# What could a future spaceship be made off?



## jorrit (Oct 1, 2009)

Hi,

I'm busy working on a space based game set in the future. One part of that game will be to build spaceships. For that reason I need an idea of the kind of materials that could realistically be needed for such a spaceship. Basically you could have the following materials:



General metals (like Aluminium)
Titanium
Carbon
Ceramics
Plastics
others?
What would be a good approximate percentage of the above materials as used in the following devices:



Small fighter ship
Medium cargo ship (about 500m long)
Big fighter (say about 1km long)
Hyperdrive engine
Sublight engine
Cloaking device
Shield generator
Power generator

It doesn't have to be exact. I'm just looking for figures that are not totally stupid 

Thanks in advance,


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## Karn Maeshalanadae (Oct 1, 2009)

Well, I'm no sci fi expert, but I wouldn't suggest too much like aluminum or even titanium, as they tend to have lower heat resistances-aluminum will melt in a bonfire, so at least not that as an outer shell. I would probably suggest well-insulated titanium reinforcement, however, since it's the strongest practical metal we have right now.

You'd probably use, as a starter, some good forged steel and maybe move on from there. As for a cloaking device, anything reflective enough to bend light-they're experimenting with invisibility right now in some areas. Not sure about the rest of it.


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## Urien (Oct 1, 2009)

Carbon fullerenes.


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## jorrit (Oct 1, 2009)

Thanks for the replies. But I'm really also looking for percentage. i.e. a small fighter is made out of: 20kg alu, 10kg titanium, 50kg carbon, ... (just random numbers). I have really no idea what realistic numbers would be here.

Greetings,


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## Urien (Oct 1, 2009)

Well your judgement on space fighter weights etc (as there is no such thing) is as valid as anybody else. Have a look at the weights of earth fighters, freighters, warships and bulk carriers...

As to metal distribution... make it up.


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## chrispenycate (Oct 2, 2009)

What technology are you thinking of? As always, form follows function, and potential manufacturing techniques as well as drive technology will make enormous differences in makeup of ships.

Are all your ships intended to make planetfall, or do the bigger ones stay in orbit and send down shuttles? If the outer skin does not have to resist atmosphere and friction, even a battleship which is armoured against opposing weaponry will have a different surface structure. If you have nanotechnological manufacturing the outer skin might be largely silicon foam; smart silicon foam, capable of reconfiguring as needed.

Anitgravity gives different answers from magnetohydrodynamics; hydrogen fusion from antimatter containment, or vacuum energy. Any drive system involving direct manipulation of spacetime (gravity control, as one example) will give completely different answers from something which uses reaction drives insystem, and since I have no idea of how your sublight engine is supposed to work I can't calculate what it's made of. 

On the other hand, give me a clue as to how the "shield generator" is supposed to function, and I'll probably have quite a good idea of the physical principles behind the insystem drive. I might even have an idea whether the power plant uses material screening or field technology to control high-speed (=hot) molecules.


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## jorrit (Oct 3, 2009)

chrispenycate said:


> What technology are you thinking of? As always, form follows function, and potential manufacturing techniques as well as drive technology will make enormous differences in makeup of ships.



Well the year is 3000 and there will be sublight and hyper engines. As to technology, things are rather open.



> Are all your ships intended to make planetfall, or do the bigger ones stay in orbit and send down shuttles? If the outer skin does not have to resist atmosphere and friction, even a battleship which is armoured against opposing weaponry will have a different surface structure. If you have nanotechnological manufacturing the outer skin might be largely silicon foam; smart silicon foam, capable of reconfiguring as needed.


Most ships will remain in orbit.



> Anitgravity gives different answers from magnetohydrodynamics; hydrogen fusion from antimatter containment, or vacuum energy. Any drive system involving direct manipulation of spacetime (gravity control, as one example) will give completely different answers from something which uses reaction drives insystem, and since I have no idea of how your sublight engine is supposed to work I can't calculate what it's made of.


I have no idea either  But it is not *that* important. I'm not looking for scientifically correct values and figures. I'm looking more for figures that are not ridiculous and that are reasonably believable in the game setting.



> On the other hand, give me a clue as to how the "shield generator" is supposed to function, and I'll probably have quite a good idea of the physical principles behind the insystem drive. I might even have an idea whether the power plant uses material screening or field technology to control high-speed (=hot) molecules.


Same here. It is just a 'shield generator'.

Greetings and thanks,


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## TheEndIsNigh (Oct 3, 2009)

Consider lodestone - magnetic and needs to be mined - as a basis of the shields/propulsion device artificial gravity (back to basics space travel)

But basically as Urien says make it up. Who's going to challenge the need for twenty....

Rethink.





OK this is it

20 toilet roll inners
4 plastic cups
2 paper clips
3 sheets of new clean A4 paper
the side of a shredded wheat packet - extra large
sticky back plastic
Blue tack

......


But then again why not. Make the "assembly" of your "space ship" part of the game. It should certainly cause some amusement and get the game going.

You could include metallic effect paper in the box along with a stack of silver paper cups for the nose cone along with other "building materials" that have to be obtained as you go round the board - as it were.

It could start with the "beetle drive" part of the game and go on to the adventure part where if you had built a poor craft your chances of winning are reduced. (think of the possibilities of selling replenishment kits).

