Spacescifi

I read online that pilots will use foot pads for yaw so there is that. Since joysticks are only good for pitch and roll as far as I know. The ship does not have to do 3g nonstop for years. It can fly so long since it is designed for solo exploration. It only uses 3g to escape 1g planets with ease. Interplanetary cruise is 1g for the gravity for the crew. 3g in space would only be for emergencies or urgent missions.

It's been a long time.... yoke for the U-shaped double stick right? Flight yoke? Thanks.

The scenario: You have a scifi SSTO large vessel that can accelerare for years at a maximum acceleration of 3g or less when fully loaded with cargo, yet higher without it. It is capable of vertical lift off and landing as well as doing airplane like maneuvers in an atmosphere. What flight control instruments are best? My thoughts: I fancy the U-shaped double flight stick that airline jets use, only the one for the SSTO would have these features: Yaw (pivot the sticks away from you with your wrists) and you yaw the ship. Pitch by pulling up or pushing down the sticks, and roll by pulling sideward. I like it over a joystick because I dunno... joysticks look like.... cheap videogame. Unprofessional. What you think? For all I know joysticks may be better... at any rate some other control method would likely be needed for VTOL.... probably button or voice control.

I was thinking.... if it would be practical to create an airship to orbit SSTO? The idea would be to rise up into the high atmosphere, and then use plasma rocketry to reach orbital velocity. Possible or not?

Magnetic fields come from mass, amd I read somewhere that certain stars have uber magnetic fields that are so strong they would kill before a person's spacecraft ever hit the star. Question: Is the size of a magnetic field dependent on it's mass? And what is the limit of the strength of magnetic field dependent on? I presume magnetic field strength depends on magnet material strength as well as power avaliable and waste heat management

Math was and is a weakness of mine.... and my current situation hardly makes studying to improve it an easy thing to do.

I warmly suggest hybrid rockers using liquid oxygen and solid propellant potassium alloy. Better thrust than pure chemical rocketry and easier to process and manufacture as well too. I think wilderness refueling practically demands hybrid propellant rocketry. Pure chemical requires a bunch of heavy compressors and large tanks that take up a lot of volume, which can largely be reduced with hybrid propellant rocketry.

Hmmmm... how about the Python from Elite dangerous? Dimensions 87.9m x 58.1m x 18.0m Pilot Seats 2 Multicrew Yes Fighter Hangar No Hull Mass 350 t And I reckon any container ship due to it's sheer size would have g-force issues with the crew during maneuvers unless they are doing it really, really slow.

Video game type maneuvering? You know, like if I wanna roll aa a big ship I roll, not necessarily super fast, but it should not take say... more than say a few seconds to do a complete revolution... those kind of speeds.

Cute pic. Is the guy Russian? I am acutely aware that Russia has a lot of dealings with Asians since they have a country larger than several put together and border china.

Sometimes reality is wilder than fiction, since it conforms to physics rather than plot. Example 1: Let's say you have large a spaceship capable of constant 1g acceleration. That's great in all... for gravity, but what happens to the crew hen the ship does other maneuvers? Like pitch, yaw, and rolling? For starters you cut off the main engines and coast for a bit before you engage the thrusters to do the maneuver, but as for the crew? They should be strapped into their seats or hold on to something. I say this because unless a big ship turns slowly, there will be g-force felt by the crew, enough to make them fall towards a nearby wall or something. With that in mind it really affects the interior design of a spaceship's habitat to prevent disasters and injuries. For example, no furniture that is not bolted to the floor, and likely metal dishes that stick to magnetic tables so that the chance of getting impaled by utensils is lower during a maneuver. The free floating junk that astronauts play with is to be avoided wherever possible on large spacecraft with significant crew numbers.... especially ones that include families and kids. Example 2: Orbital maneuvers can be weird at times. For example if you are in low orbit any planet and want to dock with another spacecraft orbiting some distance ahead of you what do you do? Astronauts in the early days tried the intuitive thing they would do on earth, thrust forward to meet the craft, but each time they did that they they noticed the craft got farther abd farther away until they were nearly out of fuel. Turns out that the best way to get near an orbiting spacecraft that is ahead of you is to lower your orbit by retro-thrusting backward so that gravity pulls you into a tighter and faster orbit. I suppose at close range this would not matter much, but at distant ranges it will... meaning retroburn at distsnt range for rendrzvous, but at close range you are probably so close that you the orbiting spacecraft simply does not have enough time to 'curve' away from you. I also know that at high enough speeds of linear acceleration that you could pass up an orbiting spacecraft but you would not dock with them because if tried you would crash more than dock because of the difference in speeds. Anything anyone wish to add?

I cannot enjoy Star Wars at all ever since I have been on KSP forums. It really pains me to say this.... but EVEN Star Trek has had more realism than Star Wars lol.

Okay what if we omitted the pistons and just put an oiled plate in the back before detonating the nuke? How much g-force are we talking for say.... a spaceship on par with the second stage SpaceX starship for weight? I would to think that with liquud breathing the crew could still survive the extreme gees, since have not tests shown that humans can survive tens of gees (like 40-60g) under liquid breathing? At least someone claimed as much online once.

