Ship Design Philosophy

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Spaceships: Doors in Science Fiction

Spacedock delves into the fascinating world of hatches, portals, apertures, ingresses and various other synonyms for door.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27zuIFflP4Q



1. Powered.

2. Non powered.
 
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Inspiration: Starfield: Official Teaser Trailer

Starfield is the first new universe in 25 years from Bethesda Game Studios, the award-winning creators of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Fallout 4. In this next generation role-playing game set amongst the stars, create any character you want and explore with unparalleled freedom as you embark on an epic journey to answer humanity’s greatest mystery.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYqyVpCV-3c
 
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Inspiration: The Scuttling of the USCSS Nostromo

In space, no one can hear you scream. So what does the crew aboard the commercial tug USCSS Nostromo do when they land on a desolate planetoid and take on an unexpected new crew member? Well... they still scream. This is the documentary on the destruction of the Weylund-Yutani Corporation's commercial tug and refinery.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8cz7ZR5oUs



1. You probably could attach a five thousand tonne docking clamp to the tug, and a combat barge in front of it, with a spinal mount.

2. As long as the barge blocks direct line of sight, likely only a meson weapon system can hit the tug.
 
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Inspiration: You Won't Believe What's Coming…

Who could possibly be breaking into this forgotten spacecraft?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9x-iR9CTzRI



Impspiration?
 
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Starships: Engineering and Scientists FINALLY Discovered a NEW Way To Travel Faster Than Light!

When you want to travel a long distance, say from one continent to another, you book an airplane flight, expecting to spend some hours in the air. However, when it comes to space travel, you need to travel faster because all the points of interest are so far away! Space explorers have always been searching for a way to travel faster than light, which will allow them to get to deep space more quickly! Basically, all the methods discovered have significant drawbacks, but scientists have found a new way! How does it work? What are the requirements? How soon will you be able to travel with it? Join us as webring you a new way to travel faster than light!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYuJdnn6NyE



1. Exotic matter.

2. Bubble.
 
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Inspiration: Star Trek Online: Yorktown Class Star Cruiser | Official Breakdown

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luizaF8rQPk



Conversion/refurbished/refitted.
 
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Inspiration: Ex Astris: Yorktown - 3D Animation Reel

0:00 - Odyssey: Iconian War
0:21 - Yorktown: Flyby 01 (Warp-in)
0:33 - Yorktown: Flyby 02
0:48 - Yorktown: Flyby 03
1:02 - Yorktown: Standard STO Ship Scene
2:23 - Yorktown: Aquarius Launch
2:43 - Yorktown: Aquarius Launch (Alternate)
2:53 - Yorktown: Utopia Planitia Shipyards
3:03 - Yorktown: Turntable Loop
3:33 - Lexington: Torpedos
3:41 - Lexington: Megaphaser
3:47 - Yorktown: Saucer Separation (Encounter at Farpoint-inspired)
4:17 - Yorktown: DS9 Battle Shot 1 (First Contact-inspired)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGc5LI0129g



Pretty streamlined
 
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Inspiration: Magee-Class Flyby

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psRLHR3MiMA



1. An interesting design variant.

2. However, doesn't follow Roddenberry's rules on Federation starship design.
 
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Starwarships: Secrets of Star Wars Design

Star Wars has a very unique visual brand, yet still manages to encompass a wide variety of styles. How is that possible? I think I've unlocked the secrets of good Star Wars design.

Special thanks to Angelos Karderinis for his invaluable input.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f80mfPYLqHg


1. Icon - That's no moon.

2. Basic shapes.

3. Materially constrained.

4. Seventies and Eighties aesthetics.

5. Inspirationally based reality.
 
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Inspiration: ThunderCats Opening Remade with CGI

Earlier this year, I thought I'd have a go at learning how to use 3D animation software, really just so I could do some simple effects in my films... but I got a little bit carried away.

The ThunderCats have been a love of mine since I can remember and the intro is something I thought would be a fun challenge to recreate and keep my interest while I was learning the software.

I'm now developing a ThunderCats short film, making use of some of the years of notes I've kept for a feature trilogy. I'm currently recruiting 3D artists to help me, so check out my channel for updates on that.

