High Guard: Preparing a Planetoid or Buffered Planetoid Hull

[Limpin Legin]

Given the same inside tonnage, can the outside of two Planetoid or Buffered Planetoid hulls be identical?

Personally, I'd imagine that Planetoids are rough shaped asteroids, with lots of irregular surfaces. If that were true, then no two Planetoid ships would look alike, even if they followed the same Build Blueprint. (IK Planetoids are larger than asteroids but according to NASA some asteroids are as big as large cities, and not all starships are that big. Meaning that some ships are possibly actually asteroids, rather than planetoids.)

However, HG says that a Planetoid/Buffered Planetoid hull is "Generally lumpy, rounded potato shapes." And the illustrations show something that is almost as smooth and as oval as a potato in the kitchen or a pebble on a beach. If that were the case, then it would be easy to build two planetoid style ships of the same size, and they would look kinda identical.

So, the question is, what are the preparations for making a Planetoid Hull configuration? Is the external surface smoothed over so that the crags and fissures disappear? Or is it a case of what-you-see-is-what-you'll-get with the minimum of maintenance and pre-preparation put into developing the hull configuration, ready for use?

HG just assumes that the hull is the correct tonnage. But for story narrative some more explanation is needed. Can anyone shed any light on this?

 

[Condottiere]

1. The raw spud exterior is fractal.

2. Twenty percent waste allows enough buffer to duplicate standard deck layouts.

3. In theory, you can take an oversized planetoid, and mirror polish and sculp the exterior with a laser, so it resembles a shiny sphere.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

At a guess they are irregular shaped.

The rules only mention hollowing them out, not shaping the outside.

The example images we have are generally irregular, e.g. HG'22, p247:


Predecessor in CT Fighting Ships, p45:

 

[Fluffy Bunny Feet]

I'd expect the exterior to be shaped. Minimize total volume and therefore power for systems.

 

[Sageryne]

I think whether or not the planetoid would be shaped would depend on the purpose. If the ship was just using the rock for armour, but bits of other technology would be sticking out, I would agree, the planetoid would be roughly shaped to have to similar thickness all the way around, removing a lot of unnecessary volume. However, if the ship was intended to be a covert ship, pretending to be an innocent planetoid to sneak past enemy defences, then I think all efforts would be taken to preserve the surface as natural as possible to aid with the deception.

 

[ross]

There's a couple of options based on how you view the technology and manufacturing in your Traveller universe. The first is to just use planetoids as they are. Obviously this is less technologically rigorous, and probably works just fine but you're not gonna have any but the most general uniformity. I have also read in some science fiction the idea of taking a nickel iron asteroid and heating it up with solar mirrors and spinning it to create a more uniform shape. A third option, which is sort of a combination of these is a shaped asteroid planetoid hull. Using big laser drills to carve the planetoid or asteroid into a specific shape.

 

[Condottiere]

How long does it take nickel iron to cool?

 

[Sigtrygg]

Why can't they manufacture a solid ball of crystaliron and then fusion tunnel the way they do for planetoid hulls?

 

[Condottiere]

Maybe it has to grow the crystals?

 

[MasterGwydion]

You can Fabricate an asteroid hull...
So, in theory you'd be able to make them on an assembly line/manufacturing plant/shipyard as well, making them all identical if you wished.

 

[Condottiere]

I've been looking at that possibility, for quite a while.

In theory, all you need to do is pour out molds for the walls to be the outer hull, and glue them together.

 

[Limpin Legin]

How long does it take nickel iron to cool?

Depends on the ratio of nickel to other alloys present in the mix. Also depend on desired properties of the metal, as Cooling down time affects the mechanical properties of the microstructure. And finally, Slow cooling at recrystallisation temperature helps separate the metal from impurities because of their different masses when liquid.