Interstellar: Endurance | Ship Breakdown

this week's episode is kindly sponsored by world anvil stick around at the end for more information [Music] the endurance program began its life as a nasa project to create a long-range high-efficiency interplanetary spacecraft however with the arrival of the cataclysmic blight and subsequent shuttering of any public-facing aspect of nasa those efforts were halted after the discovery of a number of potentially habitable worlds through a wormhole that had appeared near saturn the endurance program was revived and completed its new goal was to travel through the wormhole to verify the status of those worlds and begin colonization efforts the endurance was secretly built in orbit over many years using disposable rockets derived from the saturn and space launch system with each launch carrying a new part of the modular craft the final vehicle was a 64 meter diameter ring made up of 12 modules connected by traversable tunnels and arranged like the face of a clock four of those tunnels had external docking ports on them where a ranger could attach two ranges and two landers were stationed in a central docking hub which had extra docking ports so the support craft could be rearranged for access or for balancing the endurance's center of mass keeping the spacecraft balanced was key as it was designed to spin at roughly 5.6 rpm creating 1g of artificial gravity for the crew this meant that each module could be built with a designated floor and ceiling with up being towards the middle of the ring the docking hub was attached to one of the two habitation modules these were where the crew ate and slept as well as housing a conference room scientific workstations and storage for consumables beneath the floor was the air and water recycling unit as well as life support systems with the machinery's bulk adding some additional protection against cosmic radiation high efficiency photovoltaic arrays were attached to the outside of the habitation modules as a backup power source the primary power generation was done by four compact tokamak magnetically confined fusion plants with one in each of the four engine modules while they did provide power to the entire vessel their large output was intended for the 12 magnetoplasma rocket engines the main propulsion for the endurance each module contained three of these engines as well as the spacecraft's hydrazine based maneuvering thrusters the symmetric spacing of the engine modules around the ring meant that they could be used even while the ship was rotating and their thrust could be further augmented by any docked rangers or landers arguably the most important module on board was the cryo module as the name implies this house the cryopods that the crew used for long-term hibernation drastically reducing the use of on-board consumables and extending the mission's lifetime the craft sick bay and medical center were also in this module as was a life sciences lab on its lower deck the four uncrewed modules housed supplies for colonization use on a planetary surface and were capable of being detached and carried there by our lander the final module was the command module which contained the flight deck and navigational hub with long-range communication residing on the lower deck as with the habitation modules the exterior surface had photovoltaic arrays while the endurance was primarily flown from the flight deck an attached ranger or lander could also take full control such as when the crew first docked and needed to spin up the larger craft like the endurance the ranger program began its life before the devastating blight started destroying the earth's food crops with the goal to produce a reusable single staged orbit vehicle the result of the program was a fast agile reconnaissance vehicle that could ascend to orbit and return to a planet's surface or vice versa repeatedly unlike traditional space planes the ranges had a very unusual shape their tiny canted wings were only for additional lift and stability with most of the left during atmospheric flight coming from the main body of the craft rather than aerodynamic control surfaces they used their hypergolic maneuvering thrusters and electrically driven air jets for pitch roll and your control this limited the number of moving parts for flaps ailerons elevators and rudders which decreased the vehicle's mass and mechanical complexity due to this the craft were completely incapable of unpowered flight so the crew was forced to eject in the event of a total loss of power in order to avoid this eventuality each ranger contained multiple power sources the primary power plant was a pair of miniaturized tokamak fusion reactors backed up by triple redundant fuel cells to act as another backup to those the craft had a set of high efficiency solar panels running along the roll bar that ran across the top of the fuselage the craft's main propulsion consisted of a pair of linear aerospike hybrid plasma engines these consisted of traditional chemical rocket engines whose exhaust was then ionized into plasma which was then magnetically accelerated this dramatically increased the exhaust velocity of the engine thereby increasing efficiency atmospheric oxygen if it was available could be collected and used in lieu of a range's internal supply for atmospheric entry the vehicle's heat shield covered its belly and for landing they simply used their powerful electric jets