Designing a starship...

[Warped9]

What I'm working on is two pronged. The first part is that this is literature, not film or television (although, would be nice ). The second part is that I'm actually bothering to draw this up.

The ship's A.I. would have something of a personality, partly to facilitate interaction. Physics aside (it is SF) this is a fast relativistic starship able to get really close to light speed. My initial concept for the drive was utilizing negative energy or negative gravity. But awhile ago I came across something actually being theorized today that could sound more legit: a gravitomagnetic drive.

 

[Shazam!]

I wish they'd stop designing spaceships to look sleek and aerodynamic. Star Trek ships in particular seem to be getting flatter and/or 'rounder' every week.

 

[SilentP]

The ship's A.I. would have something of a personality, partly to facilitate interaction. Physics aside (it is SF) this is a fast relativistic starship able to get really close to light speed.

So I'm guessing that if you're doing an interstellar/system SF, that the crew would be in stasis for the journey's involved? This would explain the logic of having a shipboard AI running the ship, keeping an eye on the ship's surrounding while the crew's in deep sleep.

I wish they'd stop designing spaceships to look sleek and aerodynamic. Star Trek ships in particular seem to be getting flatter and/or 'rounder' every week.

Agreed symmetry (especially rotational) is about the only pleasing aesthetic that would have any design value.

 

[Warped9]

I wish they'd stop designing spaceships to look sleek and aerodynamic. Star Trek ships in particular seem to be getting flatter and/or 'rounder' every week.

Well if you're going substantially slower than light then you don't need anything sleek. But it turns out that if you're traveling around 90c or better then it pays to have something sleek. I researched this and it turns out that because interstellar space isn't a true vacuum then at high relativistic speeds all the stuff floating out there begins to exert a pressure on the ship's hull. A sleeker shape helps cut through it with less effort.

 

[Shazam!]

Yes, but we're not really building them.

 

[Warped9]

Yes, but we're not really building them.

But if you want it to be credible then you lean towards what is known. And this isn't a Trek starship and it won't look like one. I'm more influenced by some of what I've seen by SF illustrators over the years rather than film and television.

And based on the speculative science I've been reading then there's tech in my future setting that exceeds what Trek has shown. One writer I'm greatly influenced by is Wil McCarthy.

Other aspects of my setting are that humanity has colonized only a very few worlds, and some of them had to be terraformed. They're also within a forty or so light year distance of Earth. Also the average lifespan has been extended to about 120 years. This is also set furthur ahead than Trek.

Alien life has been found, but no alien intelligence...yet.

 

[C.E. Evans]

I wish they'd stop designing spaceships to look sleek and aerodynamic. Star Trek ships in particular seem to be getting flatter and/or 'rounder' every week.

Well if you're going substantially slower than light then you don't need anything sleek. But it turns out that if you're traveling around 90c or better then it pays to have something sleek. I researched this and it turns out that because interstellar space isn't a true vacuum then at high relativistic speeds all the stuff floating out there begins to exert a pressure on the ship's hull. A sleeker shape helps cut through it with less effort.

And then there's the long-held idea that the shape of a ship's warp envelope is determined by the shape of its hull. The sleeker a ship's hull, the sleeker its warp envelope, and the easier a ship can move through the various layers of subspace.

IMO, though, a starship really be can be any shape--from the simplistic cube and sphere-designs favored by the Borg to the fairly sleek designs favored by the Federation--as its sometimes less an issue of practicality than of cultural aesthetics to an advanced society like the Federation (to a less advanced society, however, practicality will win out over aesthtics). But if the shape of a vessel really isn't important from an aerodynamic perspective, you can have a ship that's basically a shoebox or something that's inspired by airplanes and they'd be about the same...

 

[Warped9]

^^ Well since this isn't Trek and I've no FTL and warp envelope to be concerned with that wasn't my rational.

But whenever a society masters a technology sufficiently then aesthetic considerations do come into play in regard to the things we build. We do it all the time. Early tech is crude and rudimentary in form, but as the proficiency improves we not only employ form-follows-function, but we also began molding the form to suit our tastes.

 

[C.E. Evans]

^^^
That's pretty much what I said about a starship being any shape if the technology is advanced enough.

 

[Irishman]

It's all great to want to keep humans in charge of things - but first time you come across an enemy with ships that are piloted - and who weapons are *targeted* - by an computer...you are gonna be outmatched.

When your weapons officer takes many seconds to target weapons - and only after he/she has been ordered by the captain to - against a ship that has targeted and fired in the first *nanoseconds* it encountered you - you are gonna be toast. Your ship is gonna be a vapor cloud before your commanding officer can even say "fire." Hell, you are gonna be toast before your human crew has time to *think* "We need to fire weapons..."