This type of game has been done before as I'm sure you know. Waddingtons used to have a game about horse racing where you trained your horses as a preliminary phase and then went on to the actual race.


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## Dave (Oct 3, 2009)

With advances in genetic engineering and nanotech have you considered that they might "grow" ships?

I believe all manufacturing could be this way. You have a nanoforge along the lines of that in Joe Haldeman's _Forever Peace_ in which you pour in the elemental raw materials. Then you have a genetic plan which is followed on a cellular level either by single cell bacteria, nanobots or better still if the ship itself was a complete living organism itself.

There is little new in this idea. _Lexx_ and _Star Trek: Voyager_ had living ships. In Known Space's _Fleet of Worlds_ humans tour a Puppeteer General Products factory and learn that the spaceship hulls are constructed from a single super-molecule constructed using nanotech, and their strength is reinforced by an embedded power plant that reinforces the inter-atomic bonds.


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## TheEndIsNigh (Oct 3, 2009)

Good one Dave.

Not to mention Farscape.

I think you may have hit upon it here. 

Hydroponics.


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## Dozmonic (Oct 3, 2009)

If you're worried you'll have some sci-fi fanatic who has run figures on excel in his bedroom late at night and will declare that your spaceships don't have enough - or too many - raw materials to make them the size they are, just use your own unit of measurement for the materials. A kilgoram is the mass of one litre of water, but where gravity is different, the mass will be different. So perhaps they'd use a unit of volume, or a new universal measurement of mass.


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## jorrit (Oct 3, 2009)

Thanks for all the information. It is very useful and inspiring. I also found some specifications on the StarShip Enterprise and the Space Shuttle and I'm extrapolating from that.

Greetings,


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## TheEndIsNigh (Oct 3, 2009)

Pah, What do they know about it.

Stick with us we'll put you right.


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## Pyan (Oct 3, 2009)

Dozmonic said:


> just use your own unit of measurement for the materials.



And you can call it what you like, as well...

"This new scoutship is made of nearly 100% pure jorritanium, uses an advanced Dozmonic Drive, and a new TEiN shield generator"...


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## TheEndIsNigh (Oct 3, 2009)

Patent: Pass me the application forms. 

Right, this page is now trademarked


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## Dozmonic (Oct 3, 2009)

pyan said:


> And you can call it what you like, as well...
> 
> "This new scoutship is made of nearly 100% pure jorritanium, uses an advanced Dozmonic Drive, and a new TEiN shield generator"...



Exactly ;-) It was my dad's approach to maths. Everything he didn't know was exactly 1 Variable Unit


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## chrispenycate (Oct 4, 2009)

Dozmonic said:


> If you're worried you'll have some sci-fi fanatic who has run figures on excel in his bedroom late at night and will declare that your spaceships don't have enough - or too many - raw materials to make them the size they are, just use your own unit of measurement for the materials. A kilgoram is the mass of one litre of water, but where gravity is different, the mass will be different. So perhaps they'd use a unit of volume, or a new universal measurement of mass.



Mass is invariant with environment; it is weight which changes. (Yes, I am one of said fanatics, and not even ashamed of it) Mass is a quality of matter (and energy, actually, in very small quantities); weight is a force, and is better measured in Newtons than kilograms.

In the MKS system litres are a secondary measurement anyway, and the choice of pure water (at 4° Celsius) a questionable standard due to the potential difference in mix of isotopes of both hydrogen an oxygen. Equally, the second has now been divorced from the Earth's mildly variable rotation and defined relative to an atomic resonance.

A long-term space travelling civilisation might well have developed a set of measurements around universal constants – the rest mass of a proton, the speed of light in a vacuum, Planck's constant for all I know – which would ever so gradually trickle down through engineers and thence to the general public, although the old units would be slow in disappearing; you can still, after two hundred years of dismalisation (excuse me, decimalisation), buy a _livre de pain_ in a French _Boulangerie_.

And you haven't considered life support. Any craft inhabited by living beings in space will need an appreciable percentage of its mass taken up with keeping them in this state. Breathable air (and the pipes to get it where it's needed), drinkable water (and likewise) and even, unlike airlines, edible food, and some form of waste disposal/recycling. All mass, and easier to calculate than unknown drive systems (although even there it'll modify a lot depending on whether it's a complete living ecosystem, probably impractical on warships, or nanotechnological molecule separation and resynthesis.

But the drive system is the core of all your calculations. If you're going to accelerate many tonnes of ship up to near light speeds with a conventional drive everything is going to be lightweight, foamed or foil (or even field); the freighter will have no holds, just hookon points for cargo. Make that a gravity-warping device, and everything changes; it might even be useful to have the main skeleton constructed of osmium, to have a more concentrated mass. Synthetic molecules are easier with quadrivalent atoms (carbon, silicon, germanium and apparently tin and lead) rather than the more conventional building metals (here's hoping it doesn't require appreciable quantities of zirconium or ruthenium) You could end up needing quantities of high temperature superconductors; the structure of these is yet to be determined, but it will probably involve at least some of the elements on the previous list.


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## AE35Unit (Oct 11, 2009)

a Platinum iridium compound or paper!


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