Honor Harrington - HMS Fearless Flyby and Docking
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- Опубликовано: 7 сен 2024
- My second Honorverse video. It depicts the approach, flyaround, and docking of a pinnace with the HMS Fearless, Honor Harrington's heavy cruiser from David Weber's book "The Honor of the Queen".
To see more, check out my DeviantArt page at: maxxqbunine.dev...
David Weber's forums (I'm MaxxQ there): forums.davidweb...
Quite nice. Only one issue I have with it--remember that according to the books, pinnaces have impeller wedges (shuttles do not.) They dock and undock on approach with thrusters, but once they're clear, they bring up their own wedges. I didn't notice nodes on the pinnace.
@kettch777 Look closely at the tail from around 0:36 onwards. That gap that closes houses the impeller nodes, and is closed up for docking and atmospheric flight. I realize it's a bit dark and very difficult to see them, but they are there. If you follow the link in the description to my DeviantArt page, there are a bunch of still renders of the pinnace where you can see them more clearly.
"VAMPIRE, VAMPIRE, VAMPIRE! Wave off!"
LOL!!
Excellent!! I think it looks great. Would like to see you do something with one of the bigger ships like Nike. I think the Pennance looks awesome, but, one thing, it is a wedge capable ship, so it would have node rings fore and aft. Boat bay looked great too.
A pinnace is not hyper capable, nor can it go through a wormhole junction. Warships and freighters are and do, which requires Alpha Nodes (the larger nodes on the Fearless in the video) to generate Warshawski Sails, which are REQUIRED fore and aft to balance the gravity shear experienced in grav waves in hyper, and the grav gradient when traversing a wormhole junction.
Warships also generate a double wedge, which does NOT mean the wedge plane above and the wedge plane below. What it DOES mean is that there are a pair of wedge planes above, and a pair below, both so close together, that they basically appear as a single plane. These are generated by the Beta Nodes (the smaller nodes in the video). The fact they are so close together is part of the reason the nodes need to be tuned so carefully - any out-of-synch tuning, and the wedge pairs would annhilate each other, destroying the nodes, and possibly (probably) the ship.
A ship can lose several Betas and keep running, although at a reduced acceleration rate. A ship that loses even a single Alpha can't transit a wormhole junction, or easily travel through hyper in a grav wave - it's doable, but extremely difficult.
Pinnaces, assault shuttles, missiles (except DDMs and MDMs)... ANY small craft that IS NOT hyper capable, or able to transit a WHJ, only needs a single impeller ring.
just an opinion, as this is a military ship, having the bridge on the outer hull would be a big weakness; as the crew has access to holographic video tech, you don't need the bridge on the outer hull, it can be inside the hull where it is much better protected. just my two cents worth though.
+David Campbell Yep. You're absolutely correct, which is why both main and aux bridges are deep inside the hull. In fact, both are at opposite ends of the ship, and also inside the armored core hull (a cylindrical inner hull that is almost as heavily armored as the outer hull).
What you think is the bridge is nothing more than a glorified VIP lounge/observatory/secondary comms station, and anything else you think it might contain. We haven't gotten far enough along on the interiors to decide what all we're putting there.
Anyway, as David describes the ships in the books, there's actually nothing there at all except some ancillary equipment that doesn't need to be buried behind armor - after all the upper and lower surfaces of the ship are protected by the impenetrable wedge planes anyway, thus why those areas of the ship are armored the least. So, in the design process, we needed to figure out a way to show "which end is up", and so we threw that in there. So in reality, the rule of cool took over there.
