Project Project 1 Paul Erdős Class

[MachJok]

Project 1 Paul Erdős Class - DEAD

Working on my first project for orbiter. Finishing up the conceptual design and basic shapes of the fuselage. It will be very big. The center section alone is 530' long. The nose section is done with shaping but I am going to finish the basics of the engineering section before I send more pics.This will be a bit of a long term project since I have to learn C++ for the VC and make it UCGO compliant.

The Gravity Wheel has an outer diameter of 200' and an inner diameter of 180'. The ring is 14' wide and 10' tall spinning at ~5.42 rpm to produce 1g or a Δg of 0.01g/ft from floor to ceiling. According to SpinCalc 5.4 rpm is the threshold for adaptation. "At 5.4 rpm, only subjects with low susceptibility performed well and by the second day were almost free from symptoms." Benefits of an inline system: Precession only affects yaw and roll vs pitch and roll on other types.

The Arms are Archimedean spirals so that a) there is an increasing apparent gravity on the floor as you descend if you are using the floor or you can push off from the hub and float down the corridor for a challenge. wikipedia: It is the locus of points corresponding to the locations over time of a point moving away from a fixed point with a constant speed along a line which rotates with constant [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angular_velocity"]angular velocity.[/ame]

I will probably increase the wheel section count from 24 to 48 sections.

Comments are welcome.

Hail
MachJok

 

[mc_]

I saw something like this on astronautix.com some time ago, but there was only two "spirals", and also two vertical elevators.

Spiral galleries looks like a proper solution of a "very high ladder" problem, which is common for the ring stations.

P.S.: it will be something hypnotic when approaching this station...

 

[MachJok]

Thanks for the comments! I did the spirals for the ship because of the long ladder issue. I had never heard of astronautix.com before. What an awesome site!

 

[mc_]

Looks like the "archimedean spiral" is the only proper solution for the ladder problem, it's just not well known because the authors of a sci-fi books/films do not use it for some reason...

I found again that article where i saw the spirals for the first time. It's an old (1928 - 1929) Slovenian project, called Noordung. Supposed to be an orbiting space observatory or something like it.
There isn't much information on it, only general layout, but maybe you'll get something from it. Anyway, there will be some problems to solve: docking ports, for example (hope no ship rotation needed ).

I always thought that Orbiter, unfortunally, lacks some potentially good addons. There are lots of great ideas, but no one tries to start working o them (i will not say it is bad that eweryone is about DG-style spaceplanes, we have some perfect ones after all, but it's not sad if we have somethng - it's sad when we don't have).

Your project seems to be one of the possibilities for good and brand new addon. A ring station with VC and UCGO - it would be great! :thumbup: Can't wait for docking with it.

approves your ideas. Good luck!


P.S.: i have an idea for some "crazy additional feature" for the station. Maybe you will like it. I'll explain it here after learning some new English words needed for it
Sorry for lame english and tl/dr.

 

[MachJok]

I am all in favor of suggestions. Please be advised that the project is a ship not a station and as such not all ideas may work! If you have trouble describing it, draw it.

Thank you for the link I like the design from the article.

:hail:

MachJok

 

[mc_]

It's a ship? Where i missed it? :blink:

About the "idea": i think, it will be nice to have a side docking ports (two will be enough) at the ring. It is not supposed to be the "main" ports (non-rotating section would be more handy for them), just an exercise - "docking to the ring ports while the ring is rotating". I suggest this maneuver is a bit crazy, but possible. Can explain with pictures, if you like.

Just cant undrstand the general layout of your sta... vessel . Is the ring axis perpendicular to the main thrust direction of the ship? If so, its ok only while flying with engines off...

 

[MachJok]

Thanks for the idea! The ring is parallel to the direction of travel. I listed a few reasons for this in the first post.

 

[mc_]

If the ring will be parallel to the direction of main thurst, g force in forward part will be increased while engines are on.

For example, if the ship accelerates at 1g, gravity in the fovard part will be 0g, and 2g in aft part. And the ring is rotating, remember? Crew will have to suffer 0 to 2g and then to 0 again g force change for five times each minute (5,4 rpm).

I suggest, the inline system may have a benefits only if there are no ring. Some time ago i draw something like a shuttle-style ship with constant g force at all time, expect reentry. It was inline.
I didn't even tried to build it, because it looked crazy. When in space, crew cabin at the nose turns 90 up (upper side to vessel's center), and the whole fuselage starts rotating, while the wings and engines remains stationary. When the acceleration applied, cabin stops at rear position. I also used tilting engines, so it looked absolutely brain-blasting.

Like this:

In later version a massive non-rotating part was added between wings and fuselage (for fuel tanks, etc).

 

[MachJok]

NOT DEAD!

After happily surviving last sat. I decided I would post a long over due update. Not much happened since I just recently picked this back up.

The gravwheel will be in another version of the ship when released (no aerobraking in that one...)

Here are some update shots you may recognize from other parts of the forum

still with gravwheel


Engines 40' final diameter
Trivia: Same engine bell as the Apollo CSM just...a bit bigger

No gravwheel version. The red hover engines are place holders for the boolean which is occurring as I type this. Sorry for the excessive delay in updates

Dimensions: L: 1142' W:245' at widest H: 96.8
Mass: :lol: lots
Fuel: Handwavium :lol:
Max acceleration: Unknown
Internal Docking bays: 2, fwd in the command section and aft in fwd engineering
Min Crew: 11 (captain - first officer - pilot x3 - engineer - mechanics x3 - mission specialists x2) + mission crew passengers

 

[Grover]

looks a bit arrow-freighter-ish, i hope you get some UGCO into that!

also, you will find your life MUCH easier if you start working in meters instead of feet. if you want to do any vector work, animations, docking port modelling/coding etc, you'll need to have meter units

apart from that, your model looks pretty fine!

