Ship Design Philosophy

[Condottiere]

Not in the MongoVerse, where the jump bubble buffers and protects.

Not as exciting as it sounds, since you still need the power plant producing enough to juice life support, batteries run dry relatively quickly.

 

[Condottiere]

Starships: Engineering and the Boneliness of the Short Distance Jumper

1. Any jump, regardless of length, requires a minimum expenditure of (default) ten percent by hull volume fuel, per parsec.

2. Microjumps consume ten percent by hull volume fuel, minimum.

3. Jump governors regulate fuel expenditure, so that the tanks don't run dry if they exceed the required amount of fuel for the jump, though presumably you could just have separate tanks or series of tanks in ten percent groupings, and just keep the tap closed on those you don't need.

4. Classic High Guard mentions that alphabet jump drives that just expend their fuel regardless of jump factor, can add a jump governor to deal with this.

5. The jump governor takes up a tonne, and costs three hundred thousand schmuckers.

6. Since the ten tonner Jump Drive Alphas cost ten megabucks in those days, and the equivalent High Guard three tonner would be twelve, but with an integrated jump governor, I'd say the current cost in the MongoVerse would be four and a half kiloschmuckers.

7. Since I assume the jump governor is integrated in the jump drive overhead of five tonnes, that would mean it's one tonne jump governor at nearly half a megaschmucker, one tonne capacitors at three megaschmuckers, and the rest of the overhead of three tonnes at fourish megaschmuckers.

8. A monojump drive, available at technological level nine, has no need of a jump governor.

Now, imagine a forty percent discount across the board; at default, that's nine megabux, budget five point four megabux; with Condottioning:

a. three tonne overhead - 1'822'500 Credite Imperiale

b. six and a quarter tonne core - 2'531'250 Credite Imperiale [two hundred fifty parsec tonnes]

c. three quarters of a tonne capacitors - 1'012'500 Credite Imperiale [thirty energy points]

 

[Condottiere]

Starships: Crewing, Hulling, and Auto Motion

Lowering the landing struts.

Hoisting the solar sails and the sensor arrays.

Guerrilla Glass, so you can see who's coming, besides being bullet proof and air tight.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Engineering, and you shall find me a grave man

1. So standard gravity is fixated between seventy and one hundred forty percent Terra standard.

2. Basically, I take that to mean that humans aren't going to need medical intervention for long term exposure to these environments.

3. In terms of engineering in general, and propulsion in particular, on non gravitated hulls, specifically tail sitters, you can set constant acceleration between those two values.

4. At default technological level nine, you can generate upto one gee of thrust, at ten, upto three, which means that you could cruise at one hundred forty percent, and could crank it up to three hundred percent, which for commercial drives, might be more for getting out of a Jupiterranean gravitational pull, when you're double dipping.

5. To maintain gravity during the week in transition, you could dial down acceleration to seventy percent, partially feeding the power that would be usually used for basic ship systems to the thrusters.

6. High gravity will increase fatigue, but in an ungravitated craft, this would be only when the crew needed to be somewhere in a hurry.

7. Extreme gravity suddenly justifies having all those expensive racing acceleration couches; this would start at one hundred eight one percent, and at least the human crew would need to be strapped in.

8. Deliberately designing a spacecraft in Traveller without artificial gravity is a cost cutting measure, though I'd say it was feasible at least commercially; going by memory, most commercial vessels don't accelerate faster than two gees.

 

[Condottiere]

Starships: Life Support, Air, Food and Water

https://youtu.be/WCpYqWAIwFA?t=161

1. Having voluntarily tried not eating for almost three days, I don't recommend it.

2. Going by game mechanics, an average person should survive a week without it, so if the quartermaster screwed up, you should survive the transition.

3. You could also dump some of the crew into the lower berths, and set a timer.

4. The ship practically runs itself, especially during a transition; you could lounge around in the acceleration couches to conserve energy, they're also made for long term occupancy.

5. Water is caught in a recycling loop; it seems unlikely that the starship will run dry, and the only danger would be contamination.

6. Atmospheric pressure is likely to be Terran sea level, possibly passengers could have the climate in their staterooms adjusted to slowly acclimatize them to that of their destination.

7. Emergency air supply, compressor, and/or filtration device might be attached to the uniform, pressure suit, working togs, or just onboard civilian clothing.

8. Acceleration couch could also feed you, intravenously.

 

[Condottiere]

Starships: Crewing, and Auto Motion

1. Piloting - will need two pilots to cooperatively fly the ship, to ensure proper supervision of requisite ship systems; you can still set the autopilot, but it won't react very quickly to unusual situations, like collision alerts.

