There is a very big difference between hardcore SF, soft SF and space opera.
Soft SF, is based more on the story than the science part, it doesn`t need too much realistic scientific support as hardcore SF.
Hardcore SF, compare to soft SF, values the science very much. It has to be very scientific and realistic that it`s almost believeable enough to make people trying it in real life. That is the reason why some directors uses suggestions from scientists and professors when making SF movies.
And space opera is just traditional opera stories but changing horses to space ships.
Sci-fi has many authors who categorise their work as science fiction stories because of its wide audience and because it fits into the context of today’s readers who are rapidly advancing in technology. However many of them lack a realistic and believable scientific background. This is not to say that their work is inferior or boring, however the sci-fi that we seek is more focused on real and valid scientific settings that make people realise that these designs are actually achievable in reality. We need that sense of realism, and a sense of recognition from those involved in science when they see our animations.
Are we doing a hardcore SF animation? I can hardly answer that now because there are very high standards we need to achieve to be categorized as a hardcore SF genre. But it is certainly our goal to make it as realistic as possible.
That is why me as the director has to be very concise and careful about what we are going to draw. I cannot afford a real scientist to help us to solve a time machine problem so I have to learn a lots of things about the ‘technical’ part of this project.
We had a timeline for our world settings, we carefully designed the dates and time of the events so it makes sense and realistic.
I made a pdf talking about merely the background settings.
If you read those you’ll notice that I mentioned the aspect ‘no atomsphere’ in the settings. One of the result of taking away atomsphere is that all aircrafts that we use in real life won`t work as they are powered by the lift force.
Without air pressure there are no aerodynamics anywhere on earth. So we have to design a whole bunch of aircrafts for our characters to use. You may notice that some of them looks like our space shuttle in real life and others uses mere rocket engines. We designed this ‘rocket culture’ for our world becasue well, traditional planes won`t work.
I wrote an article about the gun base and how it should looks like at the very early stage. I did it so my teammates may have a better understanding of what we are doing. Here are some of it:
- gun barrel
Considering that the main purpose is to accelerate the projectile, the barrel design should focus on the following points:
- (b) A long enough barrel to accommodate the long acceleration section of the projectile. In this regard, effects such as the deadweight of conventional gun tubes can be ignored, and excessively long tubes can be supported by additional structures such as mounts. If tube recoil is used, then the barrel should still not be too long, and if the moving barrel is to be supported, the mounts should not be directly connected to the barrel.
- A barrel with sufficient thickness and strength to withstand the ultra-high chamber pressures of firing. Externally, the added strength can be expressed by adding a ring of metal to the outside of the traditional barrel.
- Tube recoil is considered, and the nests are specially designed so that the nest aligned with the barrel recoils along with the barrel when fired, while the other nests are in place. Muzzle retractor is optional. Consideration can be given to adding a muzzle retractor to exaggerate the muzzle smoke during firing and at the same time share part of the recoil.
- Retractors and Re-entrants
As noted above, the parker neighbourhood device and the nest of rounds are together. The rotating shaft of the nest is the hydraulic parker and the hydraulic reentrant is above the nest of rounds to be fired against the barrel.
- wheelbarrow
It is proposed to use a five-round rotary nest with five rounds loaded in advance. If necessary, new cartridges and charges can be loaded from the exposed nests on the pre-fire side, and the exposed nests on the post-fire side can be de-cased or guided. The overall proportions of the nests are longer than those of the revolver’s nests, and each nest is filled with a cartridge at the front, followed by a separate charge of propellant. In addition, there is no separate breech for each chamber, and there is a uniform, self-locking breech and firing pin at the rear of the chamber, which is aligned with the barrel. The firing and firing pin reset cocking structure is basically the same as that of the revolver.
- projectile
In the case of a line-bore gun, it is proposed to consider a split-body design, where the outermost body (the butt) rotates with the rifling and separates after discharging to reach the cruise track; the inner part, including the manned module, does not rotate, and the engine at the rear end fires after discharging to continue accelerating and extends small stabilising wings to stabilise the direction of flight.
- propellant
It is proposed that reference be made to the Paeonia self-propelled gun’s split charge, with the last section of the charge at the end being self-contained with its own primer and centre tube.
Do you see it now? There is a reason why we set our story in 2020s but not some far futures, there is a reason why our designs looks not advanced but like real planes. There is a reason why we use a big gun to do space travels instead of opening a magical portal and throw people inside. It`s not we cannot have magical-machine-ideas, it’s because it is way more fun to build up a real world instead of rogue fiction. We spent time and effort behind all those ideas to make it real.
It`s never just a gun.
Ver.5 in the making…