"spaceship design - rant?" Topic

I would think that the bigger complaint would be that the fighters were manned at all. Although with hacking and electronic counter measures it seems that you might be able to come up with justification for it.

Basically, isn't a circle the best design for a starship based upon physics as we know it???

But the movies, novels, and telly are not physics as we know it

Star Trek has a bunch of physics nulling technology. You can't compare it to slower then light tech. From what I understand the nacelles form a warp bubble around the ship. So you want them far away from the ship.

I am not sure what the problem is with B5 ships that you are stating.

What is wrong with the Y-wing? It has two side boosters, makes perfect sense to me.

BSG? Are we talking the new BSG or the old BSG? Its basically a big carrier with two big internal carrier decks with plenty of space to drop down capture nets or let the fighters magnetically land.

A sphere? Yes and no. An X may be better (like the star fury) because it gives larger MoI.

If you want "historical" examples:

H. Beam Piper's spacecraft were spheres.

E. E. "Doc" Smith's were spheres and teardrop shaped.

Anyway, its science FICTION. The majority of the physics is "handwavium".

Flying WW2 battleships make more sense?

Basically, isn't a circle the best design for a starship based upon physics as we know it???

No. While the two-dimensionality is great for heat dissipation, it's impossible to cram any components with that pesky third dimension into it.

You would need to remove Star Trek from this. As stated above, the ship doesn't travel by conventional means at high speed. It warps/bends space. The actually had rules to this and has been covered by noted scientists. The design of Galactica reminds me that in an emergency situation it can drop one of the landing bays. The new series had the landing bays retract for faster than light travel.My main concern is the size of the computers they would need to navigate. To know where every planet,moon, asteroid belt,comet would be at any specific moment.

Circles maybe the best, but not the most interesting.

That's why they call it Science "Fiction".

If you're asking if you're ranting pointlessly, then yes, you are. Not beating the dead horse of this topic any more than the one about manned fighters.

I always thought the BSG ship designs weren't half bad--the fighters land in the pods, so that if they "miss" they don't risk damaging the main ship structure, just the pod. B5 designs are actually pretty good (remember, there's different tech involved in different designs as some of the races have some sort of artificial gravity capability, so you have to take that into account). I also like the designs in Starship Troopers--essentially long with greebles and pivoting engines.

For Newtonian based technologies, the best shapes for maneuvering purposes would be either spheres (or something similar to a sphere) or long cylinders, which give good strength against G-force, but the cylinders would have to rotate physically to make strong course corrections (which is what they did in B5). The spheres aren't as good against in-line G, but would have better ability to rotate quickly (as their design should stand off-axis G better). That said, if you off-set your engines, they give you better moment-arm for turning (like B5 Starfuries), though you lose structural integrity. Basically, its a design trade-off.

But in the end, as noted above, its sci fi, so your mileage may vary.

Rob

Moi moment of inertia

In terms of movie spaceships, the Discovery in 2001 is among the more realistic. If Kubrick hadn't nixed the fins* because they were cliche, then it would have been totally realistic.

Note the long, spindly spine between the engines and the habitat.

*Fins on atomic rockets are there to radiate heat that would otherwise be trapped in the thermos bottle that is a spaceship.

Queen Catherine, read the Lensman series of books as the describe the ships from spheres and rockets and eventually teardrop shaped.

Too bad no one has even attempted to depict ships like this that I know of.

Your ship shapes don't matter much in space. There is not much stress on your ship in a vacuum. Square, Circle, Long thins spike of as ship. Almost NO stress it's a vacuum no air or any type of medium to put stress on your ship. Now most space ships wont do well on reentry or in the Atmosphere.

Even Perry Rhodan had sphere ships.

If you really want to complain, look at Spelljammer.

What Inari said.

"Inertial dampeners."

Don't know how they work (or even could work), but that's what keeps the disparate bits from falling off (and the passengers from becoming puddles).

