Best and worst Mechanical Designs in science fiction

[Modax]

I think the Star Destroyer - although undoubtedly iconic - is a pretty poor design. Its heaviest weapons can only be brought to bear on targets on the ship's sides. Granted, they're obviously meant for orbital bombardments but even so its pretty difficult to understand the rationale for their placement. Why not have a staggered series of heavy gun turrets down the front slope of the hull, just like a traditional battleship?

[Crossroads Inc.]

The SHAPE of a Star Destroyer is actually wonderful, the PLACEMENT Of the guns suck...

[Stark]

Except they can fire their full firepower out of a single turret, so it's less of an issue. Placing them evenly down the spine would be better, but it's handwavable with powerplant proximity/hangar demands/etc.

[Stofsk]

Vympel pointed out to me the other week that a lot of space fighters don't have decent cockpits or HUDs, even though they're supposedly set in the future or in an age of high technology.

A bubble shaped canopy gives the pilot a 360 degree view of his surroundings. Simple, really. I never thought about it before, but now it's like I can't stop thinking about it. You'd have to be insane to climb into a cockpit that is designed so that you can't look behind you quickly to see the bad guy trying to shoot lasers or rockets up your ass.

Principal offenders I can think of:

-Vipers from Battlestar
-TIE Fighters
-Star Furies

I'm sure there are others, but those three really stick out. None of them have HUDs either, except for the Star Fury IIRC. (or it has something similar... or maybe I'm thinking of the Thunderbolt)

[Ford Prefect]

Why bother with a physical canopy? Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam, for example, had a 'panoramic' cockpit where the pilot sat inside a sphere of screens, giving the impression of actually floating in a chair in the middle of space, while actually being buried in the gut of a giant robot.

[Stofsk]

Why bother with a physical canopy? Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam, for example, had a 'panoramic' cockpit where the pilot sat inside a sphere of screens, giving the impression of actually floating in a chair in the middle of space, while actually being buried in the gut of a giant robot.

Because it over-engineers something which ought to be kept simple.

[Shroom Man 777]

Glass or transparent material would constitute a very big weak spot, a weak spot that your pilot is going to be directly under. If even a micrometeorite can shatter the damn thing...

FROD is right. Screens and electronic displays aren't really over-engineered, since even the Soviets were thinking of a layout like that when they made a functioning prototype of a Mach 3 aircraft (ditching the Mark 1 eyeball).

[Stofsk]

Glass or transparent material would constitute a very big weak spot, a weak spot that your pilot is going to be directly under. If even a micrometeorite can shatter the damn thing...

If your space fighter is susceptible to micrometeorites, then your space fighter must suck.

FROD is right. Screens and electronic displays aren't really over-engineered, since even the Soviets were thinking of a layout like that when they made a functioning prototype of a Mach 3 aircraft (ditching the Mark 1 eyeball).

How is 'The soviets were thinking about it' proof that it isn't over-engineered?

The most important principle governing any design is whether it is practical. Displays would be useful if you could spare more than a second's worth of concentration. It's not really practical to switch through display after display - do you want to look behind you on your right side, or your left side, do you want to see what's coming at you from this angle or that - when a quick head turn can give you the information more rapidly.

How many displays/screens are we talking? Are they all linked to a video receiver? Is there any way that linkage may be severed due to sustaining minor battle damage, the kind of which won't destroy your space craft but will still render it completely useless because now you can't see where you're going or where the enemy is? I can see where it might be useful to show where you can't see, but when you can literally turn your head and see what's there...

[Ford Prefect]

Stofsk, premise of the panoramic cockpit is that is that it's like sitting inside a fishbowl hanging in space. There are dozens of screens all seamlessly linked into a sphere, all active at once.

[weemadando]

Stofsk, premise of the panoramic cockpit is that is that it's like sitting inside a fishbowl hanging in space. There are dozens of screens all seamlessly linked into a sphere, all active at once.

http://www.igorstshirts.com/blog/concep ... oncept.jpg

What, like the badboy in Lost in Space? I think a typical half-bubble cockpit or a cockpit with multiple window angles/mirrors is a good bet, especially when combined with things like a HUD or helmet mounted sight.

[Ford Prefect]

It's not literally a transparent sphere in space, it simply gives the impression of such. Here, about fifteen seconds in, you actually see it turn on.

[weemadando]

Oh no, I know what YOU are talking about - I was addressing Stofsk's "overly complex" argument.

[Darth Hoth]

I think the Star Destroyer - although undoubtedly iconic - is a pretty poor design. Its heaviest weapons can only be brought to bear on targets on the ship's sides. Granted, they're obviously meant for orbital bombardments but even so its pretty difficult to understand the rationale for their placement. Why not have a staggered series of heavy gun turrets down the front slope of the hull, just like a traditional battleship?

Since the ship fights in three dimensions, I see little reason why they could not make a vertical turn of ninety degrees and expose the enemy to their full main gun complement.

