Mating Airlocks to Cargo Hatches

[MasterGwydion]

If the containers are non-pressurized, then they are also not climate-controlled. The cargo must be able to withstand temperatures of -270 degrees C to +10 degrees C. Non-pressurized containers also offer no protection from radiation. What effect does radiation have on your cargo? Also, contaminants can easily enter containers that are not sealed. How about atmospheric pressure? Anything that you are shipping will be subject to changing pressures, so anything that comes in a sealed bag or other sealed container has a good chance of either exploding or deforming to the point of failure.

Seems easier for the game to make the default containers protected against all of that.

 

[Terry Mixon]

If the containers are non-pressurized, then they are also not climate-controlled. The cargo must be able to withstand temperatures of -270 degrees C to +10 degrees C. Non-pressurized containers also offer no protection from radiation. What effect does radiation have on your cargo? Also, contaminants can easily enter containers that are not sealed. How about atmospheric pressure? Anything that you are shipping will be subject to changing pressures, so anything that comes in a sealed bag or other sealed container has a good chance of either exploding or deforming to the point of failure.

Seems easier for the game to make the default containers protected against all of that.

If you pay the additional cost for those containers, sure. Or just keep the hold pressurized.

 

[Fluffy Bunny Feet]

For interstellar shipping pressurized containers are an issue when the origin and destination have significantly different atmospheric pressures. So unless it is NECESSARY to be pressurized it won't be.

Containers can be crushed when the outside pressure is too high and burst when they aren't. Fasteners may be made much tighter or much loser on the container depending on whether the higher pressure is inside or out. Some containers would be extremely difficult thereby to open (and risk hatches etc opening violently and harming people/equipment. Loose ones may open unexpectedly.

By default cargo bays should be pressurized with equipment to equalize with the exterior atmosphere (which is why the manuals say cargo bays can function as giant airlocks). Cargoes that don't need atmosphere and/or temperature controls can be carried external in jump nets or unpressurized (cheap) pods.

 

[Condottiere]

Which would bring us back to five tonne containers, that being constructed as spacecraft hulls, are somewhat self contained with their own fusion power plant and life support.

 

[Terry Mixon]

Which would bring us back to five tonne containers, that being constructed as spacecraft hulls, are somewhat self contained with their own fusion power plant and life support.

Very expensive when there is no need for doing so. The cost of the ship maintaining pressure is negligible to the ship's operations. Unless there is an overriding need for a sealed cargo container (which would be on the shipper to pay for) then the standard, as per the SOM, is not necessarily airtight. If you want it to be airtight, pay a bit more, but that is not the standard. Hence, the cargo bay needs to be pressurized and have heating/life support. As this is the Starship Operator's Manual, it speaks to what happens on starships, not on worlds, so it seems pretty cut and dried.

 

[swordtart]

Very expensive when there is no need for doing so. The cost of the ship maintaining pressure is negligible to the ship's operations. Unless there is an overriding need for a sealed cargo container (which would be on the shipper to pay for) then the standard, as per the SOM, is not necessarily airtight. If you want it to be airtight, pay a bit more, but that is not the standard. Hence, the cargo bay needs to be pressurized and have heating/life support. As this is the Starship Operator's Manual, it speaks to what happens on starships, not on worlds, so it seems pretty cut and dried.

View attachment 5419

What is the stated cost of these containers and the cost difference between the 00 and the 05 container? Whilst low cost is generally preferred and even a Cr5 saving can be significant over millions of transactions, if the cost of loss of cargo due to mishap is greater than the cost of mitigating that risk then even a large sum would be more cost effective.

Quite why a ship owner would be interested in this is beyond me. I load your containers and I drop them off. If you want a guaranteed pressurised hold with exactly the atmosphere you require then you can charter the ship. If you want freight rate you have to protect it adequately against any random atmospheric conditions that I might need to have in place for my other needs (which could include cargos that have paid a premium for a specific atmosphere/temperature.

 

[Terry Mixon]

What is the stated cost of these containers and the cost difference between the 00 and the 05 container? Whilst low cost is generally preferred and even a Cr5 saving can be significant over millions of transactions, if the cost of loss of cargo due to mishap is greater than the cost of mitigating that risk then even a large sum would be more cost effective.