Also, if you check out my Deviant Art page ( maxxqbunine.deviantart.com/ ), there's another reason for the superstructure up there: there are differences in the design between the older ships - such as the Fearless, in the video - and newer ships like the Roland, Nike, and so on. This was done to make identifying ships somewhat easier as far as for illustrative purposes, not for in-universe ship ID, although it could be used that way. In the real world, sometimes the only way to identify what country a naval ship is from is if you really know the differences in the details on the superstructure. There's a somewhat famously misidentified photo floating around somewhere, where a news organization said the pic was a fleet of US Navy ships, when in fact, it was a fleet of Soviet/Russian ships.
so what i am seeing is basically just an "equipment room" so that the techs can work in a shirtsleeves environment, as well as a place the captain can stuff any visiting politicians to get them out of his/her hair.
+David Campbell Yep, although pretty much the entire ship is a shirtsleeve environment, except during a battle. Like I said, we're not really sure what's going to go up there. It could even be a spot for a gymnasium and/or swimming pool. Maybe a bowling alley? :D
just had an idea, how about an emergency navigation station ( if the nav computer goes belly up, the navigator comes up there to take star sightings (with what is basically a sextant) and take radio fixes on Pulsars, etc. (pulsars have a "beat interval" that is as unique as a fingerprint, some are like "pop.......pop.......pop.......pop" others are "popopopopopopopopopopopopop" still others spin so fast they actually make a buzzing sound); you could use these to triangulate your position using a sensitive enough radio and a pulsar "Identification database"
you could justify it as a emergency backup required by interstellar navigation regulations. the room is normally kept completely sealed and depressurized with opaque shields (maybe some kind of metal?) covering the windows. they did something similar in an episode of the original Battlestar Galactica. the episode is "The Hand of God"
+David Campbell Yeah. That was the "observatory" part of what I mentioned in my first reply to you. There's also a bit of textev in one of the books where an RHN State Security ship captain gets rid of a pesky ground general by sending him up to the ships' observatory to see the drop out of hyper with his own eyes.
The second hinge on the wings makes me concerned if they ever get highly loaded in an atmosphere.
@Anthony Lipke
Not a concern. Even if these were more maneuverable than current Navy aircraft with folding wings (Super Hornet comes to mind), I'd think materials science and engineering in 2000 years would be far enough along to handle that. Even if it's not much further advanced than current (not likely), there's still a secure locking mechanism in there which I was just too lazy to model :D Since it's piston-actuated, the piston actually pulls the outer wing segment in towards the inner segment, where the locks set.
@@jodonnell64 I like that you've given the mechanism that much thought. It's a funny place between wanting wings at all and strength being trivial in cost. Some of these things are just for fun and aesthetics in the end.
Christ almighty i want proper Honorverse 4x strategy in 3D .... :(
+Canaris3 yeah, well. I would be happy if any existing one would actually simulate proper distances / time lag / and inertia
0:47 - Mmrnmhrm ! Double love if you get both references I dropped there. :)
Star Control!! I noticed that as well
Is the comparative scale correct? I thought multiole pinnaces or shuttles could fit inside the Fearless's boat bays?
Looks right. Three pinnaces and a couple small maintenance craft. Note that it has two hangars, and the one the pinnace docks in has space and attachments for a second pinnace.
Pinnace? I thought those do the job with antigrav and thrusters. Not wings nor wedges what also limits the acceleration and inertial sumps. Assault shuttles, like the ones used in Echo's of Honor, those have swing wings. And yes, some dramatic music would improve the clip a lot.
A pinnace still needs wings, because, just like the assault shuttles you mentioned, they need to be able to fly without using countergrav, which only negates the effects of gravity and doesn't actually move the pinnace. The only thing a pinnace uses countergrav for most of the time is takeoff and landing, or when it may need to hover in place during a ground assault - it has a pair of internal 30mm tribarrels and a 5cm laser, and can be fitted with underwing stores and modules that fit in the cargo hatches with armaments, similar to the AC-130.
An aside: I was just checking my copy of The Honor of the Queen, and saw where you may have gotten the idea that pinnaces only use countergrav and thrusters - it's during the attack on Blackbird. Remember that Blackbird is an airless moon, and wings would be useless there, but for atmospheric flight, they're still pretty darn efficient, even 2000 years from now.
