Relative sizes of space ships both fictional and real for comparison

[spud42]

whats your guess at the biggest and the smallest ship in this youtube video??

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTPwbVqU6lc

[hiran]

whats your guess at the biggest and the smallest ship in this youtube video??

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTPwbVqU6lc

I think I'd like to see the planetary landing on some of the bigger ships...
It is quite impressive how many of those space ships show some shape close to some plane, rocket or other atmospherical vehicle.
And then there are some built so bizarre I wonder whether they'd ever sustain a maneuver.

[Redspear]

It is quite impressive how many of those space ships show some shape close to some plane, rocket or other atmospherical vehicle.

Even though they typically don't fly in an atmosphere, I think it's evocative of speed when you have wedge shaped or otherwise 'aerodynamic' forms. That said, one of my favourites is the TIE fighter design which (without doing the maths) I'd imagine would perform terribly in an atmosphere comparable to Earth's. Looks cool though... and it's hard to top looking cool

[hiran]

Even though they typically don't fly in an atmosphere, I think it's evocative of speed when you have wedge shaped or otherwise 'aerodynamic' forms. That said, one of my favourites is the TIE fighter design which (without doing the maths) I'd imagine would perform terribly in an atmosphere comparable to Earth's. Looks cool though... and it's hard to top looking cool

There is a point to it that I cannot follow.

Looking at surface that is exposed to the subarctic temperatures of space, all letter-kinds-of rays or particles of whatever size I'd try to trim surface vs volume. For a given surface maximise volume, or for a given volume minimize surface. This way the Borg had done a quite well job to come up just with a cube. And the next candidate is probably just a sphere.

[Commander_X]

Each time I see these types of presentations, I'm mind-connecting to this example (word of caution: it is a WebGL example for threejs library best viewed with GPU hardware support in the browser).

[Redspear]

There is a point to it that I cannot follow.

You're not missing much
Only that looks are important in a game to a greater degree than they are in real life - no need to worry about physics when you can make the rules yourself.

Looking at surface that is exposed to the subarctic temperatures of space, all letter-kinds-of rays or particles of whatever size I'd try to trim surface vs volume. For a given surface maximise volume, or for a given volume minimize surface. This way the Borg had done a quite well job to come up just with a cube. And the next candidate is probably just a sphere.

It's easy to forget that the design of a vehicle is matched not only to its environment but also to its pilot.
Besides, who understands 'hyperspace' as a medium to travel through? Not me...

[Disembodied]

Looking at surface that is exposed to the subarctic temperatures of space, all letter-kinds-of rays or particles of whatever size I'd try to trim surface vs volume. For a given surface maximise volume, or for a given volume minimize surface. This way the Borg had done a quite well job to come up just with a cube. And the next candidate is probably just a sphere.

Space is very very cold, but it's also a vacuum, and an excellent insulator. Overheating is as much a problem in space as staying warm; the only way you can lose heat is by radiation, so having two big radiator panels for your twin ion engines might not be such a bad idea.

[hiran]

Looking at surface that is exposed to the subarctic temperatures of space, all letter-kinds-of rays or particles of whatever size I'd try to trim surface vs volume. For a given surface maximise volume, or for a given volume minimize surface. This way the Borg had done a quite well job to come up just with a cube. And the next candidate is probably just a sphere.

Space is very very cold, but it's also a vacuum, and an excellent insulator. Overheating is as much a problem in space as staying warm; the only way you can lose heat is by radiation, so having two big radiator panels for your twin ion engines might not be such a bad idea.

Good point. But radiators are not always needed, so I'd like to have retractable radiators. Maybe as well as retractable scoops that can munch too large a debris into scoopable units (sounds like a mouth with teeth). All in all my ship would now look like a globefish with rockets instead of fins.

[ffutures]

If you've ever come across the web comic Freefall they're actually pretty good at getting that sort of thing right - the ship in that has big retractable radiators that are only seen when it's in space and the reactor is running.

http://freefall.purrsia.com/default.htm