Battlestar Habakkuk......the space aircraft carrier?

[Leading Observer]

I think I recall in one series of SF novels the ships use ice as the shielding against weopons etc

[deathjester]

If it's any help, here's one I made a few years ago.  She was a Battlecarrier, with a huge hangar bay at the bow,  heavy weapons scattered at various points to give good arcs of fire, and extremely heavy AAA armament (ball turrets down the sides, top, bottom, front and back of conning tower).

You are welcome to use any aspects of this design that you like, as the model, regretably, no longer exists.

[Weaver]

Didn't somebody on here start (or even finish) a big space-carrier type thing based on a big toner cartridge from a printer?

Edit: 'twas Black Ops I think: http://www.whatifmodelers.com/index.php/topic,21155.30.html

[seadude]

Didn't somebody on here start (or even finish) a big space-carrier type thing based on a big toner cartridge from a printer?

Edit: 'twas Black Ops I think: http://www.whatifmodelers.com/index.php/topic,21155.30.html

All the pics from that thread are gone.

[Weaver]

Didn't somebody on here start (or even finish) a big space-carrier type thing based on a big toner cartridge from a printer?

Edit: 'twas Black Ops I think: http://www.whatifmodelers.com/index.php/topic,21155.30.html

All the pics from that thread are gone.

Bugger - thought it was just the works server blocking photobucket.....

[seadude]

Sorry for gravedigging my own topic. But........I had a new idea last night.

About 2 or more months ago, I posted the following:

Anyway.........just ordered this morning from Freetime Hobbies:
2 x Moebius Models Original Battlestar Galactica
http://www.freetimehobbies.com/moebius-original-battlestar-galactica-plastic-model-kit/

I plan to whif this sometime in the future. That's why I need the extra flight pods.

At first after looking at the Moebius instructions, there was no way to make a Battlestar with four flight pods due to the way the flight pod support arms were molded/constructed. But a bit of inspiration hit me last night. It might be possible to use the flight pod support arms from the new BSG.......
http://www.freetimehobbies.com/MOE915/
.......in order to support an upper pair of launching/landing flight pods. I really hate having to rob parts from my new BSG kit to use for the older BSG model, but......if I have to make this work, then so be it. I've been thinking: Why not a BSG to use for a Habakkuk space carrier? The BSG certainly looks the part. It's big, heavily armed and armored, can launch and land dozens of fighters. Anyway, here's some preliminary pics of the extra support arms and placement of the extra flight pods. Let me know what you think.

[lancer]

That looks like a damm fine idea. Look forward to seeing the finished result. Can you imaging the air/space group would have??

[zenrat]

Back to cored out ice asteroids.  I think it is an ideal material (especially if you are a life form evolved to live on worlds where the average temperature is below the freezing point of H2O).  The ice walls would stand up very well to kinetic weapons and their thermal mass could also dissipate the energy from CREWs* better than rock or metal.  Additional energy dissipation could be gained by embedding a conductive mesh below the surface of the ice (deep enough to avoid damage from kinetic projectiles).
Ice as a hull material also has the added benefit of making an ideal reaction mass while resulting in more living space.

*Coherent Radiation Emitting Weapons (laser, maser, anti-matter plasma beam etc)

[seadude]

Back to cored out ice asteroids.  I think it is an ideal material (especially if you are a life form evolved to live on worlds where the average temperature is below the freezing point of H2O).  The ice walls would stand up very well to kinetic weapons and their thermal mass could also dissipate the energy from CREWs* better than rock or metal.  Additional energy dissipation could be gained by embedding a conductive mesh below the surface of the ice (deep enough to avoid damage from kinetic projectiles).
Ice as a hull material also has the added benefit of making an ideal reaction mass while resulting in more living space.

*Coherent Radiation Emitting Weapons (laser, maser, anti-matter plasma beam etc)

No, no, and NO. I am not going to be building any sort of comet or asteroid ice spaceship and call that the Habakkuk.  If somebody else wants to do it, then fine. But I'm sticking to more traditional spaceship designs, materials, etc., etc.

[zenrat]

I wasn't saying you should do it, just that as a construction material it is suitable.

BTW, when you build your 1/350 Habakkuk I think you should knock up a small refrigeration plant and actually make it from ice...

[seadude]

Getting back to this.........

Been doing some work on the Moebius Original BSG kits I have. I want to do a BSG with four flight pods as you see in the pics further above in one of my posts. But I'm concerned that after placement and gluing, the pods may end up being too widespread and looking like the following which I don't want:


Another option might be something similar to this small pic I found which shows one flight pod right underneath the other.



Below are some pics of possible configurations and options. Which do you think would be better?

[scooter]

What about inverting the second set of flight pods, like on the Pegasus?

[seadude]

What about inverting the second set of flight pods, like on the Pegasus?

I'm not too keen on that. Then that means Vipers are inverted (Upside down) when landing and launching from the secondary flight pods. I never understood why this was done on the NuBSG tv show with the Pegasus. Seemed like a stupid concept. 

[Madoc]

Well, if you've got gravitational field control such that you can "generate" your own gravitational pull in any direction you wish, then why not do them inverted?

Or, why not set both sets of landing bay pods aside each other but perpendicular to the rest of the ship?  That way, both sets of landing bay pods on either side of the ship would be parallel to each other - no one being "up" right next to the other's being "down."

But then, if you've got technology such that you can generate your own gravitational pull in any direction you wish you have a propulsion system that is orders of magnitude more efficient than those big honkin' rocket engines driving the Battlestars to begin with and thus don't need all that massive and glowy rocket engine stuff hanging off the back of your spaceship to begin with.

That however, is a subject for an other discussion entirely...

[jcf]

Madoc, how do you know they're 'rocket stuff'?