What would a 'real' spaceship actually look like?

[Smivs]

Elsewhere around the Board, the high-poly/low-poly debate about spaceship design and aesthetics continues, and as I'm sure spaceships are a subject close to all our hearts, I thought a discussion thread on the subject might be fun.
In Oolite, I am unashamedly in the (minority?) low-poly camp. This is because I believe that the low-poly designs are actually much more realistic and are far closer to the way 'real' spaceships of the future will look and this helps my immersion in the game. Many of you may disagree, and I have to admit that as we are talking about a 'video game' the appearance is important and a sophisticated model will always win out in terms of visual appeal as it is simply more 'interesting'. However it doesn't win in terms of realism in my opinion, an opinion I formed A long time ago...
Back in '77 when the original Star Wars movie was released I remember watching that opening sequence when the (Princess's) ship descends across your field of view, followed by the Star Destroyer. 'Wow, awesome!' etc, for a few seconds until it struck me just how silly they actually looked. Seriously, there is no way that it would ever make sense to actually build something that complicated! And of course 5 years later it was all put into perspective by the clean workmanlike shapes of the Elite shipset. Even the simple wire-frames hinted at realistic and achievable ship designs.
So in the future, what would actual spaceships look like? Firstly, some basic principles.
Firstly, I'm assuming that in 'The Future' space is a normal working environment. Raw materials would be mined from asteroids and processed in massive foundries and factories in space. Virtually nothing would need to be supplied by the Planet - getting things into orbit and beyond is ridiculously expensive and would be inconceivable on the scale we are discussing here.
So the raw materials are already in space, and with near-total automation on a massive scale on the production side, vast quantities of very cheap materials would be available in space/orbit, which of course is where the spaceship would be built.
Secondly, consider that (just like in core Oolite) most spaceships would be pure spacecraft, never to enter an atmosphere or land on a planet. That's what shuttles etc are for, and as they are specialised multi-purpose type craft they do not really fall within this discussion.
Sci-fi ships (Millenium Falcon, Serenity etc) that can just take off from a planet don't ring true - certainly there is no hint right now that the technology and fuelling needed for that might ever exist.
So, a pure space-craft. A vessel that does not have to deal with drag or even worry about aerodynamics at all. And it wouldn't even need to be particularly strong as there would be no gravity/buoyancy/lift issues trying to bend and break it. Within reason there would be no size constraints either. Which is a good thing when you consider the burgeoning economy behind all this.
Also, the perils of space travel must be considered. The risk of micrometeorite strikes, the hazards of radiation, the ever-present danger of attack from pirates.
So to summarise, we have a hypothetical future where vast quantities of cheap materials are available in orbit, and there is a need for more and more spaceships to keep the economic wheels turning. Spaceships which have to function in a vacuum and cope with the unique hazards and dangers of space.
In a word, they need to be thick-skinned. Armour-plated leviathans. Dense, thick hulls to shrug off space dirt and absorb radiation and big hulls so that all the ship systems and equipment can be safely contained within the protective hull. During construction, once the hull is complete it can be pressurised to make the internal fitting-out much easier.
Consider then that we are talking about truly massive structures. Structures that have to be built in a vacuum and zero gravity. Even with gigantic automated machinery doing much or most of the work, this is not a situation where anything unnecessary could be sanctioned. Simple is good, because simple works and keeps on working.
So without constraints forced upon you by aerodynamics, gravity etc, what shape is simple and good? Ultimately, the cube or rectangle is the logical choice. Straight edges, basic right-angles. Dead easy to construct even on a massive scale in zero-G. The Borg knew what they were doing.
So what's wrong with cubic spaceships? Well not much at all, and indeed one of the most exciting aspects of our current space programmes are the cube-sats which are perhaps an early hint of things to come. So if cubes are fine, why doesn't anybody like them. Well it's pretty obvious isn't it? Boring!
Very boring indeed. Which is really how I have come to believe over many years that 'real' future spacecraft would be 'pretty cubes', basic, simple geometric designs for simplicity of construction and use, but with enough non-squareness to offer some variety and interest. Unless you're a Borg, of course.

That's what I think....how about you?

[Cody]

Not like this magnificent ship, eh?



Clear Air Turbulence - gotta be where Banks got the name!

[cim]

Triangular hull segments would be stronger than square ones. An icosahedron is pretty close to being a sphere, so giving high internal volume for low surface area. Of course, heat dissipation could become a problem, so you might end up with fractal-ish outer surfaces in some places to maximise surface area instead.

An asymmetric design giving clear indications of the x/y/z axes would be useful for determining relative orientations visually. Some asymmetry is probably inevitable from it likely being simpler and more efficient to have one big engine and turn the ship, rather than several big engines all pointing on different axes through the centre of mass.

If modularity is important, then a sparse backbone - or set of struts, perhaps - onto which modules can be added or removed might be useful. The modules would probably be cubic-ish, but the overall shape probably wouldn't.

