FTL starship today

[Reynard]

It's so 2001 white and shiny!! Obviously would be listed as a distributed hull with those two rings.

http://www.iflscience.com/space/nasa-reveals-latest-warp-drive-ship-designs

https://www.flickr.com/photos/123021064@N05/sets/72157644113972600/

http://io9.com/5963263/how-nasa-will-build-its-very-first-warp-drive

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

Not today. Vaporware, actually.

 

[Reynard]

Vaporware or speculative drafting using what has been proposed? I like the design for the Pushpull ring engines. Definitely doesn't land.It must create an interesting twisted visual Doppler in each direction.

 

[dragoner]

It is a nice bit of CGI, and I think people should support NASA, if this is just a fancy advert, that is cool too.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

If nothing else, it would make a great reboot of Star Trek. I would love to see a show featuring the IXS Enterprise, it looks smaller, I think it would appear in a totally different Universe I would say it should appear in the later 21st century for story reasons, some unexpected breakthrough occurs and suddenly the stars are within reach. NASA could be in charge of the ISX Enterprise but other countries will have their warp ships as well. We would see a lot of familiar nations, such as China, and Japan for instance instead of the Romulans or the Vulcans. The think the extrasolar planets being explored should be depicted realistically, with no rubber suited aliens. the competition would be primarily between the nations of the Earth as they search for prime interstellar real estate to colonize, we could also do a variation on Traveller with a totally new setting based upon this premise. As for actually having warp drive, I don't know, if it happens it will probably take most of the scientific community completely by surprise, as they would be expecting a slow expansion through the Solar System. Judging from the pictures it looks like the ship has artificial gravity, and of course that is produced by the warp drives warping space, as that is what gravity is after all, a warp in space.. The ship doesn't look landable, but nothing is stopping it from hovering in the atmosphere and using its warp drive for levitation. A small shuttle could ferry people coming to and from the ship, I don't believe in transporters, its enough of a stretch just to accept the warp drive, I think we should leave it at that. The warp drive would also give us grav vehicles by the way. An air/raft would look a bit different from Traveller cannon, it would have two warp rings just like the IXS Enterprise, except they would be smaller and incapable of FTL travel, it simply allows the ship to hover and land, avoiding various obstacles, and as in Traveller, you would have your open top varieties and pressurized ones, plus the speeder and GCarrier where needed.

 

[simonh]

Vaporware or speculative drafting using what has been proposed? I like the design for the Pushpull ring engines. Definitely doesn't land.It must create an interesting twisted visual Doppler in each direction.

Well, anything speculative is vaporware.

There wouldn't be any doppler in the direction of travel because it would be traveling faster than the light it's emitting or reflecting, so you'd get an EM version of a sonic boom.

nothing is stopping it from hovering in the atmosphere and using its warp drive for levitation.

When the drive is active, whatever is inside the warp bubble is causally disconnected from the rest of the universe. Technically it might be able to hover, but it wouldn't be much practical use doing so.

Simon Hibbs

 

[Hopeless]

nothing is stopping it from hovering in the atmosphere and using its warp drive for levitation.

When the drive is active, whatever is inside the warp bubble is causally disconnected from the rest of the universe. Technically it might be able to hover, but it wouldn't be much practical use doing so.
Simon Hibbs

So it will have to stay in orbit and hope whatever shuttles it carries can make repeated journeys down to a planet and return or they're stuck down there?

Huh a use for drones I think.

So that's just a cg representation there's been no attempt at a deck plan?

 

[Reynard]

You are now challenged! They give enough pictures to recreate the dimensions.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Vaporware or speculative drafting using what has been proposed? I like the design for the Pushpull ring engines. Definitely doesn't land.It must create an interesting twisted visual Doppler in each direction.

Well, anything speculative is vaporware.

There wouldn't be any doppler in the direction of travel because it would be traveling faster than the light it's emitting or reflecting, so you'd get an EM version of a sonic boom.

nothing is stopping it from hovering in the atmosphere and using its warp drive for levitation.

When the drive is active, whatever is inside the warp bubble is causally disconnected from the rest of the universe. Technically it might be able to hover, but it wouldn't be much practical use doing so.

Simon Hibbs

Only if it is warping FTL, a warp drive can also go slower than light, in which case that wouldn't follow. A slower than light warp would be a grav vehicle, since gravity is nothing but a warp in space.

 

[Hopeless]

You are now challenged! They give enough pictures to recreate the dimensions.

Looks a bit on the small side, did they say how many crew it could hold and they did remember to include a couple of bathrooms and enough space for consumables so they could survive in there for at least a few months... I don't think even McDonalds or Taco Bell has a branch out there!

Oh and please remember to include plumbing as an essential crew requirement, you really don't want a blocked loo out there needing an EVA to resolve! :twisted:

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

You are now challenged! They give enough pictures to recreate the dimensions.

Looks a bit on the small side, did they say how many crew it could hold and they did remember to include a couple of bathrooms and enough space for consumables so they could survive in there for at least a few months... I don't think even McDonalds or Taco Bell has a branch out there!

Oh and please remember to include plumbing as an essential crew requirement, you really don't want a blocked loo out there needing an EVA to resolve! :twisted:

The reason why Star Trek's Enterprise is so big is so they can have a lot of Red Shirts getting blown away, and have plausible place where they can come from. With a smaller Enterprise, they have to be more careful about who they kill each episode.

 

[Hopeless]

The reason why Star Trek's Enterprise is so big is so they can have a lot of Red Shirts getting blown away, and have plausible place where they can come from. With a smaller Enterprise, they have to be more careful about who they kill each episode.

Wouldn't they ban red shirts for that precise reason?

