What Would Sensors On Scifi SSTO's Even Look Like?

[Spacescifi]

You know... the classic vessel that can take off a planet, go to orbit, then lightspeed or FTL jump somewhere else and fly at torchship levels of efficiency in space.

In fiction you may see a satelite dish (looking at you Star Wars) mounted on the hull... maybe a few antenna, and that's it.

 

So I am curious to know if that is even accurate at all.

It goes without saying that when flying into atmosphere from space you would retract satelite dishes and any other long extending greebly bits to avoid the air damaging them from friction.

 

Because visual scifi has well covered what weapons and engines may look like... but sensors?

Hardly.

Edited February 8, 2022 by Spacescifi

[kerbiloid]

As they have a detailed 3d model  of the planet and the landing area, all they need is a wind sensor.

Ae their ship is bulky and fast, they don't need the wind sensor.

[magnemoe]

Well exposed sensors will get problems if you move at velocity in the atmosphere. Its two ways to deal with this. One is to retract them into an bay, Other is to have them inside an aerodynamic cover like radars on planes. 
The retract into an bay look coolest and has benefit that you can hide the sensor behind heat shielding or armor but it can obviously not be used then shielded. 
Now something like an telescope is probably something you want to retract wile radars are easier to protect. 

[DDE]

Flat radar arrays integrated into the skin are all the rage these days, plus tiny ports for ladar. Optics turrets as well as any SEXTANT X-ray pilsar positioning systems are probablybgoing to be retractable.

[kerbiloid]

The sensitive ship skin full of microwebcams.

And every sensor protected with a bulletproof glass and a steel lattice from the stones and arrows of the extraterrestrial nonhumanoid chauvinists trying to argue against our right to optimize their resource flows.

[KSK]

Sensors is a pretty broad term. What are your sensors intended to detect?

I would suggest reading up on real life space hardware and see if you can find any relevant pictures. Space probes and space telescopes are essentially free-flying sensor platforms so they’d be a good place to start. 

Also, consider what you’re sensing and how transparent your ship hull would be to those particles, fields, or waves.

Chances are that your hull won’t be transparent to visible light, so optical  sensors will need something to collect that light, whether that’s a window in the hull or a telescope sticking out of it. 

On the other hand, your hull may well be transparent to other frequencies, so sensors operating at those frequencies may be hidden within the hull and not visible from the outside. This would particularly apply to more sci-fi sensors such as compact neutrino detectors (and by compact, I mean anything smaller than a cubic kilometre).
 

 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

Sensors?  When we are going, you don't need sensors 

[Rakaydos]

3 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Well exposed sensors will get problems if you move at velocity in the atmosphere. Its two ways to deal with this. One is to retract them into an bay, Other is to have them inside an aerodynamic cover like radars on planes. 
The retract into an bay look coolest and has benefit that you can hide the sensor behind heat shielding or armor but it can obviously not be used then shielded. 
Now something like an telescope is probably something you want to retract wile radars are easier to protect. 

Something like Star Wars will often claim that energy shielding will act as an aerocover.

[Gargamel]

3 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Now something like an telescope is probably something you want to retract wile radars are easier to protect. 

Or you could have it shielded, like the SOFIA platform:

That's a big honkin 'scope inside a 747.  

As to the bigger question, I don't think there's a good answer for this.  Present day engineers have found multiple ways to have exposed sensors while keeping them safely protected, like conformal sonar in submarines, radars in the nose cones of airplanes, even radio antennas built into the back windows of cars.    Trying to nail down what futuristic sensor arrays will look like should probably be left upto the author of the story, as there will be very few obvious issues with almost any layout picked. 

As for the Millenium Falcon's dish.... I'm pretty sure it was just a greeble the model makers threw on there for the cool factor, before the movie was considered to be worthy of considering such implications such as physics and realism as it is today.  I don't even think in the original cut of a New Hope there was ever any shots of the Falcon in atmospheric flight. 

[kerbiloid]

Sensors. They are.

Spoiler

 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

55 minutes ago, Gargamel said:

original cut of a New Hope Star Wars

FTFY

 

 

 

May, 1977.  Avco Theater in LA.  I was there.  I know what I saw.

Edited February 8, 2022 by JoeSchmuckatelli

[cubinator]

A phone has lots of sensors similar to what's useful in an aircraft, and it looks like a monolith. I think there's no special reason for sensors to be visible on a spaceship, it's pretty much implied that there are sufficient avionics somewhere. To the untrained eye they will just look like electronics. But if your audience knows better....

Spoiler

(This is a bomb defusal scene with an Arduino Uno. I couldn't find a clear picture of it, but there is also an Arduino on the nuke in Mission Impossible 6)

 

Edited February 8, 2022 by cubinator

[Gargamel]

7 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

FTFY

 

 

 

May, 1977.  Avco Theater in LA.  I was there.  I know what I saw.

Ehhhh... even the Original Cut titled it episode IV, A New Hope. 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

1 hour ago, Gargamel said:

Original Cut titled it

Subtitled - in subsequent remasters

Edited February 8, 2022 by JoeSchmuckatelli

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

(I'm being persnickety, but on purpose.  "New Hope" came much later.)

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...

<Title> Star Wars

It is a period of civil war.

[magnemoe]

2 hours ago, Gargamel said:

Or you could have it shielded, like the SOFIA platform:

That's a big honkin 'scope inside a 747.  

