Second Age Of Sail

[deltapax]

Working on something different- A plasma solar sail ship. This is my rough start.

[mJAstro]

So, is this basically like a sailboat in space type of thing? Seems like 1 piece of debris hitting the tanks would send this baby into a billion pieces

[chrisweuve]

Looking forward to seeing more.

[Ozylot]

No idea if it would work or not, but the design is very cool!

[deltapax]

mJAstro- It's based on this concept: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_sail basically it generates a big magnetic field which get's pushed by the solar wind.

Chrismeuve, Ozylot- Thanks. It's one of those spacecraft propulsion ideas that's always mentioned but I've only seen 1 or 2 renderings of it in action, so I wanted to try it.

Actually reviewing the premise I was confused I thought you had to add plasma to your magnetic field but rereading it I don't think you have to, the magnetic field interacts with the plasma ejected from the sun. So the fuel tanks are actually unnecessary. But I'm debating using it anyways, for heat radiation. Since heat radiation seems to be such a problem for these realistic spacecraft designs, I thought maybe I could line the inside of my tube with the radiators, then have some plasma/charged gas particles running over the radiators to pick up the heat & re-radiate it out into space as it circulates along the magnetic sail. It's inefficient, as half the heat would be radiated back inside the magnetic sail toward the spaceship, but the mgnetic sail is a huge torus many times larger than the ship, so I'd hoped the sheer scale of it would make it worthwhile. Hopefully someone more scientific here can let me know if this is unfeasible.

[JustinDixon]

Easily one of the more creative propulsion concepts out there. I respect that. Your model is looking decent as well however I'm not too use about the wires; I dont thing the concept design has them.

[deltapax]

Having gone through a pair of fatal computer crashes, and then actually entering some contests to try and actually learn a bit about my 3D program before I attempt to model things willy-nilly, I finally felt confident enough to try reviving this project with a complete redesign. Here's the Solar Queen II (Kudos if you can name the homage):

The side that faces the sun:


The site that points away from the sun:


Profile view:


A lot of it (Like the ion engines) are currently placeholders until I get in to do something more detailed. Right now it's more proof-of-concept spec. If there's anything glaringly wrong with it, now's the time to point it out!

[Tinukedaya]

Maybe you should add the habitats and supply stuff on the other side? that way the radiator panels and the sail will shield it from the Sun radiation. Then put an shield in the front as well to cover it from micrometeorites.

[deltapax]

Tinukedaya,

I did think about duplicating the radiators on both sides, so the habitat sections would be sandwiched in the middle, that or maybe having solar panels on the sun-facing side, although I'm not sure how effective those would be out past the asteroid belt. I'm also thinking I want this craft to have a very open frame design, to look like it was designed to keep the mass to a bare minimum (and so it doesn't look too much like a flying saucer!)

[deltapax]

Now that I had the idea fleshed out, I started rebuilding it to actual scale. Here's my progress so far:

Scale Overview:


Closer look at habitat scaling:

The habitat modules are based on the modules from the International Space Station- specifically the Zvezda unit right now.

My little scale guy:


Initial Ion Thruster design:

Based on this image I found online, these will eventually be mounted in a giant gymbal for maneauvering.

Physically there's going to be a lot of empty space on this ship to reduce mass, but I had no idea the habitat modules would be so tiny the way I had it set up so far. I'm not sure how big the electromagnet has to be to create a useful electromagnetic sail, but I thought it'd be big. Still, I may have to rethink this, or at least cut down the number of radiators...