Still too small just the space needed for all that science fiction let alone science factual if they can't ring Earth when something happens and they have no idea what to do... do they have internet access out there?!

So if they do get this built will they check out the solar system before returning that Klingon to his home world... oh right that's an entirely different Enterprise... so will they arm it in case those aliens have been watching our TV shows but haven't got past the 50's?

Might be worth taking a few box sets to trade if that's true but for gods sake ban Twilight and the Prequels... the original trilogy and Dr who is fine they'll be too busy wondering what that blue box is to realise there's more than a USA out there... huh maybe avoid all mention of Enders Game the movie especially there's no need to scare all alien life out there after all!

 

[Reynard]

I have a feeling IXS stands for International eXperimental Starship and is a test bed rather than a workhorse vessel. Still, testing a ship mean going to other star systems and that should mean exploration. This could also be a scout and/or lab ship.

As a wild guess looking that the photo, the central cylinder is the engineering section, the disc below the bridge could have sensors and might be the living section while those four pods could house lab space. Sensors in that disc area would make sense to optimal coverage beyond the rings.

Never intended to land. It goes to a system and collects data about the system. You can still get a lot of data from orbit. It returns to Earth and docks to transfer data and crew for the next venture. The information will determine if other ship designs will carry away teams and vehicles. Obviously the main ship will NEVER land.

 

[Hopeless]

Does it look like it could carry enough components to construct a version of the International Space Station at any world it visits?

Could even drop satellites so they have a communication link across the solar system, care to estimate the crew number?

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

I have a feeling IXS stands for International eXperimental Starship and is a test bed rather than a workhorse vessel. Still, testing a ship mean going to other star systems and that should mean exploration. This could also be a scout and/or lab ship.

As a wild guess looking that the photo, the central cylinder is the engineering section, the disc below the bridge could have sensors and might be the living section while those four pods could house lab space. Sensors in that disc area would make sense to optimal coverage beyond the rings.

Never intended to land. It goes to a system and collects data about the system. You can still get a lot of data from orbit. It returns to Earth and docks to transfer data and crew for the next venture. The information will determine if other ship designs will carry away teams and vehicles. Obviously the main ship will NEVER land.

A smaller warp ship could land I think, nothing in the specs mentions anythings about Transporters, so I'll assume they don't have those. A smaller warp vessel not designed to go faster than light can deploy from the vessel and counter the effects of the planet's gravity and softly land in its surface, call this a "Shuttle" if you like. A realistic Star Trek with this type of vessel won't encounter many "Class M" type planets, so space suits likely would be required.

 

[Reynard]

The reason I say these warp vessels can't land is look at those freaking huge rings. We also have no idea how big a warp system is or if there is a minimum size. In some ways the information so far suggests the warp system is the entire drive system and can move a ship at slower than light so there would be no separate sublight engine. We also have no idea what powers this thing or how much power it consumes (LOTS). Eyeballing, without the rings it's about the size of a NASA shuttle or around 100 dtons.

For a fun idea, use the warp drive rules in the core book and the rings are the engine with the Maneuver, Power Plant and fuel in the central core.

And, unlike old sci fi movies, no guns or grenades as standard cargo!

 

[sideranautae]

The reason I say these warp vessels can't land is look at those freaking huge rings. We also have no idea how big a warp system is or if there is a minimum size.

Right now, there is no warp system. The "theory" (not really worthy of that appellation). Has not been tested.

 

[Reynard]

Uh, yeah. We kind of got that from the beginning. What we're doing here is speculating what both the warp engine technology could be and the possible design of the ship from the artist concept pictures. Seriously, you thought we read the articles and took away this was currently available?

No.

My last post even states what it might be like as a Traveller ship.

 

[sideranautae]

Seriously, you thought we read the articles and took away this was currently available?

Fix your thread title as it appears that YOU are under that impression. :roll:

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

The reason I say these warp vessels can't land is look at those freaking huge rings. We also have no idea how big a warp system is or if there is a minimum size. In some ways the information so far suggests the warp system is the entire drive system and can move a ship at slower than light so there would be no separate sublight engine. We also have no idea what powers this thing or how much power it consumes (LOTS). Eyeballing, without the rings it's about the size of a NASA shuttle or around 100 dtons.

For a fun idea, use the warp drive rules in the core book and the rings are the engine with the Maneuver, Power Plant and fuel in the central core.

And, unlike old sci fi movies, no guns or grenades as standard cargo!

I assume the rings mark the boundary of the warp envelope. Everything within in them can go faster than the speed of light, anything that is sticking out will be left behind and probably broken off in the process, but when the warp is used to move slower than the speed of light, it should act like a maneuver drive, everything outside the warp envelope while the warp is maneuvering the ship at slower than light speed at a reasonable acceleration say 1 to 6 g, should remain attached to the starship, though anything within will feel no acceleration, anything sticking out will probably feel twice the acceleration because of the gravity fields outside the flat space area of the warp envelope, So you could have retractable landing legs that extend outside the warp rings during landing maneuvers, one must retract the landing legs however if going to FTL warp, and make sure one is outside the atmosphere of any planet, the results if you do not would be catastrophic. Basically a warp drive compresses the space ahead of the ship and expands it behind, is it does this fast enough it will fuse the atoms ahead of the ship creating a nuclear explosion, likely destroying the ship and much else that is around it! If it is the size of the shuttle, then this ship should be built to land with retractable landing legs. It is understandable given what I just said, why you wouldn't want this ship landing near or in any populated areas! We're talking about a nuclear explosion here, so you would want the FTL mode of the Warp Drive to be activated only in space, even then it would leave a trail of fused interstellar plasma in its wake!