40th Anniversary of 2001:A Space Odyssey

Pat Flannery wrote:

Has anyone watched the movie to see in which direction he's supposed
to be running?
You could check out the rotation direction when he climbs up to the
core access corridor.
(If it helps, the centrifuge is located at the end of a tunnel
directly in back of the command deck and is aligned so that its axis
of rotation sits at ninety degrees to the length of the ship - if the
command sphere of the Discovery was the Earth, its front would be the
North Pole, its widest point the Equator, and its attachment to the
rest of the ship the South Pole. In the cutaway of it in my book,
this puts the centrifuge at somewhere around the equator to 20
degrees south latitude. Surprisingly it is nowhere near the full
diameter of the command sphere.)

There's a cutaway of the Discovery command sphere on this page:
http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3u.html on this one it gets
nearer the outside of the sphere than it does in my my movie production
design cutaway.
Two interesting things about this design:
1.) Inside a spaceship, usable space is always at a premium... but the
centrifuge has a very high "ceiling" between its floor and central
rotation hub. There's room for at least a whole second floor in it that
isn't being used. Concerns about inner ear problems as you get near the
hub? If you are going to puke, it will probably be in that center hub,
with your feet being pulled down toward one side, and your head being
pulled down toward the other, like you are standing on your head as far
as your inner ear goes. Combine that with the view into the non-rotating
tunnel and I'd think that would get anyone ill.
2.) Every time the astronauts move around in it, it gets a bit out of
balance. This is going to produce a wobble in its rotation that's going
to propagate from the command sphere down the whole length of the ship -
the amount will be tiny, but it's there.

Pat

On May 2, 1:17 pm, Pat Flannery wrote:

1.) Inside a spaceship, usable space is always at a premium... but the
centrifuge has a very high "ceiling" between its floor and central
rotation hub. There's room for at least a whole second floor in it that
isn't being used. Concerns about inner ear problems as you get near the
hub?

Would seem logical to have that as a non-rotating space.

Or, mechanically simpler, you could use it as a storage locker and
spin down the rotating part when you want to
get into it. But then you'd need a reaction wheel (second contra-
rotating part?) or thrusters to handle the torque
of spin up/down...

Or maybe it does rotate and HAL drops the food out of the selected
locker for you to catch.

Oh, wait, I got it! The central part should be a storage locker that
rotates the opposite direction as the outer crew ring.
To get in there, you spin them both down, to recreate your artificial
gravity you spin them both up at an appropriate rate,
using the torque on the lockers to counterbalance that on the crew
module.

Combine with the food dropping idea and HAL has another way to kill
the crew... flying cans of spam.

On Fri, 02 May 2008 11:04:59 -0500, Pat Flannery
wrote:

There is a attack variant of the Starfury, the Thunderbolt:
http://www.shipschematics.net/b5/ima...hunderbolt.jpg
...but as B5 was intended to be a peaceful station it wasn't originally
equipped with these, as the Starfuries were considered adequate for self
defense. Later in the show, when things went to crap between Earth and
B5, they did get some Thunderbolts from defecting EarthForce Alliance
ships that joined their revolt.

....The other important difference is that the T-Bolts can't go into
planetary atmospheres, while the Starfuries can.

OM
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On Thu, 1 May 2008 11:44:23 -0400, "Scott Hedrick"
wrote:

One thing missing was a heavier bomber-type craft, like BG's Raptors. JMS is
brilliant, but he can't think of everything (and didn't have the money for
it, anyway).

....This was CGI, which should have made the money issue a bit less
impacting.

OM
--
]=====================================[
] OMBlog - http://www.io.com/~o_m/omworld [
] Let's face it: Sometimes you *need* [
] an obnoxious opinion in your day! [
]=====================================[

On May 2, 3:32 pm, OM wrote:
On Fri, 02 May 2008 11:04:59 -0500, Pat Flannery
wrote:

There is a attack variant of the Starfury, the Thunderbolt:
http://www.shipschematics.net/b5/ima...ter_thunderbol...
...but as B5 was intended to be a peaceful station it wasn't originally
equipped with these, as the Starfuries were considered adequate for self
defense. Later in the show, when things went to crap between Earth and
B5, they did get some Thunderbolts from defecting EarthForce Alliance
ships that joined their revolt.

...The other important difference is that the T-Bolts can't go into
planetary atmospheres, while the Starfuries can.

