Thread: The new eagles speculation and dreaming

My concept for Eagles is the basic modular craft with changes. Two deck layout. Engines, as has been suggested are mounted in the landing gear pods. Length would increase to allow for a commmand module/excursion module/lifeboat. There would be a CM on each end of the lengthened craft. Now a poster who is knowladgable about fusion power set a length of 40 meters. My eagle is 80 meters plus lengthening of the landing gear pods containing the engines. Service module fore and aft is lengthened. CM is lengthened and skid type landing gear is used to support greater weights. Potential for carrying stores or pods on belley or spine. Comments welcome!

Followup would have the baseline eagle stretched to 80 meters than the forward airlock assembly put forth by another poster would be standard issue. Fore and aft sections which have the landing gear pods containing the fusion engines with vectored thrust in any direction would be stretched so that instead of two panels length, we go to four and enlarged landing gear 'feet' to handle increased weight. CM on both ends stretched and capable of limited independant flight for utility and lifeboat function. Auxillary control station forward in SM to allow spacecraft control if both CMs are undocked. This inspired by Fireball XL-5 with the detachable nose used for planetary excursions. Double decker layout.

A standard high power laser and light missile armament is on all Eagles.
Eagles needing more firepower can have a weapons module with very powerful lasers, plasmagun and heavy missiles is availible. Though not a nifty fighter, the Eagle can engage any target in range and relys on the weapon rather than the ship for survile. Real world example, at least one AAM has claimed ability to IR home on enemy air/air and surface/air missiles.
A high speed fighter can be embarked on the spine with a tender module for it's maintaince.

Done some more thinking, Ouch! thinking hurts but notional dimensions would be 30 by 20 feet cross section and an overall length of 300-360 feet as I have not done any drawing for years and those drawings where scalups of a standard Eagle as measured from a photo with millimeters on the photo becoming feet.
For two decks, I allow 10 feet per deck and have widened the ship to 30 feet measured at the widest point of the command module which is shaped like the CM from 'Dragons Domain'. Having engines only in the stern can be a problem as the ship decelerates only by flipping the whole ship. Engines installed in lengthened/widened landing gears pods could be mounted outboard the pod and be made swivellable so that if thrust reversing was needed, rotate the engine pod. Same for landing or vertical accelerations with the landing engines thrust vectorable to aid propulsion down or by means of gimballing similar to the F-35B nozzle which goes from horizontal to down vertical. The sight of the secondary propulsion nozzles rotating from the vertical to the horizontal should be interesting acrobatics in the engines.
Hey out there, I want to hear from you. I have only my set of ideas. Comments, criticisms and tar and feathering welcome!

Continuing with the thinking theme, I'm starting to question if we even need to expand the Eagle to a larger size. It really doesn't make sense once you take a step back and reevaluate the needs of those at Alpha. Enlarging the Eagle and keeping the same ratios is like taking a Honda Civic and making it 6 times its current size so that you can comfortably seat a dozen folks. Wouldn't it make more sense to build a new vehicle where the design follows function? I don't think the original design team envisioned the Eagle as a "stretch limo" of space travel.

The current Eagle has less, much less capacity than a C -130 and payloads for large rockets may exceed, if I remember right, 200 metric tons. The Eagle needs that much lift and capacity or room inside increase. Then you could carry heavy equipment even in a half passenger/half freighter payload module. Say, a laser tank and 40 security types though red shirts need not apply.