2. Astrogation - the astrogator will need an assistant, or it's going to take twice as long.

3. Engineering and maintenance - just half the tonnage that require an engineer and/or a mechanic.

4. Medication, stewardship, and administration - half the personnel they can pay attention to.

5. Gunnery - double the number of gunners needed to effectively operate a weapon system; it might get a wee bit crowded.

6. Sensors and communications - double the size of the shift.

7. Captaining - in theory, this would be covered by the Executive Officer.

8. Officering - still dependent on actual number of personnel.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Voyager 2 Discovers Wall of Fire at Solar System's Edge

Hello and welcome! My name is Anton and in this video, we will talk about the reports of what Voyager 2 discovered as it left the solar system and the discovery of physical barrier at the edge of the solar system.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4eg95rG18M



Liethen
2 weeks ago
So that's why SETI can't find the aliens, the devs installed a firewall.


1. Increased magnetic field, that's why you get Lost In Space, the compass no longer properly functions.

2. Reed Richards actually tried to reach Alpha Centauri, not the Moon.

3. Wall of plasma, kept in place by differing pressure from interstellar space and the Sun?

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Engineering and Perpetual Energy

1. I could have used a diagram of the Hadron collider, since I suspect it would more closely resemble that.

2. There's practically no gravity in space, but what you make.

3. As such, arrange a series of electrical turbines around a circle, with artificial gravity plating orientated behind them, creating perhaps a field of six gees.

4. Let water flow through it and spin the turbines continuously.

5. The question would be, if the harvested energy exceeds that needed to power the gravity plating.

 

[Anonymous]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_crystal

Predicted in 2012 and first seen in 2017 these are perpetual motion, but one cannot extract energy from them.

 

[Condottiere]

You can observe the past, but you can't effect it.

You can affect the future, but you can't observe it.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Engineering and Boffins find metal conductor which does not heat

by NICK FARRELL on 03 DECEMBER 2019

Breaks the Wiedemann-Franz Law

Boffins at Berkeley Lab's Materials Sciences Division have found a metal which can conduct electricity without conducting heat - an incredibly useful property that defies our current understanding of how conductors work.

The metal, found in 2017, contradicts something called the Wiedemann-Franz Law, which basically states that good conductors of electricity will also be proportionally good conductors of heat, which is why things like motors and appliances get so hot when you use them regularly.

However, the Berkeley team found that metallic vanadium dioxide (VO2) does not do that. VO2 also has the strange ability to switch from a see-through insulator to a conductive metal at the temperature of 67 degrees Celsius (152 degrees Fahrenheit).

The boffins were astounded at the VO2's ability to play fast and footloose with the Wiedemann-Franz Law.

Junqiao Wu from Berkeley Lab's Materials Sciences Division said it was a totally unexpected finding.

"It shows a drastic breakdown of a textbook law that has been known to be robust for conventional conductors. This discovery is of fundamental importance for understanding the basic electronic behaviour of novel conductors." Not only does this unexpected property change what we know about conductors, but it could also be incredibly useful - the metal could one day be used to convert wasted heat from engines and appliances back into electricity, or even create better window coverings that keep buildings cool", Wu said,

https://www.fudzilla.com/news/49895-boffins-find-metal-conductor-which-does-not-heat


That should resolve some of those heat issues.

And potentially convert that heat into electricity.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Cockpits - Go or No Go?

1. It Depends.

2. Having perused High Guard, I'm going to say that there's a hard cap at fifty tonnes, since bridge is specifically mentioned as being a downgrade option, and while cockpits are interchangeable with three tonne bridges at fifty tonnes, I don't think there's enough space to loophole a cockpit as a substitute for a smaller three tonne bridge at fifty one tonnes and above hulls.

3. Having established that, that means the primary hull can either be thirty five or fifty tonnes, for obvious reasons, optimizing firm points per tonne or maximizing tonnage.

4. Next up, can you use a cockpit to fall down the rabbit hole, instead of what appears to be the minimum require of a six tonne bridge?

5. That pretty much depends on the requisite control systems that have to be supervised; when wearing a pilot cap, I'm pretty sure that all you have to do is press a button.

6. For engineering, you could install the jump drive directly behind the cockpit, since we'll assume that jump drive overhead contains control panels, and the pilot could swivel around.

7. That leaves astrogation, and i'd say that could have it's own one tonne work station, much like having additional sensor operators can have theirs; and you don't actually have to do all that work, you can just stick in a tape in the console.

8. You could go virtual, eliminating the need for a bridge (and it's cost), as long as you account for a computer; at that point it becomes a little hazy if a virtual astrogator actually needs additional equipment, which makes the need for an astrogation station somewhat questionable, beyond the need to stick the astrogator in a place where it doesn't get in the way of the rest of the bridge crew doing their jobs.

 

[Anonymous]

Spaceships: Cockpits - Go or No Go?

1. It Depends.

2. Having perused High Guard, I'm going to say that there's a hard cap at fifty tonnes, since bridge is specifically mentioned as being a downgrade option, and while cockpits are interchangeable with three tonne bridges at fifty tonnes, I don't think there's enough space to loophole a cockpit as a substitute for a smaller three tonne bridge at fifty one tonnes and above hulls.

