This is not a new image, rather I have gone back and fixed the issues and points of critique it had gathered since back in 2009. It was not put up on GimpChat before though.

Here's the original text:

My take on a "realistic" space warship. The top ship launches a volley of missiles at a target deeper in Jupiter's gravitational well.

Note that the ships would never actually be within visual range of each other ... but that would make for a boring image.

The warship is nothing but a pack of sensors and missile launchers on top of a nuclear rocket engine. If it is manned (unlikely), the crew would be in the midsection of the ship. The major part of of the ship's weight is reaction mass, fuel and oxidizer. The front is a heat shield for breaking against planetary atmospheres. The side panels are not solar panels but radiators, to get rid of excess heat from the internal systems. When not in combat the radiators are extended out from the ship's body like a windmill, allowing them to radiate from both sides. As you can see they are glowing amber from radiating excess heat from the ship's systems.

The updates improved the visual quality and lighting of the space ship, as well as increased realism with several details on it, as well as actually showing the dull glow of the heat radiators (they would probably glow even more in reality) and some artistic adjustments to Jupiter.
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Griatch

Said it many times, but I'm really a big fan of space art and definitely a big fan of your work Griatch. Only question I is why are you attacking Jupitor? lol

I tend to disagree with the radiator usage. In space, their extension doesn't impair performance (no aerodynamic drag, and minimal influence on moment of inertia), so they should remain extended in combat since that's when they would be most used (more heat when under full power). When not in combat, they are less needed and folding them would reduce the radar signature. Also wondering about the missile launchers position, the missiles look fire through the heat shield. Absence of hull/fairing look quite realistic.

I love the image, all things said, to the least of which I know anything about, except good art.

These are good and interesting points you make! I respectfully disagree with the conclusions though. Let me elaborate:

First, it's important to remember that the radiators mean life for a ship like this. Without radiators the internal systems (even if they are just computers, even more so if it's a manned ship) cannot effectively release heat and will promptly boil/fry/evaporate.
The reason the radiators are folded is not because of drag of course. But inertia is not minimal. The main measure of staying out of harm's way (at least in these close quarters) is the ability of applying delta-V with high impulse. What is used there is most likely an open-gas nuclear rocket engine, firing hydrogen reactor mass. During full burn it's not unlikely to create an acceleration of several G (maybe considerably more if there are no humans on board). Radiators are by their very nature flimsy structures (to maximize their mass/area ratio). You don't want to have a flimsy radiator extended away from the ship during rapid accelerations, it would snap like a twig. While under full power you can in fact run a separate loop of reaction mass through a heat exchanger to bleed off some of the heat directly into the engine and have it leave the ship with the exhaust.

The missile launchers are visible behind the heat shield, facing us, that is where the trails lead. They are open systems and the "trails" to them are actually unrealistic - most likely they would launch by a simple spring mechanism and ignite away from the ship to avoid adding rocket heat to the launch structure.
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Griatch

Good answers :-)

Disclaimer: not that I know anything about these things, but...



How about a railgun type launch mechanism? I'm not sure if that would also produce too much heat, but it would have the benefit of adding lots of momentum to the missiles which would mean the missiles would have to carry less fuel for acceleration.

That would cause reaction on the ship that would have to be compensated by burning fuel there too.

Not if you simultaneously launch missiles in two opposite directions

@dd

That would indeed do it.

For the distances involved here, one could indeed use a railgun, not primarily to launch missiles maybe (they are likely too heavy), but for launching shrapnel at high velocity. The difficulty is hitting of course - each shot will hit exactly where you aim, but the target may be doing evasive maneuvers (on the other hand they'll have a hard time to shoot down the incoming bullet). Rapidly firing a large number of railgun projectiles of only a few grammes or so at several kilometers per second could cause a nice spreading "shotgun effect" in the direction of the target.

Actually one of the mayor suggested ways to attack an enemy in a realistic combat situation is to simply go faster than them, cross their path and just drop a bunch of heavy objects on them. The relative velocities will do the rest.
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Griatch