Ship Design Philosophy

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Engineering, Power Plants, and Using nanotechnology to convert waste heat into electricity | Charles Stafford | TEDxTucsonSalon

Dr. Stafford's talk discusses his ideas of using nanotechnology to convert waste heat into electricity. In particular, he shows how we might take advantage of quantum oddities in the way heat is transferred across specific atomic structures, so that we could produce cost-effective, non-polluting electricity.

Dr. Stafford is a Professor of Physics at the University of Arizona. He is also Co-Director of the UA Chemical Physics Program. For over twenty-five years, Dr. Stafford has focused his research on the theory of charge and heat flow in quantum systems. He has published over seventy peer-reviewed scientific articles, and he holds three U.S. Patents for inventions in nanotechnology. In 2000, he received the ABB Prize of the Swiss Physical Society “for his outstanding contributions to research on Cohesion and Conductance of Disordered Metallic Contacts.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BG8LYEqNmqk

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Engineering, Power Plants, and Converting Heat Into Electricity

Humankind wastes a lot of energy, but thanks to new technologies, it is increasingly affordable to harvest and use it. At a recent energy summit in Washington, one of the participating commercial firms exhibited photovoltaic cells that turn waste heat into electricity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=120&v=G5qCw5RIBc0

 

[Sigtrygg]

Here we go again.

You can not convert 'waste heat' into electricity. you can only convert a temperature gradient into electricity, which in turn generate waste heat.

 

[Condottiere]

I don't pretend to be a physicist either, but if you have to sink that heat any where, I'd dump it into the fusion reactor.

It seems pretty much equivalent to perpetual energy, if you use it to force a cycle through a steamish type turbine, whether the material is hydrogen, water or liquid metal.

 

[Sigtrygg]

The principles of the laws of thermodynamics are pretty easy to learn, but the most basic one is heat energy goes from where it is hot to where it is cold.

You can only have a temperature gradient going from hot to cold. You can not dump waste heat into your fusion reactor unless it is hotter than your reactor or you do work to shift the heat to your reactor. Doing so requires energy input to do the work, which generates yet more waste heat. Put another way, in a closed system like a spaceship if you try to move waste heat into your fusion reactor you will end up generating even more waste heat in the process - I am aware I am not explaining this very well but it is difficult without diagrams and equations

The laws of thermodynamics are very well understood and have yet to be contradicted by any observation or experiment.

Traveller has a magic heat sink technology that it has never revealed, I postulate it is based on that old chestnut gravitics...

 

[Condottiere]

The other way to dump heat would be diverting it to plasma and fusion weapon systems, since the material gets expelled, and new material has to be heated up.

 

[Condottiere]

Inspiration: Battle of the Dreadnoughts -- A Star Wars Short Film

Battle of the Dreadnoughts, A Star Wars Short Film, sees the Eclipse Super Star Destroyer -- one of the Empire's most devastating weapons -- face off against the New Republic's Viscount Class Star Defender in a Star Wars Legends space battle for the ages.

Thanks to EC Henry for all of his exceptional work, check out his behind the scenes video here:
youtu.be/VVdiY7W2B_M

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Jlo081vSQQ

 

[Condottiere]

Inspiration: Century 21 Tech Talk - Episode Four: Fireball XL5 | Hosted by Brains [Thunderbirds] and Prof Matic

Welcome to Century 21 Tech Talk, a brand new video series hosted by International Rescue's resident genius - Brains!

In this briefing, we'll be learning about Fireball XL5, the pride of the World Space Patrol!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3Jwe8s4Nww

Oxygen pills and surviving contact with vacuumed space.

 

[Condottiere]

Inspiration: Archer Season 10 Trailer (HD) Archer: 1999

Archer 1999 premieres this May on FXX.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILmMhNN0hZc

I kinda suspected that the next season would be futuristic; the other genres would have been Renaissance, Enlightenment, Regency, Victorian, Western, Civil War, Great War, Roaring Twenties, fantasy, ancient or medieval.

 

[Condottiere]

Inspiration: USCM Tech: UD-4L "Cheyenne" Utility Dropship

A look at the USCM's UD-4L "Cheyenne" Utility Dropship, and the incredible detail put into it by James Cameron & Co, as shown in the Aliens: Colonial Marines Tech Manual.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nIyIhWXZX8

The weapon pylons could act as aerofoils, properly configured and streamlined.

 

[Condottiere]

Inspiration: Anatomy of a Vessel: USCSS Nostromo - Registration 1809246(09)

An exploration of the USCSS Nostromo, the Weyland-Yutani-owned commercial towing vehicle that brought the company one step closer to attaining a Xenomorph specimen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtivHb9rnDY

Streamlined (battle) tender, I'd speculate.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Engineering and Expander Cycle Rocket Engines - Using Waste Heat To Drive Your Rocket

Another installment of 'Things Kerbal Space Program Doesn't Teach' - explaining the expander cycle rocket engines in more detail. Expander cycles use the waste heat from the combustion chamber and nozzles to boil liquid hydrogen and power the turbines. The main advantages are cooler, less chemically active turbine environments, but if used in a closed cycle design the total thrust is limited.

Most of this material is at a pretty high level, I'm not a rocket scientist, I only play one on the internet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSUhHYdyGJI

1. Turbo pump.

2. Low boiling point of hydrogen.

3. Expander bleed cycle.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Engineering and These Engineers Want to 3D Print an Entire Rocket in 60 Days

This team of engineers is using one of the world's largest 3D metal printers to build rockets, and it could shake up the space industry as we know it.

Read More:
Aerospace startup making 3D-printed rockets now has a launch site at America’s busiest spaceport
https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/17/18...
“America’s busiest spaceport in Cape Canaveral, Florida, is about to get a new tenant: a startup that shares SpaceX’s ambitious plans of turning humans into a multiplanetary species.”

