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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Thu, 26 Jun 2003 00:16:48 GMT
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Viewed:
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859 times
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In lugnet.space, James Brown wrote:
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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.
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The Hyperion 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 sure that people in the very ends of
the ship will be able to survive the manouver, since everyone coreward of those
points will be experiencing less inertial change). That means the ends will be
travelling about 1900 meters through space (relative to any previous momentum)
to do a simple 180. At 1G of thrust (measured from the ends of the ship), it
would take 13 seconds of constant thrust to reach 90 degrees of turn, and it
would take another 13 seconds of constant retro-thrust to slow the rotation to a
stop at 180 degrees of turn. So, less than half a minute total (just over a
minute for the Executor), not that it won’t feel like an eternity when you’re
trying to retreat. Now, people standing right in the ends of the ship will
actually experience more than 1G due to the fact that they are, in effect,
orbitting the center of the ship, but my higher math skills have about 10 years
of disuse behind them, so I’m not sure how to figure out exactly how much
G-force they would be receiving. Regardless, the Space Shuttles deliver about
3G during takeoff, and that lasts quite a bit longer than 26 seconds, so as long
as the people in the very ends are able to strap themselves into crash webbing,
they should be okay. If not, they’ll be shaken around like James Bond’s
martini, and probably receive some blunt trauma when they get slammed into a
bulkhead or two.
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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.
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Possibly, but properly designed, any section that would experience undue stress
should have a computer controlled supplemental thruster available to help it
along, and 1G at the ends is considerably less force the closer you get to the
middle.
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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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I’m not sure what the maximum survivable G-force is, but I’m sure it varies by
duration. I just read about a race track in Texas where the drivers were taking
5G turns, and after about 10 minutes they were starting to feel light-headed
(one lap involved about 13 seconds of 5G turns and 10.5 seconds of straight
track).
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Hypothetical design question
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| (...) -off subject- Not to burst anything, but I think the Hyperion is far less then 1200 meters, due to comparison with the Nova and Omega Destroyers. The Destroyers are 1717 meters long. B5tech.com lists the Hyperion at 1,025, which is slightly (...) (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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| (...) 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 (...) (21 years ago, 25-Jun-03, to lugnet.space, FTX)
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