The THS Spaceship Thread

[Nelson Cunnington]

Originally Posted by thtraveller

How do you make a ship that is balanced for one drive also be balanced for two? If the thrust axis for one drive is through the middle of ship how can the thrust axis for the other (and both) also be through the middle of the ship? Especially when the drives have different thrusts.

I wonder why everybody assumes that when you buy the drives for a large spacecraft, they necessarily have to be large single units. If the usual arrangement is actually four drives mounted in a square formation, then in this case the vessel might have 4 of one type and 4 of another, alternating around an octagon. (Or maybe a tight packed square for one type surrounded by a looser square of the other.)

Actually, my prefered arrangement would be five drives in a cross, normally. That way, the craft can accellerate using one drive (the centre one), two drives (either balanced pair of the outer drives), three (combination of the previous two options), four (all the outer drives), or five (all the drives). This would allow some acceleration even if one or two drives were inoperable, for example.

I wouldn't anticipate that constructive interference would be any more of a problem than it is for maritime ships with more than one engine. Even a single engine would have to be mounted in such a way as to minimise vibration to the craft as a whole. Still, "tuning" the drives might be worthwhile....