first interplanetary spaceships

[Jason Chapman]

Hello this is my very first post here, so I thought I would play it safe and put this subject in Pseudoscience and Speculations.

Anyway, I like to design stuff particualrly spacecraft. I designed this particular space ship several years ago. I would just like to ask the question; given how conventional space travel is progressing do you think it would be possible to build a ship capable of travelling fast enought to explore our solar system within a ten year mission scedule. And is it plausable that such a ship could be designed and built within the next 50 to 75 years. Hope you find the images I have designed interesting.

 

 

 

Many thanks

JC

[insane_alien]

you might want to go check out http://orbiter-forum.com/

 

its a forum much more suited to spacecraft design(and you can even use the program the forum is primarily about to fly your craft as well, unfortunately interstellar travel is a bit of an issue still but interplanetary is excellent).

 

i'm assuming your ship is designed to run at some significant fraction of the speed of light, this means that you are missing a pretty important component.

 

a shield. i'm not talking star trek type shield, just a big block of something(an asteroid or ice block has been suggested by experts) that you stick on the front.

 

this is because at those speeds stuff that is normall harmless will start eroding your hull. things such as intersterllar gasses and micrometeorites become deadly or deadlier. if you get fast enough hitting a micrometeorite would be like having a nuclear bomb detonate at the front of your ship(although i doubt you'd be going quite that fast.

[Bignose]

Also, it is "surveyor" not "survayer", though I like the pics. I think 50 to 75 years is a bit optimistic, however.

[mooeypoo]

I think that time frame is a bit optimistic for a ship that can survey the solar system so quickly..

 

However, I don't think we're too far away from being able to design and build a ship that can travel (with people in it) on relatively long-term missions. If you look at how relatively fast things move in that aspect, it's quite impressive.

 

The X-Plane, for instance, is a huge step forward. We're still lacking the ability to go to the height of the ISS (which isn't THAT far away) with a reusable plane, but the X-Plane gives us much hope.. it manages to get to about 400 km above ground while taking off almost-like-a-plane (it takes off with the assistance of another plane) and land as a plane, horizontally, and be reused.

 

The ride on it, too, is said to cost around $20,000 which sounds expensive, but if you consider the fact it's the first flight of its kind, it really isn't. How long did it take planes to drop in prices (and frequency, and occupancy) to a piont where anyone (almost) can travel easily all over the world with an affordable price? About 70 years? maybe less.

 

 

So, I guess my point is that though the OP has quite a goal ahead (surveying the solar system in 70 years), the general goal of surveying parts of the solar system, imho, can be in our lifetimes.

 

At least I hope so

 

~moo

[Jason Chapman]

Hey Guys,

Thanks for the comments.

[cameron marical]

Im curios, what program did you use to design this?

[GutZ]

Does anyone know the metallic alloys or ceramic compounds (orwhatever) used for builting spaceships these day? I mean more theoretical one that they tested for all things better in regards to spaceships?

[Jason Chapman]

Im curios, what program did you use to design this?

 

3D studio Max, and bryce for the background.

[cameron marical]

Does anyone know the metallic alloys or ceramic compounds (orwhatever) used for builting spaceships these day? I mean more theoretical one that they tested for all things better in regards to spaceships?

 

Some type of titanium allow I think. But I just heard that on a show.

[insane_alien]

only on the hot bits.

 

the airframe of the shuttle is primarily aluminium. its heat shield is made of silica fibres and there are various high temperature high strength components in the engines.

 

this is unlikley to changed much in the future because they already work so well.

[Jason Chapman]

I was watching a really interesting documentary last night on the Discovery Channel entitled ‘Aircraft That Never Flew’ They were going on about a US government research project into Nuclear powered bombers, set up in the 1940s. Unfortunately they couldn’t solve the problem of shielding the crew against radiation so the program was abandoned. It got me thinking about what I designed, and suggested the theory of nuclear powered engines on spacecraft.

I wonder if the US government did abandon the project, or did they pursue a classified research project, it’s certainly a plausible thought.

 

Atomic powered aircraft

[insane_alien]

it was abandoned but IIRC there was a russian one that flew. in principle they can work but due to weight problems and the inherent risks of warplanes being shot down the risks outweigh the benefits even for the military(and crewing it would likely be a suicide mission from the radiation)

 

nuclear reactors on a spacecraftis a much more feasible proposition because once you have it up there there are no weight restrictions because there is no weight so you can have as much shielding as you want.

 

and not only that but you can reduce shielding requirements simply by sticking the reactor out on a long boom and only shielding on the side facing the ship.

 

there are already nuclear powered satellites in space (although using radiothermal geneteratos (RTG's)) and the apollo missions that landed on the moon carried an RTG to provide power for experiments on the moon. so they can be used with manned spaceflight.