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Landscape-Painter — Orbit insertion
Published: 2012-07-06 14:04:56 +0000 UTC; Views: 1863; Favourites: 38; Downloads: 68
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The spaceship here is indeed going towards the planet, though it looks like it's flying away from it. Who could tell the difference? That's the way a classic reusable one-stage rocketship maneuvers: It leaves ground and flies towards its destination nose first and accelerates first half of the journey. At about halfway point the ship turns tail forward and decelerates until it has correct speed for orbit insertion. And, obviously lands tail first. I guess it could go into orbit either way, depending on escape velocity, approach angle, speed and who knows what else. So, every answer is the right one. It could go sideways.Destination in this case is Mars, if that needs clarification. Wild colors, I know, but I bet Giovanni Schiaparelli would be pleased.
Acrylic on 70x90 cm canvas.
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Comments: 21
This piece is now in an art feature honoring the MSL Curiosity Rover - If you like it, please comment on the feature here! [link]
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The Gods of All Stars be praised!! At last, a proper rocket ship. I love old fashioned spaceships. A real spaceship can fly through space oriented in any direction- it does not have to point in the direction of flight. It could, as you have said, fly sideways. The orientation of a rocket ship only matters when it is making a burn. Are those windows on the fins?
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Thanks!
Yes, those are windows on the fins. I imagine the engine and fuel take most of the center body. Larger doors near the tail being for cargo, and smaller doors near the nose are shuttle bays. Crew and passenger are inside the wings, which should give some sense of scale. Wingtips contain landing gear and possibly navigational thrusters and other necessary apparatus.
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So, this is a REALLY BIG rocket ship. Putting the crew in the fins is a bit unusual- usually the rocket designer would want to keep the crew as far away as possible from the hot, possibly radioactive engines. Then again, the fins poke pretty far out, so maybe there isn't any reason to worry. Are there no crew and passenger areas inside the ship? What about the control decks- are those in the main body of the ship or the fins?
I'd love to see how people embark from this ship- getting on and off rocket ships is often a bit complicated. I imagine that there are elevators and doors in the landing gear for the crew and passengers to reach the ground. The cargo bay door is a bit high up, so the crew will need a crane to lower cargo the ground. If the ship lands at a civilized spaceport, they could rely on external cranes, but if this ship lands on a wilderness planet they need to be able to unload cargo unassisted. If the ship has a helicopter or gyrocopter on board, the crew could take off from the shuttle bays near the nose of the ship...
Imagine flying in a rocket ship like this one. At take off, you'd feel the thundering vibration of the jets and the acceleration pressing you back into your seat, watch the sky turn dark and star-studded beyond the crystal viewports. Out the ship would race, past the moon and on to Mars, past the tumbling asteroids and on to Jupiter, Saturn, out past Pluto and ever farther. You'd see the stars scattered like diamonds and sapphires across the black velvet of space, the nebulae's emerald mists glowing faintly, the inky darkness of the cosmic dust clouds the obscure our galaxy's core. Dirt from the Martian ochre deserts would stick to your boots, brilliant motes of comet dust sparkle across your spacesuit, the iron dust of meteoroids cling to your gloves. Imagine seeing the sun set on Mars, an asteroid tumbling in eternal daylight, the spinning cloud bands on Jupiter, the frozen night on Titan, Charon rising into an endless star studded sky over the frozen plains of Pluto...
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You've put it more eloquently than I could. Some day people get to go. It's just shame that our promising progress seems to stall at the moment.
600-700 meters is my estimate for size. So there could be a whole village sandwiched between the outer shell and the engines, inside the main body. Most of the living space is supposed to be in wings, one of the main reasons being far away from all that possibly dangerous technology. In case of classic emergency, critical mass/reactor breach/chain reaction, wings could maybe even be detachable. Also a design flaw there, as living space would be safest to place behind something else, in case of hitting debris in flight. This isn't designed as freight vessel, but takes what it needs. It could take something like 7000 modern shipping containers, only a half of what Mærsk E class container ship can take today. I imagine the whole cargo bay could slide out and lower itself to ground, if needed. At least it has its own cranes for moving cargo, if there isn't one in the port.
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I know how you feel. Ray Bradbury wrote about how we doom ourselves with our cynical, negative attitude toward the future in The Toynbee Convector. Who knows, though, how far a painting like this can go in inspiring young people to learn about space, rockets, and advanced mathematics? I want to learn calculus so I can learn how to use the equations that model the flight of a rocket. Nothing makes math exciting as easily as rocket ships do...
A 600-700 meter long rocket ship is huge- as you said, a small village could fit in there. I assume most of it is taken up by propellent tanks. The rest of the space must be taken up by cargo areas, shuttle bays, and vital equipment. The crew would probably be safer from meteors and cosmic radiation inside the main body of the ship. That said, given that the a single fin dwarfs anything we've put into space so far, they probably have room for armor and shielding in the fins. If there is a reactor accident, ejecting the reactor is probably the best idea, not ejecting the crew in fins-come-lifeboats. 
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I think it's very average multi-purpose ship. Suitable for scientific research, passenger liner, medium range exploration, postal service, emergency service, and so forth. Standard cruiser.
Also, I just learned a fun fact about huge man-made objects in space: International Space Station is well over 100 meters long. So it wouldn't look too tiny even next to this standard cruiser. Almost the size of the cruiser's fin.
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Very cool illustration of a classic ship. You did a good job of making it look very advanced but keeping the sexy shapes.
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Thank you! I spend hours figuring the exact shape before I put anything on canvas. It is as sleek as I could make it.
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Thanks! And you're right, it generally doesn't matter. Unless there's enough acceleration/deceleration to create artificial gravity inside the ship. If a ship could do constant 1g thrust, it would better be such direction that people didn't have to walk on a ceiling. Unfortunately that 1g, or at least some significant fraction of it, is needed for easy travel between planets.
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