SpringShip - Interplanetary Spaceship Design

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Platonian
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SpringShip - Interplanetary Spaceship Design

Post by Platonian »

This is a most intriguing website: SpringShip - Interplanetary Spaceship Design.

One can't help but be struck by the design!
"It isn't faith that makes good science, Mr. Klaatu, it's curiosity."
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Re: SpringShip - Interplanetary Spaceship Design

Post by Coalition »

As he mentioned from the article, "NOTICE: Just for clarity this has nothing to do with a certain excessively enthusiastic and often technically inept American fictional television show. Although there are similarities these are purely coincidental drawing from the realities of good engineering design principles (form follows function) and not due to any other influence. "

The design is nice as you put the most 'armor' and radiation protection on the 'floor' of the ring, allowing the crew to be protected from the engine and impact damage with the same mass. Good savings there.

You'd probably want two separate power and computer networks, so you don't try to connect the rotating ring with the stationary main. The computers would communicate via radio transmitters or optical (no physical connection), and if you tried to do a linked power supply, you'd need an induction setup.

Of course, the key problem is lifting the mass to orbit in the first place. Getting to LEO puts you halfway to anywhere, delta-V wise.
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Re: SpringShip - Interplanetary Spaceship Design

Post by Tyyr »

Well there are some issues with this idea. I applaud him thinking outside the box but engineering-wise there's a reason the box exists.

The primary difference between his design and a more conventional one is the supposition that the ship can be adequately shielded for a much lighter mass. There's an issue there. First off micrometeorites are not just an issue with something you run into. At a high fraction of the speed of light this is true, however for travel inside the solar system you aren't going to be traveling at a high enough velocity to make crossing meteorites a non-issue. You can be struck by a micrometeorite from virtually any direction. That said, a whipple shield is a relatively lightweight way to armor vital areas of a ship from micrometeorite strikes. Again, at the speeds you and the meteorites will be traveling inside the solar system a whipple shield will work just fine and a big slab of armor isn't needed. As for radiation, you can't necessarily control when radiation will happen. Any radiation refuge will have to be functional from any direction so that the ship is still free to maneuver during a radiation event. You don't want to miss a breaking burn or course correction because your ship has to spend a week with it's bow pointed at the sun or else the crew dies. A shield large enough to protect the entire crew ring is also going to be a tremendous amount of mass to be hauling around. A more conventional water shielded refuge space for the crew towards the ship's center isn't as sexy, but it works. Even if you assume we manage to advance nuclear propulsion to something akin to a nuclear lightbulb set up which would have about 4 to 5 times the efficiency of a chemical engine and allow you to bring a lot more mass along on a mission no mission planner is going to want to spend that mass on a huge shield when they could go with a refuge style arrangement for 1/20th the mass and use the rest of that for mission critical equipment or making a smaller, and cheaper ship.

Finally I'm not entirely wild about the name. Springs are an actual thing, that have nothing to do with his spinning rings, which could describe a ship with a centrifugal gravity section in any orientation.
You'd probably want two separate power and computer networks, so you don't try to connect the rotating ring with the stationary main. The computers would communicate via radio transmitters or optical (no physical connection), and if you tried to do a linked power supply, you'd need an induction setup.
Not really, slip rings for data and power transfer are done all the time. For things like liquids and gasses you can use free rotating connections at the center of the ring's hub.
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Platonian
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Re: SpringShip - Interplanetary Spaceship Design

Post by Platonian »

Coalition wrote:As he mentioned from the article, "NOTICE: Just for clarity this has nothing to do with a certain excessively enthusiastic and often technically inept American fictional television show. Although there are similarities these are purely coincidental drawing from the realities of good engineering design principles (form follows function) and not due to any other influence."
Yes, I did notice that comment from the author. So much for us! :wink:
"It isn't faith that makes good science, Mr. Klaatu, it's curiosity."
Prof. Barnhardt to Klaatu, The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)
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