Recent content by The Shadow

I left the possibility of a return to Earth open, but it would take a long time to get the needed fuel for such a venture from Mars.

An Ark for each ecosystem! and yes, I apparently missed many living things. It would have to be a very well thought out process to get them all to survive. Jurassic Park on Mars! As far as coding the lifeforms and stuff like that, I may just have the ship and not actually model the...

Ouch... I'm bad :tiphat: About a fifth of a mile, that is not bad at all compared to Australia. :embarrassed: Throwing in the fact that these vials are 3D(like you mentioned) that makes it 500,000,000 cubic in. x 2.54 x 2.54 x 2.54 = 8,193,532,000 cubic cm / 1000 / 1000 / 1000 = 8.193532...

It is a pretty steep curve, you could almost use it as a slide. You are right; it comes out of the cental shaft tangentially, does a 180 bend and ends with the people walking on a platform that lies parallel to the main section of the gravity wheel, then they would walk down some stairs with the...

I agree, but it is still an option, and in brainstorming the idea is to just throw out every idea that comes no matter how crazy or inefficient it may seem. I'm still working on the mesh, I've restructured the gravity wheel. Such a massive object needs a bit more finesse than just slapping a...

I have no clue about what a real physics scientist might think, but I have come up with a simple solution: Place little rocket engines on the outside of the gravity wheel, this way you can get the gravity wheel up to speed without actually affecting the rotation of the rest of the ship. Once...

zeldafan: I'll pass on rebuilding the Deathstar since it wouldn't be able to actually land on the planet, and making a DeathStar type craft is not what I want to do. dman1410: It wouldn't be too crazy to put a weather radar on board, I can make the mesh, but for coding it, might be too much...

Here is a different mesh that has most of the things we have talked about implemented. The front is designed to be a huge lifting body/flying wing design that should be able to fly into the atmosphere, once velocity is reduced it can do a nose down approach until it is close to landing, then it...

All of the small craft designs I've seen have large propellers and aerofoils. I think that small probing aircraft could use props, similer to the Zephyr solar powered plane, medium-sized single-seaters could use a couple ducted fans, and the medium to large sized craft will need something more...

How about a ducted fan running off of an electric motor? Best example would be the helicopter type craft in Avatar, they have two ducted rotors that turn like the V-22 Osprey.

Thanks for the suggestions chub: Based on the criteria I've set for this craft, I think the "quick and dirty" approach would be better suited. Jedida: Sorry about the confusion, I originally did not know where it was going, but then decided on Mars after a bit of research and listening to...

Thank you for the advice Jedida. I can see how the radiators need work. I was experimenting with designs in order to loose the MASSIVE radiator covers, and was thinking of folding up the radiators and solar panels into an accordian, like the ISS panels, rather than have these giant sheets that...

It is based somewhat on the Arrow(What can I say? It's a beautiful design! :tiphat:), but the Space Ark is much flatter; while the Arrow is tubular. The reason I chose to go flat is so it would be Easier to build and would be much more stable once landed since only less than 1% of it's career...

So Mars seems to be the best option for the final destination. What would it really take to terraform Mars? We need Nitrogen, Oxygen, and CO2 for the atmosphere. I've seen on here that Mars's Polar ice caps contain the CO2; ship a bunch of plants to the polar Ice caps and let them produce...

here is what I have as far as a mesh. the blue near the engines are radiators, the large objects sticking out are the extendable gravity wheel, and the blue near the front are solar panels.