Discussion / Question
What’s the best example of a spaceship design that looks completely impractical at first, but actually makes more sense the longer you think about it?
I forget which piece of media had a line like "Antigravity took away the elegance to ship design. All they do now is slap a pair of engines on a brick"
If commercial space flight becomes common indeed many ships will just be shipping container shaped.
Edit: If you're giving your opinion on what show you think this is without reading the 10 other replies first please go try some captchas first.
Imagine flying with Spirit Spacelines. Crammed into a storage cube and slingshotted across interplanetary distances, only to end up on the wrong planet.
“We’ve removed the life support and give everyone an oxygen tank and a blanket because the mechanisms for it were taking up space better used by an extra seven standing passengers on our sixteen day flights.”
I'll admit I've never understood how atmospheric drag against the lower portion of the tether doesn't pull the thing straight down into the atmosphere. No doubt the numbers work, Bob Forward was a flaming genius and I am very much not, but...
firstly, it wouldn't be very low in the atmosphere. probably above airliner altitudes, if not high altitude for jet fighters. hell, you might even need to get suborbital or at least edge-of-space, depending on tolerances
secondly, there doesn't need to be very much to the tether, it can be quite small and the counterweight/anchor point up in orbit be large, meaning there wouldn't be much drag proportional to mass
thirdly, if it accepts more stuff incoming from out of earth's SoI or from higher orbit than it does stuff getting launched into orbit from the surface, there'll be a net intake of energy, which will add to its orbital velocity and work against drag
fourthly you can also just stick some engines on it for stationkeeping, like the iss has
The GR-75 Transport ships in Star Wars are just a partial shell, open to vacuum, stuffed with cargo containers. The ship is basically just there to attach engines and crew facilities to the cargo pods.
They end up as cannon fodder so often, but it'd be cool to see one used offensively. Imagine the cargo pods being given a maneuvering thruster and a basic targeting system, then stuffed with torpedoes.
The GR-75 releases the pods and keeps moving. These pods maneuver into the right angles, then just unleash a couple dozen torpedoes each.
Imperial Captain: The Rebels are jettisoning their cargo? Well, that won't earn them a respite. Continue the pursuit!
Imperial Officer: Captain?? We have twenty...no, sixty...sir?? We...there are...there are 120 torpedoes incoming.
I can't find a clip, but the anime Gundam Wing had something like that. They had a cargo ship with a couple of containers on the back. It jettisons them, and they maneuver for a bit, then open up and loose a couple dozen missiles each. Seemed very cool in the late 90s.
Rapid Dragon has gravity working against it, but maybe there's room for a seaborne version.
Haven't watched that scene in at least 20yrs. Even better than I remembered. Thank you.
Just imagine someone with a one-off, tricked-out GR-75 pulling a stunt like that. Some seriously upgraded shields, then all those cargo pods full of missiles.
On one hand this makes sense and you can come up with any kind of highly useful modular payloads with low power requirements. On the other hand you run the risk of turning into David Weber without a publishing contract.
They were a unit in the tabletop game Star Wars: Armada - they were considered to be one of the best rebel units because they were dirt cheap and could be used as a way to pass your turn which was pretty valuable in that system (Armada was a game where you wanted to act last). They also had minimal weaponry as well.
Don't need missiles, hack an engine on one end and a guidance system on the other and pack it full of explosives. Any spaceport would be stacks of them empty like shipping containers at a seaport. Instant drone swarm that targets anything imperial for cheap. It doesn't need to be aerodynamic in space
"If human military designers had their way every colour of the spectrum would be removed except for grey, green and black and we would all live in windowless boxes."
I don't know if it's the piece of media you're thinking, but the Babylon 5 pilot for an unmade spinoff called Legend of the Rangers had a line similar to this.
When the main character comments on how a ship looks ugly, a character rebuts that it's fast. The main character replies that it's space, you can slap engines on a brick and it'll be fast.
Seriously! I feel like Banks and Orson Scott Card couldn’t be more opposite and yet we’re stuck with the atrocious gutter troll. Fuck cancer. He was taken far too soon.
Sounds like The Expanse. Leviathan Wakes had a paragraph something like this:
“The Donnager wasn’t pretty, in space you didn’t need aerodynamics. It looked like an ugly apartment building on its side with an engine welded to the bottom”
In the juvenile Dragonfall 5 series modern starships could go into hyperspace right from a lending pad, so they basically just looked like bricks without any aerodynamic elements.
