Design flaw in Imperial Cruisers

torm1358

torm1358
The Imperial cruisers have a design flaw with the spinning section being parallel with the direction of acceleration. The ship will be fine when it is not accelerating, but when it is, the people and things in the spinning section will be pulled one way, and then the opposite direction as they spin round. In between these, they will feel lighter and then heavier. The reason that this will occur is that when the ship accelerates, everything inside the ship will feel a force pulling them in the opposite direction. For the people in the spinning section, this direction will be constantly changing. It will feel very much like a ship pitching up and down in heavy sea, depending on the actual acceleration.

This design may look good, but is not very practical. A much better design would have the spinning section spinning perpendicular to the direction of acceleration, as when the ship accelerates, it will feel like the ship is sloped, with the slope going down towards the back of the ship. The slope, however, be constant whilst the ship was accelerating at a constant acceleration.

What do you all think?
 

Cosmo Bozo

Cosmo Bozo
Maybe it doesn't spin all the time, only when coasting or stationary.
People in any ship are going to have to fasten their seatbelts for maneuvers, why should the imperial cruiser be different?
 
Last edited:

jabokai

jabokai
They probably lock it down for manoeuvres over a certain G... i.e. ones that would have the effect you mention.
 

Memnoch

M
And that's half the fun! To the OP, even if it was perpendicular what you say is true only if the ship is accelerating backwards and forwards. If it is turning in any way as it accelerates then these people would feel those stresses you describe but at a much lower degree because the lateral thrusters would be of a lower power to the main engines.
 

Philip Coutts

Volunteer Moderator
Philip Coutts
I'm sure David Braben mentioned something about they imagined that these ships would spend a lot of time stationary so maybe the ring only spins when they are stationary?
 

Cosmos

C
torm1358 said:
This design may look good, but is not very practical. A much better design would have the spinning section spinning perpendicular to the direction of acceleration, as when the ship accelerates, it will feel like the ship is sloped, with the slope going down towards the back of the ship. The slope, however, be constant whilst the ship was accelerating at a constant acceleration.

What do you all think?
Click to expand...

Good point. I love the internet.. you always have someone coming along and pointing out something no one really thought about. Perhaps the back of the ship with the rotating thing in it can be unlocked and shifted 90 degrees upwards for when they are moving so it is an L shape.

Or maybe it could employ some sort of swash plate so the people in it didn't get thrown about like scrambled eggs. :)
 

Kerrash

Kerrash
It's been talked about before that the ship was a war ship refitted for imperial dignitaries to meet on. To that end I would imagine that the artificial gravity is only enabled whilst in orbit entertaining guests.

Besides, they would want to employ us in our faster passenger ships to get about ;)
 

Joe nose

Joe nose
Aye. It's only a 'flaw' if you can't turn it off.

Although the recent video showed rotation whilst in combat, I'm sure that was for the 'Hollywood' effect only.
 

huwthomas

huwthomas
Philip Coutts said:
I'm sure David Braben mentioned something about they imagined that these ships would spend a lot of time stationary so maybe the ring only spins when they are stationary?
Click to expand...

... or at least, when they are on an ambassadorial mission (with civilians being entertained on board) rather than a combat one. If somehow suprised by enemies, spinning down the ring would be part of going to action stations.
 

Mobius

Mobius
I think that the spinning core of the imperial cruiser keeps spinning during manoeuvres, this is a exclusive tech only found within the Empire, the inner surface of the ring have emitters that tap directly into Dark matter making the spinning core unaffected by Inertia, because of the abundance of Dark Matter the gravitational forces counter any Inertia.
 

laforge

L
I agree with the OP. If you want to be immersive and generate artificial gravity entirely by rotation, then that ring becomes practiable useless whenever the ship accelerates. After several circles at full thrust i think i would vomit when i would be in there lol.

Apart from that, every rotating space station must be huge to avoid the effect of coriolis force and other effects, see here

http://www.dvandom.com/coriolis/spacestation.html

(this is also a reason why no such space station have been constructed yet: because they must be very large)

I suggest that the concept of rotation to generate artificial gravitiy should only be an option, but already 'out-dated' by generated gravity as seen in star trek and star wars. That would make designing the interiors of ships way more feasible. Else one may always question about how realistic it is to survive in such a washing machine for more than a few minutes.
 
Last edited:

Slawkenbergius

Slawkenbergius
laforge said:
That would make designing the interiors of ships way more feasible. Else one may always question about how realistic it is to survive in such a washing machine for more than a few minutes.
Click to expand...

They're using fancy magnetic shoes for ship interiors, and the design will probably be reasonably orthodox, as the ship will experience gravity in many situations.

Fake gravity is all fine and good, but I always think it's a shame that videogames stick to TV/Movie tropes like a pale imitation, rather than exploring something that videogames can do relatively easily.
I guess that the acceleration on the cruiser will have to be fairly low, and that unless people are buckled in ready for combat manoeuvres, it could be made so that it's not much worse than standing up on a bus. I imagine that people who were born and brought up in these kind of environments would have much better 'spacelegs' than us Earthbounders too.
 

AtomicHorror

AtomicHorror
oss133 said:
Surely, whatever plane it spun on, acceleration would affect the perceived gravity?
Click to expand...

This. Although a ring perpendicular to the acceleration vector makes the problem less serious at less than 1g (or whatever g force the ring is simulating), above that it doesn't matter. The linear acceleration becomes dominant and the ring becomes useless, regardless of whether it is perpendicular or parallel.

I think we can assume that Imperial military vessels pull more than 1g.

The ring is for use while the ship is in orbit, as it would be during official visits.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom