A good near-future spaceship design?

[kerbiloid]

Not long. Not a plane. Hab of tanks. All directions.

Daedalus

[RenegadeRad]

5 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Not long. Not a plane. Hab of tanks. All directions.

Daedalus

What the hell, it's bigger than Saturn V! How will it launch?? Where are the blue prints? 0_0

@Nibb31 

I did say to ROTATE the whole damn ship metaphorically, meaning the ship is a centrifuge. Your arguments are totallyy rebellious to everything I want, either you help me find what I want, or create your own thread with the things you mentioned

[kerbiloid]

2 minutes ago, RenegadeRad said:

What the hell, it's bigger than Saturn V! How will it launch?? Where are the blue prints? 0_0

Of course. Why should they trifle?

4 minutes ago, RenegadeRad said:

How will it launch??

It will be assembled in the space. Fuel (D+He3) — probably captured from upper Jupiter atmosphere. As always.

4 minutes ago, RenegadeRad said:

Where are the blue prints?

Blueprints

[Nibb31]

12 minutes ago, RenegadeRad said:

What the hell, it's bigger than Saturn V! How will it launch?? Where are the blue prints? 0_0

@Nibb31 

I did say to ROTATE the whole damn ship metaphorically, meaning the ship is a centrifuge. Your arguments are totallyy rebellious to everything I want, either you help me find what I want, or create your own thread with the things you mentioned

Hey, if it's just science fiction, then your thread shouldn't even be in the "Science and Spaceflight" forum. You obviously don't want any input about real science and real spaceflight, so just go ahead and make up whatever you want.

 

[RenegadeRad]

25 minutes ago, Nibb31 said:

Hey, if it's just science fiction, then your thread shouldn't even be in the "Science and Spaceflight" forum. You obviously don't want any input about real science and real spaceflight, so just go ahead and make up whatever you want.

 

It's not science fiction, no offence but you are simply very narrow minded and dont look in the new ways. I asked for designs, not any opinion of yours. A compact practicals ship which is a centrifuge itself, a one man interplanetary vehicle. I asked for the designs first, then I will discuss what utilities should be applied in a different thread.

"Who the hell cares about size" 

I do, if a ship is compact, it is economical, low massed so we don't need too much propulsion, it would be easier to manage, it could be easily launched, without the hassle of building it in space, if made small enough it could be the lander itself (with some adjustments in interior of the ship for centrifuge and planetary gravity )

And please, I mentioned before, I only need help with designs.

[Nibb31]

18 minutes ago, RenegadeRad said:

... then I will discuss what utilities should be applied in a different thread.

Form follows function. You need to know the purpose of a tool before you design the tool.

18 minutes ago, RenegadeRad said:

"Who the hell cares about size" 

I do, if a ship is compact, it is economical, low massed so we don't need too much propulsion, it would be easier to manage, it could be easily launched, without the hassle of building it in space, if made small enough it could be the lander itself (with some adjustments in interior of the ship for centrifuge and planetary gravity )

Size has nothing to do with mass. Density does. A truss doesn't have to weigh much, neither do solar panels. If you want a spinning structure, then the larger it is the better, to minimize rpm and Coriolis side-effects. If you have a nuclear reactor, then you want to put it far away from the crew, which dictates a long ship.

If you are talking near-future, then you are going to need orbital assembly. 

You haven't even stated if you want your spacecraft to go to LEO, the Moon, to Mars, to Pluto or go all the way to interstellar destinations with a full-on magical warp drive. You haven't said if you wanted a lander on it, how many people you want to transport or what kind of propulsion it has. You just want it to look cool, so go ahead and do what you want.

18 minutes ago, RenegadeRad said:

And please, I mentioned before, I only need help with designs.

But you're not listing any requirements for your design, other than "I must like the way it looks", which is subjective and not a decent way to design anything.

If you don't want a realistic design, then take the discussion to The Lounge, because this forum is supposed to be about science and real spaceflight.

[RenegadeRad]

Guess you gotta point. But yeah, I don't want magical warp drives  but it is a ship which can cover till Pluto. But you know, still what would be the best possible way for a compact ship.

As I said. Compact? And if you would add points what is necessary rather than criticize what is wrong with it, that would be cool 

[kerbiloid]

24 minutes ago, Nibb31 said:

If you want a spinning structure, then the larger it is the better, to minimize rpm and Coriolis side-effects. If you have a nuclear reactor, then you want to put it far away from the crew, which dictates a long ship.

And as a result you get a heavy rotating dumbbell, threaded onto a long slender axis — trembling like a chord — and give the ship a name: "Precession".
While using Endurance style ship your opponent gets a ship "Doughnut of Chaos".

1 hour ago, RenegadeRad said:

A compact practicals ship which is a centrifuge itself, a one man interplanetary vehicle.

As desired:
 

Spoiler

 

Edited May 23, 2016 by kerbiloid

[RenegadeRad]

10 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

And as a result you get a heavy rotating dumbbell, threaded onto a long slender axis — trembling like a chord — and give the ship a name: "Precession".
While using Endurance style ship your opponent gets a ship "Doughnut of Chaos".

As desired:
 

  Hide contents

 

Hahahahahahaha 

[kerbiloid]

Agamemnon omega class destroyer

[shynung]

1 hour ago, RenegadeRad said:

Guess you gotta point. But yeah, I don't want magical warp drives  but it is a ship which can cover till Pluto. But you know, still what would be the best possible way for a compact ship.

As I said. Compact? And if you would add points what is necessary rather than criticize what is wrong with it, that would be cool 

Physical size depends on what it's supposed to carry. If it's just a bunch of sensors and computers, a ship that fits into a 3x3x3 m box will do the job (New Horizons).

[PB666]

Having read all the orevious post i am going to recapitulate several dozen posts of disicusiion from our past. This gets quirky.

The cheapest source of energy in space is stellar radiation, locally known as insolance it is basically 

power = 1350 A / r^2 where r is distance from the sun in atomic units, A = area of panels. 

so Interstellarly we call that ISP = exhaust velocity, you csn also reflect, it does not help much/ although k2 uses for attitude control since all but 1.5 of its manuever gyros are broken. forget about g, it does you no good in deep space. 

N = 2 * eff * power/ ISP 

If your isp is as low as  1350 (135g) then you get a newton of thrust per meter squared at 50% efficiency. And the lightest weight panels are about a kilo per meter. 

As we can see, we can never realy get accelerations greater than 1 m/s with solar (0.1 g). And you will be hideously underpowered in deep space (r > 1AU). If you have ISP in the millions of meters per second, to conserve the amount  reaction mass taken and ultimately used, you need power and lots of it. One way is to kill orbital velocity and straif a star at close range, in a series of kicks keep kicking the orbit out at the apogee until finally the orbit exits the system, this unfortunatly has the ship spending years doing nothing in intrastellar space, and ultimately requires both conventional thrusters and solar power to get apoor interstellar velocity. If properlybtimed though remote power could aid in a few months of acceleration, but then again it will drift in space for eons.

Solar ships are essentially flat. A rectangular-like frame surrounds a long core and huge panels are attached to the rectangle. This type of ship offers one advantage though, it has the potential of stopping itself at its destination. by turning sideways on approach it can use stellar winds inside the pause to slow itself down, and in addition it can brake by inverted kicks at the perigee, it has power on arrival, howver the panels eventually decay with high radiation so they would have to periodically be removed and recycled. Another benefit of solar is that there is no active, only passive cosmic potential, so you dont need hideous forward shielding from space dust. 

As discussed here and in starship initiative remote laser (indirectly solar on whatever station it is position in the inner solar system and fusion power in the outer solar system) is a choice but only with very small light objects. Its completely useless in deep space and can only accelerate away from or decellerate in approach to establish bases in space. 

Basically solar for interstellar excepting remote powered gram weight vessels is a no-go

This leaves all variances of  nuclear. Right off the bat, fission energy under the best circumstance maybe slightly better than chemical rockets. It is hampered by low mass/energy efficiency and poor heat /power conversion efficiency, with this you might expect velocities in the 200 km/sec.

Everything else is fusion, right now only Orion h-bomb design is the only plausibly working example. These however do not have efficient reaction mass directors and so about 40 % of the power is wasted, it may not ultimately be suitable for manned missions and violates the current treaties so . . . . .

Assuming fusion can be workable you have generational ships that have huge fins for cooling and accelerate at the milli or micro newton rates. 

These two are the only viable near future. The ships also run into the active cosmic potentials past 0.1c, and may not be able to stop approaching their destinations. 

My fusion power ship can travel in and around any solar system, to get to the next star requires something factor 10 greater, and 1000 times more mass.

Edited May 23, 2016 by PB666

[PB666]

49 minutes ago, PB666 said:

Having read all the orevious post i am going to recapitulate several dozen posts of disicusiion from our past. This gets quirky.

The cheapest source of energy in space is stellar radiation, locally known as insolance it is basically 

power = 1350 A / r^2 where r is distance from the sun in atomic units, A = area of panels. 

so Interstellarly we call that ISP = exhaust velocity, you csn also reflect, it does not help much/ although k2 uses for attitude control since all but 1.5 of its manuever gyros are broken. forget about g, it does you no good in deep space. 

N = 2 * eff * power/ ISP 

If your isp is as low as  1350 (135g) then you get a newton of thrust per meter squared at 50% efficiency. And the lightest weight panels are about a kilo per meter. 

As we can see, we can never realy get accelerations greater than 1 m/s with solar (0.1 g). And you will be hideously underpowered in deep space (r > 1AU). If you have ISP in the millions of meters per second, to conserve the amount  reaction mass taken and ultimately used, you need power and lots of it. One way is to kill orbital velocity and straif a star at close range, in a series of kicks keep kicking the orbit out at the apogee until finally the orbit exits the system, this unfortunatly has the ship spending years doing nothing in intrastellar space, and ultimately requires both conventional thrusters and solar power to get apoor interstellar velocity. If properlybtimed though remote power could aid in a few months of acceleration, but then again it will drift in space for eons.

Solar ships are essentially flat. A rectangular-like frame surrounds a long core and huge panels are attached to the rectangle. This type of ship offers one advantage though, it has the potential of stopping itself at its destination. by turning sideways on approach it can use stellar winds inside the pause to slow itself down, and in addition it can brake by inverted kicks at the perigee, it has power on arrival, howver the panels eventually decay with high radiation so they would have to periodically be removed and recycled. Another benefit of solar is that there is no active, only passive cosmic potential, so you dont need hideous forward shielding from space dust. 

As discussed here and in starship initiative remote laser (indirectly solar on whatever station it is position in the inner solar system and fusion power in the outer solar system) is a choice but only with very small light objects. Its completely useless in deep space and can only accelerate away from or decellerate in approach to establish bases in space. 

Basically solar for interstellar excepting remote powered gram weight vessels is a no-go

This leaves all variances of  nuclear. Right off the bat, fission energy under the best circumstance maybe slightly better than chemical rockets. It is hampered by low mass/energy efficiency and poor heat /power conversion efficiency, with this you might expect velocities in the 200 km/sec.

Everything else is fusion, right now only Orion h-bomb design is the only plausibly working example. These however do not have efficient reaction mass directors and so about 40 % of the power is wasted, it may not ultimately be suitable for manned missions and violates the current treaties so . . . . .

Assuming fusion can be workable you have generational ships that have huge fins for cooling and accelerate at the milli or micro newton rates. 

These two are the only viable near future. The ships also run into the active cosmic potentials past 0.1c, and may not be able to stop approaching their destinations. 

My fusion power ship can travel in and around any solar system, to get to the next star requires something factor 10 greater, and 1000 times more mass.

I should point out, that in this ship there is a cylindrical living quarter, suspended and turned by electromagnets that outside spins at 0.5g. In habitants enter via the top or bottom center.

 

Edited May 23, 2016 by PB666

[RenegadeRad]

PB666 you win

[PB666]

23 minutes ago, RenegadeRad said:

PB666 you win

Fusion of course is not currently viable. The other issue is there is no  idea what the fusion power conversion efficiency is. The fins on the side of the vessel are primarily radiant energy deflectors for IR drive, any actual power goes to ship systems and what is left over goes into High ISP helium ion accelerators.  If Cannae proves out I could dump helium in back of the drives and potentially push off the helium using that microwave resonance.

Look at the acceleration also and the dV it would get to it destinations, but in generations.

I should also point out that as an interstellar space craft, the moment it turns to its destination to slow down, at its highest speeds it will be bombarded with cosmic radiation from atoms and molecules that begin striking the unshielded parts of the ship. The fusion reactors (in the cells), cooling system/IR drives and the ion drives would be immediately exposed to damaging particulate radiation. A ship undertaking a voyage would have to seek out interstellar space were the density of damaging molecules and dust were lower, one would not want to begin a reversal in a nebula.

Edited May 23, 2016 by PB666

[wumpus]

9 hours ago, PB666 said:

Fusion of course is not currently viable.

As you mentioned above, if you are building an Orion fusion is quite viable.  It might not work for anything else, but it can for Orion.

[PB666]

57 minutes ago, wumpus said:

As you mentioned above, if you are building an Orion fusion is quite viable.  It might not work for anything else, but it can for Orion.

Orion fusion is untested. there have been tests of the principle, same as fusion but not full scale operational testing. 

Edited May 24, 2016 by PB666

[wumpus]

1 hour ago, PB666 said:

Orion fusion is untested. there have been tests of the principle, same as fusion but not full scale operational testing. 

Yes, but unlike any other fusion design, the fusion will work.  Getting the Orion to survive the process is what requires operation testing.

[kerbiloid]

Orion project used fission

[lobe]

Weren't there also designs using fusion-boosted charges though?

[Robotengineer]

Dragon V2? It's near future.

[kerbiloid]

2 hours ago, lobe said:

Weren't there also designs using fusion-boosted charges though?

 

1 hour ago, Robotengineer said:

Dragon V2? It's near future.

2 in 1.

[wumpus]

12 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Orion project used fission

Pretty much the designers choice.  Fusion bangs tend to be cheaper than fission bangs (in bang/buck), so it depends on how cheaply you can make your smallest fusion bomb to justify such an engine.

Orion was planned to be the size of a battleship.  A fusion Orion would presumably be much bigger, and likely built in orbit using considerable mined-asteroid parts (at least most of the mass of the pressure plate shouldn't come out of a gravity well).  I'd suspect the rest would be lifted by a fission orion.  Maybe not, while you can take off from the Antarctic with minimal damage, I don't think anyone has a plan for safely landing one.  But a cargo-only Orion that can handle high acceleration (especially in bursts) should be much easier to make (and just might use fusion as well).

[kerbiloid]

56 minutes ago, wumpus said:

I don't think anyone has a plan for safely landing one.

Ho-ho...

http://www.armaghplanet.com/blog/the-amazing-aldebaran-spacecraft.html

https://www.google.ru/search?q=aldebaran+project+spaceship&newwindow=1&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjnheq2hvPMAhUD8ywKHRSdAF4QsAQILQ&biw=1920&bih=980

 

 

[PB666]

13 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Ho-ho...

http://www.armaghplanet.com/blog/the-amazing-aldebaran-spacecraft.html

https://www.google.ru/search?q=aldebaran+project+spaceship&newwindow=1&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjnheq2hvPMAhUD8ywKHRSdAF4QsAQILQ&biw=1920&bih=980

 

 

There is a plethora of explosion driven nuclear techniques. Critically however, none have been tested in a way we could assay the large scale earth launch viability.
If one could land one on the moon with conventional rockets and then test its ability to control liftoff speed, and to travel outward from earth as far as its fuel lasted into deep space you might have a sense.
Most of the ground tests have been done on small scales and have not really put the inertial buffers and device injection into long-term testing.