Starship Design

As RPGs go, this one is particularly involved. You may, truthfully, actually have to be a rocket scientist, with everything this entails and a degree in--

No. Not really. I'm taking anarcho-capitalist sorts of liberties here. Yes, you have to observe scientific accuracy, but I won't be too-too picky and I promise to you on a stack of Athe's books that there won't be any math involved, ever.

This guide will show you how to design a basic starship. My sources are this wonderfully nerdy website and my imagination; if you have any questions or objections to make, PM them to me or post them openly in the OOC Thread.

Ask yourself a series of questions.

Why am I doing this? What is the ship's role?

As with any device, this determines every design decision. The ship's size, power source, engine, crew, everything. Some possible roles for a ship are as follows.

• A shuttle. These ships are supposed to be launched from another ship in space and land on a planet. This is the only ship that can possibly get away with being designed like an airplane, since for part of its trip it is one. It will have weak engines, be of a relatively small size, and could be armed lightly.
  
• A freighter, designed to ferry goods around a system or between systems. It will be of enormous size, possibly exceeding most military vessels, and will consist mostly of cargo. It will most likely be totally unarmed.
  
• A warship. There are a few kinds, but ultimately a warship will want to be heavily armed, armoured, and defended; it will want to have large propellant tanks; it will have espatiers (soldiers whom fight in space) on board. It may also have ceremonial emblems or other such puffery.
  
• A space station. It doesn't need engines, so it has space for whatever else you want to put on it; it will need space for defences especially, as it doesn't move much.

Once you've decided what you want your ship to do, you may carry on to the next step.

I want to go somewhere. How does your ship move?

Ultimately, to perform a particular mission, your ship has to go somewhere. If you're designing something mostly immobile or an orbital, you can skip this step, but even those should have some engines just in case, as well as for course corrections--you don't want your space-laboratory falling on the Capitol, do you?

Depending on the duties at hand, and how much money you have to spend, there are a variety of engines that are possible. Considerations can be boiled down to if you're taking off from planets and how cost-effective the engine is, as well as if you can afford the engine type to begin with.

A shuttle, orbiting craft, or other short-range missions can get away with the use of cheap, readily available, relatively safe and environmentally friendly chemical fuel rockets. These inventions brought us into space first, but suffer from incredible weakness; you won't be going much of anywhere, but it's fine if you're not trekking that far. There's also no problem landing if your ship uses this system.

If, however, you're interested in leaving your neighbourhood, you will need nothing less than a nuclear rocket. Nuclear rockets are large, unsafe, expensive, deathly radioactive, and necessary. If you are ideologically opposed to nuclear power, turn back now. A nuclear rocket has no business being near a planet's atmosphere, no matter what. The radiation from these beasts will wreak havoc on the ecosystem of planets and the multi-million degree exhaust will turn things into lava. So yeah, stay away. Nuclear ships will dock with space stations instead.

The danger of having this glowing ball of radioactive death aboard is the radiation it will produce. The reactor must be properly shielded to prevent your crew's death by radiation poisoning, but shielding is heavy. This results in what's called a shadow shield--a shield over only part of the reactor, casting a protective 'shadow' over your crew compartment and everything else you don't want to get irradiated.

Keep in mind a couple of things about 'fuel'. There are two things at work in your engine--fuel, which generates the engine's energy, and propellant, reaction mass, or 'remass', which comes flying out the exhaust nozzle. In a chemical rocket, these two substances are the same thing, but in a nuclear rocket, they will be different substances--plutonium or uranium fuel, and hydrogen propellant.

Once you have this engine finalized, you have one other problem to consider. Your ship can now move forward, but what about stopping? You'll need other thrusters around your ship to stop, as well as ones to turn; if you're not aiming for this level of manoeuvrability, you can get away with "thrust vectoring"--that is to say, attaching some hinges to your rocket and having it point off kilter a bit so that you turn. Warships will have manoeuvre thrusters.

What about energy? How does everything run?

Your ship is now moving through space at whichever speed you set it to. There's a problem: it is dark and cold aboard. You need a method to produce energy, specifically electricity, for use on the ship. This is necessary for life support, heat management, weapons, communications, and everything else.

Those of you lucky enough to be flying in a nuclear rocket can mostly skip this step. A number of nuclear rockets can double as nuclear reactors, and can thus produce energy for your many needs; however, these ships, in the unlikely event of being disabled somehow, should have alternate sources of energy. A whole crew is a lot of death warrants to sign. There's also the fact that most of these nuclear engines only produce energy when actively burning, not constantly.

