Spaceship BR - a LEGO model-to-be

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Spaceship Bridge	Spaceship Greenhouse Pod	Inter-Deck Ladder	Sliding Door / Docking Port	Living Quarters/Escape Pod	Personnel Transmat Station
Ship Frame Core	Engine Room	An FTL Engine Duct	Possible FTL Generator	Overall concept of BR

This web-area is where I'm (that's me, Steve Bliss) publishing parts of my project-in-progress, the Spaceship BR. Why 'BR'? Because I was inspired to build the shell of the bridge out of quarter-dome pieces, giving the crew a panoramic view of space around them. When naming the LDraw model-files, I used BR as the abbreviation for bridge. Above (and below) you'll find links to studies I've done for various areas of the ship, in varied scope & detail. I've only just begun working, very little has actually been built yet.

Spaceship BR is to be primarily a research/exploration ship, although the sensor probe package can be reconfigured to emit a pretty powerful energy-burst.

The technology assumptions are that the ship has interstellar capabilities, with travel-time measured in the days/weeks range. This implies the culture has knowledge of FTL drives, sub-light drives, artificial gravity, inertia dampeners, etc., etc.

The basic design concept/story is the ship is built around a permanent frame/skeleton/base. The overlying halls, rooms, hulls, hardware, engines, etc. are considered "semi-permanent". That is, each section or structure can be dismantled without tearing the rest of the ship apart. This approach allows for easier upgrading over time, or at least that's what the design engineers claim. Besides the bridge, engine room, and some engineering access, the rest of the ship is strictly modular--each section can be detached by the crew, some more easily than others.

The basic ship-modules will consist of everything I'd want if I had to live on a spaceship (OK, not everything). Crew quarters, galley/mess hall, showers, cargo bays, escape pods, engineering, botany bays, engine room, research labs, monitoring stations, etc. Probably a shuttle bay, if I get really enthusiastic.

This is fairly large project -- the bridge is about 17 studs long, 32 studs wide, and 16.6 bricks high. The basic crew quarter is 16x28x10 (more or less). There are at least 4 deck levels, more if I decide to add service modules on the underside of the ship. Each deck level is 9 bricks high (8 for the corridors, and 1 for the floor/ceiling).

I haven't made an estimate of length yet, but it looks like the width will be in the neighborhood of 84 studs (that's .67 meters, or 26.5 inches). I want the ship to be longer than it is wide, but I'm not sure I can get that. I may cheat, turn the crew quarters sideways, so they'll be longer than they are wide. That'll bring the width down to 60 studs.

I've uploaded a zip file, containing all 180+ DATs involved in this thing so far. The main model (the one that produces the overview rendering) is br-ship.dat. I'm sure there are extra/obsolete files in the archive, as well as some ideas that aren't documented on this site (usually they aren't here because I don't think they worked out very well). If you want to take a look, download ss-br.zip (61KB)

Enjoy poking around here! I'll add new information as I develop it. If you have any comments, suggestions, etc., feel free to drop me a message!