The idea occured to me while playing around with the Arrow, which is about the best current long-haul freight mover, but somewhat lacking in the realism deparment.
What I envision is the typical long spindle of a ship, with a very light dry mass, capapble of hauling somewhere int he neighborhood of 64 ISO containers, either generic or of the UCGO container variety (though more is certainly acceptable.) It should have a gravity deck of some kind, preferring a proper spinny section to turning the whole craft end-for-end. Bonus points awarded for a design that keeps the apparent gravity aligned the same way relative to the deck itself whtether its adrift or under power.
It would also, ideally, be a fusion torch ship capable of making Earth-Jupiter or Earth-Saturn runs, one-way, getting re-supplied at each end. It wouldn't have to have its own landers, unless they were being carried for a special op, being serviced by small craft stationed at bases at each end of its route. Great care should be taken to keep relatively realistic numbers for thrust and ISP.
*pulls up Atomic Rockets for a looksee...*
Yeah, ISP somewhere in the range of 2.5 kiloseconds, give or take, which gives an eyeballed mass ratio of 2.
This would be very awesome.
What I envision is the typical long spindle of a ship, with a very light dry mass, capapble of hauling somewhere int he neighborhood of 64 ISO containers, either generic or of the UCGO container variety (though more is certainly acceptable.) It should have a gravity deck of some kind, preferring a proper spinny section to turning the whole craft end-for-end. Bonus points awarded for a design that keeps the apparent gravity aligned the same way relative to the deck itself whtether its adrift or under power.
It would also, ideally, be a fusion torch ship capable of making Earth-Jupiter or Earth-Saturn runs, one-way, getting re-supplied at each end. It wouldn't have to have its own landers, unless they were being carried for a special op, being serviced by small craft stationed at bases at each end of its route. Great care should be taken to keep relatively realistic numbers for thrust and ISP.
*pulls up Atomic Rockets for a looksee...*
Yeah, ISP somewhere in the range of 2.5 kiloseconds, give or take, which gives an eyeballed mass ratio of 2.
This would be very awesome.