Quite why a ship owner would be interested in this is beyond me. I load your containers and I drop them off. If you want a guaranteed pressurised hold with exactly the atmosphere you require then you can charter the ship. If you want freight rate you have to protect it adequately against any random atmospheric conditions that I might need to have in place for my other needs (which could include cargos that have paid a premium for a specific atmosphere/temperature.

All I can tell you is that Mongoose specified what the standard containers are, and they are not guaranteed to be airtight. That means that the ship has to maintain the pressure. If that doesn't suit, talk to the management.

What you do in your Traveller Universe is up to you. For me, I see no reason why depressurizing the cargo bay would ever be standard practice. It makes no sense to me. I suspect the authors of the SOM agree with my take based on what they wrote. In any case, it's a case of you do you, and I'll do me.

As for price, all they have to say is this:

Containers vary in price by size, type and TL, from barely Cr50 for a simple 4F00/5 portable steel box up to roughly MCr0.5 for a 4A92/F that might act as a noble’s stateroom. Between the metallurgy and precision required, even the simplest of these containers are rarely made to lower than TL5 standards.

 

[swordtart]

All I can tell you is that Mongoose specified what the standard containers are, and they are not guaranteed to be airtight. That means that the ship has to maintain the pressure. If that doesn't suit, talk to the management.

What you do in your Traveller Universe is up to you. For me, I see no reason why depressurizing the cargo bay would ever be standard practice. It makes no sense to me. I suspect the authors of the SOM agree with my take based on what they wrote. In any case, it's a case of you do you, and I'll do me.

As for price, all they have to say is this:

Containers vary in price by size, type and TL, from barely Cr50 for a simple 4F00/5 portable steel box up to roughly MCr0.5 for a 4A92/F that might act as a noble’s stateroom. Between the metallurgy and precision required, even the simplest of these containers are rarely made to lower than TL5 standards.

To be fair, I only said depressurising was standard practice for loading in space. I said you might choose to run depressurised for other reasons. I have no idea what the authors of SOM thought. If there is no information on the cost of Containers then inferring anything about them is unsafe.

I am interested in facts or evidenced speculation. There doesn't seem to be any evidence to call upon here so I am happy I have done due diligence and I'll do me

 

[rinku]

Containers could even be single use, recycled after opening, like carboard boxes. Although that may be more of a thing for niche operations, such as airdropped (space dropped?)

 

[CordwainerFish]

Although that may be more of a thing for niche operations, such as airdropped (space dropped?)

That's, if not useful enough, cool enough that if it hasn't been done someone should do it. Space marines [1] need to get their vehicles down somehow...

(In Dune these are called dump boxes. Surely a more euphonious name can be found.

[1] Bite me, Games Workshop.

 

[rinku]

Something is very wrong with the maths for that container illustration.

The capacity is listed as 67.3 m³, and yet the internal dimensions given 2.25 x 2.28 x 11.56 = 59.3 m³

Indeed.

Well... it IS a big blue box...

 

[rinku]

However, I suspect that "cubic capacity" in this context is the figure used in relation to storing the container - that is, the volume based on the external dimensions.
Edit: looked it up, and yep. That's what the term refers to. Volume of a package, so you can work out if a load can be fitted into a hold.

 

[Condottiere]

Space maroons can use drop pods, which are one way, but very self contained.

 

[MasterGwydion]

However, I suspect that "cubic capacity" in this context is the figure used in relation to storing the container - that is, the volume based on the external dimensions.
Edit: looked it up, and yep. That's what the term refers to. Volume of a package, so you can work out if a load can be fitted into a hold.

If this is the volume of the entire container, then how much cargo can you actually fit into one? It would seem to me, that now We have no idea how much volume is available inside of the containers.

 

[Condottiere]

Tends to be more how many pallets, or refrigerators, you can fit in.

Pallets are likely to be standardized, to be sized to make optimal use of the container capacity.

 

[MasterGwydion]

Tends to be more how many pallets, or refrigerators, you can fit in.

Pallets are likely to be standardized, to be sized to make optimal use of the container capacity.

Which still doesn't answer the question of how many dtons of cargo can fit inside of it.

 

[phavoc]

These are engineering challenges for the far future. Even if we cannot think of solutions in the here and now, it is reasonable to expect that any commercial shipping that is routine will have resolved all the issues just as current routine commercial shipping has resolved all the issues. The majority of mail in the real-world arrives safe, where there is damage or loss it is generally down to the shipper cheaping out.