There are possibly engineering concerns with "things which need to be far away from the main hull" for various reasons as well - solar panels, sensitive equipment, nuclear reactors - which might cause a break with a simple design.

Quite possibly the most efficient way to make a very large spaceship might be to hollow out a suitably-sized asteroid, using the metals gained from doing so to build thrusters, radiators, solar panels, and so on around the edge. In that case the overall external shape might be quite irregular and very much unique to a particular ship.

[ffutures]

One thing you want to avoid is having too much asymmetry around the longitudinal axis because it makes it harder to keep the thrust balanced properly. From that point of view a longish thinnish cylinder works well, anything else is going to start running into problems.

The picture below is an image I made for an RPG based on Stanley Weinbaum's 1930s SF. The ship is as close as I could get to the design he described in his story The Red Peri:



It looks cool. But unfortunately it's a really bad design from this point of view (and others which I won't go into here - there's a little about it in the game if you're interested, but it only makes sense in the context of Weinbaum's rather peculiar version of nuclear engines). The problem is that any transfer of mass around the triangular hull (e.g. someone walking from one of the corners to the middle of the triangle's side) is going to change the balance a bit. You'd need to have ballast tanks to compensate, and pump fluids around the hull to keep the ship from drifting off course, keep exactly the same amount of cargo in each side and at each corner, etc.. To an extent this is still needed with a long thin hull, but the forces involved have smaller magnitude - basically, it's harder to put the thing seriously off-balance if you can only move a relatively small distance in and out from the central axis.

There are ways around this with e.g. multiple engines under computer control, or some sort of gravity drive that affects the ship as a whole rather than pushing from a particular locus on the ship, but the former enormously complicates control issues (e.g. you might get feedback problems such as wobbling), and the latter doesn't really work well with the natural laws we can currently manipulate.

[Cody]

If we presume no 'magic' AG, is some sort of simulated gravity needed? Or are we talking zero-g? That must affect design, surely?

[ffutures]

Zero gravity really complicates things like plumbing, see e.g. pictures of zero-gravity loos, as well as being bad for your health in the long term. I think you'd need some sort of gravity simulation, e.g. centrifugal - in my Weinbaum game I went with constant low thrust, e.g. 0.01 to 0.05 g, which does interplanetary distances in the sort of time Weinbaum's stories mentioned, but realistically you could never afford the energy costs short of solar sails and other ways of getting vast amounts of energy out of the universe without carrying reaction mass.

[Smivs]

Great discussion as I'd hoped.
The principles I laid out earlier assume steady development of existing (or very likely) technology. Clearly a revolutuionary development such as the spaceships-being-able-to-launch-from-and-land-on-planets drive system mentioned in my first post would completely change the way ships design was approached.
And you are right, gravity and AG would be major factors as well. My principles assume no artificial gravity. Linking this to the points about orientation and stability, our brick is starting to look perhaps more cylindrical, rotating around the longitudinal axis.

[Redspear]

If it is to be a manned vessel then things like boarding need to be considered and perhaps field of view provided by a cockpit. If, as with your ships, this is sensor based rather than by an actual cockpit then is this likely to be a viable strategy where systems can fail/ be attacked? For example, considering all of the aids available to fighter jet pilots, a high field of view cockpit remains almost universal (to my limited knowledge). If something is favoured then would it still be universal? In oolite, would the different races have different needs with regards to observation? The thargoid vessels for example have no obvious front (whilst the drones do, they are not 'manned'), could this be related to some sort of compound eye on the part of the pilots and employing a form to suit their natural physiology (and perhaps even psychology)?

In addition to boarding there may be docking and storage to consider. If you have a squadron of fighters to store then, in the absence of aerodynamics, do flattened shapes win out over spherical ones in terms of storage efficiency (considering room for engineering etc.)?

Perhaps super-material X can hold a high level of integrity in this shape A but is highly expensive. Meanwhile, material Y can't manage the same but is much cheaper or more readily available, and so some vessels don't have the 'ideal' shape.

A potentially interesting comparison might be made with living things. If you consider a basic design, such as a cell, (robust outer wall, specialist components, essential functioning) then we might have something resembling a sphere. As things become more complicated however then we have a myriad of forms and even functions. Whilst space might seem uniform when compared to the diverse ecosystems of our planet consider that many things on our planet remain either near constant (e.g. gravity) or only seem highly variable when considered on a planetary level (e.g. temperature). As for the various habitats, visit any one near you and consider the variety of life existing within (for exmple) one forest, on a single tree or even under a fallen leaf.

Niche (or role) could alter shape significantly. If it's a freighter, does it store cargo internally or externally (volume independant)? If externally, then is the cargo in simple modules that are attached/towed? If it's internally then perhaps it becomes more bulky but the cargo is better protected. If it's a fighter then does a flattened profile make both attack and retreat safer due to being a more difficult target? If it's a destroyer/gunship then does presenting a larger face/front also allow more weapons to be pointed at (perhaps more mobile) targets?

