Deckplanning Gravity Rings

[zero]

I have both the Gravity Ring and the Magnetic Plates in my games, it covers more corners that way.

 

[Gee4orce]

Remember arms and rings can be spun up, and de-spun, using reaction motors. That is, small rockets jets on the ring itself which expel gasses to create thrust to spin the ring. This wouldn't cause the main ship to spin at all.

Alternatively, if the main body of the ship is much more massive than the spin habitat, the counter-rotation of the main ship when spinning the ring might be so small as to be negligible. In other words, a motor on board the ship is used to spin up the ring, and Netwon's laws say that the ship is spun in the opposite direction with equal momentum - but because the ship is much more massive it only spins very slowly. Remember, that the Apollo capsules were made to rotate slowly on their way to the moon in order to prevent the sun overheating one side - so a slowly rotating main vessel might actually be a feature and not a bug.

 

[GJD]

You'd need to have a contra-rotating counterweight to stop the ship from trying to de-spin the arms by rotating the hull in the opposite direction. If the ship is big enough you can have two sets of arms, or rings, rotating in opposite directions. Otherwise just a really heavy flywheel will do it.

The spin mechanism also means the ship will resist course changes, as the gyroscopic action of the arms will tend to try and dampen down any changes to the rotational vectors of the rings/pods.

During combat, when you might need to change course a lot, you'd probably de-spin and lock the arms/rings in place.

The pods can also be designed as lifeboats, with low berths or emergency shelters in them. Give them a fraction of the power plant and lfe support to represent independant systems.

Another system is to couple two ships together with a tunnel or cable and spin the whole ship in pairs around a common centre.

As i said, you don't need another ring, just an equivalent mass. You can use a big flywheel instead.

Also, if using arms and spin habs instead of a grav ring, you don't have to have the same pods on the end of the arms, as long as the mass balances out. You could have one long arm with a small mass at the end, and one short arm with a larger mass on the end.

G.

 

[zero]

Thanks for the tips everyone, I'm just to see that the science is there and I can come up with little handwaves to keep a more "hard" setting (despite there being mean mythos aliens and such...)

 

[Solomani666]

As i said, you don't need another ring, just an equivalent mass. You can use a big flywheel instead.

Also, if using arms and spin habs instead of a grav ring, you don't have to have the same pods on the end of the arms, as long as the mass balances out. You could have one long arm with a small mass at the end, and one short arm with a larger mass on the end.

G.

At barely TL8 what ship can afford to have counter rotating dead weight?

You don't actually have to have the same mass, just the same potential energy. You can spin a lighter mass faster.

It's still much better to have two counter rotating rings of usable cabin space.


.

 

[zero]

Tbh, the battleship my crew is on is at the high-end of TL 10 with its tech, the Jump and Weapon tech excepted.
They get a 0.1G generated in their gravity ring at 2rpm. Not perfect, but they have medication, magnetic floor plates (ala Dead Space) and those fancy gravity countermeasure skinsuits that NASA have in RL. Also they can put the rpm up a bit for a slight G increase (not really needed with the stuff they have already).

I've got all the info I need to make their experience onboard as realistic as I can, with any answers able to be given based on questions.

Its not completely real-life, but its hard enough scifi for what I need in this game.