Subject:
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Re: Air lock and ship docking discussion
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.space
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Date:
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Mon, 21 Feb 2000 09:37:03 GMT
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Viewed:
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631 times
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In lugnet.space, Jon Palmer writes:
> I've been thinking about my ship's air locks and its mechanism for
> docking to another vessel that would be too big for its interior bays.
> My ship will have 2 personnel air locks and I know roughly where there
> location will be. It will have one docking ring for other ships and again I
> know where I want to put it but haven't given a lot of thought on how it
> will look or work.
> In an earlier post Pat Justison proposed that we could have a standard
> design which could be implemented on different ships or stations. I think
> this is a VERY cool idea.
> In a long thread a while back there was a discussion about the geography
> of local space. I believe this was pertaining to the creation of a .space
> world and community. It strikes me that Pat's idea would be a great way to
> further bind the .space community together in a fairly simple way.
Indeed. I'm not sure that the idea was Pat's, however.
Tom McDonald proposed his airlock as a standard design back in this message:
http://www.lugnet.com/space/?n=6
It's a very nice design (the use of pegs and beams is well thought-out, and I'm
likely to steal that part of the idea), if you start from three assumptions:
1) Your spacecraft design has room to spare. The walls are thick, and there are
two doors.
2) There's a reason to want an airlock that accomodates a *standing* minifig.
In other words, you're working in an environment that has artificial gravity.
3) You consider it important to preserve cabin pressure under all circumstances.
In other words, you want a double-door airlock.
Think back to the Gemini and Apollo LEM spacecraft, not long ago. When the
hatch was opened, the entire interior of the spacecraft was open to space.
There was no room or weight budget on these ships for a dedicated, double-doored
airlock, large enough for a person (and their space suit, plus some wiggle
room). Now, on many missions the Shuttle has such a chamber, mounted in its
cargo bay. However, there is no gravity in the Shuttle when it's in orbit, so
the chamber can be of any shape. And the door can be a lot smaller, since the
person/minifig can crawl/float through, instead of walking.
But maybe extravehicular activity is not a major concern for your spacecraft.
(There's very little EVA in most sci-fi. The only sci-fi story with EVA that I
can recall at the moment is Asimov's "Foundation's Edge." IRL, NASA does much
more EVA.) Maybe the hatch almost always opens into the docking port of another
vehicle, or into a breathable atmosphere. In that case, you can get away with a
single door on the ship, which greatly simplifies the interior design.
I haven't said anything about this for a while. However, shortly after the
original discussion ended, I concluded that we Space Datsville hopefuls will
probably still end up with at least two or three different types of airlock
design. Some of them may be able to join to each other, others not.
I like Tom McDonald's design, for the situation it was intended to address. For
a spacecraft that I'm presently building, I'm working from the opposite
assumptions -- a zero-gravity environment, and the need for only one door. I'm
trying to make the door frame from (among other pieces) four of those 45-degree,
three-stud bricks -- the kind you see in step 18 of the instructions for the
6949 Robo-Guardian:
http://www.brickshelf.com/scans/6000/6949/6949-06.html
An octagonal crawl-through hatch, if one can succeed in making it, should be
very believable -- and, hopefully, pleasing to the eye.
--
John J. Ladasky Jr., Ph.D.
Department of Strucutral Biology
Stanford University Medical Center
Stanford, CA 94305
Secretary, Californians for Renewable Energy <http://www.calfree.com>
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Message has 4 Replies:
 | | Re: Air lock and ship docking discussion
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| (...) Or you can create a little extension (sort of like a docking port with no ship attached) which adds an extra door to the port, thereby creating an airlock. (...) other, >others not. Then comes the challenge of creating adapters from one type (...) (25 years ago, 21-Feb-00, to lugnet.space)
| | | Re: Air lock and ship docking discussion
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| (...) <snip> (...) No, it wasn't, but I certainly welcome his input, and from others too. I'd like to see this discussion continue. (...) I'm (...) are (...) That is correct. The craft possessing this airlock is not meant to be small. It is a (...) (25 years ago, 21-Feb-00, to lugnet.space)
| | | Re: Air lock and ship docking discussion
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| (...) It makes a few other assumptions: 1) No critters in your universe will ever be larger than mini-fig scale. 2) You'll never want to use an airlock for transfer of objects larger than minifigs. That last one is the annoying one. It hit me that I (...) (25 years ago, 22-Feb-00, to lugnet.space)
| | | Re: Air lock and ship docking discussion
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| (...) be (...) I made a small lander that used an octagonal plate. The hatch itself is still rectangular, but the plate was octagonal, was a crawl-way, and had warning strips and lights around the hatch. Personally, I think it would have made for a (...) (25 years ago, 29-Feb-00, to lugnet.space)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Air lock and ship docking discussion
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| I've been thinking about my ship's air locks and its mechanism for docking to another vessel that would be too big for its interior bays. My ship will have 2 personnel air locks and I know roughly where there location will be. It will have one (...) (25 years ago, 21-Feb-00, to lugnet.space)
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