Variable Geometry in Sci-Fi Spaceship Design 

I can't believe in all those mentions of moving ships parts there is no mention of Battlestar Galactica and its retracting flight pods.

So there ARE people out there who like Jupiter Ascending! There's dozens of us. Dozens!

Klingon Bird of prey variable wings , The Galactica with it's retractable flight pods.

I liked Jupiter Ascending cause it felt like I was seeing the inside of someone's imagination! It doesnt make it a good movie but it did make it interesting to me. I wish we used this amazing visual technology to show what crazy things exist in people's imaginations rather then infrastructure destruction in New York.

Riftborn ships are like this because riftborn themselves are sentient disconnected geometric shapes from other dimension, it's natural to them.

the funniest thing about the argama class, which is pictured in the thumbnail, is that from what i know it's the only ship in all of uc gundam that does centrufugical gravity. All the rest just persist in zero g inside

The Expanses also uses variable geometry in a scene in season 4, where you can see the UN One unfolding its wings after flying out of the hangar of a larger ship to bring Avasarala to the surface of Mars.

You missed the first ship in Star Trek with this. The Klingon Bird of prey, whose wings fold for landing, flight and later attack. Shown before the Enterprise D sauser separation.

4:55 "Stupid, terrible, gorgeous movie", is a spot on description for Jupiter Ascending. The ships are staggeringly beautiful. The Wachowskis have made some amazing visuals. If they just removed the dialogue, they'd be all the better.

In the Forerunner Trilogy novels, they describe the tech that allows them to keep all those separated parts working / moving together as "constraint fields". When I read that, it made me think of the various Constraint tools you can use in 3D modeling sotware like AutoCAD, which lets you determine where features on an object or drawing are in relation to other features. For instance, you can set the distance between two parallel lines or two surfaces to a certain value, and as long as that constraint is applied, they will always remain that distance from each other, no more, no less, even if there are no other parts connecting them and if they never touch one another. By the same token, if you manually increase or decrease the value of the distance by which those parts are separated, then you can make them "float" further apart or closer together.

In the Battletech videogame released in 2018, the hero ship has three large pods toward the rear that serve as living areas. In flight these are folded flush with the hull so that occupants experience thrust gravity. Upon reaching a destination they fold out perpendicular to the ship's axis, and it then spins up to rotate around its axis and generate spin gravity within the pods.

My wife & I both loved Jupiter Ascending. It was delightfully goofy, but oddly enough our favorite part was the most grounded - the scenes with the Galactic probate bureaucracy.

One thing that I didn't hear mentioned is the fact that the warp nacelles and saucer's ability to separate would make a lot of practical sense for Star Trek. Being able to disconnect major chunks of the ship would allow for the repair and upgrade of the vessel relatively quickly.

One neat conjecture I saw about floaty parts is, they may not just be held together by energy, but could actually be connected physically/mechanically but in 4th or higher dimensions.

Pro: Cool folding geometry. Con: OHGOD THE MAINTENANCE COSTS!

Of all the digs at Mass Effect Andromeda I can think of, the geometry of Architects is something I never thought I'd see picked on.

I love clicking on a Spacedock video and praying they mention any morsel of Gundam and not relegate it to background visuals and man did I have my hopes up with that Argama thumbnail

A good use of variable geometry in space vessels is to spread out radiators to deal with excess heat while stationary and then fold them back in behind a forward micrometeorite shield for flight!

Given the thumbnail, I was disappointed you didn't talk more about anime examples.

Don't forget about the Normandy and Tempest, the engine nacells would move and adjust both for thrust vectoring as well as FTL travel.

Another one I'd like to mention in the Realistic category is the Hail Mary from Project hail Mary. The ship splits in half to become a Centrifuge when needed, but it can retract back into a flight mode at will. They use the feature multiple times throughout the story, even using it during an uncontrolled spin to lessen the force of gravity by expanding the radius

Nice to see Chorus get a spotlight. While it wasn't a perfect game, it has it's fun and amazing moments.

You could use the SDF-1/Macross as a variable ship as it has several modes and doesn't constitute as a "mech" itself

A supercool vid about variable geometry in sci-fi spaceships? :Hoo yea! Vid doesn't mention Macross and/or robotech: "Bold strategy,Cotton!Let's see how this plays out!"