In summary, I would expect that once you get enough evolution, you see a plethora of forms existing in a wide variety of niches.

[ClymAngus]

Currently, for things to get into space they have to get out of an atmosphere. When your construction ships outside an atmosphere I would expect people to work with designs that were proven to keep humans alive. rotating velocity wheels, that kind of thing. The problem we have is we love mixing WW2 dogfights with space and although it is incredably appealing/ to do so. It's not really realistic. The perfect space ship has to do a LOT of things. A fair few of them we haven't really worked out yet.

[Disembodied]

Streamlining is definitely an issue in space, if you want to travel at anything resembling a measurable percentage of the speed of light. Even the interstellar medium - roughly about 1 hydrogen atom per cubic centimetre - will produce drag when you're trying to move through it quickly (not to mention the fact that those atoms will be coming in like hard radiation at sufficient velocities). So there would be a premium for fast ships (for a given value of sublight fast) to be long and pointy, with the crew quarters a long way away from the front end.

Lots of good information on this sort of topic over at
http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/r ... design.php

[Cody]

So there would be a premium for fast ships (for a given value of sublight fast) to be long and pointy, with the crew quarters a long way away from the front end.

Long and pointy, eh? How about Liberty 1...



... always have loved that ship.

[Diziet Sma]

The problem is that any transfer of mass around the triangular hull (e.g. someone walking from one of the corners to the middle of the triangle's side) is going to change the balance a bit. You'd need to have ballast tanks to compensate, and pump fluids around the hull to keep the ship from drifting off course, keep exactly the same amount of cargo in each side and at each corner, etc.. To an extent this is still needed with a long thin hull, but the forces involved have smaller magnitude - basically, it's harder to put the thing seriously off-balance if you can only move a relatively small distance in and out from the central axis.

There are ways around this with e.g. multiple engines under computer control, or some sort of gravity drive that affects the ship as a whole rather than pushing from a particular locus on the ship, but the former enormously complicates control issues (e.g. you might get feedback problems such as wobbling), and the latter doesn't really work well with the natural laws we can currently manipulate.

All the above makes the (IMO unwarranted) assumption that the engine(s) are constantly supplying thrust. In other words, always accelerating or decelerating. Which, while it's the fastest way to get from A to B, is hugely wasteful of fuel. It's far more likely that thrust would be applied up to whatever speed was wanted, and the engines then shut down until needed for slowing down at the destination.

With thrust off, any changes in balance are irrelevant. So long as mass distribution is properly balanced, and locked in place (crew included) whenever thrust is being applied, there would be no problems.

[spud42]

In a non hostile universe the cube, or some derivation of it , would be the simplest to construct. However in a non peaceful environment a cube would present a large target to an enemy in all directions. Each side would be a broadside.Assuming that "shields" are nonexistent as well.

Zero gravity still has mass and inertia to overcome so things like center of mass and center of thrust are very important in maintaining control of the ships trajectory. AS ffutures said humans do not survive well in extended periods of zero gravity, after 6 Months in the ISS with constant exercise astronauts still have problems with bone density and muscle degredation. There is a reason most if not all SciFi ships have some form of artificial gravity, even Babylon 5 rotated....

Back to the aesthetics of the outer hull of a spaceship, i do agree that most are lumpy and bumpy to be interesting to a viewer, however there are going to be sensors,antenna,solar panels,radiators to dissipate heat etc that have to be on the outer hull of a ship to function.

[Disembodied]

Back to the aesthetics of the outer hull of a spaceship, i do agree that most are lumpy and bumpy to be interesting to a viewer, however there are going to be sensors,antenna,solar panels,radiators to dissipate heat etc that have to be on the outer hull of a ship to function.

There's also the question of handholds/footholds/harness attachment points for crewmembers undertaking EVAs. A network of struts could be very useful. Much of a spaceship's body might be nothing but struts, as a low-mass method of holding engines, attachment points for lightsails, etc.

Obviously, a huge factor in any design is what sort of (presumably real-world) engines are we going to use? A ship fitted with a Project Orion-style engine would have to look (and be) very different to one powered by ion thrusters.

[Mazur]

And as for battle in space: forget dog-fights, forget roll (not for nothing does Ender stress: "The Enemy gate is down."). Battle will take place over immense distances, as soon as computers can sufficiently make out the enemy, and then it is a matter of who has got the best range/the best capability to overcome the others defenses/the best computers able to predict the enemies manœvres. Firing a laser in space is likely to miss if you do not aim at where the enemy will be instead of where he is when firing. Torpedoes will be rarely useful, since the enemy will be able to see them coming from a long way off and sleep on how to destroy/misdirect them before they hit¹. Coming within 100 km of eachother will be considered a near collision, given the vast distances of space.

These concerns are why Elite//Oolite did well disbanding normal space for the game, it would be too boring.

¹ Just think of firing a fancy torpedo from the moon at whatever eyesore or Evil Maniac on Earth you prefer. I should have the ICBM coordinates for a certain building in Redmond, WA, around here, somewhere.