Directorate Officer
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
DESCRIPTION
As with most other companies, Lucerne Labs always has been looking for new manufacturing techniques and technologies which could potentially give it an edge over the competition. To that end, one of the avenues it explored was the use of 3D printing to make entire hulls for atmospheric craft and smaller starships. While not advantageous for corporate use compared to traditional manufacturing techniques and technologies, it was thought that it could be ideal for licensing arrangements with smaller customers or for producing small production runs of craft which otherwise would be prohibitively expensive to set up entire assembly lines for. Not only could a 3D printer produce a wide variety of hulls without the need for any retooling, but it would not require skilled labor or large amounts of floor space on the factory. To that end, a team of materials engineers and starship designers within the company collaborated to make this method of hull construction a reality for the company.
The result was the Starskimmer-series Hull.
While the primary goal was focused on expanding manufacturing abilities and thus developing an industrial edge for Lucerne Labs to exploit against competitors, the resulting methodology also provided a number of direct benefits to the end-user. The most apparent effect to those onboard such vessels is their exceptionally smooth ride, with condensed-matter composite throughout the hull absorbing and rapidly dispersing vibrations from atmospheric turbulence. While this makes Starskimmer hulls particularly attractive to civilian transport and recreational vehicles, the main attraction of Starskimmer hulls to military and governmental users is its nonferromagnetic construction, which has the potential for low-profile sensor signatures at long ranges from FSTs and significantly reduced magnetic signatures for stealth craft (especially if the vessel is going to be cloaked).
While the company itself has thus far only made limited use of this technology, it has been successfully licensed it to large number of hobbyists, small firms, and other organizations, providing the company with a steady stream of additional income without having to invest in resources of its own. Several governments and organizations within the Silver Jedi Concord itself have been provided with free or nominal licensing schemes which has allowed them to cheaply make experimental craft or small production runs of different designs with only a limited amount of infrastructure. The Directorate has also made extensive use of this technology, particularly on the Waystation, to build prototypes and starfighters. Aside from building starships with this technology, Lucerne Labs itself expects to primarily use this technology to build planetary vehicles (air, ground, and naval) for smaller contracts with planetary governments and groups.
- Intent: To provide a new method of hull construction for atmospheric/ground vehicles and small starships
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- Canon Link: N/A
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- Manufacturer: Lucerne Labs
- Affiliation: Silver Jedi Concord, Directorate, Closed-Market
- Model: Starskimmer-series Hull
- Modularity: Can be easily formed into different hull shapes; possible addition of corellian epoxy and thermal gel as discussed below.
- Production: Mass-Produced
- Material: Carbo-plas, condensed-matter composite, corellian epoxy (optional), thermal gel (optional).
- 3D Printed: Starskimmer is designed to be built by industrial grade, dual extruder 3D printers. The basic hull design can be loaded into a computer, and its density settings or proportions can be altered via intuitive design programs to get different effects. In other words, a hull could be designed to have more hollow spaces to make it lighter and more fuel efficient, or conversely be made denser to be more durable in combat. Hull sizes can be scaled up and down, or certain dimensions exaggerated as well based on the user’s want. This allows Starskimmer hulls to be easily built with low-skilled workers or by individuals and teams whose main expertise isn’t in the starship construction/engineering itself, but who are looking for more of a custom hull which isn’t otherwise easily available. 3D printing allows Starskimmer hulls to be built in non-traditional and smaller settings than normally required, allowing such varied places as homes, university labs, or at remote bases (for explorers, military groups, resistance groups, etc) to serve as starship construction sites for limited production vessels. This construction method can also be used by different sizes of 3D printers, allowing small printers to produce larger vessels by printing subsections of a larger hull for eventual assembly later on or larger printers to print out hulls in one iteration of printing.
- Geodetic Construction: Starskimmer itself is actually a specific variant of geodetic fuselage construction, where the geodetic frame itself is made out of condensed-matter composite, which noticeable serves to absorb vibrations and shock fairly well which in turn provides its users with a smooth ride. Carbo-plas is then printed and molded around this framework to serve as the main “plating” of the hull much as it was used on the A-wing. Ideally 3D printing extruders run hot enough that both materials are thermally bonded together as they are printed at the same time. Sometimes, these materials are further bonded with Corellian epoxy to increase cohesive structural strength. As nonmetallic materials cannot be welded, Corellian epoxy is also often used to act as the bonding agent for any necessarily repairs. The 3D printing process can also create hollow spaces within the fuselage or plating itself, which is often intentional to lower the mass of the hull. Users concerned with durability can simply print out the more or all of the fuselage as solid if desired. However, as a third option, these hollows can also sometimes filled in later on with thermal gel, which provides additional protection from kinetic shock and heat (such as during atmospheric reentry) or from a vast variety of different weapon types.
