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Subject: 
Re: Fancy Docking Idea
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.space
Date: 
Sat, 30 Mar 2002 01:29:22 GMT
Viewed: 
310 times
  
Hello,

I've had an idea for something that might be an option for an umbilicus
between ships of a capital or large subcapital size.

Many of larger vessels often have independent support ships, such as the
current US carrier groups.  Whether they be supply ships, refueling, scouts etc.

My thought was to have a ship that acts in all of these rolls.  It would
carry a large fuel cell, perhaps oxygen and water tanks, general cargo area
and as relates to this conversation, 'taxi door' gantry.  Essentially, the
midsection of the ship would have short extensions on both sides with
conventional airlocks equiped with generic mating parts.  The airlocks would
be connected by a short, self contained distance. Whenever two ships would
need to transfer personelle, this supply/gantry ship would position itself
between the two cap ships, connect airlocks and voila...instant umbilicus.
Fuel and air transfer could be done thru addtional connectors, or as
incorporations into the airlock conjoiners.

The size of this ship would still be reasonably small (I would say 30-35
studs long) if the fuel, air, small cargo container would be externally mounted.

Just noodling.

I'm still pretty new to this whole gig, so I apologize in advance if I've
missed the spirit of the thread.

BTW Joel, the pop-out airlock looks awesome...I wish I could work such
mechanics of motion into my MOCs...

Cheers,
-G



In lugnet.space, Joel Kuester writes:
In lugnet.space, Evan Butzlaff writes:
I have been reading some universal docking ideas of Jon Palmers when I came
up with something.  I'm probably not going to post here again though, lol,
unless someone has a resonse, but here goes:  Why doesn't someone make a
cool docking thing that makes it so the two ships don't have to be touching?
You can make something slide out on the new pieces they have now-a-days.
Wouldn't it be cool to have something like a little tube that could pull out
and be accessable via hinges that would connect with one another?  I think
that would be awesome to see: two ships with this little pull out thing, and
when they're done with whatever they are doing, whether it be having
ambassadors meet on a big ship, or just old captain buddy's seeing each
other, could both detach and go back in?  Two different types though, the
airlock on one side on the outer part folds up when docked and the other
side fold down for easy access.
That would just be awesome to seem some people pull that off!
~Evan

heya,

that is an idea I have been playing around with myself.  There are some
really good reasons to have an airlock be flexible and extendable.  One is
unexpected movement; if you have two ships attached to each other through a
small locking device and one of the ships lurches (due to engine error/
meteor collision/ etc...) you could very easily rip a hole in one or both of
the hulls, and also damage your airlocks.

I thought about using that concept on my last couple capships, but since
they are only designed to dock with much smaller shuttles and loaders, I
didn't think it was neccessary for the design.  Therein lies one of the
problems of this idea; size.  The true capships (200+ studs) are the best
suited to support such a large device (compared to other lock designs), but
unless you plan on building a capship that docks with other capships, they
aren't really neccessary.  Medium sized ships (100-200 studs) are probably
the best suited for this, but space is usually at a premium on these
vessels, and many designers look at airlocks as almost an afterthought as
far as I can tell.

I do plan on finally working on some large military vessels this year, so I
will be working with this airlock stuff myself soon.

here are some sketches I did for a universal airlock that I will be trying
to incorporate into a 'snake-lock' for my medium sized ships:

http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=5774

One idea I have thinking about trying is to have the whole device shown
above sunk into the wall, so that when it pops outward, the space it leaves
inside the ship actually becomes the airlock room, but that is slightly
different from a 'snake-lock'.

later!
Joel K



Message has 2 Replies:
  Re: Fancy Docking Idea
 
I like Gil's idea of an umbilicus ship and can see such a ship in action. I am still working on the original challenge of making something flexible. I agree with Dan that the door in the Final Duel I set looks pretty cool andd two can be connected, (...) (22 years ago, 30-Mar-02, to lugnet.space)
  Re: Fancy Docking Idea
 
(...) actually, this is a cool idea IMHO... I have small droids that caretake the hull and stuff, not as small as Jon's droids, my ships only have about 4 to 8 of these, they could be run from this lamprey class ship too. I can totally see this (...) (22 years ago, 31-Mar-02, to lugnet.space)

Message is in Reply To:
  Re: Fancy Docking Idea
 
(...) heya, that is an idea I have been playing around with myself. There are some really good reasons to have an airlock be flexible and extendable. One is unexpected movement; if you have two ships attached to each other through a small locking (...) (22 years ago, 29-Mar-02, to lugnet.space)

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