As to the bigger question, I don't think there's a good answer for this.  Present day engineers have found multiple ways to have exposed sensors while keeping them safely protected, like conformal sonar in submarines, radars in the nose cones of airplanes, even radio antennas built into the back windows of cars.    Trying to nail down what futuristic sensor arrays will look like should probably be left upto the author of the story, as there will be very few obvious issues with almost any layout picked. 

As for the Millenium Falcon's dish.... I'm pretty sure it was just a greeble the model makers threw on there for the cool factor, before the movie was considered to be worthy of considering such implications such as physics and realism as it is today.  I don't even think in the original cut of a New Hope there was ever any shots of the Falcon in atmospheric flight. 

Yes something like an large telescope would be useful on any sort of military or science craft and you could have it doing double duty as an laser. On an warship or if you entered atmosphere you would want them to be retractable.
For star wars greeble was the key world who goes down to handguns. like Han Solos blaster  and other guns like the heavy blaster was an machine gun without the barrel but with an scope. 
Overall star wars has an dieselpunk feel as it was WW 2 in space or how battle of Midway looks a lot like star wars  as I saw the star wars movies long before I saw WW 2 documentaries. 

[DDE]

2 hours ago, magnemoe said:

For star wars greeble was the key world who goes down to handguns. like Han Solos blaster  and other guns like the heavy blaster was an machine gun without the barrel but with an scope. 

Some guns didn't need dressing up.

Straight outta Mos Eisley!

[Nuke]

id just figure they would be deployable and would be stowed for re-entry. some sensors could be hidden in the structure, such as using the nosecone as a raydome, which is how fighter jets tend to place their radar. optical sensors would be placed in a turret somewhere, like what military drones use for their sensor package, though usually in the chin position or in a pylon mounted pod, a space craft would want that on the cold side of its heat shield, and it might be something you could retract when you are not using it. you probibly want some kind of high gain dish antennae for long range communications, but again this would be retractable for re-entry (which isnt really the best time for communications anyway).  when your local afb has an airshow, be sure to look around at the various sensor and communications packages for inspiration, and then realize a system used in space is going to need to be bigger to maximize aperture for the longer operational ranges they will be used at. 

Edited February 9, 2022 by Nuke

[Spacescifi]

1 hour ago, Nuke said:

id just figure they would be deployable and would be stowed for re-entry. some sensors could be hidden in the structure, such as using the nosecone as a raydome, which is how fighter jets tend to place their radar. optical sensors would be placed in a turret somewhere, like what military drones use for their sensor package, though usually in the chin position or in a pylon mounted pod, a space craft would want that on the cold side of its heat shield, and it might be something you could retract when you are not using it. you probibly want some kind of high gain dish antennae for long range communications, but again this would be retractable for re-entry (which isnt really the best time for communications anyway).  when your local afb has an airshow, be sure to look around at the various sensor and communications packages for inspiration, and then realize a system used in space is going to need to be bigger to maximize aperture for the longer operational ranges they will be used at. 

 

Hmmm.... so the original Enterprise was more correct than later versions (see the big dish)?

 

 

I just assumed satelite dishes were for receiving, not sending? Right?

I know virtually nothing about why dishes are special (why not use a bell nozzle dish instead).

 

Edited February 9, 2022 by Spacescifi

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

36 minutes ago, Spacescifi said:

I know virtually nothing about why dishes are special

They keep your food from wandering around the table!

Hutt Lore.

[Nuke]

35 minutes ago, Spacescifi said:

 

Hmmm.... so the original Enterprise was more correct than later versions (see the big dish)?

 

 

I just assumed satelite dishes were for receiving, not sending? Right?

I know virtually nothing about why dishes are special (why not use a bell nozzle dish instead).

 

yea, since the enterprise never goes into the atmosphere (at least in the pre-jjverse canon), there is no reason to have it retractable. keep in mind that in trek lingo the purpose of the dish is to detect and clear space debris that can harm the ship at warp. so it has both receiving and transmitting elements. the tng technical manual also indicated that it contained long and short range sensors. i think it may also come with lasers to ionize space dust, and then the dust is steered out of the way (or into the bussard collctors) via magnetic fields. it can also be used to ineffectively shoot at borg cubes. while i generally like the star trek design language, the deflector is a little bit too jack of all trades for my tastes. 

[razark]

2 hours ago, Nuke said:

the enterprise never goes into the atmosphere

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomorrow_Is_Yesterday

(But that wasn't on purpose.)

 

3 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

I know virtually nothing about why dishes are special (why not use a bell nozzle dish instead).

The dish is parabolic, and nothing more than a reflector.  The emitter/receiver is mounted on the central spike, at a certain distance.  The parabolic shape of the dish focuses incoming energy on that point in the case of receiving, and in transmitting, the energy is reflected by the dish towards the direction the dish is pointing.  It makes an omnidirectional signal into a directional one.

[Nuke]

i forgot that episode for some reason. 

[kerbiloid]

20 hours ago, DDE said:

Straight outta Mos Eisley!

Now I understand, why are they watching this movie before a space launch... It's a SW spinoff.

[razark]

1 hour ago, Nuke said:

i forgot that episode for some reason. 

The odd thing is that I had just watched that video a couple days ago, so it was fresh in my mind.