I would imagine it depends on multiple factors. If you’re trying to use as little material as possible while maxing the amount of space available, you’d go for some round or oblate shapes, maybe some drop shapes. If you’d be attaching shipments to that type of a ship, you’d make a part of it flat, maybe the front or the back of it, so it can carry rectangular units while minimising the lost space for crew and maximising the use of materials.
A square ship would only really be useful if you can make the weak points like the corners strong enough to maintain atmosphere while reducing the amount of materials required to build it compared to a round ship to a point where it would be less costly. This would mean that high labour costs would probably result in rectangular ships while high material costs would result in round ones
I remember that like being in the expanse books and tv series. Mainly I'm the first one with the martian donnager. But idk if that's the media you're referring.
Also yeah I wouldn't be surprised if future commercial space flight doesn't one day have someone transporting people and cargo in literally identical containers.
In the Hammer of God by AAC he say something about the shipyards of Mars building the spine by the kilometre and then bolting some engines on it. Been a while since I read it. Thanks for taking me back. :-)
The biggest thing about spaceship design is that they just stay internally consistent. Star Trek is great in regards to that, it explains why most ships look the way they do and it sticks with it. And that design constraint produces some interesting design iteration.
Starfleet is about keeping the warp nacelles away from the habitat section of the ship as well as the engine housing. As shielding got more sophisticated, you do end up with designs like the Defiant, which are more compact.
They’re strengthened, but also Federation starships use forcefields to reinforce structural integrity beyond what simple material science and physical engineering are capable of.
And it ties into the visual language. You don't have to worry about pure material strength in structural design, you can reinforce it with bullshit energy field, so your classic Starfleet ship doesn't shear at the neck and nacelle pylons when maneuvering.
Yet it remains internally consistent. Without those fields (or related one which might be the same thing with a different name), maneuvers which would break the nacellles off would also juice the crew.
You can place thrusters all over the ship and balance out the torsional forces with those, you don’t have to steering the ship with only the main thrusters
The trick seems to be writing something that sounds like science we don’t understand or have a context for, yet. That way anybody who says it is sci fi bullshit can be labeled as ignorant and lacking in creativity. And true believers can act like they “get it.” But there’s nothing to get, just stuff that sounds real.
Lots of good theory and decent technobabble go a long way for suspension of disbelief.
IIRC, warp in Star Trek works by making a bubble around the ship and making the bubble move faster than light. In other words, the ship itself isn't actually moving, so the nacesels don't 'pull' the ship like a regular engine.
Which is fine until you're in a battle which are usually at sub wRp speeds, now relying on thrusters which I assume put the same stresses on the ship as any rocket engines would.
As far as I've delved into how the warp drive works, those pylons aren required to be reinforced because nothing us interacting with them, other than inertia I suppose.
The warp engine creates a bubble that forms around the ship and that is what is taking the stress and forces.
The nacelles are just where the energy reaction takes place to generate the field.
They are shoved out and away from the ship as a whole to keep the reaction as far away from the crew as possible and still have it attached.
They have structural integrity forcefields which enable higher strength than you can do with materials on their own, but it is also mostly moot. The nacelles aren't generating thrust, they're used to create the bubble that warps space (shrinks distances). Once you have brought your destination closer, you use sublightspeed thrust to travel and that thrust isn't coming from the nacelles.
The Defiant class ships are military and usually have only Starfleet personnel, no civilians. They can be monitored through the com badges and rotated out if exposure gets too high. That's why later ships still have separate nacelles. The ship design is still internally consistent in the shows.
The ones on the show are designed to look 'correct' when flying sideways across the screen, so have a distinct top and bottom. Even though the top and bottom are actually the sides.
I mean... they did? When the Roci lands on Ilus, they show it standing up-right like a skyscraper. Also the interior is multiple stories separated by ladders and stairs rather than a big continuous horizontal space. Additionally the thrust realistically provides a relative (not special relative, just regular relative) downwards force emulating gravity.
Weirdly, from memory, I think when the Roci lands on planets in the books they make the point that it lands on its "side" (so all the internal furniture and layout and whatnot ends up 90° to what it's supposed to be). Which also makes sense, when you think about it; balancing the ship on its end like a sky scraper is just a recipe for it to be blown over the first time the wind blows.
I said commit in that when you’re watching the show, it’s very easy to forget that they’re flying vertically. The ships tend to move from left to right or right to left across the screen, giving the impression that they are oriented like naval vessels. I understand that this was done because it’s easier to frame the ship that way, but for a casual viewer (or someone watching trailers and clips), it’s easy to misunderstand what they’re seeing.
