![]() It is a poor design which forces the crew to choose between controlding the ship and dying of radiation poisoning. Most old NASA Mars mission designs do that, or at least have some rudimentary auxiliary controls present. Another do-over I'd implement is putting the blasted control room inside the storm cellar. Very important to protect the crew from solar storms, but absolutely vital if the enemy is lobbing nuclear warheads at you. And the little room right below marked, the bomb shelter or anti-radiation storm cellar. The hexagon is the manoeuvring gyroscope which I mistakenly thought had to be at the ship's center of gravity. It is no surprise that both had the same solution, there really isn't any other solution).Īpparently I also knew enough to add some fundamental items. This will give the warship much the same advantages and disadvantages of a Traveller style battle-rider (which was about six years in the future when I designed this. You can see the dotted outline of the stardrive unit in the diagram. So I postulated that the ship would detach from the interstellar drive and leave it parked in a (hopefully) safe place as it leaped into battle. The spacecraft was a slower-than-light starship, and I figured the Bussard Ramjet interstellar drive (or whatever) would be just so much penalty-weight in combat. However I take points away since the radiators have nowhere near enough surface area to cope with the laser thermal load. I give points to my teenage self for recognizing the need for radiators. There are even heat radiators mounted on the hull. Which is important since Every gram counts. The two-ended laser is the way you get two high powered lasers for the price of one. Enzmann.Īnother do-over I'd implement is making the engine into a magnetic nozzle with bladed structure. I swiped the arrangement of splitting mirrors from a diagram in an article "Torchships Now!" included in Worlds of If, September-October 1974. The blue unit is a torch drive: inertial confinement fusion rocket with the laser beam split into beam-lets that bombard a pellet of deuterium fusion fuel from all sides. Again there is a yellow gas lens of questionable utility. I postulated a " liquid crystal mirror" because that sounded more high tech than just swapping in a mirror. Unlike most gas lasers, the one in this warship is designed so it can select which end the beam emerges from. Like most gas lasers, the blasted laser beam wants to exit out both the front and back ends. The part in pink is the hollow axial shaft the laser is mounted inside. The long hot pink rod is the laser proper, with both ends slanted at Brewster's angle like all good gas lasers. The spacecraft has a spinal mount laser ( i.e., instead of mounting a laser on a warship, the warship is built around a honking huge laser). So I have been irritated at media science fiction getting this wrong for a bit over forty years now. Naturally you see even at that tender age I was well aware that rockets were not boats and I knew which way was down. While I would change some of the details now, many of the main features I would still stand by. The artwork appeared in The Space Gamer vol #3 It was for the seminal 4X boardgame Stellar Conquest, and was one of the first few pieces of artwork that I actually got paid to do (not counting political cartoons for the local newspaper). This is a spacecraft design I made in the mid 1970s when I was in high school. The toilet is also located here (but isn't shown). Also contains the main electrical distribution panel. To the right is the ship's mess and kitchen. The spare chairs are folded up on the walls and stanchions. The normal crew complement is 30, but the quarters has contour chairs for 60 in case another spacecraft in the expedition has a catastrophic failure. On the left is the shower, placed here due to lack of any other place to put it. On the right is the auxiliary astrodome and telescope/tracking camera. An analog device indicates the spacecraft's current position, which can be compared to the planned position printed on the chart. Telescope in the center is for taking navigational sightings through the iris-shuttered astrodome. Workstations for Captain, Pilot, Flight Engineer, and Radio Operator.
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