How to build this? Forum: SSI-List
Thread: How to build this?
yup, sort of, you can loose all the front and back really, seems just
redundant zero-g space. You can have a docking facility in front of the hub,
and engines in the back, but in proportion of the whole structure would be a
tenth of what's depicted there...
Still, the whole thing is just good for experimental or research vessels.
Any ship with a decent engine will have is max speed limited by the
acceleration the crew could stand, so artificial gravity would really be the
least of the things you would design your ship around IMHO.
First of all trash all the horizontal designs, StarWars/Startreck type of
things, that's just a Hollywood convention to make things more familiar to
the audience. Any reasonable ship designed according to law of physics will
be arranged top>down, not rotating and even less left>right, because the
acceleration will make the bottom the part oriented opposite the direction
of travel, not perpendicular to it. To maximise speed in a voyage you'll be
accelerating at ~1G constantly to half way, then shut the engines, spin the
ship 180 and spend the other half of the voyage decelerating back at the
same rate. All the time your feet will be solidly stuck to the floor by the
acceleration, except for a few minutes of zero-g midtravel while you spin
the ship. That's because that is the max speed you can go regardless the
efficiency of your engines. We already have engines that can accelerate
faster than that, so going slower is not really an issue... Given the very
minimal acceleration represented by 1G, rotating gizmos are only necessary
for ships that go so slow as to be pretty much useless for space distances
anyway. I don't have the math on hand but even at a constant acceleration
and deceleration of 1G would take months just to get to Mars IIRC... slower
than that, don't bother really... :)
It's more likely that ship's crew will be trained (if not actually
genetically enhanced) to stand accelerations of 2, 3G or even more for the
duration of the entire voyage. As a matter of fact it's likely that a whole
race of space traders will gradually adapt at living in high G environments
even without genetically manipulation, just getting used to it from birth
will already make a big difference...
If ships will be designed with artificial gravity as a main concern, that
will be to dampen acceleration effects, not generating anymore!
Cheers,
Claudio