Project Space Ark

[The Shadow]

Ok, I've been wanting to make an insanely large craft lately so I came up with the idea of a Space Ark. It'll be my little pet project while I teach myself C++.

Unfortunately I'm rather lame when it comes to spacecraft mechanics, so I'll go ahead and for ask your advice before I mess up too badly.

Heres the scenario; Earth is becoming overpopulated and uninhabitable, scientists expect the ozone layer to collapse in 20 years. Save all life on Earth from total destruction and preserve the gene pool for the repopulation of a new world. We have unlimited funds and world support, all non-essential production has ceased and is being devoted entirely to the production of this craft. Huge mining effort are already underway in order to produce the raw matierials required. In essence the entire world is now devoted to the task of saving life.

What would be the best ship design for this effort? What would be the best planet(or moon) in the solar system to terraform and populate? and what are all of the possible other requirements for such a huge undertaking?

I understand that in reality this would be nearly impossible, but still, it would be fun to make for Orbiter.

 

[The Shadow]

here is what I have as far as a mesh.

the blue near the engines are radiators, the large objects sticking out are the extendable gravity wheel, and the blue near the front are solar panels.

 

[Chub777]

In my opinion, it would be easy to live on the moon. For something even better, you could create terra-forming probes that launch bombs (ie:Bomb MFD) aimed at the ice-caps. Also, land on Mars.

 

[T.Neo]

I'd go for a fleet of really, really big Orion spacecraft. The 8 million ton ones should do well...

And land on Mars. It's the best bet in the solar system for terraforming or otherwise.

 

[The Shadow]

So Mars seems to be the best option for the final destination.

What would it really take to terraform Mars? We need Nitrogen, Oxygen, and CO2 for the atmosphere. I've seen on here that Mars's Polar ice caps contain the CO2; ship a bunch of plants to the polar Ice caps and let them produce Oxygen(hope they don't freeze :lol. As far as the temperature goes, we might want to harvest some geothermal heat to increase the temperature of the atmosphere(which would also release tons of CO2). Mine the soil for water. Send a huge tanker to Titan and have it scoop up the Nitrogen and send the tanker to Mars.

Plausible?

 

[DagoO]

The back of your Ark looks a little like Dansteph's arrow one, no?

Good project anyway, i had the idea to make an ark (something like in 2012 movie) but it have never been make.

 

[MeDiCS]

The back of your Ark looks a little like Dansteph's arrow one, no?

The back? It seems like an only slightly modified Arrow.

 

[The Shadow]

It is based somewhat on the Arrow(What can I say? It's a beautiful design! :tiphat, but the Space Ark is much flatter; while the Arrow is tubular. The reason I chose to go flat is so it would be Easier to build and would be much more stable once landed since only less than 1% of it's career will be spent in space; the rest will be on the ground providing a habitat for life while the planet is terraformed.

Yeah, the Arrow and 2012 are the inspiration for it.

Don't forget, with 10 or 20 of each kind of lifeform on Earth contained in it's own self-sustained biosphere, this thing is BIG!!!!!!!!!!!

Its purpose is similer to the Axiom in Wall-E, only designed more for the comfort of all life for less time than for the life of humans for a long time.

---------- Post added 04-04-10 at 04:56 PM ---------- Previous post was 04-03-10 at 11:04 PM ----------

Does anyone have any comments or suggestions for the design of either the mesh or the playability of this craft?

I'm hoping to add full-fledged support for different stations, like for engine, power management, things like that, since the ship would be run by many people in real life I thought it would be a good idea to have many of the systems be interactive like in the XR series. More playability during those years of floating along. It'll be awhile though, I'm not done reading "C++ for Dummies." :embarrassed:

 

[jedidia]

Well, you could give Clarks Rama a read, if anyone should ever design a space ark, that's probably kind of what it would look like.

Anyways, for a first technical advice, your radiators won't do much good... they'll radiate at each other. Radiators that are tilted less than 90 degrees towards each other don't really make sense.

Plus, unless the scale of this thing is absolutely frickin huge (as in death star huge), they are waaaaaaaaay too small. If you have a spaceship with a serious human population, most heat will have to be radiated in the low spectrum. It takes a kind of radiator to get rid of the few thousand kelvins of the fusion reactor (or anti-matter or whatever), and it takes a whole other kind to get rid of heat produced by electronic equipement, and, not to forgett, a few thousand people. And the second kind is a lot less efficient, because the hotter your heat, the more it will radiate. So for low heat you need severly more square meters per kw to get rid of it.

oh, and looking at it a second time, I'd ask why so much of the ship is outside the gravity section, but still has a very large cross section. Looking at the huge RCS thrusters you'll proabably want to spin the whole ship for gravity (and everyone will be thankfull for that, because the maintenance of such a huge centrifuge would be a nightmare, especially considering it will probably have to hold together a few centuries). But if the bow and stern of the ship are so wide, you'll have noticable gravity towards the outer shell in those sections, which will probably be unwanted. My advice would be, have a strong central truss with an engine on one end (and considering the size, the engine'd better stick out for a looong distance. Don't want the whole population die of cancer 10 years into the trip, now, do we). along the truss you have the fuel tanks, rcs, radiators etc, and two big habs conected to it by thethers as in your design. No matter what your engine, such a giant can accelerate at a few mili-gees at best, so the habs don't have to be retracted during acceleration.

