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Long ships with a long bit in the middle
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[QUOTE]Originally posted by Lurker Emeritus: [QB] Peregrinus, thanks for those. Just what I was looking for. Yes, I discounted the Excalibur because the spacecraft is essentially the aft section with a large weapons platform mounted on the end of a long pylon. On reflection, the D7 is probably a contender as Lee suggests. Perhaps it's the relative sizes of the two sections which is misleading. The "head" would actually contain a lot of volume, although some of that is sacrificed to the torpedo launcher. [QUOTE] The long skinny design mode doesn't work well for sci-fi with a lot of conflict. That's one of the reasons the Rebel frigates stand out in our memories. Ships that fragile-looking seem like they shouldnt be in combat situations -- let alone do well in said situations. That's why they tend to show up more as set-peices, as the Discovery and Event Horizon demonstrate to good advantage. [/QUOTE]Well, actually, it all depends on your frame of reference. I know a gentleman who is a naval architect in his day job and so is familiar with the principles of warship design and engineering generally. He once created a 3D computer model of a double ended spacecraft. Imagine a long central shaft with a centrifuge torus at the centre. Offset from that is a pod containing the command and control. At either end you have a main drive assembly which also contains the main weapons systems. The ship can thus accelerate, brake and accelerate without having to flip over to point it's engines in the right direction. It is also designed to that if one end of the ship gets shot off, the spacecraft can survive, fight and propel itself using the remaining drive section! Of course, he designed this ship with real physics in mind. As such, his spacecraft is limited by the constraints of human biology, which prevents him accelerating much above 5g in any direction for more than 3 to 5 minutes at a time. In the Star Trek or Star Wars frames of reference this ship would be overwhelmed by spacecraft using faster than light drives, inertial dampers and unfeasibly powerful force field shields and directed energy weapons, against which his reaction drives and rail guns would be ineffective. I will ask him for permission to post the image here. It's rather nice looking. Parts are mirrored for defence against lasers. Also, Larry Niven imagined conflict between ramscoop ships designed as components strung along the length of miles long tethers. You can find an extract of this text at this link http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3aj.html#derivatives It's the second section from the bottom of the page. I suppose that such a distributed set of components might actually be harder to hit than a compact, voluminous hull. And cutting the tether would be extremely unlikely, just as they discovered in World War I when they tried to use artillery bombardments to cut barbeb wire. All they succeeded in doing was moving it around. [/QB][/QUOTE]
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