Exactly the opposite. The T-Bolts were the craft that attacked the
settlements on Mars. The Starfuries had to stay out of Epsilon 3's
atmosphere when it's defences fired on the research team's
shuttle.

Andre

Derek Lyons wrote:
Nope - you just drop them sequentially as each bay comes in line with
the departure vector. This leaves 'em deployed in a very nice line.

I've never seen B5, but the above solution was used in another novel
(whose name currently escapes me).


That's exactly how they did it on the show; the only direction where you
can't launch them is straight above the station, as they would collide
with the de-spun spine.
B5 has 27-28 Starfuries ready for launch at any one time divided between
the four Cobra launch bays, so they could get them all launched in
around 1/2 minute if they wanted them all heading in the same direction
at launch.
If there was a real need, they probably would salvo launch them from all
four Cobra Bays simultaneously, and let them maneuver into attack
position on their own. In that case you should be able to get them all
launched in around 10-12 seconds.
(around 7 seconds based on launch rate, but you would have to avoid
launching into the spine, which will slow things up some.)
There are more Starfuries held in reserve, but I don't know how long it
takes to get them ready to go.

Pat

wrote:
Would seem logical to have that as a non-rotating space.

Or, mechanically simpler, you could use it as a storage locker and
spin down the rotating part when you want to
get into it. But then you'd need a reaction wheel (second contra-
rotating part?) or thrusters to handle the torque
of spin up/down...


According to Clarke, there is a flywheel that the centrifuge transfers
its energy to if it has to be stopped.
I assume this is counter-rotating with the centrifuge at all times to
keep torque from being transfered into the ship.
Again, this seems like wasted mass unless it's full of batteries or
something else that serves some useful function.

Or maybe it does rotate and HAL drops the food out of the selected
locker for you to catch.

Oh, wait, I got it! The central part should be a storage locker that
rotates the opposite direction as the outer crew ring.
To get in there, you spin them both down, to recreate your artificial
gravity you spin them both up at an appropriate rate,
using the torque on the lockers to counterbalance that on the crew
module.

Combine with the food dropping idea and HAL has another way to kill
the crew... flying cans of spam.


How about just revving the centrifuge up to around 100 rpm to stick them
to the floor, then depressurize the ship?
In fact, depressurizing the ship would be a lot easier than the way HAL
did it.
I think the main reason the big interior space on the centrifuge exists
is the same reason the stewardess walks up the wall in the
Aries...because it looks cool.

Pat

OM wrote:
...The other important difference is that the T-Bolts can't go into
planetary atmospheres, while the Starfuries can.

That's backwards.
Starfuries can't land on a planet but they can go into its outer
atmosphere, and did do that a couple of times on the show, IIRC.
Thunderbolts can go into atmospheres and land on planetary surfaces.

Pat

OM wrote:
...This was CGI, which should have made the money issue a bit less
impacting.


Way back in the pilot movie for B5 a ship was shown leaving the station
escorted by two ships that looked sort of like the "Narcissus" lifeboat
from "Alien".
These appeared to be B5 fighters of some sort, that were fleshed out as
Starfuries in the finished series.
I wonder if the original ships that were in the "Cobra Bays" were "Cobras"?

Pat

Andre Lieven wrote:

Exactly the opposite. The T-Bolts were the craft that attacked the
settlements on Mars. The Starfuries had to stay out of Epsilon 3's
atmosphere when it's defences fired on the research team's
shuttle.


There's nothing really stopping a Starfury going into the very outer
atmosphere of a planet if it cut its velocity enough in relation to the
planet's rotation not to experience entry heating, although it would
have to face pretty much straight down while hovering on its four
forward engines like was shown in that episode.
Landing is a real problem due to it needing to come down tail first, and
ending up resting on its ion trail suppressors mounted behind the four
rear engines...in any sort of a serous gravity field, that would crush them.
However in a low enough gravity field (like on a airless asteroid) that
might be doable.
Another concern would be that the atmosphere would screw up the
operation of the particle thrust ion engines themselves - causing shorting?
At least the side engines on the four pods run on some sort of high
energy solid propellant; as to whether the front engines are solid or
ion driven is not made completely clear in my references, but they seem
to point toward them being solid.
Here's JMS's comments on how Starfuries launch BTW:
http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/find/Answers/answ75.html
That's from this website: http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/lurker.html
....which has all the B5 questions categorized:
http://www.midwinter.com/cgi-bin/lurkfind

Pat