- Nonferromagnetic Construction: Starskimmer is somewhat unusual in that its entire construction is nonferromagnetic, which has the potential to give the Starskimmer-based starships very small magnetic and FST signatures depending on the other components used to construct it.
- Nonmetallic: Starskimmer hulls are nonferromagnetic, which means that depending on other components chosen for the ship, it could have the potential to be the basis of a fairly effective stealth craft or vessel with a lower sensor signature than normal at long ranges.
- Structurally Resilient: While the hull itself isn’t particularly more durable or protective against weapons fire than other hulls, the geodetic construction means that it can suffer more structural damage than normal and still be operationally flyable.
- Smooth Ride: The extensive use of condensed-matter composite throughout the entire hull means that Starskimmer equipped ships absorb vibrations and disperse them very well, providing unusually smooth rides to users even in turbulent atmospheric conditions.
- Hard to Modify:.While Geodetic construction makes the Starskimmer unusually structurally strong, this method of construction also makes the craft much harder to modify structurally, which is compounded by the use of nonmetallic materials – one can’t simply weld on additional framework or structures. Additionally, the geodetic frame itself is not very forgiving in having sections of it removed, thinned, or otherwise altered because it then adds additional, unbalanced stress to the opposite side of the hull from that which it is modified.
- Unusual Materials: Condensed matter composite and carboplas are not common shipbuilding materials, which can make repairing the ship difficult (or unusually expensive) in most star ports.
- Scaleable to a Point: The condensed-matter composite framework used in the Starskimmer is only structurally sound on relatively short lengths for starship construction (fifty meters or less) which regulates its potential use only to planetary vehicles or small starships like freighters and starfighters (50 meters in length or smaller) .
DESCRIPTION
As with most other companies, Lucerne Labs always has been looking for new manufacturing techniques and technologies which could potentially give it an edge over the competition. To that end, one of the avenues it explored was the use of 3D printing to make entire hulls for atmospheric craft and smaller starships. While not advantageous for corporate use compared to traditional manufacturing techniques and technologies, it was thought that it could be ideal for licensing arrangements with smaller customers or for producing small production runs of craft which otherwise would be prohibitively expensive to set up entire assembly lines for. Not only could a 3D printer produce a wide variety of hulls without the need for any retooling, but it would not require skilled labor or large amounts of floor space on the factory. To that end, a team of materials engineers and starship designers within the company collaborated to make this method of hull construction a reality for the company.
The result was the Starskimmer-series Hull.
While the primary goal was focused on expanding manufacturing abilities and thus developing an industrial edge for Lucerne Labs to exploit against competitors, the resulting methodology also provided a number of direct benefits to the end-user. The most apparent effect to those onboard such vessels is their exceptionally smooth ride, with condensed-matter composite throughout the hull absorbing and rapidly dispersing vibrations from atmospheric turbulence. While this makes Starskimmer hulls particularly attractive to civilian transport and recreational vehicles, the main attraction of Starskimmer hulls to military and governmental users is its nonferromagnetic construction, which has the potential for low-profile sensor signatures at long ranges from FSTs and significantly reduced magnetic signatures for stealth craft (especially if the vessel is going to be cloaked).
While the company itself has thus far only made limited use of this technology, it has been successfully licensed it to large number of hobbyists, small firms, and other organizations, providing the company with a steady stream of additional income without having to invest in resources of its own. Several governments and organizations within the Silver Jedi Concord itself have been provided with free or nominal licensing schemes which has allowed them to cheaply make experimental craft or small production runs of different designs with only a limited amount of infrastructure. The Directorate has also made extensive use of this technology, particularly on the Waystation, to build prototypes and starfighters. Aside from building starships with this technology, Lucerne Labs itself expects to primarily use this technology to build planetary vehicles (air, ground, and naval) for smaller contracts with planetary governments and groups.
