My first attempt at using Illustrator to model ships. It's used as a shuttle and a planetary lander about 50 year's before ENT. I'm working on the interior now. Any criticism (pos/neg) is welcome!
Pre-ENT shuttle/lander WIP
- Thread starter Klondike307
- Start date
Looks neat and would work for airless worlds, but on any planet with an atmosphere all of those unprotected external parts will burn up and destroy the craft. External tanks are especially a bad idea. Your artwork is good, I like it. It's the design that needs to be thought on some more. A minor niggle, round the corners of your windows. It's better engineering for a pressure vessel.
it could work, if it comes in with an aerobraking ballute. jettison that after you've dumped most of your velocity, and use the rockets for final landing.
definitely this. there's a brief and tragic history of square windows in aviation.
What Sojourner said. And I agree about the windows, but the reason is fatigue. It's bad for a non-pressure vessel too.
Actually, there is a way this would survive entry into a world with an atmosphere, and that's to come in at zero ground velocity. All the friction from reentry comes from using the atmosphere for braking from orbital speed. Of course, it's highly unlikely that any ship this would be attached to wouldn't be in orbit.
Actually, there is a way this would survive entry into a world with an atmosphere, and that's to come in at zero ground velocity. All the friction from reentry comes from using the atmosphere for braking from orbital speed. Of course, it's highly unlikely that any ship this would be attached to wouldn't be in orbit.
Not a good answer for a multiple use vehicle. Too many failure modes with chances getting multiplied with each use.
Like I said, it's a work in progress, I really wasn't taking the physical toll of reentry into account when I first started making this. I was mainly just trying to make an interesting looking ship. I'm usually better at taking that sort of thing into account but it's been a few years since I've been here or really done any Trek 3d or 2d modelling. I guess I just have to get back into the swing of things 
Regarding landing through an atmosphere, that big rocket could provide a heat shield for the craft nicely enough - just have it firing ahead of you at "tad above idle" when you enter and its blast wave will be all the heat protection you need.
Although if the engine is good enough for that, there's no need for entry heat in the first place. Just land slowly enough that there is no air friction.
As for the windows, I'd appreciate a view down in a lander; everything else is sort of nice-to-have extra.
Timo Saloniemi
Although if the engine is good enough for that, there's no need for entry heat in the first place. Just land slowly enough that there is no air friction.
As for the windows, I'd appreciate a view down in a lander; everything else is sort of nice-to-have extra.
Timo Saloniemi
This is maybe a little too basic to be just before Ent. This design is much closer to now, having no apparent field technologies and relying on old fashioned rocket style motors. As for the design itself, the only thing I'd change would be to delete the windows around the main body. It makes it look like its almost all passenger space and no internal workings.
Timo, buddy, usually your posts are pretty good and seem pretty well thought out but sometimes you say something like this and I think ... huh!?!
Blast wave as heat shield doesn't make a lick of sense and burning your engine the whole way down is an absurd waste of a limited resource (in this case fuel) which you will need to get back off the planet.
As for a window on the bottom, I think having a chunk of glass right where the craft is designed to take the most punishment is hardly the best idea. Besides the crew safety problems for that, all the disturbance of a landing rocket will throw up such a mess that a window won't be all the helpful anyway. Give me a camera, a radar, and a range-finding laser. I believe that's how the LM was equipped and that seemed to do the job.
Another factor to think about if this thing does land on planets with atmosphere, is that it needs to have a much bulkier fuel tank if it's just using conventional rocketry. If a planet is big enough to hold down an atmosphere, it's going to have enough gravity to provide a serious obstacle to getting up into space in the first place. There's a good reason why it took a Saturn V rocket to get the LM to the moon along with three guys and separate return capsule.
I think maybe this lander is used only for landing on asteroids and small moons. Unless it has a serious anti-gravity device somewhere, which, given the Star Trek tech development could well have existed, indeed probably did exist, by the turn of the 22nd Century.
Perhaps this gig is not so far behind the shuttlepods as we might guess from it's big rocket nozzle after all. Maybe this is the last lander ever built with the LM type landing apparatus.
Actually it reminds me of the sort of thing that I'd find in the old SFC. I think that's a good thing....
--Alex
Sure does. A shock wave in front of your vehicle prevents heat transfer into said vehicle. It's even better than using an ablating solid shield, because this gaseous shield uses ablating material chiefly from an outside source.
It won't be all that limited if the lander is going to be worth anything. For a realistic mission, the vehicle needs to carry enough fuel for at least two go-arounds, which, considering the rocket equation, is way more than twice what's needed for one go-around.
A good way to have that would be a pane angled down at a "waist" section, with a fatter section protecting it from directly below but allowing for an acute downward angle of vision nevertheless.
Depends on where one is landing. And a "mess" is only going to result a second or two before touchdown, unless the pilot senselessly hovers; chopper pilots know a trick or two to avoid brown-outs in situations like that.