[Starglider]

The Falken in the Ace Combat universe has an exceptionally impractical main weapon design, with the entire front of the aircraft jacking itself up to reveal the spinal laser unit. I hate to say it, but cool as it looks the 'switchblade' wing design on the X-02 Wyvern is structurally and aerodynamically implausible as well (if only they'd made those wings slide out, instead of fold out). The ADFX-01 Morgan design is more sensible, with the laser in a big external pod held between the engines.

[Crazedwraith]

I think the Star Destroyer - although undoubtedly iconic - is a pretty poor design. Its heaviest weapons can only be brought to bear on targets on the ship's sides. Granted, they're obviously meant for orbital bombardments but even so its pretty difficult to understand the rationale for their placement. Why not have a staggered series of heavy gun turrets down the front slope of the hull, just like a traditional battleship?

Since the ship fights in three dimensions, I see little reason why they could not make a vertical turn of ninety degrees and expose the enemy to their full main gun complement.

Also present the maximum possible surface area for the target to shoot back at?

[VF5SS]

It's not literally a transparent sphere in space, it simply gives the impression of such. Here, about fifteen seconds in, you actually see it turn on.

At least use my video which is actually hi-def :3

[Shroom Man 777]

Glass or transparent material would constitute a very big weak spot, a weak spot that your pilot is going to be directly under. If even a micrometeorite can shatter the damn thing...

If your space fighter is susceptible to micrometeorites, then your space fighter must suck.

It's glass. Micrometeorites, shrapnel and debris floating in space could crack it. It will be structurally weaker and more vulnerable than burying the pilot in the middle of the space craft and relaying information to him through multiple redundant sensors.

[Ghost Rider]

I think the Star Destroyer - although undoubtedly iconic - is a pretty poor design. Its heaviest weapons can only be brought to bear on targets on the ship's sides. Granted, they're obviously meant for orbital bombardments but even so its pretty difficult to understand the rationale for their placement. Why not have a staggered series of heavy gun turrets down the front slope of the hull, just like a traditional battleship?

Because they aren't fighting in a traditional battleship format? Literally your arguement is because they are in space, in a 3D format...why aren't the guns on a terrastial format. Que?

[Isolder74]

Since the ship fights in three dimensions, I see little reason why they could not make a vertical turn of ninety degrees and expose the enemy to their full main gun complement.

Or tilt the ship down and fire all forward.

[Samuel]

Glass or transparent material would constitute a very big weak spot, a weak spot that your pilot is going to be directly under. If even a micrometeorite can shatter the damn thing...

If your space fighter is susceptible to micrometeorites, then your space fighter must suck.

It's glass. Micrometeorites, shrapnel and debris floating in space could crack it. It will be structurally weaker and more vulnerable than burying the pilot in the middle of the space craft and relaying information to him through multiple redundant sensors.

A better point would be that even if it is "super-glass" it has to have an obvious weakness by definition- it lets visible light through. Which means you can blind the pilot. If you use electronics, you can have them set with a maximum brightness so your retinas don't get overloaded.

[open_sketchbook]

I always sit by the arguement that the glass canopy on the TIE fighter is a backup for Mark1 Eyeball, and that the sensor package of the fighter feeds enough data to the pilot to allow him to see past the visual limitations of the window. It was brought up on SWTC; it explains why sometimes pilots look to places beyond the window.during the Battle of Yavin.

[Shroom Man 777]

The fact that their pilots are wearing modified Stormtrooper helmets, plus visors, corresponds to that too.

[Cykeisme]

I do recall references in some novels about Star Wars starfighter canopies "polarizing" (becoming opaque) in specific areas to protect a pilot's eyes from sources of bright light.

Also, the idea of having a pilot sit in a 360 degree sphere of screens is silly when you can just project an image of the same input into a helmet's eyepieces, while tracking the helmet's motion.
The TIE fighter pilots looking around all over the place supports this possibility.

[Isil`Zha]

Many SW ships in the prequels, especially Naboo ships, had ridiculous "small point" landing feet that bugged me the moment I saw them.

Then there's that abomination ground-based HTL platform that for some reason moves via several dozen relatively tiny legs instead of something sensible, like treads.

[TheLostVikings]

I do recall references in some novels about Star Wars starfighter canopies "polarizing" (becoming opaque) in specific areas to protect a pilot's eyes from sources of bright light.

Also, the idea of having a pilot sit in a 360 degree sphere of screens is silly when you can just project an image of the same input into a helmet's eyepieces, while tracking the helmet's motion.
The TIE fighter pilots looking around all over the place supports this possibility.

Especially since we can do that today with our current tech (i.e. F35 pilots), so it would be silly to say it's "too advanced" to make in the future.

One interesting thing I read about that is that most fighter pilot tend to occasionally glance at the parts of the cockpit with the least amount of displays on it to reduce information overload induced headaches, and obviously beaming the HUD straight into their eyes makes that kinda hard. Of course they could always close their eyes, but then they wouldn't be able to see blinking warning lights and other stuff that they presumably are aware off trough their peripheral vision.