And by then - assuming you *weren't* completely taken out - buy the time you target and fire back - the AI-piloted ship is gonna have anticipated and moved out of the way. Or seen the weapons coming - and moved before a mere human pilot's brain could even register "we need to move". Same for trying to get out of the way yourself when ultra-fast AI-targeted weapons have already been launched against you. And odds are they are smart weapons - and can follow you and adjust to any move a human (or other biological-based) pilot can make faster than the human pilot could make them.

Computers are just faster. Much faster. (And Trek's clumsy 2-D flat keyboard-based interfaces, where you have to enter complex commands an moves by *typing* in numbers and letters...just seem horribly antiquated an inefficient compared to a machine than can just think it an the ship moves...)

If you want to keep a human in the loop - fine. But I would make the human crew cyberneticly enhanced (and when you consider that any future human starship crew is likely to be post-human, it seems likely that they *would* be) - and I would have a augmented human-linked to an AI pilot the ship and fire the weapons. That way you get the best of both worlds.

At the very least - I'd replace the clumsy keyboard interfaces with thought-controls. But even those will be slower than an AI-controlled vessel - or even a vessel where a cyberneticly-augmented human is linked to an AI. (I am assuming some sort of tech magic where the cybernetic enhancements would allow the human to think as fast as the computer...though that would probably mean that some of the human's thought processes are ran on or in the computer...)

I really like your idea about the AI. What if you had a weapons officer in charge of weapons systems directly (which were AI-controlled), and the captain simply relayed info about condition alert status changes to the officer and he/she took it from there?

Like, the Captain would either authorize the use of immobilizing/incapacitating weapons, OR destructive weapons. (I.e., we either want prisoners or we don't...target the engines only, Maltz). Then, forthe duration of the engagement, all decisions about how and when and what targets to acquire is between the weapons officer and the AI under his command. You don't need or want a delay of 15-30 seconds before the Captain starts yelling "Fire!" at targets that have moved, already been acquired and engaged, or destroyed.

 

[ngc7293]

The ship's A.I. would have something of a personality, partly to facilitate interaction. Physics aside (it is SF) this is a fast relativistic starship able to get really close to light speed. My initial concept for the drive was utilizing negative energy or negative gravity. But awhile ago I came across something actually being theorized today that could sound more legit: a gravitomagnetic drive.

Since this is a Relativistic ship, you will have to turn around mid-way through your trip to slow down to your target. Unless of coarse this is one of those ships that just "drives" at near light speed and then "parks" in orbit.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I wish they'd stop designing spaceships to look sleek and aerodynamic. Star Trek ships in particular seem to be getting flatter and/or 'rounder' every week.

Well if you're going substantially slower than light then you don't need anything sleek. But it turns out that if you're traveling around 90c or better then it pays to have something sleek. I researched this and it turns out that because interstellar space isn't a true vacuum then at high relativistic speeds all the stuff floating out there begins to exert a pressure on the ship's hull. A sleeker shape helps cut through it with less effort.

I thought the whole point of forcefields and navigational deflectors was to KEEP things from hitting your ship? Some of these ships even have TWO deflectors now. Where's the advantage of having a navigational deflector if you're just going to physically power dive through nebulas and dust clouds anyway?

 

[Albertese]

Fascinating. Do have an idea for how your ship will be shaped yet? Or is it too early to post your sketches?

--Alex

 

[publiusr]

Now, in a recent issue of Science Illustrated, there was a cover article on starships, one that needed a lot of power from a laser station. I also remember hearing about natural lasers, and how one might be generated by dumping an asteroid into a star.

Nice site
http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/

My favorites
http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/enginelist.php#Nuclear_Salt-water_Rocket
http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/enginelist.php#Solid_Core_Nuclear_Thermal_Rocket~NTR-SOLID/DUMBO

This drive table should be helpful to you
http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/enginelist.php#The_Drive_Table

Look how well the 90% solution NSWR does.

For interstellar probes, my choice would be a scaled up New Horizons mission with either/or NSWR/Dumbo as the Centaur replacement.

The actual spacecraft would be the AIMSTAR payload
http://www.engr.psu.edu/antimatter/Papers/AIMStar_99.pdf

Here is your first real starship.

You send nuclear electric craft to the solar foci of both our star and the star to be visited to have solar foci communications
http://www.tsgc.utexas.edu/archive/design/foci/
http://www.indiadaily.com/editorial/11067.asp


http://www-personal.edfac.usyd.edu.au/staff/souters/space/missions.html