Not infinite... just a few years... which to us virtually is infinite since real high thrust rockets last less than a thousand seconds of thrust. Really having such missiles does not mean they can necessarily catch up with spaceships. If anything such scifi tech makes the galaxy safer. Why? Missiles are best used for intercept, so they are GREAT as orbital defense swarms. Any enemy missile or spaceship must plot an intercept course for such a planet, and believe you me that any industrialized planet will have far more missiles in orbit than virtually all but the most uber space fleets can muster. Quanity and concentration of force is a quality all it's own... something planets can do in orbital space with ease... especially with my scifi drive. RKV's may be deadly, but they are also quite easy to destroy because of how fast they move even a grain of dust could obliterate them.

True... but remember that.... when has the last time the USA fought a peer power? When you already have air superiority because you have taken over a weaker country and their air fields, the only real fear of a counter attack you face is an RPG by a local who would have to get past drone patrols and soldier patrols to do so. Worst case scenario would be if a more powerful rival sold or gave more advanced surface to air handheld weapons to locals, then the spacex troop transport would be in grave dangerm

I know.... but that really would not help in a SW like setting with of ships. In that case ship size missiles would be viable. I like my idea better. Allows for more utility... even an ironman like suit lol.

I do not want missiles to be able to outrun ships with drives that can fly for years. It would make all spacecraft obsolete. You have it backwards in this case.

My point is that a lighterweight orion would cause hard g-force but a prepared crew could survive it. So it is not impossible... just wildly unsafe and impractical. It just illustrates how impractical SSTO's are unless you have an airbreathing spaceplane and even then it would be lightweight with minimal cargo. Trying to build a heavy SSTO seems to be a foolish endeavor when 2 staging is superior. Only way around it is outright scifi make believe and accepting the consequences of it.

High thrust constant acceleration is useful for scifi but also creates what I like to call the relativistic kill vehicle problem. If a lot of folks have them and so do missiles, missiles would outrun spaceships and make them all but obsolete. Yet I found a solution by a chance of creational conceit. Equalized Acceleration: The high thrust constant acceleration drive is of course a fictional plot device, so it's limits can also be. The drive can actually accelerate for years without refueling. Unlike a normal rocket the scifi drive's maximum acceleration is capped in the low gees (3g max). Thrust the drive harder and it will become unstable and detonate like a nuke... releasing a tiny part of it's energy in the detonation which is more than enough to blow the spaceship to smithereens. Missiles with the drive would also be acceleration capped at the same rate (3g) unless they had a secondary close range rocket stage for intercept. How would this change the space battle field? Seems to me that at longer ranges missiles could NEVER catch up with spaceships since max accelerations are equalized and we both know normal rocketry is only good for a closer range intercept. Would this make missiles near obsolete except for planet orbital defense? I am aware that if spaceships are closing range with each other missiles could be useful but rendezvous would have to be mutual or otherwise a ship must be drifting toward another at a high enough speed that reversing directions or evasion would take too long before missiles intersect along it's potential paths.

I am well aware of the issues, all I was saying was that if the pistons and plate could be made to weigh less than the original orion then a ship could SSTO with it in theory. Would not be very practical or safe I know, I was just saying it could work with a more kerbal mind set (where enviromental concerns go out the window).

Well at least I learned hybrids are thrustier than chemical even though the delta V is less. They can also he throttled or cut off unlike solid fuel boosters. So it seems like the only SSTO that could be made right now with a decent cargo load (40 tons) would be an SSTO with hybrid rockets for lift off and orion nuclear pulse propulsion. It is unlikely it could land itself safely, but it could at least get up to orbit as an SSTO. It would have to be lighter weight than traditional orion and crew would likely need liquid breathing for the acceleration but it could in theory be done from a thrust POV.

Ok... I believe you. What if you tried a hybrid rocket SSTO utilizing the same technology of sprint mixed with hybrid rocket technology? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid-propellant_rocket You may add airbreathing rocketry or even pulse detonation rocketry if it helps it SSTO any better... anything but project orion since that has been well discussed. I am throwing known tech against the metaphorical wall to see what may stick.

The arc reactor would have gave Stark burns as would th.e wire

I was thinking about classic belly lander space plane SSTOs and realized solid fuel similar to the sprint missile would be ideal. Space is at a premium on a manned SSTO so having solid fuel which takes up the least amount of payload space is ideal. Yes I know you cannot throttle solid fuel rocket engines and they will burn all their fuel. That is the plan. Reaching orbit: Take off a runway at high g acceleration (not 100g but definitely 10g) crew can be do liquid breathing to handke g-forces. Burn through the atmosphere until air plasma surrounds leading edge of the hull. Activate magnetohydrodynamic fields to deflect and use the air plasma as a source of thrust to cruise out of the atmosphere and into space. In space: Any SSTO would have planet use solid fuel sprint-like engines and space only engines that use chemical propellants. Conclusion: Who knows if it would work, but in scifi defense screens and shield fields can often deflect uber plasma and particle beams moving at a significant fraction of lightspeed. If they can deflect that... atmospheric frictional plasma can also be.

Nice scifi thread Sevenperforce, did not think you had it in you lol! Anyway you are not going to want hear me say it but I have to. WASTE HEAT. I reckon the ironman suit would need to at least be the size and weignt of Iron Monger to either not overheat Tony Stark or provide so much impulse that it breaks his joints on a single pulse. Still it is a cool idea, but one that I really think should be scaled up for a space plane or first stage rocket or SSTO.