The LM only had a radar, and that didn't do much good for the final dozens of meters. Angled windows were the way to go there.
Anyway, the "lunar module" interpretation really describes a vehicle way more primitive than what's being depicted here - in verbal terms, visuals aside. This contraption is supposed to be a shuttle, capable of a SSTO takeoff after the landing: the engine we are seeing is necessarily orders of magnitude better than what we have today, or can even imagine today.
Really, investing in a good engine is a winning approach over saving on the engine and investing in heat shielding. You get better cross-range and accuracy, and you can abort at virtually any point of the landing.
The big engine bell doesn't strike me as a necessarily primitive feature, considering the "star destroyer" bells on that ship in the ENT opening credits, or the super-engine of the Phoenix test rig.
But yes, this could be a simple lunar module as well. In which case I'd definitely keep the windows in the bottom section: if this is to be any improvement over 1960s technology, then most of that lower section is likely to be "payload" rather than "systems".
Timo Saloniemi
I'd like to see some secondary reference for your shock wave/ablative gas/heat shield concept. I'm still not buying it but I'm certainly willing to entertain it if i can read something about it.
Other than that, I stand by my comment that the only way this could dream the impossible dream of carrying enough fuel would be if it has a burly anti-grav unit that does most of the heavy lifting and the rocketry is there for mainly boosting and maneuvering.
But if you can show me some outside source for your blast wave theory I'd love to learn something new!
--Alex
Other than that, I stand by my comment that the only way this could dream the impossible dream of carrying enough fuel would be if it has a burly anti-grav unit that does most of the heavy lifting and the rocketry is there for mainly boosting and maneuvering.
But if you can show me some outside source for your blast wave theory I'd love to learn something new!
--Alex
this is the only reference to the concept i've been able to find so far...
http://www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/Evolution_of_Technology/advanced_reentry/Tech20.htm
http://www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/Evolution_of_Technology/advanced_reentry/Tech20.htm
It's intuitive enough an idea that ol' A.C. Clarke pondered using it in fleshing out the Leonov design for the Hyams movie. They went with a visually simpler to understand (and more impressive) ballute design instead, but the engine itself (exposed in the middle of the ballute) was supposedly protected from Jupiter's atmospheric fiction by its own exhaust.
It doesn't really matter how you generate that shockwave. Some designs use a thin spike protruding ahead of the actual body - a shockwave adjusting technique also researched for drag reduction purposes, or for modifying the sonic boom. A gaseous "spike" created by the rocket engine would have several advantages, most importantly being readily adjustable in flight.
Googling for "aerospike" (not the inside-out engine nozzle design but the drag-fighting physical lance at the front end of an air vehicle - the terminology is confusing) or "air spike" (its gaseous equivalent) should turn up a number of articles. Even the Wikipedia entry links to one on the latter:
http://www.tfd.chalmers.se/~valeri/Ajax/aiaa_2002.pdf
Also check out Leik Myrabo, an early proponent of air spikes, and Yuri Raizer. I think their work making it to AW&ST in the mid-nineties is where I first heard of this concept. Apart from Clarke, of course... But the experiments with air spikes created by rocket engine plumes are said to date back to the fifties. That approach would have called for much better engines than they had, though - but since those are already a requirement for a reusable SSTO shuttle, using them rather than an additional, dedicated system would make sense.
Edit: Not directly from the AW&ST archives, but I found this on another page:
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread60559/pg1
Timo Saloniemi
It doesn't really matter how you generate that shockwave. Some designs use a thin spike protruding ahead of the actual body - a shockwave adjusting technique also researched for drag reduction purposes, or for modifying the sonic boom. A gaseous "spike" created by the rocket engine would have several advantages, most importantly being readily adjustable in flight.
Googling for "aerospike" (not the inside-out engine nozzle design but the drag-fighting physical lance at the front end of an air vehicle - the terminology is confusing) or "air spike" (its gaseous equivalent) should turn up a number of articles. Even the Wikipedia entry links to one on the latter:
http://www.tfd.chalmers.se/~valeri/Ajax/aiaa_2002.pdf
Also check out Leik Myrabo, an early proponent of air spikes, and Yuri Raizer. I think their work making it to AW&ST in the mid-nineties is where I first heard of this concept. Apart from Clarke, of course... But the experiments with air spikes created by rocket engine plumes are said to date back to the fifties. That approach would have called for much better engines than they had, though - but since those are already a requirement for a reusable SSTO shuttle, using them rather than an additional, dedicated system would make sense.
Edit: Not directly from the AW&ST archives, but I found this on another page:
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread60559/pg1
Timo Saloniemi
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Discussions about RLVs here
http://www.bautforum.com/showthread...ft-that-launches-from-a-runway-and-enters-low
http://www.bautforum.com/showthread...ft-that-launches-from-a-runway-and-enters-low
