Semi hard SF ship near future

I’m working on a ship that is set in something like “the expanse”, a semihard near future settingat most like 300 years from now.

This is the forward section where I imagine most of the crew will live and it has most but not all the sensors and comms systems. There’ll be a rear section with the engines and reactors, and a mid section sort of like a framework where there will be places to attach cargo pods and whatnot along with small cargo handling/hauling mini ships.


Here’s a close up of the most detailed area so far, the forward scanner array.The round dish in the middle is a fixed forward 45 degree cone phased array system that is used just for nagivationand detecting possible threats like small asteroids.


The other wide arrays are designed to be able to sweep scan and have specialized systems like ladar and imaging radar. They could add to the forward view by scanning a 60, 90 or 120 degree arc ahead of the ship. The middle ones would sweet side to side in countersync, the upper and lower would sweep up and down in sync.

I know real blender masters could have done all this in an hour, it took me many hours to get this far. feedback appreciated especially if snark free.

I noticed the comm array antennas looked awful and worked on them, here’s a more distant foreshot showing the new ones. A little scaling, a subsurf mod and the addition of some ring braces make a lot of difference.


I added a couple carousels to provide centripetal gravity to the crew for there health and comfort. Probably like half a g. I mat radically change the comms arrays and reduce them in number.

The one problem with the cfarousels is that seem to give the ship an unfortunate “Princess leia” look but hey, if people don’t get the idea of snipping gravity modules I don’t care wjat they think. I think these will rotate in opposite directions to balance out torque.




Yeah I think I’ll replacethe current comms arrays with something else and less of them.

Is this for a short story your working on? Or is this a standalone piece? The design reminds me of a satellite.

Standalone. Just inspired by the expanse.

You should remember this is just the front section. There will be a mid section that is a framework that cargo pods can be attached to and a rear section containing engines, fuel and reactors.

New additions, this is the blocked out full ship model. There’s a lot of stuff to add, like cargo pods, auxiliary craft, detailing, etc but this is the general form of the ship.I plan to put 3 engines in the rear.

Attachments



Here’s the latest. I dumped a lot of the big antennas and have added some details. Here’s one of the main sensor arrays, I based it on a modern AWACS plane array.

the smaller forward dish is a tight beam transceiver. It can emit a tight focus comm beam, laser or maser, for untapabble tight beam transmissions. It can also recieve a tightbeam message for security. While a lot of the ship’s comms traffic will be broadcast, some things are deemed sensitive enough to be tightbeamed only.


Latest version. I dumped all those array anterrae and am working on the middle more. The thick parts around the middle bars are where cargo pods will attach to.


The ship will be called the “swissjack” class. She is meant to be a very versatile and multi role vessel capable of doing far more than just carrying cargo. Her sensor and scanner arrays allow her to gather scientific data as she passes relatively near various parts of the solar system. She can also deploy probes, communication relays, etc along her way.

Half the designers wanted to call her the “swiss” class as she was meant to be a swiss army knife ship, the other half wanted to call her the jack class since she was a jack of all trades. After a lengthy debater and a few drinks the name “Swissjack” was accepted and both sides were happy.

Here’s the docking collar for the heavy cargo pods. I worked quite a while on designing and getting this done. This and the reciprocal collar on the heavy cargo pods. These get a complex and very heavy docking arrangement as the pods are large and massive. The smaller pods will have smaller and simpler collars more like the ones seen in STTMP.


Added a door/airlock.


Latest version, with one heavy cargo pod attached. The pod has a series of thrusters on it, located in the boxes along the frame. The frame is both structural and a fuel supply for the thrusters.

I’m reaching a real issue here I could use a little help with. I was a little too free with subsurfing and started choking on vertexes. I’ve cut way back on subsurfing and eliminated it when possible but still i have a lot of verts. Could some friendly blender god here offer to take a look at my mesh and tell me what I’m doing wrong?


Here’s a generic shot featuring 4 pods and the forward scanner array which was a key component of the ship concept. I added 4 pods to show that not all the hard points for heavy cargo pods need be filled every flight. If the ship carried 2 it carries them on the center points. It carries 2, 4 or 6 in balanced pairs.

I’m working on my vertex choke problem. The cargo pods really needed a subsurf but the attached docking port and thrusters didn’t, so I separated them and onll subbed the pod body, it seems to work.


Ok I have a question about something I’m working on. It’s actually got two aspects to it. One is “artistic” and the other is technical.

I’m hoping tho not really expecting to get an answer on the artistic side here as this is more the artistic forum.

Anyway I’m working on the ship’s engines and I had an idea to make the engines a little unusual. I was thinking that the ship’s main power is provided by a big fusion reactor that fuses hydrogen into Helium 3. Now the helium 3 is usually used by the ship’s engines as fuel and propellant.

The H3 would be channeled to the engines from the fusion reactor, incidentally taking a lot of heat with it on the way out, and at the rear of the engines would be caught in an external cage like affair that is a superconducting super magnetic field generator that generates a magnetic field powerful enough to “pinch” the still very hot H3 plasma to a fusion stage. The thrust produced by magnetic fields on the rear of the engine repelling the charged fusion plasma would provide high energy thrust.

Now here’s my question, I had the idea of making the engine section that is facing the pinch fusion process completely plated with high purity gold. Why? You may well ask. Because gold is the best known reflector of infrared radiation (heat) we have today and it also blocks or reflect microwave radiation pretty well too, so I saw this as layer to protect the rear of the engine compartment from intense heat and microwave radiation being generated by the fusion process.

Artistically can I make this work very well in blender as gold being like a mirror is hard to get to look right in space. Any advice?

Here’s an early model of the engines. As I said the engines will have superheated H3 plasma drawn straight into them from the fusion reactor which will be funneled into a very tight stream of very hot plasma into the engine chambers in the rear where ultra intense magnetic fields generated by the chamber will pinch it to fusion and the same fields will force it out the rear at high speed for thrust, which will be generated by the force of the fusion plasma pushing against the magnetic fields.


Well I added the engines to the rear hull. I was going to post a pic but hey, why bother?

You seem to be thinking of the purpose of all the individual parts which seems good. It seems to be coming along well. Did you draw out some concept design first or are you translating thoughts directly to modelling?

yes I do try to design everything with a purpose. I don’t ind a little visual greebling but I try to make as much as possible valid. I believe some of the best SF designs in history, like robby the robot and the original starship enterprise, were intelligently designed.

I can’t draw a straight line due to poor dexterity in my fingers, which also explains my sucky typing. I envision things and try, usually unsuccessfully, to model them.


Since someone showed interest here’s the engines. The coils along the cylinder are accelerator coils meant o accelerate the H# plasma from the hydrogen fusion reactor, which is still star hot, towards the thrust chambers. The coils in the thrust chambers basically construct the plasma, essentially squeezing it down until it achieves ‘pinch fusion’ just past the last coil.

Now I need to do some cycles texturing. I still have some bits to do and some greebles to model but i do need to start texturing. I likely won’t add windows as I see the habitat areas as having double walled hulls for meteor protection.

Here’s the ship with the Pitch Yaw Roll Strafe system added. These control jets control the PYRS of the ship.

The strafe term was put in by engineers who were designing the ship. many of whom were FPS players. The PR department changed it to “slide” as “strafe” was considered too militant ad not completely accurate. The engineering department replied “That’s a good argument. Now bite us.” Since the engineers were far more valuable, hard to replace and important than the PR department whiners and nitpickers, the engineering department won the disagreement.

I braced the upper PYRS thrusters as the top cross beam was unsecured and thinner than the lower one.