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Post by airc777 on Jan 9, 2019 23:57:06 GMT
[/div][/quote] Edit: Also as for failsafe, what if it also had some emergency gaskets that could extend to cut off atmosphere loss (at the cost of drag and maintenance) in the case of a power outage or plasma window failure? [/quote][/div]
That's a fair point, You could easily have a ring of material free floating on the inside of this joint that in the event of power loss would be forced into the gap by the air pressure itself.
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Post by doctorsquared on Jan 13, 2019 19:26:49 GMT
If there was some way to mount sections of the vehicle (IE propellant tanks, verniers/thrusters, turrets/launchers) on magnetic bearings with slip rings to transmit power then a cheaper option might be just to spin up the vehicle (either through a solenoid at a drydock/mooring station, drop tanks with RCS thrusters, what have you) to get centrifugal gravity instead of making it internal. There's minimal friction with magnetic bearings in a vacuum, so while you might need to recharge the spin after a while you avoid having to build an internal pressure vessel that has to spin at 1G while the rest of the vehicle is stationary around it.
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Post by airc777 on Jan 15, 2019 14:08:00 GMT
If there was some way to mount sections of the vehicle (IE propellant tanks, verniers/thrusters, turrets/launchers) on magnetic bearings with slip rings to transmit power then a cheaper option might be just to spin up the vehicle (either through a solenoid at a drydock/mooring station, drop tanks with RCS thrusters, what have you) to get centrifugal gravity instead of making it internal. There's minimal friction with magnetic bearings in a vacuum, so while you might need to recharge the spin after a while you avoid having to build an internal pressure vessel that has to spin at 1G while the rest of the vehicle is stationary around it. I'd be a bit worried about having hundreds of tons of railgun turret not bolted directly to the hull. Having it magnetically suspended on a track that's strong enough to survive maneuvering sounds like it would add mass. I'd rather de-spin the craft before combat or during orbital maneuvers then re-spin the craft for orbital transfers or station keeping. The crew would only need to be inconvenienced for at most ten minutes after which they would typically have months of uninterupted gravity service. Launchers shouldn't need to be de-spun and aimed to launch guided missiles and drones anyway, if anything it would just give them an extra 9.8m/s^2 of delta V to have them flung out of the craft like that. Not to mention that any track system like that would complicate loading mechanisms for turrets and fuel lines for thrusters, I don't like it. The only gains I'm seeing is constantly rotating to present fresh armor to the enemy, which I wouldn't value as much as having the craft and the crew module not independently rotating so damage control personal can access the entire craft. Plus not being able to place radiators between turrets or on the opposite side of the hull from turrets sounds rather limiting.
Edit: On the other hand, you could build a magnetically suspended turret track system for the purpose of if you have damaged turrets moving all of the functional turrets to the correct side of the hull to engage the enemy. But again, extra mass and loading complications.
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Post by walterscientist on Jan 15, 2019 22:25:08 GMT
Given the relatively low energy needed to spin up and down the whole ship in comparison to energy needed for interplanetary travel I am leaning toward having the whole ship spin during long range travel. It seems it would remove a lot issues more or less without any drawback. Directional antennae could be attached using canfield joints so they don't lose aim. If using nuclear reactor and MPD you would just need to budget a bit of extra reaction mass for few spins/despins.
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