But while a sphere is the optimal design in certain aspects, the problem of heat dissipation arises. Everything on a spacecraft generates heat, and unless you want a barbecued crew, you have to dissipate that heat by radiating it into space. And the best way to radiate heat into space is… Big Honkin' Fins. That's right--- all those fins, "wings" and other broad, narrow surfaces have a perfectly logical purpose: radiating away excess heat.
Which means that that some of the wildest designs with the "spindly" bits may be more realistic than anything more compact!

EDIT: Began this note a while ago and returned to post it, so I missed the intervening reference to fins in the 2001 reference. But, yep, the original design had them because the ship would need them.

"tear-shaped"

Tear shaped would craft would work well in the air but in space a square is just as valid. There is NOTHING to put stress on a ship in space.

I think this is very much a case of artistic licence. What is written in books may not be quite so impressive when portrayed visually.

Fielding a fleet of ping pong balls and saying it is a Lensmen armada is not going to impress anyone, nor make it easy to tell ships apart. By providing a standardised look for a fleet, you make the faction instantly recognisable. You can then make variations on the design for the different types of ship. I would say it is probably better to have this than a 'clothes peg' Manticore fleet.

On the handwavium side, I believe that in Star Trek they can increase the power to structural integrity. This would suggest the ship can be reinforced using tractor beams or force fields to stop it breaking apart.

> There is NOTHING to put stress on a ship in space.

Changing direction does put stress on a ship in space. Unless you can somehow make the turning thrust exactly the same all along the ship.

Or, invoke 'inertial dampeners' (not to be confused with counter balances by the same name). Handwavium.

I'm pretty sure Inari7 meant 'no drag…'. Again, not quite true, but close enough.

And, Traveller had ping-pong battleships three to four decades ago. Been around long time…

I'm pretty sure those were based on volume-to-surface efficiencies; thickest hull for given space has cost benefit.

Star Blazer ships have relatively compact hulls, but plenty of protuberances. Subject to the same stresses, I'll point out; likewise fin radiators.

Anyway, at the vector changes suggested, second and third collisions trump any shape of vessel.

Doug

Edit: Rich(or Gary, or…), have I mentioned lately, your a better man than I?

The issue with space travel is not stress on the ship (which as Inari said is not any issue because of vaccuum). The issue is stress on the crews.

That's why the Borg licks ship design every time, and I might add your initial questioning on ship design has one real answer here on TMP. Because it would not look cool.
Cheers all remember if your comms are out no one can hear you scream in space ;)

When I said changing direction I should have said facing, "direction" could mean a bunch of things when dealing with Newtonian motion.

The problem with a sphere is that it has a rather large rotational inertia. That is, it would take a lot of force to make one change it's direction of rotation.

"wings" make sense in terms of places to mount your reaction-control system thrusters. They let you use less fuel to get the same angular rotation. That's why the Bab5 Starfuries have 4 middling-big engines at the end of the wings and a tiny center section, for maximum zero-gee maneuverability.

Wings also give you a place to mount radiators, but you're going to have at least two different sets of radiators in the first place. One set of radiators will be fairly cool, roughly 300K, for your life-section heat, while the others will be glowing cherry-red at 1600K for your reactor.

However, wings also represent weak points in your ship structure, so I'd really want thick-at-the-base, tapering wings, with multiple sets of RCS thrusters running down the length in case a wing catches a hole from weapons fire and you lose the wingtip thrusters.

In terms of reactor shielding, the simplest shielding is distance. Next is a physical shield, but that gets heavy. Finally there's exposure time, but that's not really easy to manage onboard a starship.

The reason 2001's Discovery and so many other realistic starships have a long, spindly shape is to get distance between the crew section and the reactor. They're spindly because the lightest radiation shield is called a shadow shield and is a small chunk of Tungsten and/or Polyethylene, and a shadow shield makes a very small circle of less radiation. Then you need to keep the entire crew section, including the areas the crew will be working EVA, inside the shadow. What the starship designers seem to forget is that you need a lot of water for the crew, anyway, and that water makes a pretty decent radiation shield when you have enough of it. Water is heavy, but when you're carrying it and recycling it anyway, might as well use it as part of your radiation shielding. But this is where we start talking about 10,000ton ships.

