Project New interplanetary ship in progress

[Hispa]

I'm modelling a new interplanetary ship; a single spacecraft3-type with 7 docking ports and enough trust power to boost large amounts of cargo or space stations to other planets. The origin of this ship was the result of my little adventure to Mars posted in this thread. This is today the "state of the art":

A general vision of the ship.

First set of docking ports for small ships/shuttles (forward docking type).

Cockpit camera vision of bow.

Trusters exhaust alignment test.

No idea of how to paint/texture the ship, so I could send the model to anyone who likes and were interested to do it.

PS: I forgot to say that the ship is 545.66m long.

 

[Moach]

that looks COOL! :thumbup::blink::speakcool::10sign::yes:

mind if i ask - what are those rings around the bow?

and... if i may suggest something, would there be centrifugal modules for artificial gravity?
perhaps the habitation modules could be mounted on the ends of rotating struts (not in a ful ring setup, but like the AARAG station)


looks cool anyways! keep it up

 

[garyw]

Looks awesome, more screenshots please?!

 

[T.Neo]

mind if i ask - what are those rings around the bow?

Some sort of shield?

Or perhaps rigging for a magnetic sail?

 

[Ark]

Pretty cool looking. I'm curious how you propose to handle imbalance issues in the docked spacecraft.

 

[Izack]

So you are releasing it! Fantastic!
I read in the thread that those things around the hab section are electromagnetic antiradiation shields.
:10sign::10sign::10sign:

 

[supersonic]

Awesome, can wait to destr.....er, I mean fly it.:lol:

 

[Interceptor]

Very nice work,great job.

 

[shangding]

i can't see pictures

 

[jedidia]

nice work! The truss looks a bit on the weak side to support all that load if the ship is supposed to pull significantly more than 0.1 G, though.

 

[Chub777]

That is HUGE! I like the idea of the docking stations for the XR2/ Shuttle-A.

 

[mc_]

This is the examle of right addon developing - understand what you need, and then build it.

New docking ports for small vessels looks like a good idea. And, the ship become longer, as i see.
It's already looks beautiful, but some textures would be nice too.

P.S.: what about a VC? :hail:

 

[johnz5150]

Holy moly! I like how it looks, and it has a slight resemblance to the USSC Discovery One from 2001.
Keep up the great work!

 

[T.Neo]

I agree with others here that the truss needs to be reinforced- it looks far too flimsy to hold up all that mass during acceptable acceleration.

 

[Hispa]

Hey guys, have you ever ear about "carbon fiber"?

Finally I learned a little about texturing, but I advice that my skills are too poor and my artistic sense is horrible-inexistent. Really, I've got an "ex-artistic sense". :dry:

No screenies today, I'm sorry. Too busy and too tired.

 

[River Crab]

Whoa! That came from NOWHERE. Looks like we have a legit Addon Dev here! :hotcool:


But, since I can never just be nice and leave it at that (sorry), :dry: I have some suggestions:

The truss is fine at that width, but IMHO there's a lot unnecessary length in it- I think it should be truncated to put the aft tanks just behind where the XR5s dock. Really, what is bigger than an XR5 and isn't interplanetary on its own?

The ports for the XR2/Shuttle-A might be better behind those pods, rather than sticking out of them- that would give the ship less of a CG shift if something was docked unevenly, and probably look more integrated and lighter IMO.

For uneven docking, I think it will need some automatic engine gimbal. Sounds hard to program though, and that means no more Spacecraft3...

Maybe not, but...doesn't it need radiators? They shouldn't be hard to implement between the aft tanks. Trapezoids and rectangles are quite fashionable.

I don't know if you've decided on this, but are you sure about those magnetic shields on the front? This is a state-of-the-art future vessel, but I think it's more plausible and viable to use a passive shield. An active shield constantly uses up large amounts power over long voyages and is heavier. Lightweight passive shielding has been seriously researched and would just make stuff easier. What you could do, though, is put the active shielding inside the middle of the hull to protect docked vessels.

For textures- I'm still relatively new here, but can I give it a shot?
(this is going to sound cocky) I'm a bit of an artist myself. See my albums (more to come). I'm not Coolhand, but I'm OK at Photoshop, and I can find textures to fit. I've done some modeling before and I know how UV maps work. I do understand that I have almost no visible qualifications as of now.
PM me if you're interested. If not, that's fine too.
arrrg long post is long

Looks awesome, and don't forget to Hail !

 

[jedidia]

The truss is fine at that width, but IMHO there's a lot unnecessary length in it

That's the most efficient way of radiation protection. considering the engine that monster has to sport, I'd say the length is adequate. The tanks will provide a lot of shielding while they're full, but when fuel gets lower that bonus will decrease.

 

[natey787]

It looks fabulous, Hispa!
Just an idea, it might be a way to keep the weight down while keeping the longer truss, but why not turn the engines around and have them in tractor configuration, at a slight angle from the centerline, in the style of the ISV Venture Star and the Valkyrie concept that was based on?

 

[T.Neo]

Hey guys, have you ever ear about "carbon fiber"?

I had that in mind when I made my comment.

Finally I learned a little about texturing, but I advice that my skills are too poor and my artistic sense is horrible-inexistent. Really, I've got an "ex-artistic sense". :dry:

I too am hopeless with textures. You can get around that, sortof- a good start would be to look around CGTextures.com, there are plenty of good textures there.

I once made a gold foil texture by scanning in some tinfoil and changing the colour in GIMP. :lol:

 

[vonneuman]

Will the ship be ummu and ucgo compatible?