There's textev for a pinnace having a wedge. One of the earlier books has a scene where a pinnace is catching up to a warship for a meeting or something. The warship is underway, but holding its accel down to allow the pinnace to catch up. You just never see a pinnace use a wedge much because they're usually depicted in the atmosphere, and with a wedge that is 30km wide and long, it wouldn't exactly be a good thing for planetary weather patterns.
Cutters, a pair of which can be glimpsed in the aft boat bay, don't have wedges or wings.
Of course, you could always tell David Weber himself that he's wrong, since he's the one who told us at BuNine what the requirements are for the pinnace. :) He's very specific about the behind-the-scenes details, and in fact, at the BuNine Annual Meeting this past weekend, he tossed out a comment almost offhand that means I will now have to change some of the details of the HMS Fearless. BuNine is not a new consulting group. We've been working with David for almost 10 years and it was his specifics that were used for the original artwork of the pinnace that appeared in the Jayne's books from 2007 - top drawing in this pic: www.scifi-meshes.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=104611&d=1373690766
Also, I don't know if you've seen them yet, but I have three more vids here on YT:
ruclips.net/video/fy8e-3lrKGE/видео.html
ruclips.net/video/i99Ufp_wAnQ/видео.html
ruclips.net/video/byq68MjOlJU/видео.html
@@jodonnell64 Nope, wings don't make sense, they only look cool or "right". But the pinnaces are supposed to be able to move at quite a large range of speeds in atmosphere, and that would make it hard even for a sweeping geometry. Atmospheric reentry is also a problem with those big wings. The stress forces would be ludicrous. Next, they are mounting those impeller nodes which can manipulate gravity so that they can almost instantly reach relativistic speeds (ignoring the inertial compensator). You can't tell me that they can't manipulate the wedge to create a tiny 9G (or similar) force component upwards? Or have an antigrav doing that? The problem with these thrusters is that they need some kind of reaction mass or combustion fuel, even when air breathing.
@@Andreas-gh6is A wedge measures 10's of kilometers on a side on a pinnace, no matter what power level or accel required. Do you realize what a wedge with a gravitational gradient strong enough to stop light (remember, NOTHING gets through a wedge, not even light), and is 25-30 kilometers square per side would do to weather patterns on a planet? Let's not even talk about what flying with a wedge at a few hundred meters altitude would do to the surface of said planet (hint: the phrase "Smoother than a baby's bottom" comes to mind, and with a gouge deeper than the crack in said bottom). The impeller nodes are "hidden" within the tailcone during atmospheric flight, and are only exposed when actually USING the impeller. If you watch the video, you can even see the tailcone sliding forward to cover the nodes during the docking approach.
Why would you want the wedge to create an upward force? It CAN do that, relative to planetary surface, but the pinnace would be pointing up as well. The wedge works in one direction only - forward. To turn, one needs to turn the entire ship, and since the wedge is "part" of the ship, it turns as well. Aside from docking at stations, the RCS system of a ship is used for this. OTOH, Honorverse physics (according to David Weber) allows a ship to not necessarily be in the center of the wedge. It can move slightly away from center to further confuse targeting systems for incoming fire. While not as powerful as a wedge, the sidewalls still have enough of a grav gradient to make precise targeting difficult. That's why Honorverse missiles have multiple laserheads - they target multiple areas around where the target MIGHT be
Regarding the speeds at which a pinnace can move through the atmosphere, it's not like they're hypersonic (Mach 5+). At best, they're probably limited to Mach 3, MAYBE 4, at the highest. I used to work on F-111's in the Air Force, and those pigs could hit more than Mach 2.5 (no matter what "official" sources say). Just like the F-111, the wings are swept back for high speeds, and forward for slower speeds and landing. If an F-111 ever took off or landed with the wings swept, there was a major problem.
