[Contest] The Next Generation of Space Travel

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Re: [CONTEST] The Next Generation of Space Travel

Post by Knobby Plastic » Thu Jul 28, 2011 6:08 am

Please don't get me wrong, the Space Elevator is a legitimate and feasible entry. And I'm not jealous. I thought it looked vaguely steampunk because of the spires and arches. I'm not saying that it is steampunk just that, at least for me, it conjures up images of large boilers, Victorian architecture, and men in top hats.
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Re: [CONTEST] The Next Generation of Space Travel

Post by Pilotdude » Thu Jul 28, 2011 6:47 am

vynsane wrote:
Pilotdude wrote:Because you do not have a counter weight, you used the top of the elvator, the centripital (spelling?) force excerted on the station would give it the effect of upside-down gavity
Nah, it's in orbit - there would still be 0 gravity whatever the orientation of the celestial castle.

The way i understand one of these elevators to work is that the centripital forces of the earth, pulling the counter weight, in this case the structure would balance the weight evenly on the cable, making this structure work.

I am sure all of the lego scientist have figured out a way for this one to work with 0 gravity though.
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Re: [CONTEST] The Next Generation of Space Travel

Post by Brick & Blue » Thu Jul 28, 2011 8:17 am

We could technically build a space elevator right now, the problem is we haven't made a ribbon thin / strong enough to make it work.

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Re: [CONTEST] The Next Generation of Space Travel

Post by legitimatealex » Thu Jul 28, 2011 8:19 am

Knobby Plastic wrote:Please don't get me wrong, the Space Elevator is a legitimate and feasible entry. And I'm not jealous. I thought it looked vaguely steampunk because of the spires and arches. I'm not saying that it is steampunk just that, at least for me, it conjures up images of large boilers, Victorian architecture, and men in top hats.
Hmmm...I should have thrown a top hat somewhere in there :lol: They make everything better. Well that clears the steampunk comment up for me.

Also I don't think everyone is jealous, its just an idea that doesn't get thrown out a lot and the specifics are still something that get debated today by people who are interested in it. It's not like there is an example we can look to of people attempting to build a space elevator from before and say 'well look at what they did there' as we can do with a space shuttle. It's all theoretical until someone actually starts building.
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Re: [CONTEST] The Next Generation of Space Travel

Post by Brick & Blue » Thu Jul 28, 2011 11:17 am

legitimatealex wrote: It's all theoretical until someone actually starts building.
Which is the case with everything ever built. :lol:

The point of space travel is to think outside the box. The point of this contest is to pick the thing to replace the space shuttle or some future form of space travel. Most thought of ships, but there is always one that htinks outside the box.

We will see who wins next week.

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Re: [CONTEST] The Next Generation of Space Travel

Post by vynsane » Thu Jul 28, 2011 12:22 pm

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SpacePlaneOne by vynsane, on Flickr

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SpacePlaneOne - feathered re-entry by vynsane, on Flickr

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SpacePlaneOne by vynsane, on Flickr
Dateline, Spaceport America, October 4, 2024

On the 20th anniversary of the Ansari X Prize-winning flight of SpaceShipOne, and the 67th anniversary of the launch of Sputnik, Scaled Composites and Virgin Galactic have achieved one of the most elusive accomplishments ever - the development and successful orbital flight of a single-stage-to-orbit (SSTO) vehicle.

Derisively referred to as "The Unicorn" by project detractors due to the near-mythically elusive nature of a successful SSTO craft, the monicker was eventually used as the unofficial name of the craft, also known as SpacePlaneOne. Unlike its predecessors, SpacePlaneOne needs no mothership to carry it through atmospheric flight to the edge of space. Thanks to the newly-developed Variable Cycle Engine technology it employs, the craft can take off like any conventional airplane, powered by standard turbojet thrust at sub-sonic speeds, transferring to ramjet thrust during transonic speed, cycling through to scramjet thrust above the sound barrier and finally to full rocket-powered thrust outside of the atmosphere.