Things near to a sun can get away, perhaps, with solar panels; this is cheap and highly effective if you're in the right neighbourhood. If you're in the shadow of a planet, or far away, you'll want to use something else. A radiothermal generator, henceforth referred to as an RTG, is basically a nuclear battery. It'll provide a small power supply for longer than your ship will be in service. If you think there's enough nuclear material aboard your ship already, you could use a fuel cell, of the same type that is currently being used in cars. Another option is charging conventional batteries with your engine, and running off of those when you're coasting.

No warship will permanently use solar panels due to their fragility, though they could be carried as a secondary, deployable measure, perhaps to recharge batteries on the move. As well, a warship will require alternative energy sources, just in case.

How does the crew stay alive and happy? What about sanity?

As a human being, you require air, water, food, rest, medical care, and human companionship. Systems providing the first three fall under the collective umbrella of "life support", and it is a one hundred percent necessary expense.

Well, maybe not, truth be told. Before you look quizzically at me, ask yourself if your ship needs people on it. The answer is probably yes unless its job is extremely simple and tedious, such as a communications relay, satellite or beacon, or suicidal, like a specialized kamikaze drone. AI in the CH universe isn't advanced yet to fully replace human beings, and all countries will at least require that a human give the order to open fire for ethical and political reasons.

Life support systems will most likely be based upon recycling waste material, carbon dioxide, and other undesirables and turning them into the things your crew needs. Note that ships on a short-duration journey can just pack food, water, and air with them; this becomes more and more expensive, however, until it becomes more attractive to recycle. If you're just packing lunches, you can mostly skip this section.

There are all sorts of real world ideas on how to manage this, which means plenty of liberty for you, dear Reader. You can scrub carbon dioxide from the atmosphere of the ship, or recycle waste matter in the form of an on-board farm. You don't need to delve into the technical details of all of this during your posts, but warships or long-duration ships should have farms, recycling systems, and other such amenities on board. These will require energy input.

For your ambitious national redoubts, incredibly long-duration starships, and other such projects, it's possible to make systems that can sustain themselves for centuries. This will entail recycling every last thing; it will still have a rate of loss, but one that is mostly insignificant until you start getting into incredibly long, multi-generational missions.

Now that the crew can stay alive, it's time to deal with the issues of keeping people on board a ship for this long. In the real world, cabin fever is a real problem; it results from a claustrophobic reaction to a person's environment. To avoid the symptoms of restlessness, irritability, forgetfulness, laughter, malign distrust, and excessive sleeping, vessels on extended missions will have psychological screening going on. Those afflicted will have to be drugged, put in cryogenic sleep, and discharged at the next planet or station for treatment.

In the meanwhile, it is preventable. Overwork and entertainment are the easiest methods--keep everyone and everything busy, busy, and busy again, tenfold. Train people in disciplines that aren't theirs. Have useless cleaning and inspections. Let people bring books and entertainment. Know when to turn a blind eye to gambling, minor recreational drug use, and drinking. The crew has to stay sane.

There is also the problem of physical injuries and illness, which are totally unavoidable over long periods of time. Yes, there's band-aids in the future, but what if someone gets really ill or has an arm crushed? You carry a doctor, and a proper sickbay, along with you. A warship may have the equivalent of a whole hospital aboard for combat injuries.

It sure is warm in here. How does the ship manage heat?

Heat is the enemy of starships, almost more than the opposing fleet, radiation storms, or collisions. Some reports suggest that the Jerry Springer Show is still a more devious foe, which seems likely. Luckily, such drivel is banned in the future.

Besides my wishful thinking as to a better future for television, heat really is a major enemy. You can't destroy heat or convert it into anything else; you can only move it. Because there's nothing to move it to in space (heat doesn't go across a vacuum), it'll just sit there, turning things into lava and eventually boiling you alive. That's pretty bad for public relations, so you need a way to get rid of heat.

Luckily for you, there's exactly one good way to get rid of heat. Two in some situations, but that's for the next paragraph. Certain coolants--exotic, expensive, indispensable coolants--emit infra-red radiation when searing hot. Put these in open radiators and watch your heat fly away into the depths of space, never to trouble you again. There are three possible types of radiators: unarmoured ones, which are flimsy and need to be retracted during any sort of fight (if they're shot up, you burn); droplet radiators, which spray coolant into space and collect it; and finally, radiators armoured with expensive materials that allow infra-reds to pass through but also stop bullets. These are arranged in order of ascending quality and descending affordability.

There is another method. Some engines can get rid of heat by blasting it out with the exhaust; this is called open-cycle cooling. It's a great system to have, but don't rely on it--you won't constantly be burning engines.

