Ship Design Philosophy

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Spaceyards and SpaceX Starship - Why are they building it in a scrap yard?

In this Episode, we will take a look at what SpaceX has achieved with their Starship program, how the process has evolved over time and where it's heading in the near future. Most importantly though, we'll be finding the answer to the question, what exactly is so different about Starship compared to other rocket development.

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

1. So you can manufacture a spaceship in a scrapyard, existing or created.

2. Floating launchpads.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Does the S.H.I.E.L.D. Quinjet Design Make Sense?

The S.H.I.E.L.D. Quinjet is the latest in hybrid carrier fighters deployed by the Avengers in the Marvel films. We take a look at the Quinjet's design and look at what makes sense and what doesn't.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40J9JH_KXNc

Probably as a technological level eight dropship; if it's cheaper than a ship's boat.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Hulls and The Impact of Graphene

Graphene, Carbon Nanotubes, and other hyper-strong materials have generated great interest in recent years, but how do they actually work and what will their impact on our future be?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pocV0wKzEw

1. Fifty times stronger than the current strongest steel; and super dense bonded, is how strong, four times?

2. Could graphene armour also act as energy storage?

3. Unintended consequences.

 

[Condottiere]

Inspiration: Can Humanity Colonize Ganymede? (Moon of Jupiter)

Ganymede is one of the largest satellites in our solar system, it orbits the gas giant Jupiter and also has a magnetosphere. In the Expanse a gigantic agricultural project calls Ganymede home, the favorable conditions on the planet make it one of the bread baskets of the belt. The question is can we also one day colonize this Jovian moon?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQEHJH3k7mU

Doody, humus, compost.

Thank you for your sewage.

 

[Condottiere]

Starships: Stargates, or External Jump Drives

There's an occasional attempt to have drop tanks predropped, and pump their contents through extended plumbing to the onboard jump drives.

However, consider the fact that Mongosian jump drives create a jump bubble, that doesn't need the continued operation of the onboard jump drive to maintain integrity for the next week or so.

In which case, having a spaceship pass through a giant ring, where a jump drive within the ring calculates the precise push and hydrogen a given spaceship (tonnage) needs to push it to a specific destination, through hyperspace.

The jump bubble is created at the precise moment the spaceship passes through, and automatically snaps shut once the rear of the spaceship is also through the ring.

The Stargate would also have to be pointed in the correct direction.

 

[Sigtrygg]

Collector, antimatter and battery powered jump drives don't use hydrogen - so no hydrogen filled bubble.

See MWM Jump Space article in MgT JTAS2

 

[Condottiere]

The fusion engines, or batteries, only shunt the requisite energy demanded by the jump drives.

Who knows what collectors actually do, one reason to have kept it a unique relic; maybe the author forgot to mention the lanthanum grid.

 

[Condottiere]

Inspiration: Star Wars The Force Awakens - Original opening scene

The original concept for the force awakens opening was very different to what finally made it to screen. Using the original storyboards by J.J.Abrams, I have attempted to capture what this could have looked like.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48cc5nvsZ_c

Scrapyards - ya can't beat them, you just don't want to be beneath them.

 

[Sigtrygg]

The fusion engines, or batteries, only shunt the requisite energy demanded by the jump drives.

Yup, and thre is no hydrogen filled bubble.

Who knows what collectors actually do, one reason to have kept it a unique relic; maybe the author forgot to mention the lanthanum grid.

There is no lanthanum grid - that was another MegaTraveller screw up. Lanthanum is used in the jump drive as "coils" - see MWM jump space article MgT JTAS 2. The hull jump cable network material is not defined.

 

[Condottiere]

As demonstrated, this is very much edition specific.

Specifically, Mongosian jump drive mechanics are loose enough, that the possibility exists the jump drive and fuel tanks need not be attached, nor travel, with the spaceship hypering.

 

[Condottiere]