Many, if not most, physical stresses do not disappear just because you place the ship in a vacuum.

For example, if you take a long, slender piece of wood and hold it by one end and give it a good, hard swing like a baseball bat and then abruptly check your swing the stick will snap in half if it's cross section is too small. I can assure you that air resistance isn't breaking the stick. Momentum and intertial forces are to blame. Those same forces could break apart an improperly designed ship in the vacuum of space.

Actually, at extremely high velocities (say, 0.1 C or above), a cube is not a good idea. Space, after all, is not a true vacuum, and smacking even a tiny speck of interstellar matter is a really bad thing. So a streamlined forward shape with some sort of "deflector" system (probably an electromagnetic field of some sort) is a good idea. (That's probably why Matt Jeffries designed the Lief Ericson wiith that funky cone cowling):

A cube is just inviting yourself to get smacked with the energy impact of a small nuke. Not A Good Idea.

So a streamlined cone or wedged shape allows a ship to deflect interstellar particles with a minimal field coverage (saving power).

Cones, wedges, fins… turns out the most viable starship design might be this one:

1. We have no idea how the technologies that make these craft go could possibly work, despite slapping on the names of technological concepts we do know of, which do not work as depicted. Therefore it is not our place to judge what makes sense, as the shape might be neccessary to operate an unknown technology which may render all our concerns pointless as it negates every problem we know of. We also don't know if there is anything else carried on the ship that could help against these issues. It is useless saying "who knows what technology we'll have in the future", but this is a made-up story in a made-up place with made-up characters, where applicable; so they may have made-up technology that doesn't correspond to any that we've ever heard of. So we shall have to save the judgements on how it's supposed to look because we cannot know how it should work. And that's only assuming they don't have even greater technology to keep it safe and intact, and is sufficient to allow greater stylistic extravagance.
2. The designers still believe in deflector shields and teleporters, the former of which can withstand Tsar Bomba detonating right up against the shield. When Perry Rhodan and crew found the Arkonide battleships' lifeboats were capable of such a thing, demonstrated by a Chinese bomber hitting their landing site with nukes just as an emissary plane was crashing into the shield, I thought they'd painted themselves into a corner, in terms of keeping the adventure going through hundreds of books.
The clincher was when they started to raise farms outside the shield less than a year after detonation, seemingly unhappy with the next lot of negotiators landing in what was ground zero mere hours after the attack.
Lion- we start talking "star" ships, we were probably already talking about thousands of tonnes.
Intra-system travel would require a larger ship than one usually sees in space opera in the hands of, shall we say, player characters.
Also, if you turn hard enough to rip bits off, you are probably not driving safely. Alastair Reynolds had a real problem with this, and so did Peter F Hamilton; their solutions were protective units which, were you caught outside one during the maneouvre in question, wouldn't be able to stop you being pulped. Theoretically they shouldn't help the one inside that much either.
There was one race of aquatic aliens whose vessel, since it had to be full of water, travelled by teleporting a tiny distance, thousands of times per second.
You could always have the projecting items fold and stash away.
Also, I don't believe in the sphere. Which is the biggest part of the ship? Where would it go inside the sphere? How much volume do you need all around it? Is it a good idea to be right next to it?

Late to the party, but in defense of the Star Trek ships they are designed to be 'Warp Streamlined', and apparently those weird shapes are the most effective when it comes to cruising around in subspace. It's all pseudo-science, but it's (usually) consistent pseudo-science.

Also, I don't believe in the sphere. Which is the biggest part of the ship? Where would it go inside the sphere? How much volume do you need all around it? Is it a good idea to be right next to it?

It's not a matter of belief, it's an engineering question of can you work around these design issues and build a workable ship. I suspect the answer is yes.

-Will

Lion- we start talking "star" ships, we were probably already talking about thousands of tonnes.
Intra-system travel would require a larger ship than one usually sees in space opera in the hands of, shall we say, player characters.

Depends on your FTL drive and in-system drive assumptions, but otherwise I will grant the point. Any realistic ship (for rather loose values of 'realistic') is probably going to start at about 2000tons mass for an in-system ship.

