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The Star Wars Alphabet Project
An anonymous reader writes "A ship for every *other* letter in the alphabet. Jon Palmer is creating a Star Wars fighter out of LEGO for every letter in the alphabet (minus X,Y,B,A,E and V). He has about 5 to go. Check out the project on From Bricks to Bothans." I have to admit, some of these look even cooler than the ships created for the newer Star Wars movies.
The X-Wings, Y-Wings, A-Wings and B-Wings can be seen in the movies, so "official" designs exist already. The E-Wing is found in the comics, and I think the V-Wing is also somewhere in the expanded universe, so it exists in a "semi-official" way. So they designed ships for the rest of the alphabet.
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
IIRC, the V Wing was in one of the computer games from Lucas Arts, "Rogue Squadron", and also cropped up in some of the books as well. One quick Google later and it would appear that there are also K-Wings, T-Wings and W-Wings already as well according to this page.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
I think it is very sad to go to slashdot for a few minutes to make fun of a guy. At least the Starwars guy inspires me with his great designs (not as a Starwars fan (which I am not!), but as a professional designer), while you just told that you are a karmawhore.
(yes this can be compared with sex)
The S-Wing is a deliberate homage to the origin of Legos in Space-the first Classic Space sets released, back in the late '70s. The S-Wing is a deliberate re-make of the 918 .Space.
http://guide.lugnet.com/set/918_1
One of the most famous sets ever made, the 918 was one of the original three classic spaceships released by Lego. Jon did not "give up", he built a deliberate homage to the Holy Grail of
http://news.lugnet.com/space/
Space. Forever!
Star Trek fans don't flesh out throwaway comments into things of vast significance in the Star Trek universe.
Dude, you've clearly not seen what I do for fun.
Why Warp Works, (or doesn't work).
Star Trek Computers
Born and raised a Trekie.
--GrouchoMarx
Card-carrying member of the EFF, FSF, and ACLU. Are you?
The requirement of being "space worthy" does not itself add any shape requirements to a spaceship. Many sci-fi spaceships are spheres, for maximum bang-for-the-buck surface area/enclosed volume ratio. Also due to limitations on materials. One of Vernor Vinges spacecraft described in Marooned In Realtime, for instance, was an assemblage of spheres, not even physically connected to each other (impossible due to other technological considerations).
But Star Wars spacecraft aren't traditional spacecraft. The ones we see are typically combat craft, and that adds several concerns into the mix:
- Mounting space: There must be space to mount weapons platforms, such as missles, turbolasers, ion cannons, and other things. A Spherical design is actually a little too efficient with the surface area in this case; you probably need more room then a Sphere would have left over, plus you'd be challenged to get spacing and angling right.
- Reduced silhouette: You want to be able to present a reduced silhouette to the enemy, so you can be harder to hit. This means that there is some other angle with an increased silhouette, but the tradeoff is worthwhile, if you have an intelligent pilot. Again, a Sphere, or a random misshapen lump of metal, does not meet this criterion, and this strongly indicates a traditional aircraft-type design, with a limited number of thin protrusions and as small a main body as possible. (Of course this doesn't indicate exactly an aircraft; the B-Wing fits this just fine.)
- Manueverability: You need to be manueverable. Whether you have air-like physics as in Star Wars, or real Newtonian physics in space, that indicates being able to turn quickly and focusing the thrust elsewhere. Again, random lumps of metal don't do this well. This forces a relatively short axis on the thrust line, so you don't get too much rotational inertia, again limiting your freedom of design.
Add this all up and you aren't free to throw hunks of metal together.Most of the designs on that page aren't too bad, and thrust coming from off-axis is regrettably already established in Star Wars (B-Wings in particular look really wrong to me, the engines should be about 25% lower, unless the lower spike is entirely hollow, in which case it should not exist for other good reasons). Star Wars has already established high levels of technology, such that while we'd never build those ships, they make OK sense in that universe.
Once you have these limited protrusions, you might as well go ahead and make them wing-like. All Star Wars craft have enough power that true wings are not necessary, in the sense of providing lift, but they can still provide valuable manueverability by acting as control surfaces in atmosphere. Also, since drag rises quite quickly, you still want to limit drag in a craft that will spend significant time in an atmosphere, as many, if not all, craft in Star Wars do. Again, "misshapen hunk of metal", while spaceworthy, doesn't help you here.
All in all, while Star Wars craft are fanciful and deliberately made for aesthetic effect, they aren't too badly done, and harsh criticism of them, once you accept the aircraft-maneuverability "physics" of Star Wars, really isn't too justified. (Criticism of the physics is, but you have to at least admit they knew they were wrong and they were deliberately imitating WWII dogfights, which mitigates it a little; I find deliberate violation less annoying then accidental violation.)