Next, the wings, when swept for atmospheric re-entry, have a similar area as the space shuttle. Except for one dramatic case, where it wasn't the strength of the wings, but a heat tile issue, the shuttle program never seemed to have an issue of winged re-entry from orbital velocities (about 24,000 km/h for Earth). The space shuttle only experienced 1.7 G's or so on re-entry. Granted, it lasted about 10 minutes, but after a couple weeks of zero-G, it would be a bit of a strain on the astronauts. In the case of a pinnace re-entering, why would it need to be much more than that? It wouldn't even be hard on the passengers, since they have grav plates that can simulate any grav well you can think of. The only time anyone experiences weightlessness in the Honoverse is when travelling through the boarding tubes, performing external maintenance, or when a grav plate failure happens.
As for "antigrav", you seem to be equating that with countergrav. These are two completely different things. Yes, if the Honorverse used antigrav, you'd be correct. However, as I mentioned in my previous post, countergrav, as used in the Honorverse, only negates the effect of gravity - it DOES NOT act as a force to move against gravity. If you were to fall from a plane, and after a few seconds, activate a countergrav belt, it would not stop you instantly. It WOULD remove the effect of gravity on your acceleration as you're falling, but to slow down, you need to rely on air resistance. Eventually, you would stop, then you can reduce the countergrav field to a point where you could finish falling at a much safer and more manageable speed, allowing you to land no harder than stepping down from one step on a staircase to the next. Antigrav is just that: the opposite of gravity. It would be a force that moves you against the pull of gravity. Countergrav DOES NOT do that.
Lastly, you can't tell me that engine power and efficiency hasn't gotten better 2000-odd years from now. The fuel (whatever you decide it is, but there is textev in Honor of the Queen that says it's hydrogen) is in tanks below the floor level of the pinnace. The floor level is at the same location as the "chine" along the body and blending into the wing glove leading edge. There's also some in the wings and the vertical stabilizers, just like on the real-world F-111. There is one hell of a lot of volume for fuel on a pinnace, even if the engines are at our real-world tech level. The thing is bigger than an F-111, and those have a non-refueled range of 4000km on internal fuel storage only. I'm betting a pinnace could fly from New York to Sydney, Australia on a tank of gas, and still have enough left over to head up to Tokyo afterwards.
Look, there's always going to be "discussions" about future tech in sf. You can't apply current tech to something in the far future, because no one knows what new things can be discovered or developed. When Orville and Wilbur first flew in 1903, do you think they believed we'd walk on the moon 66 years later? They may have imagined it (Jules Verne certainly did), but they couldn't have predicted the changed in tech over 66 years that would allow that. With the Honorverse, we're talking 2000 years! 2000 years ago, the height of engineering was Roman columns, wooden, human- (and wind) powered ships, and pyramids, and THOSE were a couple thousand years old even then. Instead of criticizing the minutiae of a fictional, futuristic universe because it MAY not work with current real-world tech, why not just enjoy the story and the "made-up" tech of said futuristic universe?
It's not like it's Star Wars...😁
Now if only we could have these birds in Orbiter so we could actually fly them!
You could try to build one in Kerbal Space Program.
Some issues with size and technology, but as I have never even learned to 3D format, I'm not one to give critical advice. Be interesting to see final renders, and how folks decide to show the gravity drives in action. A fine effort, sorry if I sounded critical :) Good job.
Not sure what issues with size and tech that you are referring to. The dimensions are exactly what we at BuNine - and David Weber - finally settled on for "House of Steel". I use Blender for my modeling and renders, and I use a 1:1 scale when "building" Honorverse ships - 1 Blender unit = 1 meter.
