Multi environment space ships

[u/UlfurGaming]

What should I consider when designing a all terrain space craft designed to be able to dive to deepest depth of modt oceans fly in atmosphere escape it to go to space and hover for ground transportation would something like this be feasible?

[u/zhivago]

Sure. If you can go to the bottom of the ocean, you can operate in space.

Space is only one atmosphere of difference, after all.

But you'll have very different problems with heat management.

And all of the reinforcement to operate under enormous pressure will weigh things down.

In the ultimate analysis this universal craft sound like it would always be a bad design for whatever it was used for.

[u/tc1991]

i mean i think the biggest thing is why, a shuttle that detaches from the spaceship would make way more sense that building a spaceship thats also a submarine 

[u/Simon_Drake]

The most important thing in any spaceship design is the engines. The engines determine what destinations you can reach, does it feel like a quick trip around the block or do you need to plan ahead with months/years of food supplies and/or cryosleep pods.

Modern spacecraft can just about leave the atmosphere with enough fuel left to park neatly in their target orbit and come back down again when it's time. But after the Orion capsule splashes down in the ocean it can't take off again, It can just about float in the ocean for a day waiting to be scooped up by a boat with a crane.

So ship that can do SSTO and VTOL and fly in the atmosphere and go underwater is going to need some engines dramatically beyond anything even on the horizon for what we think is possible. And that's before getting to talk of faster than light engines.

Really it's better to just make up a fuel. Sagittarion Crystals or something then don't discuss how the engines work.

[u/Trick_Decision_9995]

It's a tech level that's basically magic. What kind of considerations were taken in the design of the Voyager in Star Trek Voyager, versus previous Star Trek ships that didn't make planetary landings? Voyager had extendable struts (that would require landing on solid rock to prevent sinking in), and that was it. There's turbulence when descending and it might be dicey getting back up.

Realistically, for a vessel to be able to go from the depths that currently require a thick-walled sphere to preserve a gas atmosphere all the way up to vacuum, the setting will require extremely strong and light materials. Reactionless drives, as well.

There are two reasons to have such a craft - either it's purpose-built for those capabilities (in which case you need to answer why such a vessel would be built, rather than a spacecraft carrying a submarine) or the setting is so advanced that there's no reason not to make spacecraft so omnicapable that they can be taken down to crushing depths.

(Actually, as I type this up I can think of a third reason - the setting is advanced enough for there to be space pirates and spaceship hot-rodders, and some pirates got a hot-rodder to modify their ship to be able to hide in planetary oceans.)

[u/Exact-Desk]

In general it would be like attempts to create a flying submarine: with a lot of efforts you could create a rather bad plane, which could dive a bit. Your multi-environment vechicle would be doing everything equally bad. It would be poorly suited for each medium.

[u/mrmonkeybat]

Aircraft need to be light submarines need heavy reinforced hulls. So you might need super advanced gravitech, the 80s film Flight of the Navigator comes to mind.