Also, if you turn hard enough to rip bits off, you are probably not driving safely.

We ARE talking about combat spaceships, aren't we? Any concerns about things breaking during maneuvers is strictly a matter of the ship's structure having been damaged beforehand.

My initial comments were directed towards the idea that a spherical ship would be slower to rotate in one or two axes than a spindle, and possibly faster in the remaining axes. Translational thrusters won't really matter, though a spherical ship could very well need a lot more thrusters to keep the center of thrust going through the center of mass, when a winged spindle can pulse all 4 thrusters (or clusters) for a pretty well-predicted translation 'push'.

The winged spindle is going to be much less effected by things getting moved around inside the hull, or mass shot off the outside that's not on the wings.

The most guilty parties are probably the Star Trek ships. the memorable designs are crazy – klingon vessels with that long neck and wings?? The federation ships are insane. Enterprise should fall to bits at the first change of direction.

Star Trek has Inertial Dampers (inertia negation devices) therefore do not need to worry about stress of maneuvers causing the ship to break things off. Not to mention most Star Trek ships don't exactly fly like an airplane or make sudden ship maneuvers to dodge with. Their maneuvers tend to be very earth sea ship-like (wide turns, slow acceleration).

Battlestar Gallactica, a much more compact design, but why would the two pylons on the side be for the launching and collecting of fighters?? Why have pylons at all?

They are military targets, moreso than the central point. Given that is where a large portion of fuel and weapons are stored it makes sense to keep them away from the center of the ship. Otherwise when their launch bays get destroyed or damaged by enemy fire or their own planes crashing they don't destroy the whole ship in one explosion. It also makes it easier to jettison a section to isolate it from the main ship. In case of enemy boarding they are easier choke points in defense of the ship and boarding actions.

Star Blazers…makes a lot more sense. GENERALLY speaking the ships are compact and either angular or round in shape, and seem like they should withstand stress.

Star Blazers are designed more around earth sea ship designs. A lot of their designs extrapolate from that. Although depending on which season and version of Star Blazers you watch tend to at least embrace a more true vector movement.

Star Wars. Many of the ships seem pretty compact. The Death Star – perfect circle. The Imperial Star Cruisers are triangular with that odd raised portion, but overall seem solid. Some of the other ships have weird shapes, I can't see a reason for the shape of the Y-Wing at all, the A-wing makes more sense with the Millenium Falcon.

Star Wars have inertial compensators (inertia negation devices) which are basically inertial dampers like Star Trek. The design of the ship doesn't matter if you have something to account for inertia. Most cases though designs tend to put engines away from the cockpit or in strange locations making them easier to isolate without destroying the whole ship.

Spaceships would obviously look like this:

We aren't a point to really plan an actual spaceship design for practical purposes. Yes I realize the above is a design that is being worked on but it isn't practical use. It is testing and discovery which are two different applications. There is a lot of theory and you can plan one using current information and knowledge. By the time we get to the point where we would apply it to practical purposes (star travel, combat, etc) we would have newer technology and science with it changing our current designs. In other words… science fiction. It isn't used as an excuse of 'it's science fiction' because they do explain it by upgrading their current technology to account for it. Once you move past that designs don't really matter. There are only one factors to really take into effect after you have a means to create inertial dampers.

Will the ship be atmospheric? If it is atmospheric is only designed for Earths atmosphere or other environments? That determines what directions and designs you can use. Currently the best designs would be ships designed strictly for star travel and not planetary travel. You would use shuttles to go from the ground to the ship and vice versa and the star ship would take you to the other planets.

The pressure in outer space is so low that it is almost non-existent. The current theory is that if we are to make a viable sublight drive it would utilize some sort of gravity field or bubble. The design would need to take in account to extend that or be utilized to create something to negate inertia. Another method is to design the inner works in a similar fashion we design buildings to withstand earthquakes. Through construction methods the stress is lessened and despite looking flimsy could actually be stronger than the main hull of a ship. Not to mention in the future who is to say that zero-g mining of minerals, ship construction doesn't develop or create lighter material that is stronger than earth based metals (which also tends to lead to the scifi genre and explanations they use). If we apply current world technology to spaceships, they wouldn't be moving about at high speeds like fighters. They would be designed to move like cargoships, wide turns and course corrections.

