Death star (sphere) vs Borg cube: better design?

[MacTech]

@straight_man

I don’t think you would turn more slowly, though I’d have to play with the physics a bit to be completely sure. In the atmosphere, the restriction on turning from long and slender designs is because of the very high drag coefficient more than anything else (especially with aquatic vessels) – take away the atmosphere and put your turning mechanisms on the end to maximize the torque, and I think it would be the same.

The Babylon 5 StarFuries and the reimagined BSG Vipers and Raiders are good examples of this, zero-point turn radius maneuvers, flipping around a central axis, and true three-dimensional flight, like when Starbuck does the noseflip in her Viper to bring her guns to bear on the Olympic Carrier in the BSG episode “33”

as far as the question in the OP, as stated upthread, each has it’s advantages, the Sphere has the better targeting arc (assuming multiple weapons hardpoints), the Cube is more modular and able to create larger craft by docking, but if a side is facing away from the target, it’s effectiveness is drastically reduced

[smiling_bandit]

@straight_man

I don’t think you would turn more slowly, though I’d have to play with the physics a bit to be completely sure. In the atmosphere, the restriction on turning from long and slender designs is because of the very high drag coefficient more than anything else (especially with aquatic vessels) – take away the atmosphere and put your turning mechanisms on the end to maximize the torque, and I think it would be the same.

OK, this is getting more complicated to explain than I like.

It depends on what you are using to turn, and where. If your vessel can only accelerate through forward motion (and likewise decelerate by reversing heading and firing the engines), then turning is probably a matter of having small hjets located at the front of the ship. When fired, the jets rotate the vessel.

Now, unlike Babylon 5, this is massive engineering headache; it has to be absolutely precisely calibrated to within an inch of its life, and know exactly how much to vent before shutting off. And do this in 3 dimensions. And be able to rapidly accept changing orders and directions from the pilate and/or computer system in case of emergencies, without backing orders into a queue or getting confused. This is a huge pain with earthly robotics. It is a massive, but still solvable, problem for space travel.

It’s a lot faster to turn a small, round (or boxy) vessel than a long, thin one, and still do so accurately. It has a smaller arc to turn. The longer vessel, however, can line up to new bearings more accurately, precisely because it has a larger arc to turn. This assumes there is a certain level tolerance in heading accuracy, because if you have no tolerance you can never be accurate and if you have infinite tlerance it doesn’t matter.*

*Although, because of the cuvature of space, you will eventually get to your destination regardless.