I'm working on a new version of the Kif ship from her Alliance-Union universe, incorporating many things I've come up with that these ships would need to work the way they do. I'm UV mapping the parts as I model them, doing the map image outputs with lines.
As I get closer to done on it, I'll be looking for someone who can do a better texturing job than I.
I figured out how to create two and four way mirrored UV maps so that leaves more room for detail on parts that'll work with a mirrored texture.
My ultimate goal is to create a short animation of the ship docking to the edge of a rotating space station.
Nobody has artificial gravity in this universe, except maybe the Knnnnn, but they don't talk to anyone except the T'ca, so nobody knows if they do or not.
The solution Cherryh came up with was to have a big rotating cylinder running through the middle of the ship.
That presents a problem or two, the biggest being torque trying to spin the rest of the ship the opposite direction. In my redo of this ship I put a heavy torus at each end of the big cylinder to counter-rotate and nullify the torque.
Cherryh's ships tend to be long and fairly narrow so she came up with a quite unique docking configuration. The cylinder is spun down and locked then the ships pull up to the outer edge of the spinning station and connect their noses to it so the ship is parallel to the spin axis of the station.
To visualize this, take a CD-ROM, lay it flat and poke a finger straight down on it at the outer edge. Your finger is the ship. This configuration provides for 'gravity' towards the bottom of the ship which has the same force the whole length of the ship. The tradeoff is that when docked the livable space is all in a narrow section along what's then the bottom side of the cylinder.
There are some issues not mentioned in her books. The ships just dock with the stations, there's some drama at times when a captain wants to get away fast and blows the clamps and stuff like that, but there's no major detailing of the process.
Some thinking on the mechanics and physics of this...
#1. The station is spinning fast enough to produce a comfortable acceleration at the main dock level near the edge, say .5G. At the size the stations are, that's pretty quick spin.
#2. A ship coming in to dock would need to match its rotation to the station, but there's a twist. It has to match rotation with the dockpoint, not the station axis! The ship must be able to accelerate *sideways* to match speed with the edge of the station. It must also be able to thrust upwards, towards the station axis, as it comes in to dock. In other words, the ship has to enter a forced orbit matching the path of the dock point, and be able to maintain that until solidly clamped to the station.
#3. Following the above, these ships need engines on the ventral side which are powerful enough to produce a G force at least equal to that of the highest G station they'll dock at. Preferably a bit more, otherwise a missed approach that slips 'below' the dock would have to be aborted and the ship would have to 'drop away' and loop around to come back in closer to the station's axis. The ships also need flank engines that can move the ship sideways as fast as the fastest spinning station it will dock at.
#4. Dorsal engines wouldn't need to be anywhere near as powerful since the ships never encounter a situation requiring high acceleration that way. Undocking would be a matter of bringing the ventral engines up to match station G, getting unclamped, scooting back a bit to clear then shutting off the ventral engines while keeping the flank engines up enough so the ship at the next dock doesn't come around and crash into it until the undocking ship is clear. The acceleration imparted by the station spin will throw the ship clear.
#5. The dock points on the station would need to be extremely strong, to help out with the forces created by large starships trying to pry themselves downward like starfaring can openers, it'd be a very good thing if the stations had docking braces that reach out and clamp onto the ships' frames at least halfway back on the dorsal side.
So here's how the docking approach sequence goes.
The 'Pride of Chanur' enters its assigned lane towards the side of the station which is rotating clockwise from the Pride's POV.
As the Pride closes in, the starboard flank engines are fired up to begin matching rotational speed and the ventral engines are also thrusting so the ship doesn't move outward away from the station.
Manuvering thrusters also fire to add a slow spin along the ship's lengthwise axis.
All of these thrust vectors have to remain balanced and slowly ramped up as the ship closes in on its dock. When it gets to a certain distance, it must be *exactly* matched in speed and roation so it can move straight in to the docking cone. Any screwup will either cause the ship to hit high (towards station axis), fall 'below' and miss the station, exceed the rotational speed of the station and hit the ship to spinward or not be moving sideways fast enough and the ship docked to anti-spinward will come around and hit the Pride.
Hmmm, perhaps the ships should have a couple of fairly powerful dorsal engines so they can get down and away in case of a botched docking aproach.
The Pride's vectors are perfect (Pyanfar Chanur wouldn't have it otherwise!) and at the last half meter, the clamp arms reach out and pull the ship in. All engines shut down the instant that the nose clamps indicate a secure dock.
To undock, the ventral engines are brought up to match station G, the instant they match, the nose clamps release and the clamp arms shove the ship away. Meanwhile the starboard flank engines are fired up at full thrust as the ventral engines throttle down. From the POV of the station, the Pride has dropped and rolled to port. Undocking is much less complex and nerve wracking! Once clear of anything moving with the station, the flank engines are shut down and the Pride can turn to its vector toward the jump point using manuvering thrusters.
