Not explicitly interstellar (though implied to be on his website) but I'm rather partial to Mike McPhail's CGI designs:
What could a future earth space ship look like.
- Thread starter KJbushway
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I can't really see those designs being interstellar, perhaps interplanetary though. They look too small to have a substantial crew or supplies to last interstellar distances, barring some kind of drive technology far in excess of what we have now.
I'm guessing the one on the right is meant to be some kind of military, or asteroid defence ship, judging from the weapon turrets and what look like clamps/buffers on the side.
I'm guessing the one on the right is meant to be some kind of military, or asteroid defence ship, judging from the weapon turrets and what look like clamps/buffers on the side.
ANYTHING interstellar is going to be in excess of what we have now. If you can cross interstellar distances at all, you're either cheating the laws of physics (using wormholes, hyperspace, hypergates, folding space or something likewise exotic) thereby allowing an otherwise conventional spacecraft to leap from system to system by some means or another, or you're doing it by some MASSIVE undertaking like a generation ship or a Yonada-style asteroid cruiser. In either case, McPhail's designs seem like a very good extrapolation on what a future Earth vessel would look like, since anything smaller than Manhattan Island is going to depend on either exotic propulsion systems or a galaxy-hopping mothership. You've got all the elements there: propellant tanks, propulsion, crew habitation, etc.
Even if you rule out some physics-bending technique for interstellar flight, the simple limitations of special relativity rule out any interstellar journey taking less than a few decades, thus food and material storage won't be a problem in either case; the crew will have to be stored cryogenically for the duration of the voyage anyway. Assuming, of course, that the ship even carries a crew; the interesting thing about REAL space craft is that most of them are capable of operating just as well--if not better--on automatic as they are under human control. I would go so far as to say that any future space fleet, military or otherwise, will be dominated by a majority of unmanned space craft with their manned counterparts making maybe ten percent of the inventory.
I'm having trouble finding the original website, but from what I recall they were BOTH military, after a fashion. They're both modified versions of a civilian space craft, redesigned for military use; the smaller one is scaled down about 50%, the larger is reinforced with thicker armor and heavier weapons. Both are equipped with armored box launchers for nuclear-tipped antiship missiles.
Not unless you undergo suspended animation and the technology is closer than you think.
Check out the following links:
http://singularityhub.com/2010/03/1...ation-another-step-towards-immortality-video/
http://www.hplusmagazine.com/articl...nimation-zombie-pigs-squirrels-and-hypersleep
Cool, huh?
Yeah, all he is really missing is sufficient heat exchangers.
I would suggest that a fast ship for use within the solar system could look a lot like a typical Trek starship, for three reasons, if some form of projected artificial gravity is developed: (1) the streamlined hull would parry microasteroids (2) the saucer shape of the habitable area is well suited to artificial gravity for the crew, and (3) positrons, the cheapest and most easily produced form of antimatter, have the drawback of gamma radiation, actually requiring nacelles to keep that radiation away from the habitable area, stood off by pylons and directed where the ship has been rather than where it's going.
And if artificial gravity rather than Newton's third law of motion is the mechanism of propulsion, such a ship could be very fast indeed, maybe not reaching full impulse (which would mean just minutes to Mars orbit), but many times faster than we can expect to go with chemical rockets.
And if artificial gravity rather than Newton's third law of motion is the mechanism of propulsion, such a ship could be very fast indeed, maybe not reaching full impulse (which would mean just minutes to Mars orbit), but many times faster than we can expect to go with chemical rockets.
...and clockwise vs anticlockwise.
Even with artificial gravity it would make better engineering sense to arrange the decks perpendicular to the direction of travel.
Also, if you have an artificial gravity drive you could theoretically break lightspeed, as it's a reactionless system.
