Cruising Past Deimos by geirla
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Description
Going for a different look with this spaceship. Sort of Space 1999ish. I had started to do a redesign of the "Cosmonaut" class ship featured in The Wreck of the Gherman Stepanovich Titov, but then I had to attend a two hour sales demo right after lunch. Dozed off, and this design sort of came to me in a dream... I kind of like it, anyway.
While I was doing a bit of research for the previous series of "near future" interplanetary craft, I came across an article describing a Uranium Arc Fission reactor, which I thought was pretty feasible to develop. For the other amateur rocketeers among us, see:
http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA339003&Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf
For everyone else, I can summarize it as "goes faster with less fuel". For more technogibber, see the story below.
And as for the Chinese name of the craft, it's what I got from Google Translate for "bolt", as in crossbow bolt. If in fact it means something like "shaft" or "screw" or something worse, my apologies.
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The Luoshuan was the third crewed spacecraft to make it to Mars, but the first to return.
The Chinese and Russians collaborated on technology development, but built entirely different vehicles. Whereas the Gagarin was a monolithic multi-purpose craft capable of flight, landing and return, the Luoshuan was focused on performance. Hooks for external tanks allowed the ARC engine to burn large amounts of pure hydrogen on departure from Earth. Forward and rear tanks of lithium hydride, kept liquid by the waste heat of the nuclear power reactors, provided fuel for the rest of the mission. The forward heat shield not only allowed for atmospheric braking, but acted as a radiator for the excess reactor heat. Twin landers, with their own heat shields, allowed for two surface expeditions to the red planet. The same landers had the ability to land and return from all of the major moons of the solar system.
The Gagarin beat the Luoshuan landers to the surface, but with its higher performance, the Chinese ship was able to take a shorter route back to Earth and bring its samples of Martian rocks and traces of life back before anyone else.
And in the years to follow, with their better performance, the Luoshuan and her sister ships became the first crewed vessels to visit Mercury, Jupiter and Ceres.
Footprints and Scrapings: The Race Across the Solar System, 2029-2048 Dorado Press, 2099
Comments (14)
NefariousDrO
Wow! I love this kind of near-future SciFi, and you've nailed a realistic-looking ship that is actually feasible. Brilliant modeling work, and Mars in the background looks awesome!
Smoho
Great! and .. wot no star background ?
Seaview123
Excellent work on this picture. Thanks for the look ahead.
peedy
Excellent! Great modeling! Corrie
tse60
I love depth of field, but there is no atmosphere in space ;P Well... Very nice work ;)
grafikeer
Nicely modelled and rendered,love the retro ship design!
wblack
The Brian Johnson (Space 1999) inspired design is awesome -- and the Uranium Arc Fission link is an excellent read -- well, for us rocket-punk techno-nerds anyway -- really exiting stuff! Great job!
preeder
Great work on this one. Very 2001 ish.
gmvgmvgmv
Fine looking spacecraft. Looks like a credible design as well!
kjer_99
Is this ship faster than the plasma-variant featured last week on PBS Nova program? Here's the link to that part, if you happened to miss it. The entire hour is worth checking out for this and a new type of Martian/Future spacesuit. Plasma engine segement: http://video.pbs.org/video/1741722591/ Entire Program "Can We Make It to Mars:" http://video.pbs.org/video/1752557302/
Bambam131
I really like seeing spaceships that have only a crew of six or less if I am correct, it makes it seem more real and something that we could actually see in our life time. The only comment that I have about the design is the attitude thrusters on the main ship itself. They look rather big, especially given the thrusters on the Lander that is attached. You may want to scale there puppies down a little. I mean no disrespects as I am very impressed with the over all design. I am glad to see that there are other like myself and wblack out here that is trying to give a positive view of the future. In addition I realize that there are quite a few others that also post images that deal with space exploration but we few are dealing more with what could be in our life time and I really like that! Keep them coming!!! David
Markal
Very cool. The blackness is deafning...it could have used a nebula or starfied. Still, a cool image!
dcmstarships
Great realistic spaceship design. I especially like its back story as an international effort. We need more images like this showing nations working together in space rather than just turning it into another battlefield.
e-brink
An interesting craft. I thought it looking a bit Russian when I first saw it. I have always found it interesting that different nations hardware have character of their own. Including items such a tanks. Interesting backstory!