Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

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BattleRaptor
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Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by BattleRaptor »

Heat is not friction.
We have both electrical and thermal superconductors that exist today
We also have frictionless materials today
We also have damn near 100% efficent thermoelectric converters.
Lets assume in 200 years they have gone from short lifespans in the lab into mainstream production.

ball lightning
Not only is self contained plasma being developed for containing radation in nuclear reactors and it having been created in the lab repeatedly since the 1970s, but its also seeing development into anti missile weapons where its accelerated to 200km/s in atmosphere in one test.

Then its the MARAUDER project.
Self contained Plasmoids were created that reached over 3,000 kilometers a second by 1995. Then after a battery of successful tests everything was immedately classified by the US airforce and so no one knows just what has been done with it since.
You can however look it up and find the information about it before it disappeared.

However I am sure that they would love to hear what they have been doing is impossible and that it is magic and they should stop bothering to try to do it.

Im going to stop talking to you now, Im not getting paid to correct your mistaken beliefs, so I dont see any point spending more time on it.

Karst45
You MISSED the entire section where I said IT would be highly inefficent and you WOULD have to use shitloads(Pun intended) and it would still have gaps.

Talking to people about stuff they quite clearly cant understand is always frustrating.
So I will stop.

Karst45
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Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by Karst45 »

BattleRaptor wrote: Talking to people about stuff they quite clearly cant understand is always frustrating.
So I will stop.
Nice way to say we are all idiot and that you are the superior mind.

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icekatze
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Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by icekatze »

hi hi

Friction is the force resisting the relative motion of solid surfaces, fluid layers and/or material elements sliding against each other. Friction converts kinetic energy into heat. So while friction itself is not heat, when you have friction, you necessarily have heat as well.

Edit: I did some digging, and there are some practical mass driver designs being kicked around using superconducting magnets, but there are some limitations. I saw one example of a lunar mass driver that would use a 1km long track to accelerate a 20kg vehicle up to 10.5km/s with a conversion efficiency of 80%. Not quite 10%c, but impressive none the less.

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088
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Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by 088 »

awesome render man and your probably right about most of that X3
i'm not sure the humans would really go for a catamaran design tho.

and im sorry everyone for starting a nerd fight over the effectiveness of rail guns X3

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icekatze
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Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by icekatze »

hi hi

For my part in all of that, I apologize. It seems that I am not very good at this.

Tamren
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Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by Tamren »

We had this conversation before. IIRC the end consensus was that mass drivers, railguns and other projectile weapons just don't stack up against Outsiderverse energy weapons. The Tempest alone can almost instantly destroy a moving target at 300000km. In order to hit a moving target at that distance with railguns you would need to fire an expanding wall of munitions at a fraction of the speed of light. Not only would this require enough projectile mass to make a small moon, but there is still no guarantee the target could not just move out of the way.

Though we haven't seen much of terran ships other than some side art. They have a different set of design aesthetics than the Loroi do. We would probably start out with their equivalent of an escort ship. Lots of point defence and antimissile launchers. Only a human design would be more like a modern submarine, and require less materials with a corresponding reduction in crew comfort.

Majincarne
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Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by Majincarne »

I've always been a big fan of the sphere shape for space crafts. So far very few others have gone this way but perry Rhodan has a few.
I mostly like the design based on the concept of less turrets more power and cooling per few turrets excellent field of fire. Two turrets is all you need to give complete 360 coverage of the ship. Place other fire systems such as point defense at the other poles and you have a design thats very suited to the three dimensional combat of space.The logical max of this design is taken to small planitoid sizes in the Dahak book series. but the tech in that is at least several fold greater than in outsider.

Image
/\ not fanart. just fyi

Also not quite the niceness of field of fire but the borg cube is a rather close follow up to a well engineered spaceship design.

discord
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Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by discord »

"Metal Storm has created a 36-barreled stacked projectile machine gun, boasting the highest rate of fire in the world. The prototype weapon demonstrated a firing rate of just over 1 million rounds per minute for a 180-round burst, with a claimed maximum rate of fire of 1.62 million RPM"
BUT that still does not change that it is only 180 rounds, with a reload time...in minutes, and would probably not work very well in a rail gun anyway.

metalstorm is a interesting concept, and was used in the legacy of the aldenata series by john ringo(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy_of_the_Aldenata) but that was a metal storm based on 105mm rounds....and that is just silly.

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bunnyboy
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Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by bunnyboy »

Because we are not cabable of building umiak proof armour or weapons with good enough kick, so why don't we forget both of them?
Just build a big mesh form plastic containers and lot of independent spare systems. Umiaks may shoot it pieces if they wan't but there would be still enough cells to keep it operating.
Nonworking parts can be disposed and with some litterbombs it can make good decoy.
Enemy can shoot his expensive missiles in to dirt cloud if he feel rich enough, but change that he hit something important is small.