 

[Wishbone]

Is it for atmospheric or exoatmospheric flight? Sleek features may be not needed if you're planning to do interplanetary transit, but some kind of artificial gravity is almost always required (unless your handwavium includes AG as part of the deal with the provider - btw, hope you did use regular ink in signing the contract).

 

[MachJok]

The version without the grav wheel will be primarily a freighter vs passenger transport hence the difference. The sleekness is to allow for aerobraking atmospheres but primarily exoatmospheric flight.

Grover: Thanks for the heads up. My Gmax is set up to export in meters but display in feet. (found a tutorial on that but can't remember how I did it - long time ago).

It will be fully UCGO compliant and the freighter will include the rover transport. It will be able to land in low grav environments - No Mars Landing. The Passenger variant will not be landable.

Thanks for all the compliments

 

[MachJok]

The hover boolean is finally done after several days of headache. The boolean B-A stopped working after 3 times and I had to do a union and then manually delete vertices and delete polys and retriangulate...lots of computer threatening happened. :lol: I imported the Arrow to give a comparison (per grover) and here are the pics

Also, I loaded up the cargo bay with 13t x 100l x 1w UCGO containers. I dont know how big the final bay will be but here is a quick shot of that too. there are 5 feet of space between each container

 

[MachJok]

Hoverdoors and Landing Gear

The hover doors are 6" thick of the clamshell variety with the opening longitunally oriented with explosive bolts to blow off the cover in case of failure - ala Lambo. The hover engines have been fully booleaned out of the ship and attached. I would show a pic but it is a bit hard to see.

The ship sits about 20' off the ground and the legs are 11° rotation with a 4' tall pad.
The gear is 54' apart at the base. The gear is rated to support the max gross weight (TBD) of the ship on earth + 25% safety design factor for any "less than optimal" landings.

the cargo bay will be similar to the XR2 UCGO bay but will be lowered from the bottom of the ship. Lots of hangar bays because UCGO is limited to 40 boxes. I think I calculated using the full mid section as a cargo bay 55,656 UCGO containers would optimally fit :rofl:. Lots of volume in that midsection.

 

[MachJok]

WOOHOO update time!

I completed the boolean of the bridge and the cargo area 8 crates long x 5 crates wide with bay doors.

Points to the person to figure out how much floor space is available :lol:
Most of the work has been small details with the center hover doors to prevent them from "colliding" as they open.

I have put in the wraparound bridge window and made a protective outer shield in case of debris/meteroid shower. I really need suggestions for coming up with a deployment/stoage method. I want to avoid breaking up the shield into the 16 component panels if possible.

I also defined the cargo areas in the mid-ship. Plenty of space for 40 crates and 2 Azure Rovers.

Also: While UCGO mesh browsing I found a small ship.

looks like 2 person orbital ops only, no main engines so I am guessing RCS only. I wanted 3 but since it is not available in game I decided to go with the rovers.

Comments and Suggestions welcome!

RedMeansGo

 

[Spacethingy]

Also: While UCGO mesh browsing I found a small ship.

looks like 2 person orbital ops only, no main engines so I am guessing RCS only. I wanted 3 but since it is not available in game I decided to go with the rovers.

Comments and Suggestions welcome!

RedMeansGo

That is in the game. It's actually a UCGO car called the "Landspeeder".... :lol:

It should just be in your UCGO>Cars folder in Scenario Editor.

 

[MachJok]

movie

the bridge debris shield is done!
http://s41.photobucket.com/albums/e266/MachJok/?action=view&current=shieldclosingfront.mp4

Comments and questions are always appreciated

 

[MachJok]

UPDATE!

I will be redoing the bridge debris shield, the vertices somehow went slightly out of alignment cause all sorts of visual anomalies. I have completed the bridge layout and I am very comfortable with it. Please Let me know what you think. I also decided on a name. This "class" of freighter will the the Erdős Class. Serial number 11000 will be the Paul Erdős.

The naming guideline will be to use historically significant mathematicians. Ultimately I would like to make a thread of registries as people make repaints they can post their ship name in the thread and I will add it to the list of serial numbers starting with 11001,002,003 etc. But that is for later.

RedMeansGo

EDIT:

That is the desk I made with a chair. That way you can see what it looks like a bit better. The angled portions I would like to make into screens of some sort. I have lots of plans with no coding experience and no idea exactly what is a reasonable expectation of a feature (hence the lack of any mention of one)

 

[Wishbone]

It would be fitting to include Erdős numbers of the namesake mathematician as part of the ship's number

Paul Erdős - a great name for a ship, BTW.

 

[MachJok]

updates

Well another 2 months flew by, work is progressing slowly. i am trying to learn C++ for all of the goodies I want to implement, would be boring to show.

As for modelling I changed the engeine exhausts to an annular throat type exhaust

the body plug is partially modeled for the visible areas only to save on poly count.

Each exhaust is 46x46x40 so it is a bit larger than the bell nozzle but offers better debris shielding and the possibility of thrust vectoring with minimal hardware.