this may be a bigger problem than we thought....

And yes, of course you can point it somewhere harmless (maybe), but the point is that you need to know where the harmless directions are. You'd need a detailed, updated map of every inhabited object or vessel in the system you were approaching. Sure, the odds of hitting anything by accident in the vastness of space are minuscule, but the danger is so great that it would be reckless not to be aware of the risk and take every feasible step to minimize it. When you're controlling a ship with the power to annihilate an entire civilization just by slowing down, it is not okay to shrug and say "Meh, it'll work itself out."

 

[largo]

First off, I've already explained that if we're talking about current Alcubierre-based warp theory, then it probably would be a straight-line sort of thing -- the direction in which a warp bubble propagates is the same as the direction the ship was moving when it initiated the warp bubble. In order to change course, you'd have to drop out of warp and reorient yourself.

poppycock, fields are malleable. while we're all speculating on unproven theories and technologies...

 

[Christopher]

Some of us in this thread have chosen to speculate based on existing theories, to work within the constraints of that framework as a creative exercise. It allows more focused speculation than just making up stuff in a vacuum, and the choice to work within a set of constraints can be more creatively challenging and rewarding. That's the spirit in which I offer my discussions of what real physics says. I'm not trying to be negative or shoot things down; I see that some of the designers here are interested in basing their models on Alcubierre warp theory and I'm providing information about what that theory says in order to help them. Okay?

Besides, "unproven" is a meaningless term when talking about scientific theories. "Proof" is not a concept scientists use; theories are derived from observations and make predictions that can be tested to assess their usefulness. The Alcubierre warp drive is a solution of the equations of General Relativity, a theory that has been verified by countless experiments and observations. It's not some new, separate theory, it's just an esoteric consequence of a theory that was formulated nearly a century ago and has been overwhelmingly supported by the evidence. We know that the GR equations are a reliable description of how space, time, energy, and gravity work in nearly every observed situation (except on the quantum scale), and Alcubierre merely calculated how to apply those equations to create a spacetime metric that would behave like a warp drive. So it's more solid than mere speculation.

 

[Psion]

But Christopher, I'm not sure why you've come to the conclusion that Alcubierre's solutions imply a strictly straight-line course. I've looked at White's documents coming out of NASA's Advanced Propulsion Labs, and it looks like the field effect from the warp drive is localized. While the drive itself doesn't have any obvious means of steering, if the ship is turned using old-fashioned rockets while in flight, the drive field should adjust accordingly, and the ship will move on a new heading.

 

[sojourner]

First off, I've already explained that if we're talking about current Alcubierre-based warp theory, then it probably would be a straight-line sort of thing -- the direction in which a warp bubble propagates is the same as the direction the ship was moving when it initiated the warp bubble. In order to change course, you'd have to drop out of warp and reorient yourself.

poppycock, fields are malleable. while we're all speculating on unproven theories and technologies...

Wow, the "nuh-uh" defense. Very nice.

 

[largo]

I see that some of the designers here are interested in basing their models on Alcubierre warp theory and I'm providing information about what that theory says in order to help them. Okay?

of course its okay. and i'm disagreeing with you. okay?