Antimatter Spacecraft

This spacecraft, belonging to the "Otherside" class of experimental vessels in my as-of-yet unnamed sci-fi setting, is both the first spacecraft that I successfully modeled in Blender, as well as the first entry in the Gallery page. While de-canonized, it helped me to not only find my footing when it comes to 3D modelling, but also helped to advance the setting and its aspects.

As far as the ship itself is concerned, its primary engine is a Beam-Core Antimatter drive, which to scale would stretch over a kilometer. In short, it works by colliding matter and antimatter, and using the resulting energy to propel the spacecraft to a significant fraction of the speed of light. Notably, this incarnation is much shorter than the original design by Robert Frisbee, who posited a 700-kilometer long spacecraft, most of which was dedicated to the engine. For the sake of aesthetics and ease of modelling, I reasoned that advances in containment and heat-management technology would allow shorter (yet still reasonably-sized) engines. On either side of the engine truss are the radiators, which are glowing from the heat that they must remove from the system. Given the extreme amounts of energy released by these reactions, such a radiator field is necessary to prevent the engine from vaporizing itself.

Further up is the primary radiation shield, followed by another series of radiators. These radiators, however, function differently to those on the engine itself. These are Liquid-Droplet Radiators, which use droplets of liquid metal in a stream to radiate heat, as opposed to a solid pane as the previous ones use. Above these are the reactor and fuel segments. The reactor is likely some form of fusion-powered assembly, which isn't modeled in detail aside from its containment structure. The fuel tanks come in two variations, one for standard hydrogen, and one for anti-hydrogen (hydrogen made from antimatter particles). The anti-hydrogen storage comes in the form of supercooled magnetic chambers which prevent the frozen anti-hydrogen from making contact with the container walls. The storage of anti-hydrogen is segmented, allowing a compromised container to be ejected before it causes a chain reaction that destroys the ship.

Further up the truss is another radiation shield, which conceals the secondary propulsion system for the spacecraft: a quartet of closed-cycle nuclear gas core rocket engines, so chosen as they are still efficient enough for interplanetary operations while not emitting radioactive exhaust. They are needed as the main engine of the spacecraft emits a multiple-kilometer beam of energy, not to mention a horrendous amount of radiation, something completely unsafe to operate near planets.

This radiation shield protects the final part of the truss, which contains docking mechanisms to carry smaller spacecraft with it, as well as the crew section, which is partially obscured by the frontal particle shield. The crew segment contains an artificial gravity centrifuge with swing arms to compensate for acceleration, as well as microgravity regions for cargo and specific applications. Finally, the forward particle shield is there to protect the ship from collisions at interstellar velocities, as even the smallest dust particle might endanger the ship as it travels at significant fractions of the speed of light.

So there you have it, the beginning of a hopefully long-lasting series documenting both the technical and artistic aspects of the spacecraft presented in the Gallery. More to come!