NASA Tests First 3-D Printed Rocket Engine Part Made with Two Different Alloys
https://www.nasa.gov/centers/marshall...
“Engineers at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, tested NASA's first 3-D printed rocket engine prototype part made of two different metal alloys through an innovative advanced manufacturing process. NASA has been making and evaluating durable 3-D printed rocket parts made of one metal, but the technique of 3-D printing, or additive manufacturing, with more than one metal is more difficult.”

Relativity Space reveals its ambitions with big NASA deal
https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/...
“Relativity announced Wednesday that it has signed a 20-year partnership with NASA's Stennis Space Center for an exclusive lease of the 25-acre E4 Test Complex in Southern Mississippi. The four test stands on the site will allow Relativity to develop and test enough engines to build 36 rockets a year, and the agreement includes an option for the company to eventually expand its footprint at the site to 250 acres.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5mhUm6NzqE

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Engineering and How NASA Mission Designers Invent Futuristic Spacecraft

From journeying to distant worlds to catching asteroids, this NASA conceptual design team turns the spacecraft of your dreams into reality.

Read More:
This Jumping Probe Might Explore Neptune’s Biggest Moon
https://www.popsci.com/this-jumping-p...
“After the probe (called the Triton Hopper) lands on Triton, it would use radioactive isotopes to heat ice that it mined from the moon to drive rocket-powered jumps up to a kilometer high and five kilometers long. Steven Oleson, the principal investigator on the Triton Hopper, says the probe has the potential to explore a large portion of the moon's surface. "We want to go from the equator to the pole."”

A Nuclear Tunneling Worm Could Help Us Find Out What's Beneath Europa's Ice
https://www.popularmechanics.com/spac...
“While the Europa Clipper's launch is TBD, scientists are already working on the big problem of getting through all that ice to see what's below. Working with NASA, a team of scientists have proposed a solution: a nuclear-powered tunneling robot.”

NASA Space Submarine Could Explore Titan's Methane Seas
https://www.space.com/28589-titan-sub...
“The extraterrestrial seas of Titan, Saturn's largest moon, provide an ideal world for a robotic submarine to explore, and a team of scientists is working on an innovative mission concept that could make that vision a reality.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0Meo8ablI8

Maybe more, alternatives to All Terrain Vehicles.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Hulls and Adam Savage's One Day Builds: Scratch-Built Spaceship!

One Day Builds are back! Adam takes us through another spaceship model build, this time utilizing his trusty vacuum former, sheet styrene, and years of experience from his special effects modelmaking days. As the spaceship takes shape, Adam introduces several new tools and tips for this kind of modelmaking, and shows the versatility of this kind of build.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uS7A4x31PY

Lots of vacuum in space.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Engineering and Is SpaceX's Raptor engine the king of rocket engines?

2:55 - Basic physics of rocket engines
6:10 - Rocket engine cycles
20:30 - Rocket fuel comparison
30:40 - Raptor vs other rocket engines
44:05 - Summary

Article version - https://everydayastronaut.com/?p=9823...

SpaceX's new raptor engine is a methane fueled full flow staged combustion cycle engine and its so hard to develop, no engine like this has ever flown before!

Now this topic can be really intimidating so in order to bring the Raptor engine into context, we’re going to do an overview of a few common types of rocket engine cycles then compare the Raptor to a few other common rocket engines, like SpaceX’s current work horse, the Merlin, The Space Shuttle’s RS-25, the RD-180, Blue Origin’s BE-4 and the F-1 engine.

And if that’s not enough, not only is SpaceX using a crazy engine cycle, they’re also going to be using Liquid Methane as their fuel, again something that no orbital rocket has ever used! So we’ll also go over the unique characteristics of liquid methane as a rocket fuel and see if we can figure out why SpaceX went with Methane for the Raptor engine.

We'll also break down and explain all the different engine cycle types so you know what the full flow staged combustion cycle is, how it works, and how it compares to the other cycles.

So by the end of this video hopefully we’ll have the context to know why the raptor engine is special, how it compares to other rocket engines, why it’s using methane and hopefully find out if the Raptor engine will be the new king of rocket engines…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbH1ZDImaI8

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Hulls and World's Lightest Solid!

Aerogels are the world's lightest (least dense) solids. They are also excellent thermal insulators and have been used in numerous Mars missions and the Stardust comet particle-return mission. The focus of this video is silica aerogels, though graphene aerogels are now technically the lightest.

At one point Dr. Steven Jones literally held the Guinness World Record for making the lightest aerogel and therefore lightest solid. If you're interested in learning more about aerogels, let me know in the comments as there is a potential trilogy in the works...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeJ9q45PfD0

I thinking sandwiched between two skinny layers of titanium steel.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Engineering and Spaceplanes

Spaceplanes long seemed like the logical next step for getting into orbit after the Space Shuttle, but have seemingly fallen to the wayside in recent years in favor of reusable rockets. But the future may see a return of spaceplanes, and we'll look at some of the more promising designs like Skylon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4BQvD_QJwM

Financing and zoning might be an issue.

 

[Condottiere]

Starships [Literally]: Engineering and Fleet of Stars

Interstellar travel is very time consuming, moving from star to star, but perhaps we could use stars themselves as spaceships, and move whole solar systems or even galaxies.

Today we'll look at how to use Shkadov Thrusters, novas, supernovae, black holes and quasars to move through space, literal starships.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxwCIeWaU3M

For those who think big.

 

[Anonymous]

Today we'll look at how to use Shkadov Thrusters, novas, supernovae, black holes and quasars to move through space, literal starships.

Don't need to learn how to take off if you blow up the planet you're on.