Recent content by phavoc

I do not disagree with you at all. Having that flexibility is great - but it's not without other costs. Making a container that is both vacuum-proof and very resistant to the temperature changes that space provides is not going to be cheap. So that means containers meant for exposure in...

Comparisons still work, and there all we have. Depending on what you are wanting to model, you can go back in time to different era's and different forms of shipping. Traveller shipping is kind of more of a match to the early 1900s - naval vessels use armor for defense, battles are generally...

The infrastructure question is quite valid. In other discussions it's been mentioned that for fast-turnaround ships, there'd probably need to be infrastructure right at the 100D limit so ships jumping in would minimize their time in-system. None of us really know if that'd be economical or not...

LASH and lighters aren't quite the same thing. LASH barges are moved by a tugboat and the idea would be to have one tugboat move multiples (or in the case of river traffic to add them to regular barge traffic - though this was one of the drawbacks to them due to a number of reasons). A lighter...

Logistics over interstellar distances would work roughly the same as logistics today. However you'd have to take into account the inherent delays to timeframes that jumping causes. It's easy enough to overcome - you'd simply have to increase the onsite inventory for any imported parts or...

Ah. Well, I think by default design the deckplates of ships will have built-in gravitics. So that can be set aside. There is, I believe, a very good reason why cargo decks will always have gravity - and that's because your average container load will most likely be palletized, and while there...

True. Getting .1G added to your speed doesn't work in the game since all the tables and calculations are on whole numbers. Though if someone is calculating actual thrust for longer distances it would shave some time off your trip. Too much effort to min/max things (though an enterprising set...

From a pure cost perspective, making the cargo riders as stand-alone ships interjects a much higher cost model into the equation. In the late 1960s the Lighter Aboard Ship (LASH) was implemented. It was basically a barge that you could take upriver to smaller ports but that it could be loaded...

It's a couple of things that all came together over a long period to make it so. In the early days of railroads, freight cars had some differences as far as length went. But eventually the (US at least) standardized on the 40' boxcar as a defacto standard. It made it easy for builders to...

The idea of the "optimal" size of containers is going to be constrained by the environment in which they operate in. And by that I mean you have to think of the entire ecosystem in which the container will be used. Bigger is sometimes better, but there is the idea of too big as well...

If you are staying in a vacuum then a square or rectangle-shaped small craft is entirely reasonable. Though I'd think most small craft would be used as an interface to some location you could not take your ship, thus they'd be designed to work equally well in vacuum as atmosphere. At least...

Sort of. I'm not graphically gifted to really illustrate what I'm saying. Most Cargo containers are all about being square, and while the revolver idea is circular in nature, I'd expect a LOT of 90 angles to maximize storage space - basically like we see today. For some cargos a tubular...

Yeah, the different sizes of containers were driven by profits, but also because of roads. You couldn't drive longer trailers till laws changed to allow them on the road. 20 and 40 ruled the seas for a long time, till they were allowed to get bigger. Even with better materials it's still a...

When I was toying with a container article I thought you'd see 2, 3 and 5 ton containers in tramps and for small scale shipments to in system colonies and stations and in tramp freighters like a free trader. They are small enough to hold cargo that you would expect these types of ships to...

Perfectly reasonable so long as the ships all carry frop capsule launchers and drop pods. It sounds really cool to make every embarked marine a battledress equipped one, but costs are massive. Even fictional governments have to bow down before the accounting overlords and cry uncle when they...