 

[The Shadow]

Thank you for the advice Jedida.

I can see how the radiators need work. I was experimenting with designs in order to loose the MASSIVE radiator covers, and was thinking of folding up the radiators and solar panels into an accordian, like the ISS panels, rather than have these giant sheets that need to hold themselves up. I expect they would do like any other piece of paper on Mars, which is flop over. I think the new design will be better both structurally and efficiently. I'll look for more ways to increase surface area and decrease storage space.

And I really didn't put much thought into how much of the ship should be gravity section so the size is just a guess.

How would using tethers to hold it in place work? Wouldn't the wires just wrap around the trusses? Even if you I engines to start the rotation, I would still need ways to keep it from falling behind the rest of the ship and turning into two giant waterskiiers riding the wake of exhaust.


How about this? Build a dedicated cetrifuge externally(similer to the default orbiter wheel station) that the Space Ark docks with, this centrifuge would get towed along for the ride to Mars, operating for the duration of the flight. Once the whole assembly reaches Mars, the front portion of the Space Ark ditches the centifuge and main engines in orbit, leaving them to keep the centifuge in orbit for the next 10,000 years(the Marsian humans may need it to escape back to Earth then). This also eliminates all of the dead wieght of the main engines during re-entry making it much safer.

The only problem I see with this plan is the fact that the engines on the front section will not be used until the point of the retrograde burn to enter the atmosphere. Do you think it would be possible to use the pods to make the deorbit burn, or would they need to be more powerful? Maybe add some retro thrusters in the front?

Really, thanks, the more people that say what they want to see, the more I know how to build this right.



UPDATE:



I've worked the mesh a bit. Solar panels will slide out of the side of the front section, unfold, and cover a large area. Radiators will remain in orbit with the engines and use a similar approach for storing. Solar panels for the centrifuge will make up the outer surface of the ring, radiators will be along the edges of the ring and radiate outwards, away from the rest of the structure. The rear section shown in the previous mesh will probably be removed and replaced with a more cilindrical engine module. I've added a large hanger bay inside the lander for the securing of ships designed to fly on Mars. These new craft will be used to place Terraforming stations, weather stations, sensors, and what-not on other areas of Mars, possibly by using UCGO but I may need larger containers.


So several new questions, since I'm incompetent:
(1) Do you think that this would be an enjoyable add-on?
(2) What kind of engines would I put on the various craft? I've got the main engine module, the lander, and the Mars aircraft.
(3) What would be the best flight shape and profile for a Mars based, heavy-lifting aircraft?

I know it is alot to ask before the add-on ever gets started, but I want to make it right.

 

[Chub777]

I think nuclear engines for the main engines would be good. The only problem is the humans onboard would get radiation poisoning. I don't recommend LH2/LOX engines, they use lots of fuel. Unless you tow along a HUGE tank of fuel, I don't recommend it.

Ion engines would be the best engines ever invented. They don't use lots of fuel and once you have lots of electricity you could power them efficiently.

 

[jedidia]

first off, sorry, I didn't realize that the ark is only going to mars. I overread that somehow, I thought it was meant for an interstellar trip.

As for the radiators, I think there isn't much point in letting the whole thing descend down to mars. If you leave the bulk of the ship in orbit, you don't need deployable radiators either, and the less moving parts, the better.

I think the most reasonable way to get all the population down efficently would be to design the Habitat parts themselfes as landers. They could detach and get down to surface with everything and everyone inside, serving as an imediate start for the colony, while the rest of the ship stays in orbit. It wouldn't be easy to design the big habitats in a way they could be landed on the surface (some kind of lifting body maybe? as in the comic 2001 nights), but it would still be easier than getting the whole monstrum down there. it might be reasonable to make more, yet smaller habs in that case.

as for the thethers, you simply lead one "rope" to the front and rear end of the central truss to prevent them from moving along the z-axis.

The deorbit burn doesn't need to be that strong either if the whole thing entered orbit aproprietly. If you decide to use the habs themselfes as landers, they'd just need some SRB-like rockets attached to them that will perform the deorbit burn. It's a one-way trip of course, but you can't expect to build such a huge ship that is able to deploy AND retrieve thousands of people. The mothership would have some Deltagliders or comparable craft with it to not cut off the acces to space entirely, but the majority of these people will probably stay on mars until they can make their own fuel.

