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Post by RiftandRend on Jun 17, 2017 7:50:11 GMT
I really recommend against artificial gravity. The technology required for that is on the edge of the theoretical and is far more complicated than anything else you listed. You could do artificial gravity by rotating the crew compartment at relatively high speeds, granted that needs power and/or some sort of engine to keep the crew compartment rotating, if you don't want to spin the whole ship. He seemed to be referencing some kind of sci fi Magic rather than centripetal systems.
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Post by Easy on Jun 18, 2017 3:28:27 GMT
I am a big fan of 2001 style internal centrifuges. Relatively small, no visible rotation outside nor rotating seals. You don't have full earth gravity, but lunar gravity or less that keeps food and drinks in the right direction.
Gentle push with super low grav sleeping bunks nearest the hub. Gym and running track on the lowest level. Rotation could be stopped in emergencies or repair.
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Post by Enderminion on Jun 18, 2017 3:30:44 GMT
The spin deck on the Discovery could be fed into a fly wheel
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Post by srbrant on Jun 18, 2017 6:14:49 GMT
You could do artificial gravity by rotating the crew compartment at relatively high speeds, granted that needs power and/or some sort of engine to keep the crew compartment rotating, if you don't want to spin the whole ship. He seemed to be referencing some kind of sci fi Magic rather than centripetal systems. As I said before: sufficiently advanced.
I'm thinking of having the decks be floor-to-engine, but have there be gravity generators for when thrust is absent.
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Post by The Astronomer on Jun 18, 2017 6:17:29 GMT
The word 'sufficiently advanced' really breaks everything. Artificial gravity? Use them as your ships' drive, tractor beam, weapon of mass destruction, literally everything.
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Post by Hicks on Jun 18, 2017 7:46:06 GMT
So, you already know how realistic starships operate, they're skyscrapers with engines in their basements; the Burj Khalifa- IN SPACE. By 5525, torch ships are a thing and you don't need to worry about spin gravity or anti gravity or long-ways decks, you need to worry if the passengers can survive the constant, high acceleration thrust the engines are capable of as they brachistochrone from orbit to orbit. Weirdly, slow ships @1g constant acceleration are the luxury, super posh, expensive affairs. everybody else is packed like sardines, strapped into a G-couch with auto-catheters for the 4-6g "human limited" freight line. In CoaDE we can talk about solar sails slow-boating freight across the solar system; in 3,500 years the fast boat accelerates at the limit of the freight it carries. No gravity? no problem. That just makes everything easier to load, as you are only limited by inertia and not supporting freight against the deck.
Container ships are engines, reaction mass, and a stack of a few kilotons of freight balanced on top of it. Space is weird, but one of the main appeals is that it is so *unlike* terrestrial shipping. we get to explore how stuff works when there are at the same time less and more restrictions on how things operate. But if you take anything away from this, use the Sky Scraper model, which makes it way easier to grok and gives your audience something familiar in a setting so completely devoid of similarities from our own.
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Post by tortugagreen on Jun 18, 2017 23:12:52 GMT
It feels like wall-to-engine orientations are best not only because they're more familiar, there's more width for cargo bays and freight ramps. It may also be a morale thing so that they are more reminiscent of ancient sailing ships instead of orbiting sardine cans. Why would wall-to-engine systems be more familiar? If you're on a vehicle, would you expect to be pulled towards the floor or wall? Because of experience from previous life on a planet, we expect to be pulled "down" towards the floor or ground, rather than sideways. As such it would make sense to have the floor be oriented towards the engine, though there is an exception for artificial gravity equipped ships where the floor and down should be somewhere between the thrust axis and the artificial gravity's pull (whether from a spinning section or space magic) so the floor still feels level under thrust. On the second argument, that there's more width for cargo bays and freight ramps, I disagree, because of these diagrams I just cooked up in Paint. Having the floor - which I'm defining as "the side of the room on which things are placed" be 90 o from the thrust direction is just asking for a loose box to get pulled loose from the floor by the thrust and go to the wall facing the engine, possibly taking other boxes with it and additionally possibly breaking the wall in the direction of the engine. Due to this possibility, it is advisable to have any even slightly loose objects on the face of the room towards the engine, which would then be defined as the "floor." Onto the "orbiting sardine can" remarks - Is that not what they are? I feel that any improvement to morale due to the resemblances you describe (which I don't think would be present, especially if this society has had space colonization for a while) would be more than countered out by being thrown to the wall whenever the ship maneuvers.
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Post by ross128 on Jun 19, 2017 1:30:21 GMT
One thing that can help the "floor toward engines" configuration to make more sense visually is to think about how a ship would be oriented for liftoff on a planet. The engines are pointed at the ground, because to take off the ship wants to go up, and the rest of the ship is built like a skyscraper. You're not flying a boat in space, you're flying the Empire State Building in space.
