One for the Trek fan

Kenny_10_Bellys · Post by **Kenny_10_Bellys** » 2003-03-04 05:50am

Hmm, the bay doors are an approximation of those on the shuttle in the start sequence, and also pretty close to what you'd expect of an SSTO ship. The surrent shuttle gets away with it's relatively large cargo bay as it carries it's fuel in a droptank and has boosters, whereas this is more a spaceplane and fully 'single stage to orbit'. If you look at pictures of the X-33 or Venture Star you'll see the doors are not as big as they might be, due to the fact that so much room was needed for the tanks and engines. I actually did a search and found some Boeing concepts from 1969 which show their 'Drawbridge' shuttle design, a huge ship with wings that fold down from the side like a drawbridge when it was due to land. The best part was that it was designed to also carry the huge fuel tank IN the bay, then eject it if it needed to, or bring it back if possible. Very elegant solution, and a monster of a ship.

On a purely 3D tech note, the doors wouldn't work on this right now anyway unless I flatten the top out considerably more than it currently is, there's too much of a curve along the hinge-line. The bay was actually positioned a bit further forward than it is now, but the curvature is even worse there so I moved it back. I dont have to have the doors open in the movie so i dont particularly care, as a movie vehicle it does what it was designed to do.

Post by **Rob Wilson** » 2003-03-04 12:34pm

Kenny_10_Bellys wrote:Hmm, the bay doors are an approximation of those on the shuttle in the start sequence, and also pretty close to what you'd expect of an SSTO ship. The surrent shuttle gets away with it's relatively large cargo bay as it carries it's fuel in a droptank and has boosters, whereas this is more a spaceplane and fully 'single stage to orbit'. If you look at pictures of the X-33 or Venture Star you'll see the doors are not as big as they might be, due to the fact that so much room was needed for the tanks and engines. I actually did a search and found some Boeing concepts from 1969 which show their 'Drawbridge' shuttle design, a huge ship with wings that fold down from the side like a drawbridge when it was due to land. The best part was that it was designed to also carry the huge fuel tank IN the bay, then eject it if it needed to, or bring it back if possible. Very elegant solution, and a monster of a ship.

On a purely 3D tech note, the doors wouldn't work on this right now anyway unless I flatten the top out considerably more than it currently is, there's too much of a curve along the hinge-line. The bay was actually positioned a bit further forward than it is now, but the curvature is even worse there so I moved it back. I dont have to have the doors open in the movie so i dont particularly care, as a movie vehicle it does what it was designed to do.

Ah, didn't think of the Fuel tanks. Still if that bulge were your entire Cargo bay then why not make it a clamshell opening, with the hinges where the long edge of the bulge meets the main body and the top splitting in half along its length. That way the whole bay can be exposed to space for cargo extraction.

Kenny_10_Bellys · Post by **Kenny_10_Bellys** » 2003-03-05 04:42am

When i first saw a screencap the doors were not clearly visible and I thought the whole bulge might be some kind of door mechanism. Once I got a better look though, the doors were situated on top of the bulge and things were clearer, but I did try and figure out decent ways to use the bulge as a door. I didn't want to open something that large on hinges, I planned to have it split across the x-axis and for the bulge to slide forward over the cockpit on some kind of extending rail system. Then again, the doors are the size of the bay, so I dont see any reason for changing them now, it's as big as it would need to be, if we assume this thing uses internal fuel tanks. If we launch it using boosters. then we could have a big bay, but I think the guy wants this as an SSTO Spaceplane.