Another spacecraft with variable Geometry is the prototype Cosmo Python from Space Battleship Yamato 2205. Another maybe less noticed feature is the Yamato's deployable wings for atmospheric flight. Same goes for a number of ships from gundam. A more recent example would be the Spartan from Gundam Thunderbolt deploying it's wings for atmospheric flight after atmospheric entry.

Great video! I also really LOVE the variable geometry moving parts also. I consider myself VERY fortunate to have been in the Navy and stationed on a carrier (USS Forrestal CV-59) that had 2 squadrons of F-14 during my first "Cruise". They are awesome fighter craft and ruled the skies! Great video - Thanks for this!

IRL, straight wings are more efficient at low speed, but they're unstable at supersonic speed. Swept wings are more efficient there. Moreover, the mechanism to sweep the wings adds weight and complexity. Various technological advances mean that variable sweep wings are no longer the optimum design for military aircraft. So ... in space, you don't have aerodynamic considerations, so it's basically just the rule of cool.

I almost spit my drink out when Stratenblitz was in the spotligth! Haha!

I really love that design from The Sojourn, thrust gravity and spin gravity are both underused in sci-fi and combining them both in one design is just so neat

The DUNE Ornithopter is another neat variable geometry craft. Uses the folding and flapping of wings as primary mode of flight, and like a bird or insect, use them to glide, dive, and hover mid air.

The Slave 1 from the original trilogy wasn't shown to have a rotating cockpit (as far as i know). However, when the ship was shown in Attack of the Clones, the cockpit was shown to rotate from landing to flight mode and even adjusted while in flight!

The Argama and the Defiant are my favorite Sci-Fi ships

I absolute love Chorus, you pass from fighting religious zealots to fight Lovecraftian monsters from the void, and the game is really, really, really hard, they even changed the final battle in the final update because how hard it was, is still hard, but at least now is more fair, never the less, it take me five hours to defeat the final boss of the game.

I honestly really love variable geometry in sci-fi. The X-Wing was, of course, my introduction to it, but I love the Normandy and the Turian ships from Mass Effect and loved the ship descriptions in the Halo Forerunner Trilogy of books. I quite enjoyed seeing them in Halo Wars, 4, and 5. I haven't actually played Infinity yet despite getting it shortly after it released, so I can't comment there, but VG has been a part of Forerunner tech since Combat Evolved and the Sentinels. Gundam has some good VG as well, though it varies by series. The Forbidden, Freedom, and Justice Gundams along with the Dinn from SEED have VG as part of the Mobile Suit's maneuverability or weapons while the Aerial, Calibarn, and Schwarzette Gundams from Witch From Mercury used VG weapons.

One thing I really appreciate about this channel is that every single clip on screen is directly sourced to a searchable origin

MEGAMAID! Thank you for including Spaceballs among the legends of Sci Fi :)

That picture of KSP @ 7:48... It is hilarious. It sounds and looks exactly like some one would do, cause they can!

Most of the smaller ships in my setting have some form of variable geometry, mostly swing-wings for atmospheric flight. Lots of thrust vectoring in their main torches and RCS thrusters, too. A lot of them have VTOL or STOVL capabilities too, since anti-grav isn't available.

An interesting case of floating parts or, as I like to call it, Raymanning from a developers perspective is in the antigrav racing game Redout 2 where all the ships have Rayman parts attached to them, most particularly in the stabiliser fins and auxilliary thrusters. In addition to being a cool visual feature as each part jostles as the ship is constantly maneuvering in high speed turns and jumps, but it allows the devs to use the same in-game model for many parts while not compromising the overall aesthetic of it, you can customise these ships with many different components and it adds its own look without looking wrong!

An example from Sonic Adventure is the Egg Carrier, and its cruising and battle modes. particularly memorable because navigating the ship changes based on what mode its in

7:45 Jeb Kermin says: "more rocket more better!"

Saw the Jupiter Ascending bit and showed my wife. You now have a new fan. She loves that movie.