Inspiration: Making Sense Of Mars | Mars Academy Episode 1

We are going to start making sense of Mars or at least build a foundation to build on.
Since Mars doesn't have oceans or vegetation, this is a poor way to study the planet.
My favorite way to study Mars is with an elevation map because it highlights all of the planet's amazing features.
Now, let's imagine Mars having enough water to fill to the zero-elevation point as it might have long ago.
Mars would have a vast ocean in the northern hemisphere and a massive lake in the southern hemisphere.
This is the broadest way to characterize Mars, by its two main regions called the Northern Lowlands and Southern Highlands.
The southern highlands have even more diverse topography compared to the lowlands with its densely cratered surface along with the Thaumasia Plateau and Tharsis Montes.
Scientists believe that the surface of the southern highlands is much older than the surface of the northern lowlands because of the disparity in crater density.
This assumption is based on what scientists discovered studying the craters on the moon, that at some point around 3.8 to 3.5 billion years ago, the rate of asteroid impacts dropped dramatically.
So, from here you can break down the planet's regions further in different ways.
The most common way is to refer to the planet's major regions.
We are going to cover the significant regions in great detail in the next episode, but today, we are going to focus on the Mars quadrangles called Mars Charts or simply, MC.
The Charts were established by the US Geological Survey and split Mars into 30 regions.
The numbering of the charts begins with MC-1 at the north pole and works its way south and then from west to east, ending with MC-30 at the south pole.
If we are talking about a chart between 1-15, you instantly know it's in the northern hemisphere.
Charts 1-7 lays out quite nicely except for MC-3, the charts on this row primarily represents the northern lowlands.
Then charts 8-23 are the regions that sandwich the equator, dominated by the Tharsis region on MCs 9 and 17.
Tharsis is a vast volcanic plateau containing the largest volcanoes in the solar system!
The plateau can get up to 7 km high, not counting the volcanoes themselves that are much taller.
Finally, charts 23-29 make up the mid-belt of the southern highlands dominated by the Hellas Basin between MCs 27-28.
Hellas is the third largest impact crater in the solar system.
It's over 7 km deep and about 2,300 km wide.
Going back to our thought experiment, if the Hellas were filled with water, it would make the great lakes seem like puddles.
Now there's one final layer to add before we wrap this up, and that's making sense of where the space probes are located.
We won't cover them all, but here are the more famous landers and rovers starting with the Soviet Union's Mars 2 lander.
Mars 2 crashed on Mars in 1971, becoming the first man-made object to impact the planet’s surface.
The exact site is unknown but is believed to have crashed on the western edge of the Hellas Basin in MC-27.
Then there's NASA's Viking 1, which was the second spacecraft to soft-land on Mars, landing on the west side of the Chryse Planitia on the edge of the transition zone on MC-10.
The great Pathfinder lander is located in Ares Vallis at MC-11 landing there in 1997.
Spirit and the legendary Opportunity are located on charts 23 and 19, landing on their respective sites in 2004.
Spirit shares MC-23 with the incredible Curiosity Rover, which landed in 2012.
The most recent probe to land on Mars is not too far away on the southwest corner of MC-15 with the InSight lander, which landed in 2018.
If everything goes according to plan, the Perseverance Rover will land on MC-13 on the Jezero crater on the western edge of the Isidis Basin in February 2021.
And with that, I hope you now have a more robust conception of Mars than you did before.
And I hope you build off this and continue to make sense of our fantastic planetary neighbor.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yb0UWllWRQE

I think Forty Kay got it correct, Mars is going to end up as the Solar System's industrial park.

 

[Condottiere]

Spacestations: Hulls and Saturn's spongey moon Hyperion | Space is Weird

Saturn's moon Hyperion is the poster child for the potato-shaped moons in the solar system. But unlike other potato-shaped moons, it's not thought to be a captured asteroid. So, does it's weird spongey looking surface give away how it might have formed?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnN5e4QyN6A

No, 'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a
church-door; but 'tis enough,'twill serve

 

[Condottiere]

Spacestations: Armaments and How Much Would a DEATH STAR Cost? | Because Science

What are the costs and energy specifications of the Death Star from Star Wars? It's Imperial Engineering 101 on this episode of Because Science, now airing for the first time on the Because Science Channel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrImnLihTV8

Or drop one Mount Everest on Alderaan, at speed.

 

[Condottiere]

Inspiration: Amazing NEW STAR WARS 1313 Screenshots LEAKED! - How could they cancel this?

Amazing new screenshots from the cancelled game Star Wars 1313 just leaked, giving us a look at the Coruscant Underworld, and it leaves me wondering... how could they possibly cancel this game?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDOmGh6jah4

Kinda true: you save production costs by constantly ending up in the wilderness.

 

[Condottiere]

Inspiration: Cargo Raid - A Star Wars Fan Film

A small rebel force lies in wait for an Imperial cargo shipment...

Thank you for watching my first space battle animation! This was mostly a technical test to figure out how I would go about animating and rendering out a full scene. Despite this having a ton of flaws, technical glitches and the like, I'm very happy with the final product, and am looking forward to improving and doing more scenes!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4tCsVRpkG0

In theory, four TIE fighter complement would make the freighter a Merchant Aircraft Carrier; however, this is different in the sense that small combatants can ambush the convoy directly from hyperspace, which shouldn't be possible without some form of beacon that's detectable in hyperspace, or a gravitational force like that of an Interdictor Cruiser, to pull them out of it, all of it carefully coordinated.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: What's hiding in SpaceX's Starship?

In this Episode, we will take a look at what happens inside SpaceX's Starship SN5, while pressure testing goes on. We will take a dive into the internal setup of a Starship and see, how it all works. We will also take a look at Rocket Lab's latest launch "Pics or it didn't happen" and how it... didn't happen and what the implications might be for Rocket Lab's future.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fP8ZiOi10w

Space flight can be very unforgiving.

Then you fall down the rabbit hole.

 

[NOLATrav]

What do you make of the latest ISS mission’s astronauts saying the Starship was a “rough ride” compared to previous rockets? Musk doesn’t seem to be the kind of guy to cut corners (other than his stance on COVID-induced factory shutdowns I suppose) and certainly the sexy cockpit was impressive. But rough ride seems like a bad description of a new iteration of tech that’s been around a half-century or so.

 

[Sigtrygg]

There have been no starship launches yet, and definitely no manned ones.

Are you referring to the Dragon launched atop a falcon 9?

 

[NOLATrav]

Yes, the Dragon launch. My apologies. Root canal yesterday, go figure.

 

[Geir]

If I remember the interview correctly, the first stage ride was smoother (no solids like the shuttle) but the second stage rougher. Since the shuttle had three main engines and the Falcon second stage only one, then it could just be a matter of the three shuttle engines evening out each engine's occasional "roughness" with no such "averaging" happening with a single engine.