After successfully breaking the boundary to space as its predecessors SpaceShipOne through SpaceShipTen have so many times before, SpacePlaneOne made three orbits before docking with the International Space Station to prove its capabilities in that area, then returned to the atmosphere and powered flight via the unique and innovative "feathered re-entry" system featured on all previous SpaceShip designs.
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Re: [CONTEST] The Next Generation of Space Travel

Post by legitimatealex » Thu Jul 28, 2011 1:00 pm

It looks very wooshable Vynsane : ) I totally thought this was something real until I read the article and actually looked at the dates. Is there anything special on the bottom? I'm not seeing a bottom shot on your photostream.
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Re: [CONTEST] The Next Generation of Space Travel

Post by vynsane » Thu Jul 28, 2011 1:25 pm

legitimatealex wrote:It looks very wooshable Vynsane : )
Yeah, it totally is ;)
I totally thought this was something real until I read the article and actually looked at the dates.
HA, yeah, I wanted it to sound as realistic as possible. It's based on actual craft that have made sub-orbital flights - I wanted to make this as a natural progression of what we're seeing in this day and age. I actually looked at past press releases for SpaceShipOne and other Scaled Composite craft before writing my description.
Is there anything special on the bottom? I'm not seeing a bottom shot on your photostream.
There actually is a little bit of SNOT work around the engine, but the overall bottom is unimpressive, just a bunch of plate tubes, so I focused on the top in the pics I uploaded.
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Re: [CONTEST] The Next Generation of Space Travel

Post by legitimatealex » Thu Jul 28, 2011 7:46 pm

Research always helps in both the design and the description. The colors on your ship remind me of the Fighter Jet Creator set.
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Re: [CONTEST] The Next Generation of Space Travel

Post by vynsane » Thu Jul 28, 2011 7:53 pm

I actually cannibalized what was left of the Creator Sonic Boom set along with the flying car I built last year to gather the pieces necessary to build this. I did a sort of 'design sketch' in LDD before-hand, without any preconception of color blocking, then followed the generated instructions, finding the pieces I needed in colors that I had a large number of. Thanks to Atlantis, Space Police 3 and last year's Creator offerings, I have a LOT of red and white, hence the colors seen here.
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Re: [CONTEST] The Next Generation of Space Travel

Post by mvas11 » Fri Jul 29, 2011 1:59 pm

Here is our entry for the next generation of space by me and my 5 year old son. We had a blast using our imagination for a space colony. It was cool seeing what he pictured in his mind come out in creation form. The piece count is just under 100 pieces. All pieces are lego.
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Re: [CONTEST] The Next Generation of Space Travel

Post by lukeskywalker » Fri Jul 29, 2011 2:02 pm

Good job

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Re: [CONTEST] The Next Generation of Space Travel

Post by vynsane » Fri Jul 29, 2011 5:00 pm

Very cool micro colony - I'm jealous of that crater baseplate...
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Re: [CONTEST] The Next Generation of Space Travel

Post by Pilotdude » Fri Jul 29, 2011 6:49 pm

I built virgin galactics V4 (so i guess we have simmilar models) just have to make a few additions and take pics and upload. I got really busy this week and it has taken longer than i expected.
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Re: [CONTEST] The Next Generation of Space Travel

Post by legitimatealex » Fri Jul 29, 2011 8:27 pm

vynsane wrote:Very cool micro colony - I'm jealous of that crater baseplate...
Second to both sentiments.
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Re: [CONTEST] The Next Generation of Space Travel

Post by Luciant » Fri Jul 29, 2011 11:01 pm

LOL, I was thinking "Where did he get that wonderful baseplate" =)
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Re: [CONTEST] The Next Generation of Space Tra

Post by hatcher » Sat Jul 30, 2011 4:05 pm

So since legitamatealex chose the same concept that I did (a space elevator) and his looked pretty good, I decided to go with my plan b model. I call it the I.S.E. Columbus.