I love your main point about the narrative need in visual fiction for visually interesting STUFF, or movement to create tension. This is something that exploded across all visual entertainment as CGI got cheaper. It takes time, labor, resources to build physical props. And they're limited by the properties of the materials used. I think of everything from Peter Jackson's Hobbit to Michael Bay's Transformers as huge splurges on overstimulating visual movement and action. CGI? No limits except for the need to be relatable to the audience. That's why we get the real-world influence from familiar ideas: then-current military tech trends, WW 2 in space tropes, biomimetic designs, etc. Something from the latest cutting edge research or engineering at any point in time IRL will not have had sufficient time to seep into the public consciousness through media images and descriptions. Heck, 40 years after their introduction, bullpup rifles still look exotic to a lot of people. As for variable geometry itself, it's the usual boring question I always love to hammer home: is the juice worth the squeeze? It takes more energy, resources, cost, complexity, skill, etc to use. So your technology base and military budget and supply chain have to be up to the task. In the 70s, we were smart enough to come up with the concept of variable geometry aircraft, but it turned out to be expensive to manufacture, operate, and maintain disproportionately versus the marginal utility we got out of it. Potentially, with 50 years' additional advancement and reduction in costs for materials science, computing power and automation for both design and operation, etc we have a lower bar for accessing variable geometry designs. On a very small scale, there are various research projects into biomimetic flying drones and robots that emulate birds, bats, and insects -- many of these use MUCH more complex and active variable geometry elements than the F-14 or the 3 or 4 swing-wing bombers still in operation. At the same time though, the world's biggest military budget has not seen fit to revisit variable geometry designs. Likely because there still isn't a strong enough case that can be made for needing the specific and unique capabilities of variable geometry flight, at the cost necessary to design, manufacture, and sustain it. Which is kind of saying a lot, for a military that's willing to throw half a billion dollars at a single bomber. :D For now, low-observable features > AA > swing-wing speed. Moving parts always come at some cost or trade-off. Opening the weapon bays on an F-35 temporarily reduces its stealthy signature. The F-14 couldn't mount additional weapon pylons on its wings. The Tornado had pylons that counter-rotated to offset the wing orientation changes, at the cost of even more mechanical complexity, weight, and potential points of failure (e.g. any kind of shock or flight stress that might jam a warped pylon or disconnect a control mechanism, throwing off flight performance or rendering the aircraft unable to deploy that part of its payload). A transforming system would need to derive some huge fight-winning benefit that outweighs these costs and trade-offs, meaningfully exceeding the capabilities and/or reducing the sustainment burden of operating 2+ simpler separate platforms that each do half of the combo deal's jobs.

The mecha aesthetic hits hard.

I'm amazed. The Argama was both in the thumbnail and the outtro, yet wasn't mentioned, or similar features even acknowledged. Really, showing it on the single deployment section when the centrifugal pods retract to protect them in combat is exactly the sort of thing that this channel would be hyped about, since it's a practical and realistic feature that weirdly doesn't show up in sci-fi aside from one or two times.

There's a non-cannon starfleet ship from the game:, "Star Trek invasion" where the hero ship, a Typhon-class, can switch to what's called "siege-mode" where it compacts from its carrier mode to a more traditional style design, so to speak.

I had an idea about useful variable geometry in my setting a while ago. The radiators on my hero ship are situated on rails and feature movable shells and covers that allow the ship to control and minimise its infrared signature in whichever direction needed. I'll probably never finish it, but i liked the thought of moving around huge radiators a lot.

Actually, was imagining a spaceship made mostly out of small segments (say Sg1 replicators), able to connect in different smaller designs (like dogfighters or the prowling crabby shape of basic replicator. THAT design would incredibly fit into SG setting, especially SGU setting, where the crew is in distance and location unreachable by means other than stargate, wich is a roundish ring with zirca 3 meter of inner diameter. Not to mention, that such spaceship/army of small robots/fleet of starfighters, could be incredible handy for resource mining, repairs of Destiny and re-stocking of expeditions non-edible suplies, and vastly expanding Destinys fighter/drone compliment (for having some replenishable redshirt starfighters on the ship can help. Not mentioning adding the expedition crew a second FTL capable and steerable spaceship. That should give the ship unparaleled ability in eluding anti-ship torpedoes and most of one-shot, one-kill anti ship weapons. Not to mention unparaleled transportability and modularity (and repairability if enough new segments are aviable or can be produced on site).

4:57 adorable reference to the legendary "absurdly tiny planet with physically impossible rings surrounding it" thing from VOY.

Not spaceships, but definitely sci-fi. Ornithopters in the original Dune book (only the recent films have got anywhere close to representing them on screen) were very much shown as variable geometry aircraft.

It's subtle, but there's still a bit of variable geometry on real life aircraft - flaps and slats. You change the geometry of the wing to trade between lift and drag; a smaller wing for less drag, larger wing for more lift. This allows a wing that both provides enough lift at lower speeds for take off/landing while also allowing a more fuel efficient wing to decrease costs and increase range.