These methods only cool you down so fast. In the meanwhile, staving off system meltdown and assorted boiling doomsday scenarios falls to your trusty heatsink. This is a place--a very cold, durable place--that you put your heat into before it is radiated away. This means that if you produce too much heat in a short amount of time, you'll slowly overwhelm your systems; therefore, warships will have enormous heatsinks and redundant radiators.

In the event that a warship's heat radiation systems are disabled, it must surrender or face unavoidable and toasty warm consequences for its arrogance.

The question of size is a tricky and very mathematical one, but for CH's purposes, a ring around the edge of a centrifuge is just fine for keeping the habitat alive. For dealing with weapons, fairly large radiators will be required, but nothing insane.

How does the ship perceive the world around it?

Obviously, to do anything effectively, you need to understand what you're doing. In other words, you need to see things. Fear not, for there are many ways that you can make sure you're never snuck up on. There's telescopes, for instance, the most basic of sensors. Every ship worth its iodine tablets has one; you should too. Peer pressure.

There's also thermal sensors, which enable you to detect virtually anything of note out there; note that any vessel will be detectable this way, unless it's a high-tech drone operating at near absolute zero temperatures. Even then, if the drone burns engines, then you can see it. This is why stealth in space is impossible. Radio receivers and transmitters are also useful for sensors and communication. Everyone needs these also.

Passive sensors receive data and do not give away your location; active sensors send out signals and catch them when they bounce back, revealing your exact coordinates to anyone who is watching. Active sensors also give you an excellent reading on everyone else's coordinates.

At long range, systems suffer from lightspeed lag. Light is the ultimate speed limit in the universe, and so you can only find out about things so fast. If I am one light-second away, you see me as I was one second ago; no big deal. If I am one light-hour away, you saw me as I was an hour ago--big deal unless I'm stationary. If I'm one light-year away, well, good luck shooting. For reference, the Moon is four light seconds from Earth, the Sun is eight light-minutes away, and you see Saturn as it was an hour ago.

I'm not content floating around. How do I get gravity in space?

First, padawan, ask yourself if you really need to have artificial gravity in the first place. If you're in space for anything less than three months, the answer is definitely no; less than eight is a probable no. Between eight months and a year, it's your choice; anything over a year and the answer becomes a yes.

There are three ways to get gravity. The first is through actual gravity; this could be accomplished by placing a large mass under the ship. This condition is generally known as "landing" and is impractical for use on the move. The second is through thrusters, which is infinitely more practical; the final method is through the use of centrifugal force, which is expensive but provides artificial gravity without you having to be in an engine burn.

Thrust gravity is a result of good ol' Newton's laws. If you've ever driven a Grand Prix--if you haven't, I'd get one, they're amazing cars, and the interior looks like a freaking stealth bomber--then you've experienced this. Come to think of it, if you've ever driven, you have. Acceleration produces a force pushing you back into your seat. This feeling would also exist on a spaceship, and it is why decks--with the exception of the centrifuges I'll get to later--accept that "down" is the direction the exhaust is shooting. This provides gravity during engine burns.

Then there's spin gravity. If you pick up a bucket of water and twirl it around, over your head, in a circular motion, the water stays in the bucket if you're fast enough. Now, do this with a person, and before they strangle you, reflect on its applications in starship design. Have a floor, in the shape of a ring, being rotated around a central point... and viola. There's your gravity. Alternate methods include spinning the whole ship end over end (tumbling pigeon), or releasing a counterweight on one end of a long cord and spinning around that.

Spin gravity has multiple problems. It's expensive; it needs energy; it's high-maintenance. It's also a liability on a warship unless armoured. Finally, it needs to be precisely calibrated to prevent giving your crew motion sickness, and some may need drugs to acclimatize. As if that wasn't enough, it gets screwed up when you burn engines along with it. There are ways around that: gimball the compartments so that they turn to match the current direction of "down". This, however, is much more expensive, high-maintenance, and harder to engineer, but you can do it.

So in the end, what rooms do I need?

Your ship, ultimately, will be put together kind of like this. Most of it is interchangeable, but the engine is usually at the back.

• The Command deck, Bridge, or cockpit. The stations and capabilities of this area vary greatly; it would house plotting, navigation, gunnery control, et cetera on larger ships. Know that it should not be on "top" of the ship! There is no up or down in space, and you don't want this place to get shot at.
  
• Bunks and Crew quarters--places to sleep. Make sure to strap yourself in; you don't want to go flying if there's unexpected manoeuvres.
  
• Recreational Facilities. Keeping the crew sane is a priority; have exercise machines, computers, video games, books, whatever you need. To save on weight and money, rely on computers.
  
• Mess Hall. Eat here. It could be combined with the red facilities to save space.
  
• Bathrooms. Yeah, self-explanatory. Hook them up to the life support system for recycling.
  