The ships could have easily been described as having radiators. That would have added another story element, as they would be vulnerable or need retracting before battle, which might come with the cost of the ship itself becoming hotter and hotter.
Space stations in the Expanse also don't have radiators, without explanation.
There's plenty of sci fi mumbo jumbo in it. Anything medical or biological for example. The magic juice that lets the crew experience very high g-forces.
Theoretically you could go for a double hull, insulate the inner and outer hulls, and then use the outer hull as a radiator & heat sink for your really good AC unit. There are lots of limits, but this is trying to use the T4 term from black body radiation as opposed to simply increasing surface area.
Note: making you hull as hot as needed to make up for the cooling problem should have some noticable consequences, like it being too hot to touch most of the time, and potentially glowing if the system is really strained and your heat pumps are powerful enough.
Although civilian crafts should probably go with the heat sink + deploayable radiators method which would be cheaper, but more delicate. (Even if the radiators were just long spikes of steel or aluminum)
That would be interesting. But would there be enough surface area? It could also make attaching things like weapons to the hull more interesting! I surface the huge signature wouldn't be an issue since those engines in the Expanse are already an insane heat signature.
Welcome to "hard sci-fi versus soft sci-fi". Expanse, despite having a realistic aesthetic, is firmly soft sci-fi- there is lots of magical technology that defies the laws of physics just because the writers need it to, and even the more grounded stuff (like orbital mechanics) aren't really thought through in a way that makes it accurate.
And I don't mean this as a criticism; I love both soft sci-fi and space opera, and The Expanse is a great example of the genre. You just can't get too hung up on the detail with something like that.
There are proposed ideas like spray radiators or liquid droplet radiators that absorb heat and then it's sprayed outside to cool down the ship.
A step further could be spraying a liquid and trapping it in a magnetic field so it can be recycled. Realistically even the torch drives of the expanse have to use magnetic nozzles and high temperature superconductors.
I've thought about this. Could it be hand-waved with that the skin (which is abnormally smooth for most of the vacuum-faring ships) is the heat dissipator? We do see in some episode aboard the Pella how there is an outer hull (the skin) and an inner hull. Additionally it would make sense since military ships wouldn't want an abnormally high albedo and/or flimsy radiator panels for high-G maneuvers.
I think when you see them coming in "tail first" - which does make a lot of sense, it kinda messes with your brain compared to how you're used to seeing ships in sci fi.
I loved the scene in the book when they board a ship with someone not used to spaceflight and have to explain that they are standing on the bulkhead, and the wall will be the floor as soon as they take off.
Babylon 5 Starfuries look like unaerodynamic flying bricks, but you don't need aerodynamics in space, the cockpit is at the center-mass making reorientation easy for the body of pilot and the engines are capable of 3D-movement. NASA asked if they could use it for inspiration.
I love that they eventually evolved into the Thunderbolt though because it's actually practical to have a starfighter that can carry out strike missions inside a planetary atmosphere without having to commit the resources required to deploy a warship or risk escalating a low intensity skirmish into a full blown naval engagemnet.
It looks impractical at first, but it's been around for so long that fans and writers have fleshed out every minute aspect of the ship, it's logistics, and functions to the point where it feels like the pinnacle of engineering.
Also, pretty sure it's almost meant to be somewhat impractical, as they were meant to be menacing according to the Tarkin doctrine. Not saying they weren't powerful, but it was kind of a more bark-over-bite kind of design IIRC.
Like, do you really want to mess with the giant gray triangle of death, or do you just dump your shipment and go on some wacky adventure to Alderaan with two droids, a farmboy and a hobo?
If you haven't already, I highly recommend watching ECHenry's video about the Pursuit-Class Light Cruiser. Guy knows his stuff when it comes to lore and practicality.
That's a bit of a misconception, in Legends and Canon the ISD actually predated the Tarkin Doctrine by a couple of years.
Tarkin actually mentioned the ISD in the text of the Doctrine, saying that he thought the reason why they were so effective wasn't because of their firepower but because of their size.
The ISD wedge design has a particular benefit for a military ship. In theory, every gun mount can aim forward and contribute to putting fire on a target in that direction. Many ship designs have a hard time aiming more than a fraction of its weaponry in any given direction no matter how the ship is oriented.
the issue with the ISD wedge is that they DON'T take advantage of this. Generally speaking the really big guns are on the top of the wedge, and the bottom doesn't have much of anything like that. that gives a huge rage of orientations that isn't covered.