I did like the idea of rocketbikes. There are no need to give big juicy target to the enemy. 10 km long mesh of holes, operated by handful of crew having only spacesuit and some safeboxes for important equipments. Enemy can shoot it whole day and it may means nothing. The only sure way to destroy it is ramming on to it until it is small ball or tug it on to atmoshere of planet or star, and in close combat, we may have a change of winning. Or give enough time to our allies to save us. ;)
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osmium
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Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by osmium »

So there are a few things you can do to extend the utility of projectile based weapons in outsider.

1) add an engine (basically Umiak torpedoes, so economically inefficient)

2) add a beam weapon (some people have talked on and on about nuclear detonation powered x-ray pumped lasers)

3) some sort of guidance system

4) shotgun, tons of projectiles.

So there are severe limitations to all of them. 1) torpedoes biggest utility is in large numbers you have to try to shoot them down, so they draw useful and damaging fire away from your other more expensive ships. More useful if you need cover to close the firing gap to get into weapons range. 2) likely too expensive to be worth while, basically you'd need a disposable sensor package and a kinetically launched missile would detonate and create a big laser beam aimed at the nearest target. 3) would be expensive kinetic rounds, still easy to shoot down, but more likely to be able to cause trouble than straight up kinetic rounds. 4) the problem is space is large. Essentially you'd want to have a version of 2)+3)+4) where you could aim a shrapnel-like explosion of the munition to create a lot of projectiles in a given region.

Basically we've done some calculations and usually these weapons only cause problems for severely damaged fleets as actual weapons. But they can provide cover by eating up defensive fire. And even solid projectiles if shot will still be a cloud of gas with a dangerous amount of kinetic energy, so shotgun / torpedo style salvos could be effectively used to deny fleet movements for specific periods of time by making it difficult to navigate through said space (if only by making their movements more easily predictable given the location of the various kinetic weapons you've got passing through the space they would need to move through.

That all aside humans don't really have much to contribute. There might be a few humans think very differently moments and you might get some hidden nukes take down the mimbari cruiser moments (see babylon 5 <grin>), but by and large this effect would be minimal, there would be a clear simple countermeasure to any "trick" we come up with, usually involving keeping range and just blasting the area with significantly longer range weapons.

That all being said kinetic weapons would be *very* effective against ground targets from orbit because the speed / acceleration / light speed lag (at outsider levels of acceleration and effective weapons ranges).

-O

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Cdr Straker
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Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by Cdr Straker »

...How many more Catgirls must die before this thread ends????? :lol:

And for what it's worth, the two submissions are reminiscent of Babylon 5 and Space Cruiser Yamato in general appearance. Not that that's a bad thing. The adoption of alien tech is certainly a Babylon 5 concept, though humans tend to be (like most sentient species, I would assume) biased toward their own design philosophies. Also, I don't see anywhere in the histories of the two warring powers where they showered newfound allies with shiny new technology- particularly anything that they might have to defend against later. No, "humaniti" ain't swoopin' in with Defiant-class corvettes or Andromeda-class battleships. Our contribution, I suspect, will be on a different level.
We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm
-George Orwell

Karst45
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Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by Karst45 »

Cdr Straker wrote:...How many more Catgirls must die before this thread ends????? :lol:
i suppose your reffering to this:
SpoilerShow
Image



The answer, like to any question, is: 42

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sunphoenix
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Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by sunphoenix »

"Oh no... not again!" :)
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Arioch
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Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by Arioch »

While I don't condone the killing of catgirls, I don't really think of Outsider as fantasy. Space opera, yes.

Okay, I lied. I do condone the killing of catgirls.
SpoilerShow
I think the concept of post-war Terran ship designs is an interesting one. I do have some back-burner notes on a possible sequel to Outsider that has some post-war Terran ships exploring the "up-arm" regions of the galaxy... if I come across some ship concepts that are not embarrassing, I'll post them.

BattleRaptor
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Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by BattleRaptor »

osmium.
Engines can be efficent.. VERY efficent.. and the missiles can be small.

I figured I would go ahead and provide a REAL world based propulsion system that humans in the Outsider universe are capable of using.
That out performs other Outsider race missiles by a very very large factor(and even ship propulsion).

First off requirements
Accurate aiming systems out to a lightsecond or more.
long range beam cohesion out to a LS or more.
Lasers capable of pulsed energy output of 100mw/s or above.(to provide 1000g thrust or above)

What currently exists in the real world.

The lasers capable of 100mw/s pulsed output, soon not just in the lab either.
Free Electron 100mw lasers expected to deployed as antimissile system in the next 10 years by the US navy.
a 14.4mw test system was able to punch though 6m of steel in in one second.

We already have targeting systems required to aim a laser out to 1ls or further.

What doesnt exist currently is a way that can keep a beam sufficently focused over a lightsecond+

Considering outsider universe states this is effective range of energy weapons and suggests that the Blaster tech suffers from beam dispersion more then laser based weapons.
Such Collimaters exist in the Outsider universe.

