"Michael" from Footfall.

[Galane]

Found these and thought they'd be ideal for a KSP build. From the Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle novel "Footfall".

Note that it's carrying 14 of these, plus the four Shuttles. http://pre05.deviantart.net/ea84/th/pre/i/2015/216/f/5/gunship_by_william_black-d8euev1.jpg

 

[selfish_meme]

Roverdude has a mod for a Nuclear pusher plate, but it's nowhere near that size

[Temstar]

I think the most amazing part of the design is the synergy between nuclear pulse propulsion and bomb pumped gamma ray laser, which unfortunately doesn't really translate into KSP. Without this it's kind of just an interplanetary mothership carrying several smaller spacecrafts.

That and we need a mod for proper nuclear fireball for the atmospheric flight.

[Galane]

Sooo many mods would be needed to build this. BD Armory for the guns. A mod to put a special launchpad way far away from KSC or launch would wipe it out. Is LAZOR still being maintained?

[Tex_NL]

Don't forget TweakScale. You'll need it for those insanely large RCS nozzles. Comparing them to the shuttles they are at least 5 metres in diameter.

[Rune]

5 minutes ago, Tex_NL said:

Don't forget TweakScale. You'll need it for those insanely large RCS nozzles. Comparing them to the shuttles they are at least 5 metres in diameter.

IIRC from the book, those are SSME's. For attitude control.

 

Rune. Niven sure thought big.

[Yukon0009]

I must give this a try with welding when I have time.

[quasarrgames]

what a silly design! i love it!

 

[Galane]

In the book, it's built to go out and attack the aliens who resemble baby elephants with a tusk that's split into two multi-tentacled appendages. After dropping a bunch of rocks on Earth to bombard the humans into submission, the humans are rather upset.

The aliens provide a symbol to be used on non-military stuff to indicate it shouldn't be attacked. So this "Michael" ship gets built under a large dome with a big copy of the symbol on it. It all has to go up in one launch because deceiving the aliens will only work the one time.

With an Orion drive it's not a problem if the first bomb fails, the big problem is if the *second* bomb fails. Then you're popped up into the air a ways and falling back. If you can't get a 3rd bomb under and exploded ASAP the ship will either smash into the ground or the blast wave combined with the downward velocity of the ship will destroy it. You definitely want all of the launch to orbit bombs to be perfect.

[selfish_meme]

I believe they also had a nuclear directed energy weapon, so they could throw those out the back and explode them to produce a burst of high energy radiation in a certain direction essentially frying their enemies as they flew.

[Temstar]

1 hour ago, selfish_meme said:

I believe they also had a nuclear directed energy weapon, so they could throw those out the back and explode them to produce a burst of high energy radiation in a certain direction essentially frying their enemies as they flew.

It's bomb pumped x ray laser, or in the book "spurt bombs". What happen is you have a package which has a bundle of x-ray gain medium rods, each with targeting mechanism. When a nuke goes off near the bundle of rods each rod is energised by the flood of photons from the bomb. The gain medium then focus all that energy into a laser beam just like conventional visible light laser, only this is a beam of x-ray capable of doing tremendous damage.

It has to be powered by a nuclear bomb because as with regular visible light laser, you have to pump the gain medium with photos of same wavelength, and there's not that many good source of x-ray or gamma ray. Fortunately nuclear bomb is an excellent source and a ship with orion drive has nukes on tap when it's thrusting. So with Michael, it would fire a bundle of these x-ray gain mediums in between detonation, each of the rods then get pointed at a target. When the next bomb goes off it both propels the ship and energise the spurt bomb. X-ray laser shoots everywhere blowing up enemy digit ships all around Michael. After firing the gain medium rods would have been vaporised by the bomb, their job done.

Edited January 2, 2016 by Temstar

[Rocket In My Pocket]

I love the design of that thing, very "hard sci-fi".

Would be amazing to see it built in KSP, but idk if it's even possible...I mean it's just so damn huge!

I gotta read this book. 

[Galane]

$4 for the e-book http://www.baenebooks.com/p-920-footfall.aspx

Also note the Free Library for free books. There are also some CD-ROM image files of free books at baencd.thefifthimperium.com On those discs you'll find over 100 total free books in multiple formats, all DRM free. (There are several of them on more than one disc, and Lois McMaster Bujold requested discontinuing free distribution of the disc that was packed with the hardcover of "Cryoburn".)

Edited January 2, 2016 by Galane

[Rocket In My Pocket]

13 hours ago, Galane said:

$4 for the e-book http://www.baenebooks.com/p-920-footfall.aspx

Also note the Free Library for free books. There are also some CD-ROM image files of free books at baencd.thefifthimperium.com On those discs you'll find over 100 total free books in multiple formats, all DRM free. (There are several of them on more than one disc, and Lois McMaster Bujold requested discontinuing free distribution of the disc that was packed with the hardcover of "Cryoburn".)

Awesome site man! Thanks for the recommendation!