He probably isn't. It's only a sci-fi conceit that thermal control has to be provided by big honking radiators that stick out hundreds of meters like sails. Skylab and Soyuz have conformal radiators pulled in close to their hulls, as did Apollo. Besides, I've always felt that a method of trapping and recycling waste heat is not beyond technological capability, provided you have a power source with plenty of energy to spare.
1) No it wouldn't. In the first place, at the relative velocities you describe, the kinetic energies involved would still tear through the ship like tinfoil. In the second place, it doesn't matter what the ship looks like along the axis of its acceleration because all those micrometeorites are also in motion, not stationary, and many are crossing the ship's trajectory at several kilometers per second.
2) Even assuming trek-style artificial gravity--which is a technical absurdity in the first place--it really isn't. Since your gravity field is attracting everything in a uniform direction, the ideal solution is to build the ship around its normal axis of acceleration so that the field pulls everything "down" towards the engines on the rear of the ship. This allows the ship's natural acceleration to provide some of the gravity, and also prevents the crew from being disoriented and/or tossed around every time the engines fire.
3) Positrons aren't all that useful as a power source. But even if they were, moving the nacelles farther away from the hull would not be in any way useful in protecting the crew from exposure. You would have to provide shielding between the crew and the nacelles, and the most efficient way of doing that is a "shadow shield" that only blocks radiation that would come into contact with the hull. In this case, both nacelles would have to be placed right next to each other so they can both be blocked by the same shadow shield (or two smaller ones) instead of placing them right next to the hull where they can bathe the entire ship with radiation from afar.
As for "gravity drive," considering the weakness of gravity as a force it may not be very fast at all. It takes the total potential energy of a planet the size of Earth to produce accelerations of 9.8m/s. If you could even figure out how to produce an artificial gravity force and impart it on a space craft, you'd be lucky if it outperforms an ion engine.
It depends on the application, the shuttle has big honking radiators as does the ISS. A ship with a big engines/weapons will most likely require big radiators as well. There's a good talk on the subject here: http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3e.html#radiator
Of course, future developments in technology may change things. But that's true for everything.
Sure, but Skylab, Soyuz and Apollo still do not. Thermal control systems come in many shapes and sizes.
1) I said nothing about acceleration too severe for the crew to endure. But with artificial gravity it may be possible to ramp up that acceleration and use the artificial gravity as an inertial damper. Otherwise, it takes time to get up to speed, and likewise to decelerate.
2) Sure, we don't have this kind of artificial gravity, but at Harvard they have made some progress doing tricks with the Casimer effect above and beyond the classic experiments, and research on this is accelerated by the need for it in the field of nanotech. So some surprises may be in store sooner than one might expect. And if you're only thinking of plain rocketry, then sure, 1 g of acceleration could substitute for locating the habitable space a big centrifuge, although you've have to turn that backward when decelerating.
But assuming artificial gravity, I say statistically you can deflect more impact from space pebbles by using the classic Trek configuration with the saucer parallel to the general orbital plane of the planets, considering that some percentage of the energy involved comes from the ship's own relative velocity. Sure, you won't get them all, but more than if having your dorsal face forward to create gravity from 1-g acceleration and flip around to decelerate, assuming priority here on deflecting bullets over creating gravity in the manner you suggest, since this scenario assumes something like artificial gravity.
3) Most of the gamma radiation is actually to be utilized, but the nacelles would be shielded, and the least shielded part would presumably be far aft, away from the habitable space.
How useful would positrons be for interplanetary flight? This reference covers their use for rocketry but at least emphasizes the extreme advantage in power-to-weight ratio over chemical fuel:
http://www.niac.usra.edu/files/library/meetings/fellows/mar06/1147Smith.pdf
What it doesn't mention is that positrons could be produced in quantity in space, using Mylar balloons transparent on one side with opposing reflective inner surface to concentrate sunlight and power a laser to zap 1-mm gold plate, which produces a shower of positrons ripe for gathering and magnetic storage. That's antimatter without waiting centuries for antiproton fuel.
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