New Project - The "Quad"

[Herkimer Jitty]

D) is still an issue.

No matter what the technology, a tube is still a tube and a cylinder is still a cylinder.

Now, if the turbocars were spherical... this would be no problem.

 

[MadMan1701A]

Hey guys...

I should have been clearer with what i meant about the cleaner arrangement for the turbolift cars.

I think they only move vertical or horizontal... I never liked the idea of them moving sideways, diagonal, or anthing like that. I guess maybe they just have staircases in those angles struts, I don't know.

 

[GilmourD]

A fair point. (about the X style having identical pylons) But given the inertial dampeners and "gravity plating" I see no real engineering problem with a diagonal turbolift shaft.

Well, think of it this way. Try and design an elevator shaft that is angled into one of those pylons that
A) keeps the box shaped or cylinder shaped car upright
B) allows you to stop at different decks in the pylon
C) doesn't use excessive stair stepping
and
D) transitions smoothly to a standard vertical or horizontal turboshaft.

Why would the car need to be upright? The artificial gravity plates are in the car, not the shaft. You could turn the car (or the whole ship) "upside down" and nobody would know the difference. Therefore, the car should be able to be on an angle relative to the rest of the ship.

 

[FrankR]

You know I was just toying with an design similar to this; but with the warp nacells & engineering hulls being on mission swappable components.

one mission might have two nacell pallets; or one nacelle pallet and an A-WAK esk sensor pallet or cargo module adapter.
etc, etc.

I was going to extend the idea to the primary hull and have swapable components there also... but that wouldn't work as well for you're design.

-frank

 

[sojourner]

A) Your shaft should echo the shape of the car, otherwise you are wasting internal volume.
B) If your going to use turboshafts it would be nice if they stopped on decks occasionally
C) Still a waste of internal volume. (see A and B for why you diagonal is a problem)
D) Inertial dampers may help the occupants of the car, but not the mechanicals required to make the transition from an angled shaft to a vertical/horizontal shaft.

To make it work the way you envision it, the cars would need to be shaped like spheres. The reason for this is so if moving in an angled shaft, the relative floor of the car could remain parallel to the decks of the ship allowing ease of ingress/egress at different decks. The spherical shape also allows the transition from angled to vertical/horizontal shafts without complicated corners or awkward mechanisms to change the orientation of the car. The down side is you would be wasting huge amounts of volume on this sphere based turbo shaft in relation to a cylinder based turboshaft. It's not elegeant.

 

[MadMan1701A]

Hey guys. I just wanted to let everyone know I was still here. It's been a busy few days...

Any, I have been looking at this thing, and I don't know if I still like it. I'm thinking of going on and starting back up on the Constellation, if I have time. Once I get the parts built for that one, they should be easily portable. What do you guys think?

 

[Herkimer Jitty]

Punch it.

 

[sojourner]

Do what holds your interest!

 

[Neumann]

Truly Excellent!

 

[Praetor]

I look forward to when you get back to this... the quad was probably my favorite of the ships from the Vulcan task force. While the Stargazer approach is cool, I do hope you'll consider making a more "accurate" version, too.

 

[DiSiLLUSiON]

^um, in the X layout the secondary hulls and the nacelles have identical hull arrangements as well.
As for this layout, you don't have to have strange angled turboshafts. It's not the thickness that is the problem, it's coming up with a turbo shaft that does not look awkward engineering wise.

If it's the turboshaft you're concerned about, might I suggest a catamaran style hull (like the Akira); then you'd simply have 2 straight turboshafts, it's a lot more elegant then a T-shape. The nacelles need no turbolift at all...