I.S.E. stands for International Space Explorer. The Columbus is a long term voyager that is to take humans out of our solar system and on to a hopefully inhabitable planet many light years from home. The Columbus was built in the year 2134, and the name was chosen by school children writing essays explaining why the ship should be named what they chose. The name Columbus was chosen in honour of the man credited with discovering the American continents in 1492. The ship is quite large, over a kilometer in length. The ship is made up of 3 rotating drums, a rather large engine, and 2 sets of wings, one set oriented "up/down" and the other "left/right" (arbitrary designations as there is no up or down in space). Each rotating drum is mostly storage for all of the materials needed for such a long trip. Since the Columbus' top speed is around .5 c (or about half the speed of light) a journey to a star 10 light years away would take about 20 years. Therefore, the majority of each drum contains food, water, fuel, air etc. The outer layers of each drum are the crew quarters, where the simulated gravity would be closest to earth normal.

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IMG_4979 by hatcherman, on Flickr

The nose of the ship is the command and control dome, with a communications/sensor array. On the wings, there are other domes that have various functions. Two of the domes are actually fully contained detachable habitats that could be used as either emergency escape pods or as colonies on planets that don't have breathable atmosphere. The other domes would be science labs, manufacturing facilities, medical facilities, recreation, animal and crop production, etc.

Image
IMG_4980 by hatcherman, on Flickr

On the "left" and "right" oriented wings we see two docking platforms for smaller vessels. Since the Columbus can not land (when it reaches its destination it will become a space station) it needs support vessels to assist it. The smaller vessel on the "left" platform is a mining shuttle, used to harvest raw materials from asteroids, and to make repairs (if necessary) to the Columbus while on route. The larger vessel on the "right" platform is a shuttle like vessel capable of landing on planets and then taking off to return to the Columbus. It will only be used once they arrive at their destination.

Image
IMG_4981 by hatcherman, on Flickr

The bottom of the Columbus shows us the engines, the most powerful engines ever built. Also seen are two solar collectors on the bottom of the "up" and "down" wings. They are only useful while the Columbus is in a solar system, but they will provide supplemental power to the ship as it leaves our solar system, and when it arrives at its destination. I'm not sure what the main power source will be 100 years from now, hopefully some kind of clean nuclear fission.

(Here's a link to my photostream to see the fourth picture (the bottom of the ship)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/hatcherman ... 991495405/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I was inspired for this design from a number of places, but I will admit I got the idea for the spinning drums to simulate gravity from the movie 2001. Even though after watching it about 30 times I still don't get the ending, the Discovery (the ship) still rules as the best realistic portrayal of space travel in a movie that I have ever seen.

I got a lot of the parts from the Star Destroyer (mini fig scale) set and some of you might recognize the "Domes" as being buzz droid heads. I was going to try to make it larger, but the scale was just too daunting. It has approximately 75 pieces. Hope you like it.
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Re: [CONTEST] The Next Generation of Space Tra

Post by legitimatealex » Sat Jul 30, 2011 11:48 pm

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/s ... 799369.ece

Even though this piece of news is quite old (3 years now) its the most recent news peice I could find on someone actually trying to build a space elevator. The Japanese price tag was only at $5 billion US. I think that's quite optimistic but then again if any one was going to credit Japan with anything its definitely that they bring the world the futuristic inventions. The article does a good job of explaining everything about a space elevator though, stressing that this is entirely doable with what we have, its just the largest engineering feat ever.
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Re: [CONTEST] The Next Generation of Space Travel

Post by Brick & Blue » Sun Jul 31, 2011 9:43 am

mvas11 wrote:Here is our entry for the next generation of space by me and my 5 year old son. We had a blast using our imagination for a space colony. It was cool seeing what he pictured in his mind come out in creation form. The piece count is just under 100 pieces. All pieces are lego.
*Shakes fist*

Darn you! Darn you!!!

I was hoping to be the only one using an Xpod piece. :lol:

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Re: [CONTEST] The Next Generation of Space Tra

Post by Brick & Blue » Sun Jul 31, 2011 11:37 am

Gods I hate Flickr...

Anyways my entry has 236 pieces (Why does that matter?) and is called the X42 BW.

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For more pictures that aren't badly cut out on one side...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/9824337@N0 ... 200069997/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

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