Request InterSTELLAR vessel

[Bloodworth]

Given that orbiter galaxy is well under development and will most likely be completed before the launch of "Infinity-the quest for earth", we are in need of a vessel capable of interstellar travel. Due to the vast distances involved, an ftl capable vessel is going to be needed (at the max speed of any [non scifi] ship currently available, the nearest star would be weeks realtime at 100k time accel...). My personal preference is the jump drive system from RTF.

For those of us who are truely adventuresome and bold, and have no intention of putting into port any time soon, the vessel will require the ability to refuel in flight, i.e. a hydrogen scoop that can scoop fuel from the upper atmosphere of gas giants.

The vessel will need to carry landing craft, perhaps off the shelf, perhaps not.

The vessel will need to be both UMMU and UCGO compatible. It would need a large(ish) crew (20-50+) and be able to carry a good number of UCGO cargos so as to be able to carry out a wide variety of tasks and expeditions around the galaxy.

 

[Artlav]

Sounds like i'd better revive this old baby:
[ame="http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=3042"]Hius Interstellar Ramjet 070823[/ame]

 

[Moach]

i have in plans to make a generic "stack control module" craft...

something small, that could be lofted by a G42 shuttle or alike, but could be attached to any compond and control it from a nice virtual cockpit with a ton of MFDs, UMMU/UCGO-ready and all that stuff...


this would make for very fun trips where you first have to build your own ship in orbit

i reckon that attached to some form of hyperdrive, this could make for a nice interstellar vessel...

 

[mc_]

i have in plans to make a generic "stack control module" craft...

...and the only thing we need is a stack to control

I'm building something like a "control module" too, it is even able to detach and deorbit itself (with a solid booster), but it is a "historical" stuff, too small for intrstellar travels.

Anyway, the idea is good. Interstellar wessel is supposed to be a stack, which can be reassembled for another purpose or destination (longer travels will require more fuel tanks, etc).

 

[T.Neo]

In terms of interstellar spacecraft design, perhaps see the Valkyrie concept. Avatar's ISV Venture Star is also pretty interesting.

Relativistic ships have a general set of requirements- fancy engines, fancy debris mitigation. You can mix and match from there.

If your ship has an FTL gizmo, it could be a normal interplanetary ship or even an atmospheric shuttle, although you have to make provision for whatever requirements you give it (handwavion accelerator, warp core, hypermatter anihillator...)

 

[MeDiCS]

Two interesting projects: Project Orion, and [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Daedalus"]Project Daedalus[/ame].

 

[T.Neo]

Daedalus is pretty much the grandfather of interstellar ship concepts. It's pretty old fashioned though IMO, and it's lack of a deceleration ability leaves me a tad unsatisfied. :shifty:

Orion was meant to be mainly for interplanetary travel, although it's a great way to make an interstellar ship on the cheap.

I've wondered if inertial confinement fusion could be merged with the Mini-Mag Orion concept- pellets of fusion fuel encapsulated in a shell of fission fuel and detonated by a z-pinch field or particle beam or something.

I think propellant units that are not independant warheads are essential. If they aren't bombs it would make things far easier politically.

 

[garyw]

Daedalus is pretty much the grandfather of interstellar ship concepts. It's pretty old fashioned though IMO, and it's lack of a deceleration ability leaves me a tad unsatisfied. :shifty:

Then you want this. Descended from the original Daedalus work - Project Icarus

 

[T.Neo]

Then you want this. Descended from the original Daedalus work - Project Icarus

Details of the actual Icarus spacecraft seem to be difficult to find, unless I am not looking hard enough.

Assuming it's similar to Daedalus, it should not be particularly revolutionary as far as interstellar ship concepts go. What it does seem to be is a solid study made by a reputable team, just like Daedalus.

What I find iffy about Daedalus is the design that exposes the propellant tanks and structure of the ship to interstellar debris. The high speed flyby could also be problematic, both in terms of data collection and debris erosion. At least Icarus has a proposal for partial deceleration. Flying through solar systems at relativistic speeds may also be politically undesirable (by aliens, that is :hunter.

 

[jedidia]

i have in plans to make a generic "stack control module" craft...

you might want to take a look here:

http://www.orbiter-forum.com/showthread.php?t=1391

It's an older project I participated as a modeler (the only one, I'm afraid), and it stopped short of alpha stage, because... well... there were only two of us, and work for at least two more, and vChamp and I both kind of gradually lost interest, which is kind of a pitty, because the project had some real promise.

The code should still be up on sourceforge, and I'm pretty sure vChamp will let you use it, if you're interested.

Given that orbiter galaxy is well under development and will most likely be completed before the launch of "Infinity-the quest for earth", we are in need of a vessel capable of interstellar travel.

Unless the guys from infinity have made some incredible progress they forgott to tell us about, I should finish earlier. However, there's no need to hurry. I just added a roadmap to the first page of the developement thread of Orbiter Galaxy, so you can see that there's still an awful lot of work to do.
Plus, the addon will include an optional "magical teleport device", majorly for debugging convieniance, but also for people that want to see the galaxy the fast way. Any warp drive MFD's should work in direct flight mode, too.

And yes, Artlav, the Hius would certainly be a thrill to fly around between the stars! :thumbup:

 

[Izack]

I would love to see the Valkyrie as an Orbiter addon.

I'm frankly surprised no one wants to make an ISV Venture Star, though. It's pretty much the most detailed and awesome-looking realistic interstellar starship, and no one wants it in Orbiter??

As it is, it looks like if anyone wants to fly to other star systems, the choice of ships is limited to either the Hius, the ancient Vespucci or a magical spacecraft3 Star Trek thing.