(1) Do you think that this would be an enjoyable add-on?

yeah, I think it would be fun getting such a huge thing to mars and setting up a colony.

(2) What kind of engines would I put on the various craft? I've got the main engine module, the lander, and the Mars aircraft.

The main engines are a bit of a tough one. a nuke reactor and lots of ion engines might be the most efficient way to get the ark to mars, but the trip will take years, which probably isn't desired with that much people on board (plus, ion engines aren't really great for such short distances). quick and dirty might be the best way for such a giant and such a short distance. Some Gas-core nuclear engines, and lots of fuel. The trajectory would still have to be close to an optimal homan, considering the mass we're moving here, though, so travel time might still be well within one to two years. A fusion engine might be an acceptable compromise, but since we don't have to worry about resources here, something with a lot of thrust that will be able to acelerate the huge mass at at least 0.01 G or something would probably be best.

The mars aircraft would probably have some highly specialized ram-jet like engine that would be totally useless on earth but works well enough in the martian atmosphere. As for its form, I have no idea, I suck at aerodynamics...

 

[The Shadow]

Thanks for the suggestions

chub: Based on the criteria I've set for this craft, I think the "quick and dirty" approach would be better suited.

Jedida: Sorry about the confusion, I originally did not know where it was going, but then decided on Mars after a bit of research and listening to the suggestions on this thread.

I see your point. All sections that remain in space will use non-moving radiators and solar panels.

The front section has been reworked again, this time I've completely removed the wing-like extensions and will instead use tresses extending out with VASIMR or Nuclear Thermal Rocket pods on the end. These tresses will be jettisoned just prior to Mars insertion. Main engine module will be plenty far away from any life, so it can have arrays of Nuclear Thermal Engines. There will be Chemical hover thrusters for landing, Apollo style.

You're thinking that landers should be placed at the end of the centrifuge, then when the time comes they split off of the centrifuge and deorbit? That sounds do-able, and it would look really cool! :thumbup:

I think sending tons of other unmanned craft to Mars beforehand to get it ready for the Ark's arrival would be a good plan. The Ark would be the last ship off Earth and many of the supplies needed to terraform Mars will already be working.

Since it is so cold on Mars I do not think radiators will be needed.

I do not think a ramjet would be very useful for the smaller craft, but maybe the larger ones could use them when going on long ranged trips. Would turbofans work on Mars?


Here is a resource I found to help with development principles.

http://aerospacescholars.jsc.nasa.gov/has/Modules/Earth-to-Mars

thanks for your assistance guys

 

[Chub777]

Would turbofans work on Mars?

They would need oxygen. I don't think there is any on Mars. Same with the ram-jets.

 

[The Shadow]

How about a ducted fan running off of an electric motor? Best example would be the helicopter type craft in Avatar, they have two ducted rotors that turn like the V-22 Osprey.

 

[Hielor]

How about a ducted fan running off of an electric motor? Best example would be the helicopter type craft in Avatar, they have two ducted rotors that turn like the V-22 Osprey.

The atmosphere on Mars is too thin for propellers like that to be efficient, I would think...

 

[Chub777]

How about the Valkyrie shuttle in Avatar? It's basicaly a XR2 that's the size of the XR5.

 

[The Shadow]

The atmosphere on Mars is too thin for propellers like that to be efficient, I would think...

All of the small craft designs I've seen have large propellers and aerofoils. I think that small probing aircraft could use props, similer to the Zephyr solar powered plane, medium-sized single-seaters could use a couple ducted fans, and the medium to large sized craft will need something more powerful such as rocket engines.


Question:

Simple newb question.

I've been working on the mesh, but I have a problem. The mesh is smooth shaded in Anim8or, so when I try to make a panel for something to go in(doors specifically) it is shaded differently than the surrounding mesh. Does the shading in Anim8or affect the shading in Orbiter? If so it will pose a problem since the mesh is supposed to be smooth, but there will be places where it will be flat with creases.

 

[The Shadow]

Here is a different mesh that has most of the things we have talked about implemented. The front is designed to be a huge lifting body/flying wing design that should be able to fly into the atmosphere, once velocity is reduced it can do a nose down approach until it is close to landing, then it would pitch up hard and hit the hover thrusters to stop the forward momentum and make a hover landing.

I don't know if I like the engine section, the fuel pods look out of place on this craft, and I still can't decide on the engine type. Also the extra supports on the gravity wheel make it look like a steering wheel on a car . I will change this eventually.

 

[zeldafan156]

you should make a big "death star" like moon that orbits around mars lol