All 3D animation was done in Blender, an awesome (and completely free) animation software. Shoutout to those behind the MB-Labs plugin for Blender which I used to create the base models for Lion-o, Cheetara, Tygra, Panthro, WilyKit and WilyKat. Lightning and smoke effects were done in Adobe After Effects. Edited in Premiere Pro. Thanks also to the many YouTubers who upload Blender tutorials - I must have watched hundreds of them. Ian Hubert's lazy tutorials are particularly awesome and inspiring.

ThunderCats is, of course, the property of Warner Bros. and its affiliates, and this video should be in no way used for financial gain or commercial use. This video is not associated or connected to Warner Bros. and is simply a fan film made by and for fellow ThunderCats fans.

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



1. Aslan assault tank.

2. Witch Aslans - the Consorts of [Aslan war god]
 
Spaceships: Corridors and the Geography of Defence

1. Considering the possibility of trench warfare, and a refresher on castle defences, it occurred to me that you don't have to have completely straight corridors on spaceships.

2. Straight, long and large corridors are meant for logistical simplicity and convenience.

3. If you zig zag the corridors, you'd need a rubberized grenade to bounce off the walls to get beyond the first zig.

4. Or a suicide drone.

5. Pistols and knives are going to be more convenient than rifles and cutlasses.

6. You can have spiral staircases to connect decks, and arrange deckplans that invaders usually have to entre through the lower decks, and the spiral to favour right handed people coming down.

7. Not to mention booby traps.

8. If you have enough space, a changing labyrinth.

9. The attackers would have to get heavy weapons to blast through the obstacles.

A. Possibly, very heavy weapons.
 
Spaceships: Fuel Tanks and the Geography of Defence

1. I wonder exactly how strong are the sides of the fuel tanks?

2. After all, if you check the deckplans, they are all over the place.

3. They get into all sorts of nooks and crannies.

4. In theory, they should be bulkhead thick.

5. Though I don't every recall seeing that confirmed.

6. If you zig zag the corridors, unwritten design rules would have the fuel tanks slipping into those nooks and crannies.

7. And impatient borders, might just have energy weapons drill through the zig zag corridors with man portable energy weapons.
 
Spaceships: Engineering, and the best buck banged Fusion Reactor

1. I bear my share of disappointments.

2. Like when I had constructed a wonderfully logical model of technologized compromised engines.

3. That perfectly leveraged said compromises into one neat mathematical formula.

4. And then told that all calculations of cost are based on the final volume.

5. I suppose I should have raged against the machine.

6. So anyway, until someone revises currency exchange rates based on the technological incongruity between localized fiat bux.

7. We'll just have to hope for getting access to the micronized engineered power plant.

8. Presumably fission reactor fuel remains expensive, for spaceship sized variants.

9. And diesel engines continue to guzzle fuel at alarming rates.
 
Spaceships: Engineering, and the best buck banged Fusion Reactor

10. First off, there's the budgetted early fusion reactor, increased size twenty five percent, technological level eight.

11. Three eights megastarbux per tonne

12. Twenty one and one third power points per megastarbux.

13. Two and two thirds tonnes, annual maintenance cost per power point, 46.875 starbux.
.
14. Default is twenty power points per megastarbux.

15. Annual maintenance cost per power point, 50.00 starbux.

16. Then early fusion reactor, technological level eleven, decreased size thirty percent.

17. 14.28571428571429 power points per tonne.

18. 19.04761904761905 power points per megastarbux.

19. Annual maintenance cost per power point, 52.50 starbux.
 
Spaceships: Engineering, and the best buck banged Fusion Reactor

20. Fuel is ten percent by volume.

21. In theory, fuel tanks are free.

22. If you include a fuel processor, you can either purchase unrefined fuel.

23. It gets interesting with water or ice, since under certain circumstances, you have water rights if you own the property, which means that it's basically free.

24. I'd say that if you use unrefined fuel, it increases maintenance costs for the power plant, though to clarify, that's not mentioned in any rules, just you're increasing the risk for a misjump.

25. For the budgetted early fusion reactor, that's one eighth of a tonne for one power point, so one eightieth of a tonne for four weeks of fuel.

26. That's 0.175 cubic metres of fuel over four weeks.

27. 0.00625 cubic metres of fuel per day, which is what, six and a quarter litres?

28. Which is just a tad under one starbux for unrefined fuel.

29. And according to Google, the average price in the continental United States for water is one and a half bux for a thousand gallons.
 
