Shapes of fictional spacecraft (and why wings?)

I had a shower thought this morning: why do so many (fictional) spacecraft have wings?

Let's exclude ships capable of both space and atmospheric flight. Aside from looking cool, can you think of any viable reason to add wings to spaceship designs? And in particular, to your creations in Space Engineers?

I'm curious as to how other people's thought process works regarding designing the outer silhouette of their creations. (Beware, rambling ahead.)

With no atmospheric drag in space, even a rectangular box can be a practical design. But flying boxes are boring and not particularly aesthetically pleasing!

So moving from plain boxes, one would want to minimise the risk of debris striking their ships' hull, bringing us to elongated rectangles that are as small as practically possible in 2 axes while containing all the bulk in the 3rd axis along which it travels. This risk is of course pretty much negligible in SE due to the speed limit.

Next, you'd perhaps want to consider adding some sort of slope to the leading edge of the ship so that any debris would hit at an oblique angle which might decrease the chance of it penerating the hull (however slight it improves odds). This moves us from long thin rectangles to a more pencil-like shape.

Next we need to consider where to add engines. While the positioning of primary thrusters is (seemingly) straight-forward, where do we put the lateral and vertical ones? Between SE's center-of-mass-ignorant thrusters and magical gyroscopes, we're free to place thrusters anywhere we want.

Nonetheless, we'd still want redundancy. So do we place all these thrusters inbetween the primary thrusters and the rest of the ship? Or do we place them alongside the main hull, paying some sort of optional consideration to symmetry?

And how about braking thrusters? Do we add in huge and heavy thrusters in the braking direction only for them to spend most of their time idle, or do we rather just spin the ship around and use the primary thrusters? If the former, do we put some sort of retractable shield infront of them to protect them from damage when not in use? Do we cluster them all together, or space them around the fuselage? Are two on opposite sides enough, or should we go for a more balanced four in a cross formation?

Hopefully if other people contribute some insight in their process, I'll be able to plagiarise be inspired out of my creative rut

 

The only reason I can think of to have wings, other than aesthetics, is heat dissipation for reactors. That is the no. 1 reason I've read in sci-fi books. However as far as I know, irl the vacuum of space is a perfect insulator, making that method null and void.

[edit] I seem to be getting some disagrees on this, but not much in the ways of explanations. I mean, there's no real opinion to disagree on here, its just a basic thought. I'm not saying wings are bad, I'm literally saying this was the only thing I could think of, and I'm indicating that I'm not sure whether space is insulating. Please explain?

[edit2] Seems I was wrong about vacuum of space being a perfect insulator. Lesson learned. Thanks

 

Wings or thin winglets can have a real purpose in real life at least as theory, and drawbacks as well.

The pencil shape you descrive has a great shortcoming if we talk about big ships. It cant rotate as fast as yaw and pitch, because thrusters for roll are very close together. Using some wings with trhusters on its tip would solve the issue.

Other uses may extend to use of sensitive sensors away from interferences of ship systems, more visible navlights or whatever makes sense in the future.

And for wings or other things presenting wesk points against micro meteorites or combat, it doesnt matter. Space is so big and things are so spread out that getting hit or not its hardly going to be a matter of shape.
And for combat, presumably ship weapons are going to be devastating and getting to be the first to open fire decisive just like modern naval-air-tank combat. So it hardly matters if wings or stuff are exposed when most of youf ship is going to be trashed even if you win or lose.
Take note of ww2 navy. Its main guns wete kinetik ordnance were making curved shapes and armor could be effective. And no one cared, ships had lots of exposed things outside armor and it didnt matter. 90% of the time the ship will not see combat or be shot at, and when battle happened and it survived they just kept going with what they had left straight to pory for repairs.

 

Generally thought that solar winds/gases in space/photons/debris/etc had an influence (not sure). I'd like to think if you were traveling at subluminal but relativistic speeds - that the shape of a ship might make a slight difference. Unfortunately I also would like to think all my ships are capable of space and atmospheric flight which comes around to your second sentence. Debris is a good argument.

I wish we didn't have to have thrusters on all sides. I'd like to think my ship could make movements however large or small with RCS styled thrusters in the armor.

With space fighters I put very few forward facing thrusters. They're there for docking only - cause I would have to spin around like an idiot to land without them. But I like mine centered. If not centered then on larger ships have spacial armor some distance infront of them.

Sorry for any grammar mistakes. Just wanted to add to the thread before I sleep.

 

I remembered another use for wings. If your ship has minimum decent aerodynamic shape and is sturdy, you may consider heavily use of atmo braking to insert into orbit saving lots of fuel/energy. Having some wings to help keep the ship stable during such manouver could be important.