Actually, that last thought has me thinking: Rebuild the Vespucci. It's perfect!

 

[jinglesassy]

@Izack I want the Venture Star it looks so awesome

 

[Bloodworth]

The venturestar is epic and beautiful, but does not have the capacity to refuel in transit by the look of it. Skim a gas giant with that and it would fall apart under the stress

 

[Izack]

The venturestar is epic and beautiful, but does not have the capacity to refuel in transit by the look of it. Skim a gas giant with that and it would fall apart under the stress

Also, it requires orbital laser facilities already at the target for deceleration. It's like a train: only works once the rails and stations have been built.

 

[jedidia]

Also, it requires orbital laser facilities already at the target for deceleration.

ah no, it requires laser batteries only at the origin point of the voyage, it has enough fuel to deccelerate at the target and accelerate again to get home, where it breaks down using again the laser batteries.

I'm frankly surprised no one wants to make an ISV Venture Star, though. It's pretty much the most detailed and awesome-looking realistic interstellar starship, and no one wants it in Orbiter??

It's not really overly realistic. It's a CREDIBLE design, that's a difference, but I wouldn't call a spaceship with an anti-matter drive and a supporting laser battery that can easily win a shootout against the deathstar "realistic". besides that, it's so awsome-loocking that modeling it is a daunting task, which I guess is the major reason no one has picked her up yet.

I'd agree over the Vespucci though. Someone get the sourcecode, make it UMMU and UCGO compatible, there you go. Easy to handle and fun to fly ship! (there's a successor in the make, but it seems to get stuck every once in a while).

 

[T.Neo]

Antimatter propulsion and gigantic laser batteries are as realistic now as nuclear propelled aircraft carriers were in 1500.

But I think jedidia hit the nail on the head with "credible". It does get iffy in certain areas; the acceleration provided by the lightsail, the photons from the antimatter reactions propelling the ship (gamma rays produced by antimatter-matter anihillation just go through things, irradiating them and heating them up a bit), "diachronic reflectors" used in the solar sail and lightshield that reflect up to 99.9% of light (admittedly that might make sense over a small frequency emitted by the laser) and the injection of antihydrogen into the engines during matter-antimatter mode to produce more thrust (which I think is an interesting concept, it's almost a merger of a beam core and a plasma core design). Nevertheless the design contains concepts very apparent in real (and theoretical) spacecraft design, and are correspondingly absent from ship design in popular culture.

The model in the movie is also incredibly, incredibly detailed which I agree is daunting to developers- it would require a very skilled artist to approach what was seen in the film, and even then there would be trouble getting it to be usable on lower-end PCs.

I would love to see the Valkyrie as an Orbiter addon.

I actually started meshing it (for random fun, mostly) going by a single diagram and the cover of Flying to Valhalla for reference. Problem is there don't seem to be any solid parameters for Valkyrie (in terms of dimensions or masses) available on the net.

Then there is always the redshift rocket; particle beams accelerate protons and antiprotons where they collide and anihillate. Due to their velocity a portion of the gamma rays released are redshifted into a range where they can be used for power generation, and that (at least partially) powers the particle beams. Thrust would come primarily from the particle beams; it would naturally be a low thrust system. Exhaust velocity would depend on how fast you can accelerate the protons and antiprotons.

Of course in any ship design that uses a considerable amount of antimatter, you have the problem of producing and containing the stuff.

 

[Tribersman_FR]

I actually started meshing it (for random fun, mostly) going by a single diagram and the cover of Flying to Valhalla for reference. Problem is there don't seem to be any solid parameters for Valkyrie (in terms of dimensions or masses) available on the net.

Well : there a lot of information this site that was linked earlier on the topic http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3aj.html#valkyrie
That say it's supposed to be 10 kilometer long.

For a proton/anti-proton design, but I think even a Nuclear Fusion design would need a kilometer long design.
By the way, If the model used in avatar is superb, it look a little short, or maybe that's just the engine that are gigantic.

 

[T.Neo]

That say it's supposed to be 10 kilometer long.

But not how big the engines should be, or the fuel tanks, or how wide the shadow shield would be...

By the way, If the model used in avatar is superb, it look a little short, or maybe that's just the engine that are gigantic.

It is supposedly around a kilometer in length. I agree that it is a bit short for effective radiation mitigation.

The size of the engines and fuel tanks compared to the rest of the spacecraft really put things into perspective...

 

[Izack]

When I said 'realistic' what I meant was credible. It had to look cool and fit into what I hesitate to call the plot, so naturally the potential realism of it had to suffer. Still, next to a lot of other films (I'm looking at YOU, Armageddon) you can't deny the apparent realism in design.

 

[Tribersman_FR]

Well, since Interstellar travel is several order of magnitude too complex Maybe we should just focus on an interplanetary design.

It's 10 kilometer for Anti-matter/matter, but if you use less powerful thruster you may reuse data from other's design and 1km could even become too long.

The size of the fuel tank could be easily estimable if we had an idea of the specific impulse and the power of the thruster you could use.
It's not like we ask you to actually build it.

As for the shadow shield, they say that the closer of the radiation source the better it is.

When I said 'realistic' what I meant was credible. It had to look cool and fit into what I hesitate to call the plot, so naturally the potential realism of it had to suffer. Still, next to a lot of other films (I'm looking at YOU, Armageddon) you can't deny the apparent realism in design.

Armageddon was a case of "so bad it's funny", they even mocked the "American save the world" by having a cooperation between two country reestablish the communication they lost.