Matt Jeffries, when working on the original Enterprise, INTENTIONALLY made the struts too spindly, to specifically imply that the technology used to build the ship was not just 20th century with a chrome wrapper around it.

No it is not from a movie. The ship is actually NASA's new proposed warp theorized capable ship – IXS Enterprise.

Keep in mind most movie science is simply done because it looks cooler or makes better movies. That is why most space games use cinematic movement style. They fly the direction they are pointing and shoot that same direction, instead of using vector movement style. It is easier to create, film basing on how we know things work in real life versus theory. It also makes it more believable as people believe what they see. Since space travel isn't a everyday thing, it makes it harder to believe. The action is just designed that way because its cooler! As I explain to my children, don't try to explain why movies do things… if they did it realistically, the movie would of been over with in 5 minutes. Ship miniatures are often designed in the similar fashion. If I was to create a realistic spaceship, it would be bland and boring. The textures, designs and shapes help break up parts and make it more interesting.

With writing people tend to write what they know. That is one reason Star Blazer ships are designed like WWII ships. That is what we know. Fluff can be used to theorize or create any situation to make a design believable. What we know are alloys and minerals on Earth currently and how strong they are. If we extrapolate from what we know, add in another 50 years of knowledge then yes improvements in mining, construction, new alloys, more powerful drives, better energy sources which gives access to laser, rail weapons. Again using Star Blazers when it was made we didn't have remove drones, so their Torpedoes operated like sea ship torpedoes. With today's technologically if we redid Star Blazers, torpedoes would become remote control predator drones in space.

That is the great thing about science fiction, it is just theory. At the time it becomes a reality then it is no longer science fiction. As long as you can justify it in a round-about fashion then one would assume advanced space travel would mean science would also accelerate enough to support it.

If you're not aware of NASA's investigations into warp drive, it's based on a concept by physicist Marc Alcubierre. In general, he theorized that a ring of "exotic matter" could be used to create a "warp bubble" of space-time. This self-contained bubble of space-time could then be accelerated many times the speed of light without breaking any of the known laws of physics. The "bubble" would carry along any matter within it; that matter itself, however, would not experience physical acceleration. It's way more complex than that, but it gives you the idea. And yes, it is indeed very close to what Star Trek has presented.
There are arguments against the concept, but none are definitive.

In any case, the photo above is an artist's rendition of a possible ship, based on discussions with the NASA researcher studying the concept. As such, it's not entirely a fanciful product.
The rings, of course, are the proposed "warp rings" that create the bubble around the ship. The bridge is obvious. I'm not sure what that forward "saucer" part is meant to represent in the ship design. I suspect the big central cylinder aft of the bridge is power and/or living space. The side modules might be rocket engines for non-warp travel or perhaps scientific "clip on" modules with various mission-specific tasks . I suspect the little "egg cones" are probably emergency life boats?
My one caveat is that the bridge appears to be a "walking environment," which, while fine during warp travel (no relative acceleration inside the bubble), assumes some sort of artificial gravity, and in any case, acceleration couches will be needed when the non-warp engines are used.

It's not entirely a fanciful product, but an artist getting excited about a theory before all the practical concerns have been heard.
I think a more likely use of warp drive would carry the ship at sublight speeds, only negating the need for reaction mass, not actually providing FTL or a substitute for FTL. This was called "traction drive" in Mutants in Orbit.
"We ARE talking about combat spaceships, aren't we? Any concerns about things breaking during maneuvers is strictly a matter of the ship's structure having been damaged beforehand."
Not neccessarily: in Revelation Space, the Dominatrix is not under combat conditions but still ends up turning too hard; nothing rips off but an unprotected character is turned into pizza sauce. A biomechanical character, in fact.
"It's not a matter of belief, it's an engineering question of can you work around these design issues and build a workable ship. I suspect the answer is yes. "
That statement could be used to justify any shape.
link
Then again, so could earlier comments about what technology would be available to the builders.
Like why the ship is so small in Pig's Breakfast or Earth Girls Are Easy, neccessitating the users to be shrunk to enter. Is it because the technology works best if the ship is tiny? "No, because it's cheaper to build a smaller spacebus."

