Hi all,
I am getting back to Orbiter after a while away. I previously did a couple of little projects - the Stanford Torus and the Rolling Stone - just using Vinka's spacecraft.dll.
What I loved to do was to fly Vespucci (a very large ramjet) from LEO, where it was constructed, up to GEO where I had stashed the Torus. Fly 2 DGIII (from Earth) and 2 Shuttle A (from the Moon) to rendezvous with Vespucci, transfer "personnel" from Stanford over to Vespucci, and then begin a Grand Tour. At each planet, I would undock one of the DGs and explore a bit. If it was possible, I would locate a nice place to "build" a base with the DG and land a loaded Shuttle A with "base parts." If I was successful, I would "build" a base by adding it to the scenario code, load everything back up, rendezvous with Vespucci and head off to the next planet, moon, or asteroid.
Well, with each Orbiter update Vespucci got more and more buggy so I never got to finish my Grand Tour.
I recently came across the "Windmill" project, which is also a Bussard ramjet type. They are doing some really great work there on simulating the ramjet. I post over there with my thoughts about this part of it.
I thought I would build a model of my vision of a really big ramjet like Vespucci. I am an engineer (alas not in aeronautical) so I want to make it as realistic as I can.
So here is my development plan.
View attachment 2141
The little pink eraser thing is the size of a Shuttle-A parked on the landing pad. The rings are 200 m in diameter and counter-rotate once every 30 seconds for 1g pseudo gravity. At the moment it is 1km long, though I might trim it.
I am still messing with concepts for the powerplant and the exhaust bell, and I need to add a sphere in front of the docking area as the refinery and some big honkin' radiators. I'll also add a collector around the exhaust for when we are slowing down. I also need to add some ship docks and cargo/people locks (I currently have placeholders). Little details like connection points need to be added
I expect that the initial model will be done pretty soon.
So, other than to let you all know that I am working on this, I am posting to see if anyone would like to contribute comments or work on this project.
What kind of help could I use?
Thanks all!
I am getting back to Orbiter after a while away. I previously did a couple of little projects - the Stanford Torus and the Rolling Stone - just using Vinka's spacecraft.dll.
What I loved to do was to fly Vespucci (a very large ramjet) from LEO, where it was constructed, up to GEO where I had stashed the Torus. Fly 2 DGIII (from Earth) and 2 Shuttle A (from the Moon) to rendezvous with Vespucci, transfer "personnel" from Stanford over to Vespucci, and then begin a Grand Tour. At each planet, I would undock one of the DGs and explore a bit. If it was possible, I would locate a nice place to "build" a base with the DG and land a loaded Shuttle A with "base parts." If I was successful, I would "build" a base by adding it to the scenario code, load everything back up, rendezvous with Vespucci and head off to the next planet, moon, or asteroid.
Well, with each Orbiter update Vespucci got more and more buggy so I never got to finish my Grand Tour.
I recently came across the "Windmill" project, which is also a Bussard ramjet type. They are doing some really great work there on simulating the ramjet. I post over there with my thoughts about this part of it.
I thought I would build a model of my vision of a really big ramjet like Vespucci. I am an engineer (alas not in aeronautical) so I want to make it as realistic as I can.
So here is my development plan.
- Develop initial model - 90% done
- Model in gmax
- Texture in gmax
- Export to mesh format
- Export model to mesh using max2msh
- Create dds' for textures
- Create flyable spacecraft using spacecraft3.dll - Release 1.0
- Modify code from Windmill project to apply to this one - Release 2.0
View attachment 2141
The little pink eraser thing is the size of a Shuttle-A parked on the landing pad. The rings are 200 m in diameter and counter-rotate once every 30 seconds for 1g pseudo gravity. At the moment it is 1km long, though I might trim it.
I am still messing with concepts for the powerplant and the exhaust bell, and I need to add a sphere in front of the docking area as the refinery and some big honkin' radiators. I'll also add a collector around the exhaust for when we are slowing down. I also need to add some ship docks and cargo/people locks (I currently have placeholders). Little details like connection points need to be added
I expect that the initial model will be done pretty soon.
So, other than to let you all know that I am working on this, I am posting to see if anyone would like to contribute comments or work on this project.
What kind of help could I use?
- I am adequate in modeling - I don't plan on making a lot of complex doohickies that would look good but increase my work and decrease the framerate. However, I might have gmax questions...
- I am passable at texturing, but I am VERY open to help here in both generating the texture as well as doing the converstion to dds in a smart manner (e.g. square or not, pixel size, save options)
- I know how to program, but am not familiar with C++, so I will have questions about adapting the Windmill code for this project and would love to have help on this, or even have someone volunteer to do it when we get there!
- I need suggestions - what looks like it will work, what doesn't, what can look better, etc.
- All the support struts are currently plain boxes. Should these be:
- Plain boxes
- textured to look like trusses
- texured to look like cables
- modeled to be trusses at the expense of lots more polygons
- Presumably the power plant is a tokamak - what should the power plant module look like in the model?
- How much will this mass?
- I'd like to be able to close or furl the collectors - how would that be best accomplished?
- Where can I get a model of a nice-looking lock and dock that I can bring into gmax? (I don't recall that max2msh goes the other way...)
- Should the axis support be a truss with tubes shown inside (for people, etc.) around a glowing column of plasma on its way to the reactor? Can the brightness of the glow be linked to the scoop rate?
- Where can I get a model of a communication dish into gmax, or shall I build one myself? Should this be animated?
- What shape would a fusion nozzle take? Not necessarily an expansion bell since it would be magnetically contaned I think
Thanks all!