I would anticipate tiedown would be per regular freight and that would be enough to prevent movement in trnasit in all but exceptional conditions. That could be magnetic, inertial damping, grav or retro style chocking, straps and tiedown points depending on the requirement and the TL/cost ratio. Smart logistics with computer aided modelling and robot movers will optimise packing to ensure the packed volume is as regular as possible, with any significant irregularities resolved with on-the-fly custom cut packing blocks.

The air bag is just to manage the sealing aspects. It won't need to withstand much force as the tie-down is limiting or entirely eliminating that.

Totally get that with the airbag. What I'm talking about is the possible big variances in the distribution of the boxes. Having worked as a loader for a few years I'm speaking from a LOT of hands on experience. It's nowhere near as magically perfect as one thinks it might be. So when one wall is 12" from the roof, the next is 15", the next is 10" and next is 20", that air bag system has to inflate equally for all heights and fill in the gaps between the walls without crushing anything while remaining firm enough.

Not to say future people can't and won't be clever and have access to things we can only dream of. But we are still left with scaling our reality up into the future, and without complete hand waves of tech all we can do is extrapolate current conditions to the future. And right now I see problems with the giant airbag idea. It's a great idea and would work well so long as the crates were universally sized (or very close). Which is entirely possible IF you change to the idea that you WILL have minimal variations in your loads. Today you don't have that because there is no rule on what size box you must use for your packages. Change that to having just a handful of boxes for the vast majority and your idea becomes very workable - anything that doesn't fit gets charged a surcharge and all of a sudden you'll see a scramble to re-engineer some things to avoid that charge. And those people who put one strip of tape on a box with no padding and it weighs 40lbs? Charge them to death! (and those things can hurt when falling out and impacting unsuspecting feet...)

 

[phavoc]

I don't agree with the 4E. Current standard containers are standard in two dimension. That allows prismatic consistency simplifying efficient stacking. The 3m deck high tends to fix one of the dimensions. That 2.25m doesn't fit with anything and just results in .75m boundary that is inefficient. The 1x1x1 cubes can be used to fill in where the 4D is too large.

In my book a 4E would be more likely to be a 1.5x1.5x1.5 (a 3x2x2 would be unstable as the assumption is the 3 to fit in with deck height). 1.5x1.5x1.5 doesn't provide a convenient integer DTonnage, but 1/8th of a DTon is pretty easy to rationalise (and is far more credible than a 0.074 Dton container. I could see there being 1.5 x 1.5 x 3 with the 3 being the horizontal dimension. It would be easy to tesselate and gives a handy 1/2 Dton. 1.5x3x3 would be awkward in any orientation.

On paper, you have XX, where each X is 1.5 by 1.5 x 3m tall, and represent 1 Dton. Ship layouts use the same dimension. So a 3Dton container is
XX
XX
XX

And so one, up to the standard 10Dton. That correlates to todays containers.

 

[phavoc]

Tends to be more how many pallets, or refrigerators, you can fit in.

Pallets are likely to be standardized, to be sized to make optimal use of the container capacity.

Palletization of cargo works for some things - it's certainly not the standard for FedEx, UPS or USPS ground packages. Or air packages (those get loaded individually into containers). Palletization of a refrigerator works great - but it's also wasteful from a cubeage perspective as you cannot reuse the space around the edges of the pallet. While people can (and do) palletize invididual boxes and shinkwrap or strap them to a pallet, that's often because you want to keep that entire shipment together as it's going to a single destination. It takes more time and effort to build a pallet.

Pallets WILL be standardized in the future - a container will take 2 wide, with enough room to maneuver them in with small space tolerances on the sides. Most palletized loads have a lot of vertical clearance because people tend to build box versions about 6ft high. That's more of a human limitation than anything else.

 

[Condottiere]

Which still doesn't answer the question of how many dtons of cargo can fit inside of it.

That would depend on how they're packed (in).

Usually, there's an air gap along the top, so you can lift them out with you hand forklift.

Futuristic ones could have pallets with inbuilt rollers.

If you can't rely on a sustained gravity field, you probably either have to lock down each pallet, or fill up the gaps.

As to actual dimensions:

ISO 668 - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org