"Space, after all, is not a true vacuum, and smacking even a tiny speck of interstellar matter is a really bad thing."

Find a way to capture/convert the energy from such impacts and use it to drive the ship and one could get rid of those silly ram scoops. Who knows, maybe some ET civ already has…. ;-)

Not sure if this was mentioned, but space is not empty. It is essentially a thin fluid. Translate this to other fluids we have more experience with, air and water, the shape of ships like many in B5 make sense.

Now, looking at my favorite fighter plane, the F4 Phantom II, it supports the argument for many of the blocky ships. When you put a big enough engine on a brick, it will fly.

Now the appendages and nacelles on ships like those in Star Trek, think of long range bombers. Most have engine nacelles.

Given different concepts for warp drives, and as much as I hate the Star Trek ship design, most of the sci-fi ships have an acceptable comparison to existing tech. From my aspect of engineering, I don't see a major issue with the designs when all factors of the technological story line are factored in. Plenty of minor issues, but again, minor.

That said, someone mentioned Spelljammer. That is a science fantasy of ships sailing between worlds on a pseudo-ocean. Still goofy though.

Back to the idea that round ships are the way to go. it is the best way to enclose a given volume, which is wonderful for a merchant ship. For a warship they are a major pain. Turrets can take care of some of the problems of weapons alignment, but only to a degree. After part way around the hull, you have to have a huge turrent to bring the weapons back to bear again, and then you are back to having wierd things sticking out to far.

A big question is how big are the weapons in relation to the ship Single massive weapon like the deathstar? But as slow firing as that POS is and the apperent difficulty in broinging it onto a target, if it want in the script, it would get its butt kicked by smaller more nimble vessels.

Look at the turret araingment on some of the firdst dreadnaughts. jackie Fisher had invisioned small squadrons of ships fighting while facing each other. But, it was quickly discovered that that wasnt going to happen, so later designs went to the all broadside armorment. But, if they had had say a 28" main gun, and only could carry a soingle one, or maybe two. You wind up with a WWI battleship carrying a spinal mount. But heela hard to target as you have to aim the whole shipat the target.

So while a sphere may be a great way to move around, in general it ois not a great military design. And yes missles can overcome some of those things, but at a cost in Range, as you first have to kill your launch velocity and then start heading to the target. Plus, if you are trying to saturate a defensive system, thenhaving your missles arrive a few at a time is going to help the defense. Of course you can launch the far ones first and then add the rest at the right time, only that really slows down your rates of fire.

Compact design does have a lot of other advantages. the more compact a design the easier it is toarmor. That is a big reason things like mechs are unlikely to really appear in a tank like role. Just to much surface area to armor. But they do look cool.

owen

Based upon the physics that we understand, that probably applies in space beyond where we've managed to visit, what are some of the optimal ship shape / designs?

It SEEMS that the more compact the design of a ship and more able it is to endure the stress of thrust directional change AND the stress of combat, while firing in many directions, the better it should be.

So would a compact tube, box or sphere with turret bulges be the best design?

Tube or box, IMO.

Spheres run into problems with weapon arcs. It ends up that the guns and the reaction-control thrusters all want to be in the same places for most effectiveness.

Spheres also require significantly more shielding mass around the reactor.

A tube or box would let you stick the reactor back aft and get some distance to allow a smaller diameter shadow shield. You can also use this length for your big laser generator, and have mirrors divert the laser beam out through a turret. Or it could be used for a spinal-mount ginormous railgun. But whatever you put there needs to be rather unaffected by radiation.

So, we're talking something more like a B29 or B36, with small turret blisters set so that even when the ship's structure is in the way of one position, others can still hit it.