Hull configurations - corrected

[DFW]

Would non-standard shapes still fall into "standard" hulls?
For instance, the 200 ton far trader; is it a needle, cone, wedge? Kinda looks like a simi-streamlined shoebox.

The Far Trader in the MGT MRB is a flattened cone, as far as solid geometry goes.

If you look at the core book ship write-ups they simply say "Streamlined" "Dispersed" or the spot is left blank as in the yacht and lab ship. In a perfect world (yeah right) there would be a line on the MGT ship description saying "standard-wedge" or "streamlined-wedge" etc...

The VAST majority of Trav ship drawings are done by people who don't know the rules or, just draw what they want without regard to them. So, I don't really pay attention to them. The old "flying box cars" of old are an example of what I call an irregular structure, above.

For instance, what you classify a cube? Not dispersed.... not streamlined... standard? Or use the HG rules and call it "Close structure"?

Under the rules above, irregular.

 

[Jak Nazryth]

MRB?

I can kinda see how a far trader could be classified as a flattened cone, kind two flattened cones joined together, but still flattened cone none the less.

And yes, I also HIGHLY agree that many ship designs created by third parties have little to do with the rules, form, function, logic, etc... and simply "look cool" on a hand sketch.

I still can't figure out why in Star Trek "Voyager" why the h@ll the warp nacelles rotate down prior to warp... Actually I know why... cause the idiot who designed it thought it would look cool...
And why the "new" Battle star Galactica hanger bays "retracted" into the hull... cause it looks cool prior to jump! Who cares about the wasted space and structural weakness.... its' cool...
(sorry, I'm just an old grumpy architect)

 

[AndrewW]

MRB?

Main Rule Book.

 

[rust]

I think a Standard hull should be designed with the intention to avoid ma-
king it "anti-aerodynamic", and one sign of this could be rounded edges.
Therefore I would see a sphere or an ovoid as a Standard hull, but a cu-
be or box as an Irregular hull. A difficult case could be a Disc, depending
on the details it could probably be an Airframe hull (the "flying saucer" as
an unusual type of lifting body concept), a Standard Hull (with higher drag
caused by a flat edge around the disc) or even an Irregular hull (e.g. if it
is closer to a short cylinder with flat ends) - a case for a referee call, pro-
bably.

 

[barnest2]

And why the "new" Battle star Galactica hanger bays "retracted" into the hull... cause it looks cool prior to jump! Who cares about the wasted space and structural weakness.... its' cool...

because the older jump drives couldn't make a large enough slip space for the ship with its pods extended, so it was easier to make them retract. Notice that the Pegasus doesn't retract its pods, even though it's a bigger ship, because it mounts a much newer drive (it's about 40 years newer)

 

[Jak Nazryth]

MRB?

Main Rule Book.

DOH!!!

And I was trying to spell out Merchant... Rouge... Bandits.... :roll:

 

[Ishmael]

something to remember about flight through an atmosphere.
Aero drag can be thought of as 'thrust' in the opposite direction of flight.... top speed will be when the ship's thrust is canceled out by the drag.

Drag is proportional to the craft's X-sectional area which is itself, proportional to the craft's volume^.66667, all other things being equal.

Drag is proportional to the craft's drag co-efficient, which is related to a craft's shape and fineness.

these 2 things could be put into the configuration chart

Drag is proportional to the craft's velocity squared.
To go twice as fast, you'll need 4 times the thrust from your thrusters.

Drag is proportional to the atmos' density, which varies from surface density down to effectively '0' ( into space ) as you go up, in a non-linear fashion.

Aero lift is very similar in the things that affect it.

for very fast flight, the shape of the mach cone is related to speed and the entire craft needs to fit inside this mach cone or suffer hugely increased drag not to mention being damaging to the craft itself.

but the Drag proportional to vel^2 is the most likely to trip people up thing.

 

[DFW]

for very fast flight, the shape of the mach cone is related to speed and the entire craft needs to fit inside this mach cone or suffer hugely increased drag not to mention being damaging to the craft itself.

Yep, but damage to Streamlined MGT hulls would happen at much, much higher speeds than present day aircraft that have comparatively, toilet paper thin skin and butter soft internal bracing.

Some of the streamlined shapes will be faster than the air-frame ships due to lift induced drag.

 

[locarno24]

Trav grav drives still accelerate and retain velocity. They act and sound like reaction based drives to me. Thrusters make sense as they are simple and proven. In your other post about antigrav tech you make mention of thrusters. Plus, I never specified that they have to be reaction style. Maybe uber hydrazine or maybe they are grav thrusters.

If you're in 'free fall' then the gravetic force is applied to every part of the ship simultaneously - so no relative acceleration, no shear force, no stress.

The problem with acceleration is (normally) that it's being applied at one particular point on the ship (thruster array combustion chamber) and hence the engine is trying to accelerate whilst the rest of the ship hangs on. If the shear force applied to your engine bracket is more than it can take, engine compartment tears itself to pieces. Bad times commence.

Of course, we don't know what other sources of stress/strain/damage may occur from projecting a 'fake' gravity well where no dense matter exists. Since you're generating an attractive force, Newton's Third Law implies there is a reaction, somewhere, on something - but we don't know what that is.