Project New Shuttle

[DaveS]

Grover,

VERY NICE INDEED !!! Keep it up.

One thing though; with the radiators deployed in this way it's going to be hard for payload items to be easily manipulated when you take them out of the payload bay since it doesn't give you much maneuvering space before you hit one of the radiators.

In my (humble) opinion; better to leave the radiators "Shuttle-style"

Agreed. And I have yet another critical reason for leaving them attached to the doors: MMOD impact damage.

Your style would seriously expose the coolant lines in the radiator panels to MMOD impacts.

 

[diogom]

IMO, setting the radiators like that could also make docking a bit harder.
Keep on the good work! It's looking great.

 

[Capt_hensley]

One thing for sure, Heat tiles won't be near as thick as shuttle, and bonding with heavy RTV is no more, so she will be alot lighter. I agree the doors could open more. Glad to see you do as well. The radiators dont have to be the full size of the doors.

There is another possibility for radiators, don't wait for me to get it, press on. I'll see what can be compiled.

It looks more like the STS and Buran every day. Don't let this discourage you. It's a sound engineering premiss, projects like this look alike because if you engineer it properly the optimum design will be very close. That's why ours looks the same as Russias.

You can come up with any design for the windows. I always felt something larger would be in order, maybe 4 instead of 6. Dont forget the windows on top for docking and RMS operations.

I like the idea of keeping the OMS pods inboard, thus streamlining the body airflow. I'd say the vertical is too small, but vertiacls are neccessary for stability. Perhaps wing tip verts were a good idea for this model. A speed brake is unneccessary, you have enough rubber on the runway with triple wheel mains.

 

[GoForPDI]

Well, that all depends on where the water is, now doesn't it ? I mean if you want to save the weight of the landing gear and space they take up.

If you have water to land on, then its going to be a large space of water, so you don't need the precise approach that a winged craft would take, so why not use a capsule and save the cost for wings and wheels all together?

Plus, if you were to land a winged vehicle in water, think of the costs of recovering such a massive vehicle from its landing zone.

And even if you don't have landing gear, you will still require doors to open through the heatshield to deploy the floats. And the floats themselves would have to be suffecient to stop this massive and heavy spacecraft from sinking.

 

[Donamy]

Wings give better cross range, and don't the gear doors go through the heat shield?

 

[Grover]

Indeed they do... or you can make the doors into heatshield

 

[Grover]

ok, ive softened the edges, so reduce the "sharp edge" appearance of normals that aren't properly aligned (a nice little sketchup tool), now its into 3dsmax to get UVing

just a few things need addressing


my texturing skills are worse than poor, does anyone fancy giving it a go?

it still needs a name, maybe ill just go for a name similar to the ones that seem to be popping up at the moment (not a name as such, but rather like G42 (Moach's ship) or something along similar lines)

should i just make it straight into a DLL using Artlav's new tool? i hadnt planned on it appearing, but i may as well make the most of it, right?


and lastly, thanks for following guys! your feedback has been really helpful

laters!

---------- Post added at 11:56 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:44 AM ----------

oops... that didnt get far

i forgot to add the elevons in sketchup... i know i was forgetting something

i got so focused on the low quality VC (only so it shows from the external views) that i forgot to check the back end...

oh well, back to sketchup for a bit