Spaceships: Engineering, and the best buck banged Fusion Reactor

30. You need a spacecraft hull in order to get a power plantless solar panelled facility to be energized.

31. The way the rules are, it's based on default power plant at a given technological level.

32. At a default power setting, basic plus manoeuvre factor one.

33. So, thirty power points per hundred tonnes.

34. Minimum size of a solar panel being half a tonne.

35. So that would be one hundred sixty six and two thirds tonne hull being optimum for a five tonne early fusion reactor.

36. In theory, you could round it off to two hundred tonne hull, based on a six tonne reactor and a three fifth of a tonne solar panel.

37. Outside of initial capital and maintenance cost, free energy.

38. Sixty kay starbux, and sixty starbux annual maintenance.

39. Unclear if you can siphon some of that power to a battery storage.
 
Spaceships: Engineering, and the best buck banged Fusion Reactor

40. It's not mentioned how many power sources based on solar panelling can be concurrently utilized on any given hull.

41. Though considering how much space you have dirtside, probably quite a lot down there.

42. Though again, going by the rules, you build a pseudo hull, and plant it down there.

43. Most likely, a planetoid.

44. Switch off life support and supposed manoeuvre drive.

45. Siphon off excess power produced, thirty power points per hundred tonnes, and route it directly into the electrical grid.

46. Or divert it into the batteries, and then into the electrical grid.

47. As I've mentioned before, if space isn't a bottleneck, most of galactic civilization could be run off early fusions reactors

48. And since the rules appear to have changed, minimum reactor size is now anything that outputs one power point, though apparently on the far side of nowhere.

49. And the tank one tenth of a tonne.
 
Spaceships: Assault Glider

1. It was a serious attempt at designing a one shot spacecraft that is cheap enough to be disposable.

2. You have to assume you're dealing with an atmosphere, and that means aerodynamic hull at thirty kilostarbux per tonne.

3. You don't need gravity, and if everyone is in spacesuits, neither life support.

4. Since it's fly by wire, enough energy for basics like sensors, the computer and steering.

5. You can lighten the hull, and that's twenty and a half kilostarbux per tonne.

6. How many troops are you willing to risk in one basket?

7. Platoon is probably the maximum, and you probably want the pilot to be a rifleman as well.

8. You don't need a manoeuvre drive, but breaking rockets probably useful.

9. Power plant can be substituted by batteries.
 
Spaceships: Assault Glider

10. Since it's basically an unpowered brick, flying into likely any number of defensive weapon systems, you'll want armour plating.

11.As it's meant to be disposable, as cheap as possible.

12. A light aerodynamic hull comes up with twenty two and a half kilostarbux per tonne at a loss of ten percent hull points.

13. Let's say armour factor ten, with crystaliron, that's an eighth of the hull, with an additional eleven and a quarter, total thirty three and three quarters, kilostarbux per tonne.

14. One assumes dogfighting bonuses apply, so the size shouldn't be larger than forty nine tonnes, 1.65375 megastarbux and 17.64 hull points.

15. Single cockpit, basic sensors, bandwidth/five computer, forty five kilostarbux, and one and a half tonnes.

16. Armament could be twin fixed sandcasters, though I'm a tad uncertain how they would handle in atmosphere; three fifths of a megastarbux.

17. Barebones basic energy requirement 4.95 energy points per turn; one tonne diesel power plant at a quarter megastarbux, and one tonne fuel tank

18. Factor one retro rockets, 0.98 tonnes and ninety eight kilostarbux.

19. Looks like we need a heatshield at four and nine tenths megastarbux; that's a deal breaker.
 
Spaceships: Assault Ball

1. Okay, so the assault glider is too expensive to act as a disposable connector.

2. As long as you have gravitated motors, entering an atmosphere is no problem.

3. Hence, we'll use a lightened ironick planetoid, with a factor eight crystaliron hull armour.

4. Crystalironick/ten lite.

5. That's three kilostabux per tonne, plus forty percent, forty two hundred starbux per tonne.

6. That leaves us with seventy percent capacity.

7. Single cockpit, basic sensors, bandwidth/five computer, forty five kilostarbux, and one and a half tonnes.

8. I guess we'll use standard thirty five tonne sphere, at one hundred forty seven kilostarbux, and twelve and three fifths hull points.

9. Barebones basic energy requirement three and a half energy points per turn.
 
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