As for tech, without any specifics, I can't really address any issues you may have there.
jodonnell64 Sorry, didn't mean to be obscure, or sound overly critical. When the pinnace is shining it's lights on the ship, it looks like it's much larger in comparison than I would imagine a pinnace to be to a Heavy Cruiser. Also, while I could be wrong, it looks like the boat bay is in the "bottom" of the Cruiser... something which makes no sense to me with so many stories involving pinnace and other small craft catching up to a ship underway. The "top" and "bottom" of the craft are covered by it's impeller wedge in that case. Your work is superb, the vision is simply not in keeping with my own understanding, but then I'm not an engineer. I have yet to purchase House of Steel, so if what you are showing is based on Weber's own vision, so be it. Well, even if it's not, so be it. Believe it or not, I meant only to complement the work, as I have rarely seen anyone bothering with the ships from the Honorverse.
RifterBlade Ah, okay. I see what you mean. Yeah, the pinnace appears much larger, but it's mostly because of perspective. The camera is only a few meters from the pinnace and the pinnace is about 150 meters from the ship, so it'll appear much larger. Also, the Condor itself is 31 meters long, and barely fits into the boat bay (33-35 meters from one side to the other).
As for the boat bays being on the bottom, David has said on his forums that they have always been on the bottom of the ship, which actually makes sense if you think about it. The wedge is impervious to any weapons fire or missile detonations, so it protects the rather wide open and vulnerable, unarmored dorsal and ventral surfaces of the ship. As with any rule, there may be exceptions - textev implies that the PNS Tepes has side boat bays. There's a passage about Ransom's ship having a few energy weapons and missile tubes removed to add additional boat bays loaded with extra assault shuttles.
Regarding the bits about the pinnaces and shuttles catching up with the ship, the assumption is that when the small craft approaches the larger, it drops its wedge long enough for the smaller craft to approach, as well as the smaller craft relying on thrusters only once it gets within a couple hundred kilometers. A Star Knight wedge (the Fearless) is about 150 km on a side and the wedge planes are something like 40-50 km from the centerline of the ship. Even with the sidewalls up (10km from ether side of the ship), there's still room for a pinnace to manuever for docking, if necessary, although I suspect the RMN regs say that that's a big no-no.
As for House of Steel, I'm one of the tech contributors to that book. I have a little bit of artwork in it (there's an image of a Mk-28 Condor II pinnace that is sort of mine), and I'm listed in the book in the bio section of those of us in BuNine ( bunine.org/ ), which, if you didn't know, is a group of people who basically do a lot of David's background tech work, as well as other things. We have real-world active duty Navy folks, retired Navy people, a lawyer who works out the law stuff David uses in the books, a guy in Australia who is a heraldry and medals expert who designs all the awards and ribbons you see in Mattingly's cover art for the books, Army people who contribute their knowledge of ground combat and weapons, and so on. Two thirds of the book is nothing but background tech, and political and organizational information for the Star Kingdom of Manticore and the Protectorate of Grayson. The other third is David's novella, I Will Build My House of Steel. The next book, House of Lies, will be the same type of format, but deal with The People's Republic of Haven and the Andermani Empire.
Lastly, thanks for the compliments. I never took what you were saying as anything bad - I just wanted clarification on what you were having issues with. We at BuNine work directly with David to get his vision as close to what he wants as possible, but there *are* times where we have told him that something doesn't work the way he wants it to, and more often than not, will change what he's written to accomodate what we've suggested. BuNine was involved years ago in implementing The Great Resizing, where in the first few books, David was saying things like the Fearless was x kilometers long, and massed such and such, and BuNine figured out that with the dimensions he was stating and the masses he had, the ships would be as dense as smoke. Soooo... BuNine worked out better ship dimensions that worked with the given masses David had worked out for acceleration curves and such. That *may* be why you pictured the Fearless being much larger than what my models show.
If you haven't checked it out yet, there's a link to my DeviantArt page(s) in the description above. There's more renders of not only the Fearless, but also every ship in House of Steel that has line art in the book (up to the Agamemnon BC(P) - three versions of that ship - standard, Keyhole 1 refit, and Queen Elizabeth III's new personal transport), as well as missiles, pods, and the pinnace. I'm on hold for doing anything else until after the holidays, and because my BuNine boss (Tom Pope) is busy finishing up the next book in the Manticore Ascendant trilogy with Timothy Zahn and David Weber.
