The Mech Touch novel Chapter 731

Ideally, a good design involved both science and art. Good craftsmanship combined both components into a beautiful product that did the job in the most elegant fashion possible.

Their cubular-shaped shuttle design was anything but elegant. It was as blunt as a brick and flew like one.

That didn’t matter much in space because the vacuum environment didn’t care for concepts such as aerodynamics.

However, once the shuttle plunged into a terrestrial planet with a breathable atmosphere, this ugly cube shape became an absolute detriment to the shuttle’s airworthiness.

"The original stealth shuttle is a lot more capable than what we’ve drawn because it has the space to incorporate all the necessary elements that make it airworthy." Avanaeon defended himself for choosing the form of a cube for their vehicle. "We have to make do with about half the volume. Just stop and consider how much of a detriment that really is. We need to work with half as much space, but we’re unable to shrink down the essential components, of which there are many. So what choice do we have?"

"And that reasoning has led you straight to a cube?" Ves raised his eyebrow. "Why not go for a sphere while you’re at it? Our shuttle can hardly look more ridiculous from there."

"The cube is perfect for our purposes. Let me explain." The chief engineer said, and summoned a small side projection to illustrate his train of thought. "So we have a set amount of fragments, but we want to maximize our shuttle’s volume, because more volume means more space, right? The shape of a sphere as opposed to the traditional triangular cone allows us to use as little fragments as possible but allows us to stuff the most cargo inside. However, the curvature of the sphere itself poses lots of problems by itself. You know what I’m talking about, right?"

Ves knew what the man was getting at. "Yeah. A curved surface is a lot harder to hide than a flat surface. Every countermeasure needs to be adjusted by angle, and that requires an extremely powerful processor as well as very sophisticated algorithms. Otherwise you get that phenomenon where you see light bending around an optically camouflaged object."

Such an effect resembled the distortion people experience when they look at a plant that stuck out from the surface of a lake. The angle of the plant abruptly turned crooked at the edge of the water.

While the effect wasn’t exactly the same, such kinds of imperfections would take place across the entire surface of a ball-shaped shuttle. While the problem could be remedied with further development, it required far too much expertise, manpower and time to get something like that done.

Rather than wrack their heads over trying to get a stealth ball to work, Avanaeon simply chose to go for a stealth cube instead.

"It’s a matter of efficiency." The engineer explained with gusto. "Theoretically, a sphere has close to an infinite amount of sides. Even if we simplify it to, say, a hundred sides or so, that still requires the shuttle to make hundreds of extremely strenuous calculations at a time. While the surface area of each of the sides are rather small, because there are so many sides, it wastes a huge amount of processing power. More processing power demands more space and more energy, both of which we really can’t afford to waste."

Ves nodded as he understood the crux of the matter. "On the other hand, a cube has six sides at most. Up down left right forward and back. So in theory, you only need to perform six calculations to account for six larger surface areas."

"Right! While that is still a strenuous demand, it is only a fraction of the amount of calculations the original processors of the stealth shuttle performed. Those stealth shuttles carried enough processing power around to run a basic simulation of the weather of a terrestrial planet!"

That was quite a lot!

"I see. If we cut the shape of the shuttle down to a cube, the savings in processing power will allow us to squeeze in a much smaller processing bank, thereby freeing up valuable space for other cargo, am I right?"

"Yes! And don’t forget about the savings in energy consumption as well. Less calculations means our energy cells last longer."

Every argument Avanaeon put forth made logical sense. Ves really couldn’t put down any of the engineer’s design choice when his rational mind fully agreed with all of their underlying reasoning.

He still found the cube ugly, though.

Ves sighed. "Well, this cube-shaped shuttle isn’t going to win any design or beauty awards, that’s for sure. I’m glad we’re only designing this for ourselves, because if we dared to put this on the market, we’d be laughed out of business!"

Completing this draft design made Ves realize that the role of art played a larger role in designing products than he realized. If a designer stripped away every consideration for beauty and elegance, they would be left with a bot-like approach that aimed to maximize the physical parameters of their designs without a single spark of creativity.

This approach may be adequate to their current situation, but it wouldn’t fly in a commercial setting. The market expected better than machines that might as well be designed by AIs.

In any case, Ves reluctantly accepted Avanaeon’s chosen shape and worked from there.

Taking the draft design as a starting point, they both began to refine the design. They performed precise calculations on what should go where. They worked away the imprecisions and filled up gaps with something concrete.

Deciding for a cube as their basic shape led to a large divergence from the original stealth shuttle model. The main difference between their homebrew version and the one utilized by the Masters of Combat was that the latter possessed the capability to enter the atmosphere.

Their cube plainly couldn’t do so, which severely limited their options in case they needed to take refuge on the surface of a planet as opposed to another starship in space.

However, the silver lining of this design choice was that they could throw out all of the parts out of their design that only saw use when the shuttle flew in an atmospheric environment.

In fact, maximizing space while minimizing waste became the running theme of this escape shuttle. They threw out as much redundant parts as they could get away with, all in an attempt to squeeze in other necessities.

"If this is to be an escape shuttle, it has to be able to last in space for an extended period of time." Avanaeon insisted. "That means it should be completely self-sufficient in terms of air, water, food, energy, heat, vision and propulsion. These are the Basic Seven necessities of independent spacecraft."

The Basic Seven applied to virtually all spacecraft except for machines dependent on a mothership.

This meant that spaceborn mechs actually fell outside the Basic Seven’s purview, though in practice they followed the guidelines anyway. The most obvious outcome was that each cockpit contained a small stash that stored a bunch of water bottles, nutrient packs and maybe oxygen tanks.