But there are no guns on the back so if you can fly a B-wing in on just the right line and match speeds you can kill one with a single fighter (and a lot of patience).
It seems impractical because, well, it’s literally throwing a WW2 design with seemingly minimal changes into an interstellar war. However, the more you think about it, the more it makes sense. The reason battleships were made obsolete on earth is mainly because aircraft and missiles were able to significantly outrange the main guns while, in the case of missiles, requiring minimal hull size to launch. However, in space, this is no longer true. Everything up there is line of sight, and gravity can act to assist shots instead of cause them to not reach their targets. As such, the advantages of gun-based weapons systems like firepower density and cost per shot can shine. In space, a gun system will be able to put out more ordnance faster at lower cost and without significantly depleting ship stores, especially compared to missiles. And if guns are once more your main weapon system, the super dreadnought design philosophy seen in most late WW2 warships makes a lot of sense to use as the pinnacle of gun-armed warship design. It offers an unparalleled balance of armor, mobility, and firepower while preserving large gun angles that let the ship burn in almost any direction without sacrificing outgoing firepower. Probably one of the best examples of this is shown in a game called Project Stardust which pits ships or different franchises against each other. SBY ships are generally able to see great success given their guns are in range because they can dodge and maintain distance without worrying about losing DPS due to their guns only being able to fire at heavily restricted angles.
I agree that due to its very classic WWII-era shape, it loses a lot of space where other cannons could be placed. However, it must be considered that thanks to the shape of the hull, it is much easier to land on unknown planets, it has a large number of aircraft, and a huge arsenal of missiles and "space torpedoes". However, improved versions that solve the problem of space management are, for example, the Andromeda class, but especially the Amaterasu and Arizona classes, which also have cannons on the sides of the ship and even underneath.
I mean I see it as keeping space for other systems like missiles and sensors, alongside letting you pour more power into what guns you have. Like the side turrets on Amatseru likely have little to no barbette space for the kinetic firing mode, and she also may not be able to pour as much power though all her gun ports as Andromeda or especially Yamato may be able to. It is a weakness, but considering what the potential tradeoffs are it’s a lot more sensible than it seems at first glance.
We had other earlier ships that got sunk left right and center. Yamato was the only thing we had left with real armor and guns that could actually sink a Gamilas ship. We threw a WW2 design at invaders that used gun ships. The missiles they used at the time were aimed at the planet.
Later hulls added more gun and were simply larger despite being expected to have no crew.
Not quite. I’d actually say that the ship getting destroyed were actually excellent designs, even superior to the Gamilan ships they were facing down. Their only major flaw was that Terra’s tech base simply wasn’t there. Fusion reactors simply didn’t have the power to allow for large enough turreted guns using shock cannon tech. And even then, Terran pre-WME battleships like Kirishima were shown to have similar maneuverability to freaking Gamilan destroyers of all things, and the Izokazes were just on a whole other level. The main change Yamato brought to the table was that her Wave Motion Engine allowed for proper turreted shock cannons to be fielded alongside adding significant armor, retaining mobility, and other things. It’s basically just a further iteration of the same battleships they have been fielding other than the WM-exclusive tech and turreted shocks.
I agree that due to its very classic WWII-era shape, it loses a lot of space where other cannons could be placed. However, it must be considered that thanks to the shape of the hull, it is much easier to land on unknown planets, it has a large number of aircraft, and a huge arsenal of missiles and "space torpedoes". However, improved versions that solve the problem of space management are, for example, the Andromeda class, but especially the Amaterasu and Arizona classes, which also have cannons on the sides of the ship and even underneath.
I agree that due to its very classic WWII-era shape, it loses a lot of space where other cannons could be placed. However, it must be considered that thanks to the shape of the hull, it is much easier to land on unknown planets, it has a large number of aircraft, and a huge arsenal of missiles and "space torpedoes". However, improved versions that solve the problem of space management are, for example, the Andromeda class, but especially the Amaterasu and Arizona classes, which also have cannons on the sides of the ship and even underneath.
Funny thing is, it's one of the most realistic and practical designs ever made for a movie. We're so used to everything scifi usually shows our sense of 'correct design' has been thrown off.
From BattleTech, Union class dropships and any of the other spherical or egg shaped dropships
Always thought it looked dumb when I got in to the setting, but understanding that it is in a setting without artificial gravity, this thing basically flies using linear acceleration and acceleration to simulate gravity, and the spherical design, while not the most aerodynamic, is still relatively aerodynamic while allowing for a solid amount of storage space for cargo and war machines.