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Post by Rocket Witch on Jun 19, 2017 2:53:18 GMT
It feels like wall-to-engine orientations are best not only because they're more familiar, there's more width for cargo bays and freight ramps. It may also be a morale thing so that they are more reminiscent of ancient sailing ships instead of orbiting sardine cans. Once you've got a space-based society with people being born and growing up in either orbit or transit between systems, that familiarity is going to be long gone from the minds of the main demographic that designs and operates spacecraft. They would be put off by sailing, rather, and hold much more esteem in the type of sardine can they're most familiar with from the context of their own life experiences. And about cargo space, don't make the mistake of assuming everything has to be inside the hull, let alone pressurised. Unless it's a passenger transport, you can very well have massive bulk container ships that are very little more than truss spines with cylinders/spheres/boxes clustered around. Personally I think these look cool, but each to their own in the end.
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Post by srbrant on Jun 19, 2017 4:23:24 GMT
By the way, here's an idea of my starship design philosophy, trying to reconcile "traditional" starships with realistic ones. And yes, I drew this myself.
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Post by srbrant on Jun 19, 2017 4:50:09 GMT
It feels like wall-to-engine orientations are best not only because they're more familiar, there's more width for cargo bays and freight ramps. It may also be a morale thing so that they are more reminiscent of ancient sailing ships instead of orbiting sardine cans. Once you've got a space-based society with people being born and growing up in either orbit or transit between systems, that familiarity is going to be long gone from the minds of the main demographic that designs and operates spacecraft. They would be put off by sailing, rather, and hold much more esteem in the type of sardine can they're most familiar with from the context of their own life experiences. And about cargo space, don't make the mistake of assuming everything has to be inside the hull, let alone pressurised. Unless it's a passenger transport, you can very well have massive bulk container ships that are very little more than truss spines with cylinders/spheres/boxes clustered around. Personally I think these look cool, but each to their own in the end. I was expecting that answer, actually. ^^; In fact, I've considered making a sort of "Helionautical culture" for space like how we have marine lore. Instead of mermaids, buried treasure and ghost ships, why not have Star Dragons (alien race in my story), forgotten supply caches and ghost ships? One of the ways it manifests in the story is in the terms for ships. Because "battleships" and "destroyers" have little relevance with actual spacecraft, there are completely new terms. Like Grifts, which are civilian ships between 10,000 and 15,000 tons or Kiffas*, which are between 15,000 and 25,000 tons for either civilian or military purposes. *"Kiffa" is derived from "Merkava", the Hebrew word for "Chariot." The etymology for "Grift" is lost to time.
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Post by RiftandRend on Jun 19, 2017 5:57:10 GMT
By the way, here's an idea of my starship design philosophy, trying to reconcile "traditional" starships with realistic ones. And yes, I drew this myself. That's quite good art and the ships don't look too outlandish. Are they entering a dock of some sort?
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Post by Easy on Jun 19, 2017 17:44:15 GMT
Not securing cargo pallets to the deck's cargo attachment points? That's a paddling. Not completing the loadmaster's inspection on all cargo distribution and tiedowns? That's a paddling. Not verfying three dimensional mass distribution and derived rotational inertia is within operational limits? That's a paddling.
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Post by tortugagreen on Jun 19, 2017 17:48:10 GMT
Not securing cargo pallets to the deck's cargo attachment points? That's a paddling. Not completing the loadmaster's inspection on all cargo distribution and tiedowns? That's a paddling. That doesn't mean it won't happen, so it's better with them to the side with the engine just in case someone screwed up their mass-handling math.
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Post by Easy on Jun 19, 2017 17:55:46 GMT
Not securing cargo pallets to the deck's cargo attachment points? That's a paddling. Not completing the loadmaster's inspection on all cargo distribution and tiedowns? That's a paddling. That doesn't mean it won't happen, so it's better with them to the side with the engine just in case someone screwed up their mass-handling math. the cargo is not necessarily "on the floor". You might need to secure it differently. Especially if you had a tall but narrow cargo hold that was shaped like a grain silo. Plus this is space so you might have external cargo that is tied down with straps and cables and only has a thin micrometeriod covering at most. And all that has to result in an acceptable center of mass that our thrusters can gimbal or compensate for with an acceptable propellent inefficiency. -------------- Plus ships might have a "conning tower" sometimes an observation deck laterally offset from the hull has uses such as wide angle views (more than hemispherical), visual inspection of one half the hull, awareness during docking and the general ability to see both forwards and back from the same position. This says nothing of the tower's floor plan, nor am I justifying it on an amored combat ship, although you could still probably fit one at whatever mass penalty. It's not like the only job of every part of a warship is to accept enemy fire.
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