Ship Design Philosophy

Spaceships: Hulls and Pressure

4. Thinking about it, buffered planetoids have thirty five percent allocated to the hull, and have an organic hull armour factor of four.
 
Spaceships: Engineering and Sub Terranean Gravitated Planets

1. Since the vast majority of habitable planets would have a gravity less than Terra.

2. With a monofactor thrust freighter, you can reach orbit at factor one.

3. Eventually.

4. Without screwing around with the manoeuvre drive, or overloading the rocket.

5. According to the rules, as long as you have a manoeuvre drive, you can do an atmospheric reentry without burning up.

6. Like a raft.

7. A space/raft.

8. While it's implied the volume would be the same as an air/raft, it could be as large as a blimp.

9. Though I guess we would then use that for it's potential for transporting cargo intercontinentally, or into orbit.
 
Spaceships: Engineering and Sub Terranean Gravitated Planets

A. Since we'll assume that the space/raft would resemble the air/raft, it would have a standard hull configuration.

B. A streamlined hull configuration could be a canoe.

C. A hollowed out planetoid would be a dugout.

D. A sphere configuration would be a coracle.

E. A close structure is a bit tough to categorize, but I was thinking of outrigger canoes.

F. Dispersed structure could be anything, and in construction would be closer to a bunch of items tied together, so closer to the raft concept, but let's go with a pontoon boat.
 
It's volume.

Actual weight and mass tends to get sidestepped.

One interesting example is whether checked High Passage baggage is fourteen cubic metres, or a thousand kilogrammes.


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Striker took ‘stuff’ to weigh roughly 500kg per cubic meter - which is very low for ordnance. 12 missiles per 14 cubic meters is just over 1.16 cubic meter per missile. If we assume that full access to it requires double the missile’s volume - like a missile hanger - it makes that actual missile around 0.58 cubic meters and a weight of at least 290kg. - But I figure around a minimum of 500kg and even at that weight it would still actually float if dropped in the water! I‘m not sure if current air-air-missiles would float, they look kind of heavy for their volume.
 
Could be composites, and plastics; solid state circuitry for the sensors and electronics. The components need only be strong enough to withstand the acceleration stresses that a missile launch would impose, for an hour.

The rocket motors could be the only metal parts, or if the missile warhead needed to be armour piercing. The (default) fuel tank has to have enough for one hour at full thrust, and in theory, you could fuel that only if you expect combat.

If you assume docking space requirements, one tonne could be twelve missiles plus ten percent, and unless the missiles are reloaded manually, there should be machinery that does that particular chore.

If you do customization, any specific missile or torpedo might not fit all launchers or missile racks: you can enlarge missile weapon system, but only shrink the bay allocated ones (which would presume you would shrink the ammunition, though maybe only the launch mechanisms get shrunk and the ready magazine remains the same size).
 
Inspiration: How To Terraform Mars - WITH LASERS

Mars is a disappointing hellhole lacking practically everything we need to stay alive. It looks like we’ll only ever have small crews spend a miserable time hidden underground. Except, we could terraform it into a green new world. But to solve the planet’s problems, we first need to make it worse and turn it into oceans of lava with gigantic lasers.




We do have lasers and mass driver guns.

And probably be able to construct a magnetic umbrella.
 
Spaceships: Hulls and Open Frame

1. In theory, spacecraft hulls could be open frame.

2. Controls, bridge and engineering, would need some form of protection.

3. Acceleration would be an obvious reason why you would have an enclosed shell.

4. However, it's an interesting question how inertial compensation would deal with an open frame.

5. If it's a field effect, than acceleration would have no effect on the controls, or the crew and passengers.

6. The same might not be said of a stray meteorite.

7. On the other hand, the inertial compensator would act as some form of shielding, though the practical effect, beyond neutralizing gravity, escapes me.