 

Wings can be used as the area for the landing gear to retract into, and/or be attached to so that the centerline can be used to carry armament, ecm gear (like the current decoys), battery packs, cameras, or extra storage. I personally prefer having a 2-4 gatlings and sometimes one rocket launcher in the nose for more precise shooting. I'll often use extra landing gear and or merge blocks to carry bombs under, and sometimes over the wings.

 

We grew up in a world with planes and the drag you described.
Maybe if we were born in space we would think differently about it?

 

All good points

Radiators (which actually need to get hot enough to emit energy as em waves-infra red. vacuum insulates against conduction and convection, em bridges the gap quite redily)
Increasing the leverage of manouvering thrusters
Increaseing the angular seperation of sensor elements
Removing sensetive sensors frm the influence of the main hull and its associated machinery.
Mounting equipment that requires an orientation that mounting in the main hull would not support (weapons, special drives etc)
Mounting jettisonable equipment, like fuel tanks or single use payloads
Mounting equipment that would be too hazardous to mount in the main hull (high radiation emmiters, strong magnetic field generators)

Admittedly for many of those a basic pylon or strut would work equaly as well.

I think there is quite a difference beyween hard scifi and soft scifi as well. Most hard scifi 'plausible' space craft (excluding re-entry vehicles or space planes) tend to not have wings. But they usualy do have great big radiator panels.

Then again, a lot of soft scifi space craft (including re-entry vehicles and surface to space transports) do not have wings, like star trek with their funkey flying saucer with sausages and strange love of shoe box shuttles.

So i think the two biggest reasons are
They look cool
The author for one reason or another decides that spaceship flight = airplane flight (like a few popular space combat games do) so ships need wings, and continuos forward thrust, and only tiny manouvering thrusters to produce huge lateral acceleration. *stopped myself before the rant picked up momentum*

 

A lot of people add wings just so they can have something to put their guns on. It's an easy way to add lots of firepower into a small space.

Also, it's important to keep your weapons farther away from the main body because they are the first thing yoir enemy will try to destroy, and if they hit the wing it won't cause as much damage.

 

With any of my designs that have wings of some sort the purpose is to mount stuff. A pylon would suffice, but I want to make it not fall off immediatly when hit. Hence make it out of more blocks. However I would also like it to have a thin profile when veiwed from the front to minimise the chance of an impact. Result: Something that looks like a wing. Although far too small and not aerodynamic at all.

 

Most hard scifi dont use wings because near future still has too many limitations wich negates the "commodity" of wings or long struts to be usef in not essential duties.

In a future were a 400m ship can be build in orbit in an even easier way than todays container freighters, its not going to be a problem adding wings for less important features if it makes sense.
Modern future designs take into account only the essential things, and wings is at best a non essencial feature.

 

Pointless aero/wings are a bit of a peeve. Like putting racing spoilers on an economy car.
I also get annoyed with ships having a ton of forward thrust with little/no provision for brakes. (Usually on account of it not working conveniently for aero)
If it's a base ship where you do a full 180° to slow down at the destination, ok sure.
Most ships in this game don't fly like nasa rockets, it's not going to look like an airplane.

 

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SpaceIsAir

 

Aside from adding mount points for weapons, wings can also serve as a standoff for explodey bits. It can keep ammunition away from the central fuselage to limit damage to the crew in the event of an explosion. Aside from that, I would say would say wings are useful (as others have said) for radiating heat.

 

Wings provide a handy way to visually differentiate types of ship, and to telegraph which ships are more maneuverable or faster than others. Scifi movies would be a lot harder to follow if every type of ship was a needle or sphere of efficiency.

 

What ship has wings and no athmospheric capable?

 

Sad Puddlejumper is sad now

 

I have been pretty much into The Expanse lately and I am very intrigued by their ship design.
Because that universe has no artificial gravity, all the ships are basically built like Skyscrapers.
Long, slim and the decks are arranged like a house so once you are under thrust (which is basically most of the time) you always have some sense of gravity to the Floor.
Sadly, we have neither Elevators nor ladders in SE currently, so Building a ship that way is a bit moot, because much of the space would be used by the staircase.


Beware of possible Spoilers for the first half of Season 1
https://gndn.wordpress.com/2015/12/31/the-expanse-the-mcrn-donnager/

 

Of my favorite sci-fi series, Farscape. This post got me thinking about their ship design. Most of the ships in the series are capable of atmospheric travel save the PeacekeeperCommand Carrier and the Skarren Dreadnaught. (Not sure about the Nebari ships).

Most of the ships that are capable of descending and ascending on a planetary mass lack wings.

 

I saw my friend building this large ship last night. Wings galore, too much in my opinion, it's a delicate balance.

I've always loved the ship design in Eve, and now Star Citizen. I try to model most of my builds with ideas I get from those ships. Here is one I was working on last night, very utilitarian, my earlier version was quite wingless, but I wanted more spots to mount atmospheric thrusters so I could lift more cargo.