and basic landing struts they could even float for water landings the inside of a ranger was made up of two fully pressurized compartments the flight deck and aft airlock the flight deck contains the four rejectable crew seats which could rotate to face upward and a pair of folding benches for up to four passengers there was sufficient space between the crew seats for a supporting robot to secure itself four cryopods and contingency supplies were stored in each ranger for long duration missions the aft compartment was the vehicle's airlock with two docking ports to use one on the rear of the compartment and one in the floor final docking maneuvers could be done manually from a terminal near the door between the two cabin sections and when landed on a planetary surface the aft port lowered down to be used as a gangplank despite being fully capable of reaching orbit by themselves the ranges in use on board the endurance were launched to earth orbit atop a traditional multi-stage rocket to conserve their onboard fuel supplies this was also the case for the lazarus missions the 12 precursor flights through the wormhole though on those missions the ranger for each flight was attached to a lazarus pod as carrying a pod all the way to saturn and through the wormhole stretched the range's capabilities to its limits each of them had to be left in orbit once they arrived at their destination the other two support craft the endurance carried were heavy cargo shuttles known as landers these were built to ferry supplies for colonization efforts to a planet's surface from the endurance and as with the ranger they were single staged to orbit vehicles however unlike their fast and efficient siblings the landers were built for reliable and safe atmospheric deceleration while carrying a payload on their underside to this end the boxy high drag craft had heavy armor placing and performed atmospheric entry while upside down this kept the payload fully shielded during entry behind both the landis dorsal heat shield and the fuselage of the lander itself due to this the four-person flight deck was built with special considerations for visibility with windows in both the ceiling and floor the cruise seats and their control panels also rotated in multiple axes to maintain their orientation no matter the facing of the craft just like the ranges they also carried four cryopods and survival equipment for long duration missions the lander's main propulsion was very much like that of the endurance consisting of six hybrid chemical plasma engines split into two groups of three combined they had far more thrust than what was required to put the vehicles into orbit so much so that a single docked lander could carry the endurance from decaying orbit to escape velocity the four fuel pods near the corners of the craft contained electric air jets for low velocity atmospheric flight and hypergolic maneuvering thrusters for use in vacuum overall the endurance earned its name as its durable frame survived the tidal forces of the wormhole unharmed and the redundant features in the design kept it flying after it sustained damage allowing it to continue on with its mission this week's episode is kindly sponsored by world anvil world anvil is essentially a suite of world building tools which you can use for a whole host of things in creating your fictional setting you can create sort of wiki style articles on various topics all of which are very cleverly linked together in a very seamless system you can even create interactive maps of fantasy settings or terrestrial settings of any kind really there are very handy systems for creating timelines which is an extremely useful thing in world building i've often found and it just keeps it all in one really convenient place that doesn't require endless piles of spreadsheets and various other documents making it all super easy to dip in and out of whenever you're working on the project they've even now got an rpg campaign manager for tabletop folks and there's a full suite of novel writing software if you're a novelist it really is a great place for up-and-coming writers and creatives and a great way to turn a lot of the sort of tedious organizational stuff into something quite fun when you're getting your project off the ground and more than that i would say it contributes to helping original fiction writers get off the ground and for the science fiction genre especially that's something we desperately need we're i think massively oversaturated with regurgitations of star wars and star trek and i'm very very happy to support a website that really really helps new original fiction writers get off the ground and start working towards getting their fiction out there you can even monetize some of your content on world anvil if that's your ultimate goal so please do go and check it out you'll be supporting space doc you can find the appropriate link in the description below and many thanks to world anvil once again for sponsoring this video [Music] you

Channel: Spacedock

Views: 116,477

Keywords: Spacedock, space dock, interstellar, endurance, ranger, lander, tars, cooper, docking, music, world anvil, lore, movie, film, tv, christopher nolan, nolan, nasa, space exploration, space craft, ship, vehicle, brand, robot, black hole, gargantua, lazarus, scene, analysis, review

Id: idXEOFSR6Bg

Length: 9min 46sec (586 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 12 2022