Here’s a microwave sail ship. The basic idea is that you beam some high power microwaves at this ship to push it to where you want it to go (not my idea). The center wheel is sorta a hamster wheel for the astronauts that has artificial gravity thanks to the sails which are slightly pitched and turning in the soft breeze of the microwaves.
Any C&C welcome.
Thanks
Closeup shot:
it’s powered by giant potatoe chips? whats with that funky bump
Hmm …the idea is good. The implementation can be better.
try smoothing the wheel. then apply metallic texture there. The bump map that you are using on the propellers is interesting, there is a good idea here if you can do some rust material and apply there, it would be great. The wheel is a little out of place too.
looking forward to updates.
Hi garphik & enroper,
Thanks for the feedback. I liked your ideas garphik so I tweaked the model some. I incorporated rusting into the sails and the ship and smoothed the ship some. I need to put in some obligatory navigation lights either on the ends of the sails or on the ship plus some decals for the group who sent this vessel.
ok this is a state of the art ship… so why is it rusting?
cool idea tho
I agree. Rust would only happen in a water or oxygen-rich environment, which space is not. Further, you wouldn’t use metal for the sails. That would be unthinkably heavy, and would never produce any movement. Solar or microwave sails are extremely thin film on a lightweight frame (sometimes not even that).
Hi jaderberg/Aurrin,
I guess “rusting” is not the correct term for me to use - it should be “desorption” or sublimation. The basic idea is that these sails are coated with several layers of material that boil off when exposed to the microwaves and provide additional thrust to the ship. I have no idea how this would look (or work) after months/years of travel, so I’m just guessing. I wanted to show some kind of pitting on the material and discoloration makes it look more dramatic.
Here’s a paper that talks about desorption:
“Desorption-Assisted Sun Diver Missions”
http://home.earthlink.net/~jbenford/DesorptionAssisted_SunDiver.pdf
Thanks for the comments, they’re great reality-checks!
Ah, okay, I wasn’t thinking about desorbtion type sails. But Even then, on that scale, there would be only the barest hints of it in normal mapping. (extremely thin stuff) It would show up in color, I’d imagine, but I have no idea how. Though, the paper abstract suggests it would be an aluminum layer beneath, and that’s not hard to imagine.
Okay, here’s an update. I’m going with a a huge flexible sail now that’s supported by four giant inflatable masts.
Closeup shot of the ship itself:
