Spaceship Design: What makes sense, and what's nonsense?

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by FF_Ninja

I'm going to be spending some time in Inkscape and GIMP over the next few days working on some custom top-down spaceship layouts for use in a campaign later. In preparation for this, I started looking today for reference models (starting with my old stomping grounds, CGSociety).

It then ocurred to me that I'm highly influenced by sensational, flashy, exotic designs - and I don't have a clue what's more functional and realistic versus what might be highly improbably or unlikely a design feature to be incorporated.

To give you a point of reference: I don't see any functional or physical inconsistencies or design flaws with the typical Star Trek and Star Wars faire.

My plan is to design an entire hierarchy of new ships for futuristic Earth, starting from the earliest space-fairing vessels, gradually incorporating FTL into the design (haven't settled on what FTL actually looks like in this setting), and building on that form factor over time.

I would very much prefer to approach my designs with a practical understanding of what "would" and "wouldn't" make sense, rather than throwing elements together in an arbitrary fashion.

For those of you who consider yourselves more of an authority on "space-y" things, I would appreciate any insight into what would make sense in terms of spaceship design and form, and I appreciate any commentary on examples in media that stand out in one way or another.

Thank you all very kindly.

As others have pointed out repeatedly on-thread, what 'makes sense' depends on what the technology assumptions are, and also on the purpose of the ships and how rich the society is.

If you're looking for basics:

1. If the ship is rocket-propelled, 'down' is the direction toward the engine. The ship will be laid out internally more like a skyscraper than seaship. Except that 'down' is only that way while the rocket is firing. Then, unless you have artificial gravity tech, the interior is either weightless or you're spinning it, in which case 'down' is toward the outer wall.

2. If the ship is rocket propelled, then the designers will try to make it as light as humanly possible. Literally every milligram of mass they can shave off helps.

3. You mention media examples, and the problem is that in visual media there just aren't many. The reason is that a spaceship built with technology we can envision right now, under our current understanding of physics, looks fragile and clumsy and actually is going to tend to be fragile. Battle means that either you get hit and are destroyed, or they missed and you're fine. Not much in between, and very little margin to maneuver or do much else except hope your weapon gets him before he gets you, and the battle will be at distances where your unaided eyes won't matter.

Which is why Star Trek is perversely in some ways more believable than the Expanse. At first glance the latter show uses tech more grounded in the physics we think is real, while ST uses a lot of what we think is impossible magical tech (but keep in mind that nuclear bombs, radios, X-ray machines, spectrographs, etc. are impossible magical tech, too, by the physics of 1822).

But the problem is that given the more 'realistic' tech, it's highly improbable that the situations described in The Expanse will come about in the first place. Whereas once you posit the superscience, some of the Trek setting suddenly becomes plausible.

What makes for a believable space ship depends on the setting and the intentions of the creator.