Subject:
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Re: Hypothetical design question
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.space
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Date:
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Wed, 25 Jun 2003 15:59:34 GMT
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Viewed:
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816 times
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In lugnet.space, David Laswell wrote:
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In lugnet.space, James Brown wrote:
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You’re misapplying inertia. The whole ship, including contents, has
inertia. If it is moving, say, 1.25 Km/s (pretty darn quick) in arbitrary
direction A, it (and all it’s contents will continue to move in direction A,
and which direction it happens to be facing doesn’t mean diddly squat.
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He does have a point as far as capital ships are concerned. A Starfury is a
one-man ship, and everything I’ve seen suggests that when a Starfury rotates
in flight, the cockpit is pretty darn near the center of rotation, so the
pilot can withstand being quickly whipped around to face 180 degrees
different. A capital ship, like the Hyperion, is gigantic, and whipping that
type of ship around 180 degrees would involve a huge amount of G-force to
anyone standing at either end of the ship, because their relative vector
through space would change drastically during that manouver. Capital ships
have to slowly adjust their trajectories (it should be noted that Star Trek
starships use “inertial dampeners” as a way to cheat this fact of physics,
while B5 starships show realistic mass behavior with huge capital ships
taking a long time to alter course) or they will turn the crew into scrambled
eggs.
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Yup. But even a ship like the Hyperion could probably spin in place relatively
quickly - certainly not at starfury-like speeds - but I imagine it could still
do a 180 within a couple minutes. I strongly suspect, given the shape of
Earthforce ships that the limiting factor is not actually what their crew can
take, but what the structure will take. People can quite reliably take up to a
couple G’s of acceleration, and rotating the end of the Hyperion at 1G (~9.8
m/s/s) will get it flipped about pretty quick.
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If it starts applying thrust, then it matters which direction it’s facing,
but not until then.
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And rotation without a change in trajectory still involves application of
thrust, though I believe that even if a Starfury was flying at near-c speeds,
the 180 degree snap-around manouver would not feel any different than if he
was standing still. I’m also pretty sure that if it was flying at near-c
speeds, and the pilot started applying slow thrust perpendicular to the
trajectory, it wouldn’t feel any different than starting from a dead stop.
Consider how fast Earth is hurtling through space, just as it revolves around
the Sun (ignoring for now the Universe Expansion theory). Now that means
that any orbital craft is traveling, on average (adjusting for which specific
section of orbit it happens to be in), the same speed as Earth. That means
that a modern spacecraft is travelling at immense speeds, but gently applying
thrusters perpendicular to the overall direction of travel doesn’t really do
any harm to the crew. It’s not how fast you’re travelling that matters.
It’s how drastically you are changing your inertia that makes the difference.
Slamming to a stop from near-c would be just as harmful as being catapulted
from a dead standstill to near-c speeds. In the end, you experience the same
amount of G-force.
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Yup. It’s all about acceleration. :)
James
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Hypothetical design question
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| (...) The Hyperion (URL) lists> at about 1200 meters. Assuming the center of rotation is the exact center of the vessel, you're swinging 600 meters of steel around the point of rotation, and that's the critical point (after all, you want to make (...) (21 years ago, 26-Jun-03, to lugnet.space, FTX)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: Hypothetical design question
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| (...) He does have a point as far as capital ships are concerned. A Starfury is a one-man ship, and everything I've seen suggests that when a Starfury rotates in flight, the cockpit is pretty darn near the center of rotation, so the pilot can (...) (21 years ago, 25-Jun-03, to lugnet.space, FTX)
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