8. A windscreen should be enough.

9. Of course, not really advisable for atmospheric reentry.
 
Spaceships: Armaments and Turrets


Up to three weapons may be mounted on a fixed mount (small craft have additional limitations), while turrets can mount one, two or three weapons, depending on their type. These weapons need not be of the same type but only one type may be used in the same attack.


Any mount can be made modular, allowing a variety of weapons to be fitted. This allows a vehicle to change its ‘mission profile’ and become effective against different enemies.


A modular mount will increase the cost of a mount by an additional +50%.


1. Spacecraft turrets are modular.

2. Presumably. so are barbettes.

3. Making them non modular, would knock a third off the price tag (of the turret or barbette).

4. The downside is, you have to extract the entire turret out of it's socket, in order to change the weapon systems.
 
Spaceships: Armaments and Explaining Particle Beams in Space Combat

Spacedock delves into the science and applications of particle beams in sci-fi space combat.




1. Proton guns, easier to accelerate.

2. Bloom and boom.

3. Mesons - really fast light particles.

4. Magnetic shields to disperse or deflect energy beams.

5. Plasma fields.
 
Inspiration: The Science of The Expanse

The Expanse is one of the seminal sci-fi shows of the past decade. Set centuries in the future when humans have colonized the solar system, it's been called one of the most scientifically accurate sci-fi shows of all time. But just how much does this hold up to scrutiny?

- CHAPTERS -
00:00 Intro
01:13 Background
06:46 Propulsion
14:12 Crash Couches & Accelerating Drugs
17:15 The Nauvoo
22:16 Railguns, Missiles, & PDCs
28:19 Stealth Tech
29:42 Goliath Armor
32:59 Mars Terraforming Project
38:03 Belt Colonization
40:52 Asteroid Mining
42:33 Recycling
46:33 Computers
50:40 Protomolecule
54:52 Outro




1. Fate.

2. Ion propulsion with ammonia.

3. Luckily, weight doesn't concern us.

4. Chemical rockets for landing and lift off.

5. Aligned crash couches.

6. Juicing.

7. Rollercoaster five gees.

8. Increased maintenance cost for railguns.

9. DNA coded identity secured weapon systems.

A. Mars invasive species.

B. Magnetic shield.

C. Coriolis effect.

D. Fertilizer asteroids.

E. Looks like Bear Grylis was right.

F. Wide beam, tight beam.


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Spaceships: Engineering, and Fusion propulsion by 2027?? Mars in 15 days and Alpha Centauri in 11 years? Meet Pulsar Fusion!

There's a company in the UK that just received a substantial infusion from the UKSA that is targeting 2027 for the first orbital demonstration of FUSION PROPULSION! If true, this will take space exploration to the next level! SpaceX and NASA can get to Mars in 15 days instead of six months! And the stars will be within our grasp. How can this be real??




1. Generate a lot of high energy plasma.

2. Magnetically directional.

3. Ion engine plus lots of energy equals substantial thrust.

4. Fusion reaction and radiation.

5. Focussed energy equals efficiency.
 
Inspiration: Biggest STARSHIPS 🛸 3D Comparison

Many of the spacecraft, space stations and cosmic structures represented in a video, from the smallest to the most gigantic. Ships from all eras, from nobels to movies. Represented as faithfully as possible their sizes.




1. The Endurance looks like the lab ship; so presumably, that's an actual viable concept.

2. The Liberator is surprisingly big.
 
Starships: Barging In

1. A barge implies to me something big and slow, carrying cargo.

2. A large barge, with cargo

3. Argo being the name of an expeditionary ship.

4. B/Argo.

5. At it's simplest, technological level nine would allow a performance of jump factor one, manoeuvre factor one.

6. You trade time and space for simplicity.

7. Engineering can be budget versions.

8. If I thought rockets and diesel generators were viable, I'd use that to minimize number of engineers.

9. Speaking of which, ideal size probably would be a hundred kilotonnes.
 
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