There was a big smile on my face seeing the Argama class on here

Would love to see a video about Starcraft II Terran Viking

This channel is how I am able to keep any of my sci fi stories in a somewhat grounded universe

Love these Videos. Helped me really flush out my ship and science designs for my story.

You missed one of the grandest conceptions of spaceships with disconnected floaty parts: The Culture series by Iain M. Banks. The big General Purpose ships had disconnected parts, and their effective "volume" was mostly outside of their main hull and composed of what amounted to "forcefields."

For your consideration, the Arwing from Starfox. It's never made particularly clear what difference it makes, (unless I remember wrong) but presumably All Range Mode (ie full (well, minus 90⁰ from the ground, anyway...) control) sacrifices some speed for higher maneuverability.

A gret use of the "otherworldy" feeling that floaty bits give is on the Service Weapon in the game Control. It is literally a paranormal gun that draws it's power from the astral plane, and depending on how those floaty bits arrange, it acts as a handgun, a shotgun, submachine gun, sniper rifle, rocket launcher or grenade launcher.

I got your back space dock I loved Jupiter Ascending as well. It captured the shear epicness and melodrama of the space opera genre perfectly.

You know, as a lifelong fan of Ace Combat, I never noticed that bit about super planes having variable geometry wings and even better super planes ditching them.

Jupiter Ascendant was absolutely gorgeous

I would like to shout out the Tactical Destroyers from Eve Online. Of the 4 of them, the Caldari Jackdaw is one of my favorites with the Minmatar Svipul a close second.

The Earth Force ships in _Babylon 5_ use centrifugal sections. And Kosh's ship was some kind of nanotech shape-changing hull.

Starfury Thunderbolts were a stellar upgrade to an already stellar ship design, wings for atmospheric flight that folded in during spaceflight (with what appeared to be minimal mechanicals) to make the maneuvering more responsive by consolidating the center of gravity.

Finally someone that also likes jupiter ascending for the designs.

One of my favorite examples was the Argo from the most recent Battletech game. It had 3 living pods that would swing out and rotate to provide gravity while in orbit, and swing back in line with the ship to use thrust gravity while in transit.

Another real world variable geometry design that wasn't mentioned, but might make a cool asymmetric inspiration for some space ship, is NASA's experimental AD-1 oblique wing. The wing pivots (kind of like the Osprey's does for storage) in mid-flight, going from a low speed straight wing to an angled one for higher speeds -- except because it is a continuous wing that pivots, it's forward swept on one side of the plane and swept rearward on the other!

Does anyone remember the old cartoon "Starcom"? It had spaceships with variable geometry. The Starmax bombers had flip up wings for storage, and the Starwolf micro fighters could fold into cubes to hide away inside the back of the Starmax. So cool.

Wow wasn't expecting to hear an Endless Space mention today but thanks for that. Love those games.

Scymitar name drop! Nice! It's my favorite ship on all time! :)

Loved the way the Argo moved its habitation pods so that psuedo gravity provided by thrust when on the move matched centrifugal forces when the ship was in orbit. It was was a smart little detail.

Nice! It’s heartening to hear appreciation for variable geometry ships. I’m writing a hard(ish) science fiction space opera right now and the main hero ship has variable geometry in order to provide centrifugal geometry during the cruise phase. For acceleration/maneuvering it reels in the counterweight/service module, and the sensors/radiators retract so it becomes aerodynamic for atmospheric flight.

One aspect that informs moving parts (or could, in more realistic settings) is where you want your dropship's thrust vector to point. In space and high atmo, you want to move forward with the pointy bit forward, but when landing, that would make you an unstable tailsitter. So many dropships feature rotating nacelles or something else, like Slave One style. You could of course have separate landing engines on tops of your main ones but that's a bit boring.

The ‘detachable floating geometry’ stuff is HEAVILY featured in anti gravity racing games! Wipeout probably has it, but the one game I have a lot of experience with that very heavily uses features like that is RedOut. Most ships are maglev operated, run on massive, extremely powerful engines, and can separate parts of themselves to increase handling on the track. They’re kept in place with powerful electromagnetic fields and can even expand and contract with speed changes. The slower you go the more they contract, the faster you go the more the geometry separates. It’s most apparent in the Lunare Scuderia and ESA racing ships. And, as a fun side note, there’s an entire brand of racing vessels that are literally podracers from Star Wars.