You might also want to check out David's forums at: forums.davidweber.net/ I post there under MaxxQ.
Not to be picky here but shouldn´t the pinnace also have a visible impeller ring.
@Andreas Müller
It's buried under the tail cone. Watch carefully starting at about 30 seconds in and you'll see the tail retract (move forward). The impeller ring is in there. It's much more visible here: www.deviantart.com/maxxqbunine/art/Mk28-Rebuild-045-Web-427884981
looks good but needs some dramatic music :-)
I thought about a little Agnus Dei, but I think the Homeworld connection would be a little too obvious. That and I couldn't find any versions that were under 4 minutes.
Besides, everyone knows there's no sound in space ;-)
For some reason the scale seems off to me....
WilhelmSchulz Not sure what you mean. The dimensions are exactly what is listed in House of Steel, and since I'm listed as an artist for Bunine in that book, I think I got it right.
Of course, you may be thinking of the ship size listed/stated in HotQ, which is actually wrong now. The Great Resizing ( honorverse.wikia.com/wiki/Great_Resizing ) retconned the dimensions of all ships David had specified in the early books. This was done with David's blessings, and is now accepted as canon.
jodonnell64 Im basing my statement off of HoS. It almost looks to me that only 1 pinnance could fit in the boat bay on the flyby but the boat bay looks like it could fit at least 3. Now the question is "How close dose the Pinnance get on the flyby. It only seems to be a hundred yards or so away.
WilhelmSchulz Okay, well, the ship dimensions are also from House of Steel, and each of the two boat bays on the Fearless (Star Knight class CA) can hold up to three pinnaces. In the case of the video, the aft boat bay also contains a pair of Dakota cutters, so at best, the video Fearless can hold five pinnaces and two cutters.
IIRC, when I was rendereing the video, I set up the pinnace to be about 150 meters from the ship during it's closest approach, not including the docking sequence. The camera was only around 25 meters from the pinnace with a 35mm focal length, so perspective might seem a little off, especially with nothing else to give reference to scale. I can assure you that nothing was resized or rescaled during the making of this video.
If you want a better perspective on the relative sizes of the Star Knight and a pinnace, I suggest you check out my still renders on my Deviant Art page here: maxxqbunine.deviantart.com/
That will take you to the main page, but there are several pages of images in my gallery of all RMN ships with line art in HoS from Destroyer class ships up through the Agamemnon BC(P). Note that for each ship type (DD, CL, CA, BC), I include a reference image of all ships in the type, along with a Star Knight heavy cruiser as a constant to give a sense of scale.
Sometime in the next few months, I plan to finish all the RMN ships, then do all the Grayson ships, and maybe by the time I get those done, we'll have published House of Lies and I can start on Havenite and Andermani ships. Depends on how work goes. Working 10-14 hour days six days a week doesn't allow much time for modeling.
You state .. " the two boat bays on the Fearless (Star Knight class CA) can hold UP TO three pinnace.
In my VCA, that adds up to 2 Pinnace and 1 cutter per boat bay ... Unless!! 2 cutters can fit in the space that 1 Pinnace needs.
Yeah. See here: maxxqbunine.deviantart.com/art/StarKnightClassCA-002-475462456 There are two pairs of docking arms on either side of the bay. A pinnace required both sets to be securely docked, but a cutter only needs a single pair. So, two can fit in the same space as a single pinnace.
where is the Hammerhead design?
Thomas Bernecky It's there. It's just not like a hammerhead shark. The entire ship is the hammerhead shape without the handle. The expanded fore and aft sections are the "faces" of the hammerhead.
blaah what wings for? it`s a spaceship no need wings lol
Michał G It's for atmospheric flight as well as space flight. It's a transport to the surface from the ship. Have you not read the books?