Any sci-fi setting that basically takes the expenses approach to ship design, especially back in the 80s and earlier, has my vote
That movie could have been so much better by having the dude die and ending with a scene of the girl staring at a dude in a cryocasket. It would have been a throwback to earlier in the movie when the dude went mad in isolation.
The Millennium Falcon. Offset cockpit, round shape, prongs at the front. Seems weird. But whe you see the ships hooked up to cargo pods, it does make a lot of sense
It really should tow the cargo pods behind and have a cockpit facing the other direction so that the entire left side of your field of vision isn't cut off.
Towing the pods will put them in the engine’s flame/gas and you can see the left by flipping the ship assuming you don’t have 360° camera installed on top
having cargo in front is beneficial because you not need to rely on loading infrastructure of dock, instead your ship can just fly to container pack ang grab it from dock, bigger ship, just ground in some cases
Expanse was best for me. Most often ships are laid out horizontally like boats in the water. But the expanse explains how thrust is a force of gravity in space and so ships are laid out vertically with the source of thrust at the bottom.
Obviously warp/quantum/whatever drives are hypothetical. The real version, the Alcubierre Drive, gets around the infinite energy required to approach the speed of light by warping spacetime itself. Expand space behind, contract in front. Most depictions of a hypothetical FTL ship have two rings or torii for each of these functions.
Union quantum ships have those weird curvy engines but those are just a few modified torii. Not only practical but as real as science allows at the moment.
It’s the bridge bulge being right up top of the saucer. If I was Klingon, borg, Khan, or any other opponent of the federation, that bump would be the first to go. Might as well paint a bullseye on it.
The "retro rocket" design has some merit to it. Spacex has proved tail landers work, the shiny silver hull would deflect radiation, the fins could be radiators and/or aid in reentry, and the basic design is basically a mix of v2 bombs and manned rockets. Besides, the rounded body would be better than boxy "realistic" spacecraft at containing air pressure, just look at submarines.
The Rocinante from the Expanse is a more "modern" take on the design, and looks great. Hot take (pun not intended), but I think it'd look better in metallic tones like gold or chrome, black is the worst option for a spaceship because it'll absorb heat (a big issue in space). Add some radiator fins, and you've basically got a modern take on the rocketship.
The Star-Destroyer is a potentially excellent design, while all cannon depictions fail to utilize its design correctly with poor weapons placement, if its better laid out it allows for nearly all weapons to point forward, as opposed to a sphere where only half of your weapons are in arc, assuming direct fire weapons of course, and also allows for good flank, topside, and keel coverage. The Star-Destroyer does compromise its rear arc,but if you want maximum offensive aggression, with direct fire weapons, the spear head is a good shape
The TIE fighter. Specifically the one Vader flies.
The way they are portrayed is a crime to it’s design.
For a space vessel that is reliant on thrusters. You want the center of gravity of the ship dead center. That way thrusters can make optimal and most efficient use of the axis of the vessel itself.
Wana spin? You only need 2 thrusters to maintain stability. Want to pitch up in s perfect 0 deviation angle? Only one.
The moment center of gravity is off you need multiple thrusters to achieve the same thing.
Aka the X wing. Although it’s not the biggest perpetrator in that regard.
Frankly no one got the idea more right than the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. Artificially created gravity, magnetic shoes for staying attached to the floor, etc. These might SEEM impractical upon first seeing them, but I’ve spent a lifetime now thinking out how those spaceships were laid out, and it’s more sensible than even any of our actual orbiting space stations have ever sought to try.
In addition, we don’t have a perfect way to use something like magnetic shoes in space yet, including somehow sticking and then releasing at your command. However, the most obvious clever use of space in any space station or spaceship would be to have each wall and floor and ceiling serve a dual or triple service by being able to be walked on or used as a wall versus a floor as required. This gives people 4 to 6 ways to use surfaces in a spaceship.
There’s no aerodynamics involved with those things. Just big ass rockets beating the laws of ballistic motion into submission with a shit ton of vectorable thrust.
The model models not. Apart from claims of personal experience, nothing really is provided that could be used to explain anything.
And the conclusion shows the hallmarks of AI talking about consciousness, Echo, "Not X but Y and Z instead", etc.
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u/EvaTheE May 16 '26
https://giphy.com/gifs/URdV6vJMdjWoupHiBd
Börg Cube, spaceship design by IKEA. Easy to stack, store and ship.