Near Future Patrol Ship

[TheUnlogicalOne]

Howard Day's great ship made me want to continue a project I started a few years ago the I gave up on (my computer was too slow). It's a small warship (say fighter if you want) for patrols, with two point defense lasers and armed with nuclear shape charge missiles.

Its about 40m long at the moment (each girder square is 2m*2m)and I think will have a crew of 3 - 6.

I figured I would stick a solid core nuclear engine with attached generator for the lasers and other power requirements on the back. Haven't decided on a propellant yet but probably hydrogen.

I'm not a big believer in armor in space so there isn't much around, just on the important bits (like the reactor and crew section). Just lots of redundancy and open space for everything else (if they can't hit it they cant hurt it). I think any major weapon hit would be goodbye ship regardless of armor.

I may double the number of tanks or switch to a liquid propellant, not sure yet. The reactor can be separated in an emergency (the crew section will also) so I need to put backup solar panels somewhere.

The Laser turrets are retractable to protect the lenses. They are used to damage or destroy incoming missiles or if needed to burn the paint of other ships.

I should point out that I am completely self taught and quite lazy, so I don't have any skills to speak off (I couldn't optimize a cube if I tired) and this results in a poly count of 3.2 million at the moment (I know, completely stupid). About the only thing I can do is create primitives and use "convert to editable mesh" and fiddle with vertices.

As such I'm looking more for suggestions on the rest of the ship as I don't want to open the various other files ever again if I don't have to (I'm using xref with proxies for now).

I marked most of the important stuff on one of the pictures for reference.

[NIKIN]

I love this design, it's in tune with the kind of ideas we have at the moment for space exploration/patrol. It's original and you have included so many small details

[tobiasrichter]

I like the thoughts you put into the buildup of the engine. I would just make the truss a bit stronger - it has to withstand the structural stress coming from the engine.

Tobias

[VALKYRIE013]

excellent.. i love the trend to near future ships.. and this one is excellent.. now to optimise
on energy.. solar panels only work as close as mars...farther out theres not enough sunlight .. thats why casssini and galaleo used rtg's (nuclear power battery) so they might jus be better on batterys.. so you wouldn't have to model solar panels and really bump up the count

looking forward to updates

[JanJaap]

@ what I assume is the laser.

For tips, look in to turbo smooth or meshsmooth that will reduce the polycount because it allows
you to work 8 sided cylinders but when rendered that cylinder will look like it had 80 sides.
You do however need to pay attention to the edges but for that I've attached an image:
Which I believe gives a good idea how turbo smooth and edges work together

To ad to Valkyrie's comment check these links:
Radioisotope thermoelectric generator - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
CTV.ca | New plastic can better convert solar energy

The effect used in the first link could, I think at least, be applied to your ships own waste heat and maybe even the exhaust.
The second link speaks for itself I think.

[TheUnlogicalOne]

Thanks for the tips, I'll try that out. I'm working on the layout of the crew area right now so I can do some experimenting. As for the RTG, it was something I was considering but I want to minimize radiation shielding as it is heavy and the backup generator would be mounted in the crew section for emergencies. I'll look again at them though. I don't think the engine would create enough thrust to damage the trusses (and I don't want to fix them ) so they stay, for now anyways. I may rebuild stuff, but probably not. We will see.

[Howard Day]

Hey, that's pretty awesome! I like the layout, and I like the thought you've put into it. Good job!
Also, I've got something for you to look at:
http://www.hedfiles.net/goldfoil.zip
I've spent quite a lot of time on that gold foil material, and I hope it can be of use to you. It's a MAX 9 format file, If you need something else, let me know and I'll see what I can do.

[nyrath]

Oh TheUnlogicalOne! I love it!
The laser turret has a beam expander behind a conformal window and everything! There's a radiator, and most of the ship is propellant. You seem to have gotten it all correct.

RTGs do not have much in the way of radiation shielding requirements. For most nuclear RTG fuels you can get away with as little as 25 mm of lead shielding. And if you use Plutonium-238 as fuel, you'd only need 2.5 mm of lead. In some cases the RTG case would provide enough shielding.

The trouble with RTGs is that for certain technical reasons, the maximum you are going to get out of a single RTG is one kilowatt. You can stock as many RTGs as you want, with the restriction that each one will mass about 100 to 200 kilograms.

Off the top of my head I think the only things you need to add are a habitat module and a few antenna. As you know a habitat module is generally either spherical or tank-shaped. A Bigelow style inflatable module is good if mass is at a premium, otherwise a metal one. Maybe with a navigational astrodome.
Atomic Rocket: Beginning Design
Atomic Rocket: Decks: Astrogation

Hydrogen is the best propellant for a solid core nuclear thermal rocket. You've already got a bimodal NTR. Maybe a small oxygen tank if you want to add a LANTR afterburner.

[Huejass]

Though I really do like seeing a hard sci-fi ship, what will it be patrolling? The space between Earth and the Moon? Will it have any kinetic weapons?

[TheUnlogicalOne]

Curses, I had a few paragraphs of incredible thought provoking replies and the site went down for a few minutes and I lost it all. I'll retype it tomorow, I need sleep right now. Pictures of the crew area will be included.