Eve is notorious for having non-symmetrical designs. I'm not that brave yet, but some day..



I love the game Elite Dangerous but their ship designs make me gag, especially "The Dolphin" .. really? a space dolphin? what's next, whales?? (they also have an Orca, yea, an Orca...)

 

Boy do we have a script for you.....

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=557293234

Ion thrusters are the most expensive blocks in the game, it actually makes sense to minimize the number you are using and point your ass where you want to burn away from for pretty much all large ships.

 

I used that script on my carrier (Sabrina) to keep her shiny-side up. Cool stuff!

 

I put "wings" (fins, thank you ) on some of mine to get more space for engines without dramatically increasing the target profile. Most of my ships are meant to engage head-on; you can concentrate your armor on a single face, and you can make that face narrow to create a smaller target.

But this results in ships that are really skinny, and since we still can't extend engines deep into the ship's interior *coughcough*, there isn't much space on the aft of the ship for engines. Fins add space, but they're thin enough that they don't present a large target from the front. If you angle the forward surface of the fin, it's more resistant to kinetic impacts in a head-on position, plus it masses less than a straight wing would. It also nets you more style points.

 

Its sci-fi.. Its got to look good.

 

Secure mounting for fragile components that ideally shouldn't be too close to your hull with its reactors, engines, etc. I.e. Solar panels and communication antennas. You could place these on struts and save some mass, but struts are all or nothing if you're taking damage.

-Morloc

 

I love that this is actually kind of an engineering discussion!

Yeah, most spacecraft designers for books, movies, and games go on aesthetics, not actual engineering principles. Even when they try to put in "realistic" things, they tend to miss the mark, because they bolt on a few "realistic" ideas onto an otherwise ridiculous concept.

Booms / wings are a great example for this: they are really only good for sensitive equipment or equipment that would interfere with other equipment - look at the Voyager probes for a good example. Booms/wings are also really only reasonable for craft that do not accelerate because bending moments are evil. So if you have a large enough craft, you're probably actually better off putting some shielding around your sensitive thing rather than sticking it out on a boom.

Things that are really important for spacecraft which are often ignored or mitigated by technobabble:

• Mass: mass is not your friend in space.
• Symmetry: not just for thrust, but also for rotational stability. Bad Things happen if your inertia tensor has specific characteristics.
• Square-cubed law: surface area to volume ratio is important for strength to weight, ability to radiate heat, and total mass required for a given interior volume.
• Structural integrity: There's a reason why Star Trek had to come up with the "structural integrity field". If you have two bulky sections of a ship connected by a little teeny tiny corridor, yeah it might look cool, but buckling and shear bending failure are "fun" failure modes. This is generally why real spacecraft are "big at the business end, small in the direction you want to go".
• Mass. No really, this is so important: You really really really want as little of it as possible. And if you do have heavy things, you really want them as close to the CG as possible.
• Rotation effects. You have a long ship that you try to rotate perpendicular to the long dimension. People at the ends of that long dimension are not going to be happy with you if you rotate at any speed. And that's if the ship can even hold itself together. Just go to a playground with a merry-go-round and observe.
• Maneuvering: changing your velocity vector in space is very expensive. You would never really be able to fly a "fighter" or something without exotic energy sources. See also: Mass - get less of it. Hint: there is a reason why "hard" space shows talk about "delta-V budget."

An interesting example: Thrusters out on wings don't actually make much sense, because thrusters are typically heavy and produce a lot of force. Inertia goes as the square of distance from CG, while torque produced only goes linearly with distance from CG. So you're adding high structural stress and increasing moment of inertia for a given increase in torque. So there is some tradeoff point where you can really indeed be putting that thruster "too far" from your ship.

 

my two cents...

the greater the distance from the center of mass a reaction control nozzle is, the less force needs to be applied to create a greater moment force. I would think that RCT on the ends of wings produce a greater (sic faster) turning movement around the center of mass while using less fuel. This point is mute for space engineers though cause the engine calculates thruster force as a plane of force on the object the thruster is attached to instead of a point force.

 

Newtonian flight for everyone Lt. Dan!

I'm always torn between the high efficiency of it vs the high cost of repairs from me smacking into everything in sight.
I've tried just putting thrusters on the back and nothing but heavy armor on the front (Weaponize all the things! Even my crappy piloting can be weaponized!)
The problem is that I swing my ass around and try to stop, so expose the thrusters anyway.
I even had another crazy idea, building the ship backwards. So all the thrusters go up front, armor the back. Spin around to get moving, then turn and enjoy the view, and when you need to slow down hit the dampers.
See it in my upcoming book, "Newtonian flight mechanics for dumbasses"

(I like this thread, just not a lot to add since everyone pretty much covered everything I can think of)

 

...? I have to wonder how people can disagree on a personal thought which isn't even an opinion... I can't see how there is even anything to disagree about...