In Response To: I'm not an artist. (Quirel)
: I suck at drawing. Really.
: And I don't have the patience to sit down with pen and pencil to make
: soemthing look really good, unless I'm drafting something.
: What I am is an engineer. An engineer with nearly unlimited access to
: Solidworks Design Studio.
: And without further ado, I present the Department of Commercial Shipping
: Automated Cargo Ship from Contact Harvest.
:
:
: She may not look like much, but she's got it where it counts, kid.
: The Aerogroup-International MT-3400 has seen continuous service since the DCS
: purchased 500 in 2432. The slipspace drive and the reactor were built by
: Solar Dynamics and General Electric, respectively. The whole unit is
: simple, rugged, and can run forever if it is given proper maintenance.
:
: Above, we can see the Propulsion Pod. Note the massive hydrazine fuel tanks
: and the maneuvering jets. For scale, that little divot in the lower middle
: of the picture is an airlock.
: The rings around the rocket nozzle are radiator fins. They often have to work
: overtime to keep the propulsion pod cool, and are frequently replaced due
: to damage from space debris. A more complicated system was tried, but was
: prone to breaking (And crashing my computer)
: The maneuvering jets are mounted on a tower that can rotate 180 degrees about
: the long axis. In this position, the jets are either spinning the ship up
: to full gravity or are slowing it down.
: For those of you who are worried about the exposed fuel lines, it would
: appear that some lazy mechanic has removed them and failed to re-install
: them after he was done working.
: But why hydrazine, you ask? Why on Earth would Aerogroup-International (or
: Statten) choose to fuel these ships with a fuel that is toxic and falling
: out of use?
: Well, Hydrazine is cheap to manufacture in those outer colonies, but better
: yet, it can be run through a fuel cell to power the ship if the reactor
: ever fails. Engineers just love that kind of dual use.
:
: Here we have a better look at the scale of the propulsion pods and the cargo
: containers. As you can see, the pod is quite the little workhorse.
: The mottled red surface is ballistic foam which protects the cargo containers
: from debris and micrometeorites. It also comes in orange, blue, crimson,
: green, yellow, brown, powder blue, white, ivory, lilly, and a light creamy
: color that is definitely not another shade of white.
:
: The sensor module at the front of the ship contains a MASER and recievers.
: The protective covering has been removed from the MASER for illustration.
:
: Nothing sexier than an exploded view.
: You can see the elevator that grants access to the cargo containers, the
: docking collars on the propulsion pod, and why the cargo containers are
: often called 'barns'.
: See the rings on the barn roofs? Those are magnetic clamps, which hold them
: together... just about all the time. Quite often, the barns are dropped
: down a space elevator as a sextet, and are only broken up on the ground.
: A word on gravity: Wheras Contact Harvest only mentioned one cargo container,
: it later noted that the containers had artificial gravity. Since
: artificial gravity plating was developed after first contact, (or at least
: wasn't feasible for small ships) Statten obviously meant that artificial
: gravity was being produced by rotation.
: This also makes it difficult for pirates, who have to match velocities and
: dock with a rotating ship. Some prefer to hack into the ship and get it to
: stop, some disable the magnetic clamps and chase down the cargo
: containers, and some (Like Jackals) just select a random container and
: blast it until the whole ship stops rotating.
: Because of the value Insurrectionists put in the slipspace drive, many
: pirates are after the propulsion pod itself. The pod is automated with
: only a simple computer, so many attempt to hack it at the dock and send it
: to Insurrectionist hideouts. Fortunately, each dock is equipped with a
: CMA-registered smart AI who are on the lookout for such tampering.
: The first successful hijack from the dock was performed by Kaiser Sergei, who
: introduced a viral subroutine into hundreds of DCS ships while posing as a
: CMA technician.
: Seeing as how he did this on Harvest in December of 2524, his haul was
: understandibly limited, on the order of half a dozen ships.
:
: And here we get another look as to how they go together. If you look closely
: at the corners of the elevator, you'll see the electromagnets that secure
: the propulsion pod to the cargo containers.
: If the cargo containers had any modules like a heating/refrigeration unit or
: an atmosphere processor, the large extrusions would have sockets to draw
: power from the propulsion pod. Since these are bog-standard barns, they
: only draw power along the spine.
: Also: Freud was right.
:
: The containers have a control cabin that can be accessed via the elevator,
: which runs along the hull of the containers. The red indents are access
: panels that allow a mechanic to work on the electronics in the spine of
: the container.
: But what does the inside look like?
: You'll have to find out later!
Very cool. It's actually very akin to a design I was thinking about for how you would incorporate multiple cargo containers--great minds think alike, I guess.
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