I remember there's a ship called the zappa in an anime called Kacho Ohji or black heaven, that changes it's shape into a flying v style ship in which the band finally see the actual space battles going on to which their music powers a massive laser super weapon

Star Trek Online also has the Chimera class, which shifts sections of the saucer acelles around to two modes that change ship stats and expose different special abilities. The USS Dyson and variants can also do some similar but less drastic changes.

Not to mention... - Battlestar Galactica's moving flight pods. - Jet's Hammerhead ship from Cowboy Bebop with its rotating engines, extendable nose scoop and pivoting harpoon arm.

I suggest videos on: Low altitude assault transport Vulture droid Tri fighter Lamda class shuttle Sentinel class shuttle Nu class shuttle Theta class t-2c shuttle

I have been trying to remember the word skeuomorphic for DAYS, thanks

With variable geometry, there are also a few universes that use it for transitioning modes. Like extending armor panels that close over more vulnerable parts for either combat or atmospheric entry, protecting more delicate pieces such as sensors, cameras, or even weaponry. Or a transition from space to atmospheric flight... And with shifting things around, that also could cover things like gunports that open/close for battle, which is notable as something in Babylon 5 (Especially what started the Earth/Minbari War). Star Trek also has the Klingon Bird of Prey and the Suliban ships that both have transitions, though the Suliban one never stops shifting around. And for separating ships, I believe the US military had been working on something similar to it with a recon design that was largely a larger transport with a bunch of drones that could dock with it for fuel and transport.

I love the art and ships in Jupiter ascending so much

Your description of Jupiter ascending is basically perfect

I forget where I heard this, but I think the canon behind the s-foils is by separating they allow greater radiation of heat (generated by firing the weapons). The IRL was apparently to invoke the idea of a gunslinger drawing his weapon

YES! Jupiter Ascending is glorious bonkers! Taken for what it is it’s a silly, fun, beautiful ride.

On one hand, yay for the Argama being showcased, as one of the oldest hero ship from Gundam, but on the other hand, having its own variable geometry only mentioned for the centrifugal blocs and then only for a few seconds only, while it’s there for protection in other parts of the ship… where it is full utilitarian, contrary to some others, like Ptolemy 2’s front wings for example

I've probably mentioned this series a thousand times, but the Kris Longknife book series does this really well. They have ships made of programmable smart matter (basically nanites), that can change shape to fit different roles or combat conditions, shift armor or weapons around, repair damage, or even mimic the profile of known enemy ships. There are even times when severely damaged ships are repurposed into smaller ships with their remaining good components. Also, while not spacecraft, the Seraphim race from Supreme Commander go really hard into floating geometry and asymmetric design in their land, sea, and air units.

I SUPPORT YOU with your Jupiter Ascending appreciation! Also: Technically speaking the SDF Macross from Macross/Robotech was variable geometry because humans.

I love having more moving parts in my vehicles at outer space where maintenance without some kind of space workshop would be near impossible.

The mention of variable geometry for centrifuge gravity reasons being usually one way, from memory the ship in Wier's Hail Mary unspools for gravity and then spools back in for manuavering, which I remember thinking was cool as hell.

I’m so glad there is finally a shoutout for Chorus!!

I LOVED the spacecraft designs from Jupiter Ascending, those things are works of art

Trimaxian Ship remember watching "The Flight of The Navigator" as a kid? with the ship changing shape for high speed mode it even did the mentioned disconnected parts thing, with the boarding stairs floating midair

The Liberator from Starcraft also transforms when it goes into bombardment mode and goes from firing missiles to its massive plasma cannon.

Jupiter ascending, the Rococo Sci-fi gonzo film by the Wachowskis, is amazing.

I still think the Ace Combat X02 Wyvern has my favorite folding wing design.

For all Jupiter Ascending’s flaws - and there are lots - it’s still visually stunning and the score is excellent.

Valkyries for the win, the ultimate in variable fighter technology.

The Kenner toy for Boba Fett's Slave 1back when Empire came out had a feature that rotated the pilot's seat to the orientation you had the ship at plus the rings rotate, so I think that counts here.

Absolutely LOVE Jupiter Ascending!

Pilots and designers: This is the coolest shit ever! Engineers and maintenance technicians: PLEASE END MY SUFFERING