• Hydroponics Bay. Your on-board farm, algae tanks, fish farm, yogurt machines, whatever. Bring along some dude to run this crap, so you can all eat properly.
  
• The Astrodome or Observatory. Get a look at the stars and plot your course in this room with the view it provides; note that this should not be on a spinning part of the ship for obvious reasons. Also note that, due to necessary exposure to space, you do not want to be here during any kind of radiation storm or combat.
  
• Storm Cellar. During a radiation storm or reactor mishap, the ship is not safe. This is a highly shielded, very cramped room that will save your sorry hide and, through sensors, tell you when it is safe to leave. Samples of good algae or other organisms for life support systems should be kept here in case the old ones mutate or are killed; even better, put the whole shebang behind the shields of this room. Remember that this installation has to accommodate everyone in an emergency, unless you play as the USSR...
  
• Cargo Hold. Big, open space for storing things; there would be cranes, some sort of apparatus to fix cargo in place, and some way to make sure the load is balanced.
  
• Damage Control. A place to keep tools and skematics, and to plan how to save the ship. This should be very difficult to damage, second only to the bridge. Another possible system is to have "damage control lockers" spread around the ship, to spread out the means to solve problems.
  
• Reactor controls. Where you can directly interface with, SCRAM, shut down, start up, and maintain the reactor. It will not have direct access to the reactor chamber-- perhaps some robotic arms might.
  
• The engine itself. Obviously.
  
• Heat radiators of the appropriate size.
  
• Artificial gravity centrifuges, if needed.
  

I'm an expansionist. What's special about a warship's design?

Our would-be hegemons have several things to worry about when it comes to designing a warship. A warship must deal with the realities of combat and the unpredictability of an enemy, for instance, as well as long patrols and utter abuse of its systems.

Naturally, there are weapons systems that have to be added (needed to define it as a warship), with the robust heat dissipation systems also needed to support these. Defencive systems are probably a must also (public relations again); those and weapons will be covered in another topic.

Everything on a warship should have some sort of redundancy. Have one communications array? What if it gets shot up? Have two or more. The perfect amount of radiators for your systems? What if they fail, or your ship goes Finest Hour and well past its design specifications? Stick some more on there.

This kind of thinking should permeate military design, space included. Be ready. Be paranoid. It might save lives.

A military ship would need special communications, gunnery control, and identification systems, as well as finely tuned sensors. These cost money. It's likely that ships should have control styles and displays allowing for extremely quick reactions to emerging circumstances, maximizing efficiency.

Endurance is another factor. A warship may have to stay somewhere much longer than anticipated. Don't count on military timetables--go in throughly prepared to win, or don't go in at all. Have a fully self-sustaining ecology on board for supplies. This may not apply to spacecraft that don't leave planetary orbit, but for your deep-space units, this might just be essential.

Starship design and colours could hanker back to old eras of glory, or suggest a greater future; the Royal Extraplanetary Armada has many obvious parallels to the Royal Navy that secured the British Empire on Earth. Morale is mostly the realm of ceremony and sociology, but the design of the ship--emblems and whatnot--may also help.

All this tech is worthwhile, but what kind of sizes am I dealing with?

Before I begin, most of this particular section is off the top of my head. It varies a lot and these are general guidelines.

Of course, probes, satellites, or other spacecraft not carrying people could be incredibly small; perhaps two meters across. These of course would just coast along; engines and reactors are much bigger than that.

The smallest starships with people on them will probably be shuttles. The soon-to-be-phased-out Space Shuttle of American fame is roughly thirty seven meters long (or tall; relative terminology in space); this could be brought down still further, but take this as a useful size for a shuttle, which will likely be the smallest man-carrying spaceship you'll deploy.

As for an interplanetary spacecraft, the large size of propellant tanks and other such systems would make the smallest "cruiser" (or comparable) about two hundred meters long or so, but it's advisable to go larger than that.

As for upper limits, due to structural stresses, practicalities of accelerating all of the mass involved, and cost, the largest dreadnaughts ever built would be perhaps five hundred seventy meters long or so. Six hundred is a hard and fast limit.

Of course, if your ship is a sphere instead of a rough cylinder, your lengths will be shorter but your ship wider. For a cylinder, a 3:1 ratio from length to width sounds about right.

Reserved.

Reserved.

Reservededededed!

Ok, I'm done. Comments may be posted here.

Wow, Red, you've been busy! Surprisingly for me (I'm no rocket or science fan), this was pretty interesting and easy to understand because of the way you wrote it. I can't wait to start!

Thankee! Heh, it should start in a few days. Believe it or not, there's more.

Sweet, I'm interested on how this RP will turn out...