Re: Interplanetary exploration in a fantasy setting (surgeon's general warning: contains reactionless drives)

OK, let's try to salvage what we can of this derailed discussion.
There still were a couple unanswered points in my original post:

[...] a thick outer skin made of
layered steel, concrete and water tanks (which double as balancing
ballast).

Question: is this good enough on its own as radiation shielding? It is
my understanding that cosmic rays hitting the metal plates would
produce nasty electromagnetic radiation, but that water and ice and
concrete would provide good shielding against that. And what about
solar flares? I get the idea that they are events spacers *** bricks
at the mere thought of, but what would count as "good enough"
protection against them?

The fact that it has
no landing carriage can make it a necessity to "park" it in orbit,
too, in case it cannot reach one of its dedicated docks

I realized not long after writing this that the cargo doors need to be
huge, and cannot open on the belly (the belly underdeck carries the
main turrets and the ventral conning tower). I'm now considering a
combination of side doors (the sides are mostly free of
installations), pivoting the stern/bow tips open like on a cargo
plane, and using the flight deck as a loading area. Spare parts
(especially the extra amount needed for space exploration) can be
strapped to the outer hull, so I will most certainly have to put
folding loading cranes all around (in-field change of barrels for the
main guns while under planet gravity is going to be interesting!). I
wonder what kind of crane design would work both in 1g and 0g - I
guess you could pair dorsal and ventral cranes to create a "conveyor"
of sorts

The pullor is obviously used to
power a gigantic crankshaft electric generator that keeps the fat lady
singing, because with that much "free" kinetic energy it'd be a crime
not to exploit it some. I was considering flywheels for storage, are
they viable to the cyclopic scales in question, without resorting to
exotic materials?

What about this? How would I go about calculating size/mass/RPM
requirements for flywheel batteries? I was also thinking that, since
the generator does not produce significant amounts of heat, I'll have
to provide for electric heating and... what else? What about
radiators, too? I think they won't need to be as large as on an atomic
rocket, as there is no excess heat to dissipate, am I right? And what
would radiators have been made of in our 50s?

Do state-
of-the-art optical rangefinders make sense in space, or will the
delicate antiques just serve as crystal earrings for the big lady?

This too. I guess they would be near-perfect, though, especially far
from strong gravity wells, as pure trigonometry would give you almost
pinpoint accuracy

(And finally: is there any merit to the use of genius dolphins in the
Star Trek universe as space navigation experts? And how would dolphins
cope with high g's? better or worse than hairless apes? I need to know
how outlandish my outlandish ideas are)

Regardless of mission objectives, how would *you* cope with freefall
if you were trapped in a dolphin's body? Can they live comfortably
outside water, and I mean: once freefall replaces buoyancy to support
their overbloated bodies, will they still need water around them for
some biologic purpose? will their skin suffer, or maybe even just
stink a lot? (orcas in orca-sized skintight overalls "swimming" down
the main corridors would be hilarious)

.

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