So all that terrans require in the outsider universe exists for them to create this weapon.
They made need to get the Focusing technogly off the Loroi but everything else they already have, and since Terrans have long range Siege lasers it would seem they dont even need the Collimator.

Whats all this for?
Ablative laser propulsion Missiles.
A pulsed laser on a ship is fired at the back of a missile which is made of solid metal, it evaporates the metal into a plasma cloud which provides thrust.
Engine thrust provided is 50kilonewtons per kg of metal fuel.
Lasers capable of pulsed energy output of 100mw/s provide 1000g of thrust.
Missile direction can be modified by placement of the beam.

Downsides.
Human ships need to maintain firecontrol for the missile.

IF a human ship dies or pulse laser is damaged the missile becomes unguided.

They have a maxium engine deflection angle to the driving laser of around 35 degrees before they can no longer be driven except by onboard thrusters if installed.

They have guidance lag time, meaning for example at 1 light second 2seconds lag time so fragmentation warheads that cover a sphere with a radius of about 600m have to be used(area a enemy ship with 30G acceleration can move in 2 seconds from predicted path).. or just add a xray laser nuke.

If the Laser targeting is off even slightly the missile will be knocked into a unpredictable course and missile will no longer be guided.

Pros
The engine can be driven at diffrent rates allowing unequal thrusting, are very small and have massive random displacement, meaning point defence weapons cannot accurately predict its location.
Attempting to target one at 0.1 LS would be hundreds of times harder then targeting an enemy ship at 1ls with near light speed weaponry.

They are VERY small compared to chemical or other reaction based engines.
To put the size of the fuel into perspective, Water has a density of 1 gram per cubic CM, iron has a density of around 8.3, and Osmium has a density of 22.6 grams.
Assuming we use iron as its common and ignore warhead size, around 5 missiles fit in the space a single 70kg human would if we have the warhead 10kg and the fuel 90kg and want something that has a constant burn out to a light second of 110g acceleration.
This isnt how you would use them however.
You would give them maxium thrust up front.. save some fuel for evasive action, and then a little for the kill phase.

Fire Control can be transfered to another terran craft if the first is destroyed or the engine deflection angle of the first exceedes 35degrees and another ship has a lower deflection angle.

Its Very easy to make just a slab of metal with a warhead on it.

Can be improved by adding onboard Ablative laser thrusters and a its own guidance system.

It can be entirely self contained by adding a main laser drive, but lets assume its to complicated for mass production.

Mutiple ships/lasers can accelerate a single projectile and even increase the thrust output by secondary fire on the plasma exhaust.

Missiles can be launched in vollys but have thrust modified so that they can all arrive at near the same time, the the targeting lasers providing last minute corrections rather then constant thrust.
Allowing the enemy to target missiles wasting fire and then the targeting computer picks the missiles that are most likely to hit and drive them home.

Missiles can be retargeted if the first target is destroyed as the Missile is still has fuel and the next target is a 35degree forward cone.

So a projectile weapon capable of out performing Outsider based Missiles in some ways that Outsider humans have the Technogly to create on massive scale.
It has some downsides but it would allow human ships to take on outsider beam based ships and put up a decent fight, infact the missiles are MORE accurate if using a fragmentation warhead then Beam weapons, and will draw enemy fire away from the terran ships.
Can cover the same distance over a light second of Umiak torpedos over 50 time faster .
Terrans would have supply issues if using them on mass in system, however except for the warhead the weapon is so simple it can be produced by special craft in system, even from craft wreakage.
While terran lasers may not have the power to punch though Umiak torpedos which I assume are armored and take evasive action, and would require the laser to hit the same exact spot mutiple times to penetrate, they can instead drive a missile into the path of it and shower it with fragmentation.. and when you take the speed of both together it will be VERY effective.

It also is a weapon that could be real one day and is not fantasy.

TrashMan
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Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by TrashMan »

MHOAR images...

GBscientist
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Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by GBscientist »

With the understanding that the Loroi are rather unwilling to share high-level technology, perhaps the humans could get some gear from the Historians or Barsam, since both seemed very interested in Alexander Jardin. Were I Earth's military leadership, I would focus on getting better sensors, engines, and inertial compensators/dampers. Those would improve the ability of existing human weapons to hit at longer ranges and allow human ships to avoid being sitting ducks.

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088
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Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by 088 »

Noob to the rescue with content!!!

only tiny texture hiccup on the tower.
but there not bad if i do say so myself.
top carrier
bottom some heavy combat ship

Image

Voitan
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Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by Voitan »

Why fight fair in real time, when your FTL tech can be turned into weaponry?

Tamren
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Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by Tamren »

@Battleraptor
I bet the Umiak are just going to laugh, start flying sideways, and watch you try to push your fancy laser torpedoes into a 90 degree turn.

@088
Wow. Something tells me that ship doesn't turn on a dime :D

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