3. Having established that, that means the primary hull can either be thirty five or fifty tonnes, for obvious reasons, optimizing firm points per tonne or maximizing tonnage.

4. Next up, can you use a cockpit to fall down the rabbit hole, instead of what appears to be the minimum require of a six tonne bridge?

5. That pretty much depends on the requisite control systems that have to be supervised; when wearing a pilot cap, I'm pretty sure that all you have to do is press a button.

6. For engineering, you could install the jump drive directly behind the cockpit, since we'll assume that jump drive overhead contains control panels, and the pilot could swivel around.

7. That leaves astrogation, and i'd say that could have it's own one tonne work station, much like having additional sensor operators can have theirs; and you don't actually have to do all that work, you can just stick in a tape in the console.

8. You could go virtual, eliminating the need for a bridge (and it's cost), as long as you account for a computer; at that point it becomes a little hazy if a virtual astrogator actually needs additional equipment, which makes the need for an astrogation station somewhat questionable, beyond the need to stick the astrogator in a place where it doesn't get in the way of the rest of the bridge crew doing their jobs.

As with crew limits, much of the "Bridge" and "Console" space in Traveller is there to keep the space lawyers happy, and to allow for maintanence and repair during extended operations.

"Iron vision" is a military AR (augmented reality) helmet that allows crews to see through their vehicle's armor. https://www.defensenews.com/video/2017/10/12/hands-on-with-iron-vision/

All modern ships can be steered from an auxillary station (typically in engineering, as they can physically pull levers on the engines and steering engines) and there is no reason why you cannot make such controls digital and route them to some iPad somewhere. Naviation is already digital. Not something you would do for extended trips, and certainly breaks many legal regulations, but absolutely already technologically possible to one man control a ship from a sealed "blind" room, tho you may need extra hands to throw lines (throw ropes to tie the ship up, or get the harbor pilot on board).

edit: If it was such a huge problem, grav vehicles would have a window under the cockpit for landing (like a helicopter does).

 

[Condottiere]

You could install a window underneath, if only for the view.

Holographic controls option might cover augmented reality.

And ...

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Cockpits - Go or No Go?

...

2. Having perused High Guard, I'm going to say that there's a hard cap at fifty tonnes, since bridge is specifically mentioned as being a downgrade option, and while cockpits are interchangeable with three tonne bridges at fifty tonnes, I don't think there's enough space to loophole a cockpit as a substitute for a smaller three tonne bridge at fifty one tonnes and above hulls.

...

Oops.

a. Forgot about the Arladu Class utility boat from the Deep Space Exploration Handbook, that specifically allows a dual cockpit arrangement at sixty tonnes, thereby making it possible for spacecraft up to ninety nine tonnes to be piloted from a (dual) cockpit.

b. While it's stated that it has a crew of two, including co pilot part time monkey wrencher, it's somewhat unclear if having a second pilot is a requirement to prevent any minus modification to task rolls, since there would appear to be none at default for piloting larger spacecraft.

c. I'd like to note that at the basic cost of a cockpit, ten thousand bux, I wouldn't bother making this crew intensive to save forty percent.

 

[Anonymous]

Last week I had to explain to 7 year olds during a self-driving car ride, why Star Wars had pilots. (Yea, it's gonna get HARD to sell old sci-fi soon. Even Paw Patrol has wearables with digital assistants).

Edit: I am still not convinced that Star Wars doesn't promote robot slavery. Additionally Anakin may be a child soldier, and they bred a whole line of short-lived clones just to fight a war. So YMMV.

 

[Condottiere]

There's an antipathy towards clones and droids in the Galaxy currently, both being responsible for billions, if not trillions, of sophont deaths.

A ship can be equipped with a robot pilot.

 

[Condottiere]

Starships: Crewing and Auto Motion

1. Basing the cost of automating a vessel on its hull, plus drives and power plant, as shown on the ship automation table, seems incomplete, considering other essential ship systems.

2. As to why I'd say that automation can be isolated, consider the fact that during a refit, a starship could have it's default jump drive replaced by a similar model that requires much more attention.

3. A hull is likely to remain the automation level at the time of it's construction, improvement probably costs more than just scrapping the vessel and transferring it's innards to a new hull.

4. Doesn't mean that it couldn't be de automated.

 

[esmdev]

Plus the more automation and self-driving starships the more vampires running around the galaxy in a few years.

 

[Anonymous]

I personally would have based automation on the cost of the entire ship.

Whether you can or can't easily replace or automate some component depends on the design. If it's heavily integrated or not designed to be repaired, it might not be possible. If the systems are largely separate, or designed for ease of repair, it's much easier.

Consider that the labor cost of replacing a piston in a (petrol) engine is comparable to the labor cost of replacing the engine. Now imagine the engine is a metaphor for the ship itself. It was not designed for easy access to that component. On the other hand, spark plugs in the engine are easily replaced.

It becomes harder as the design ages and you cram more and more things into the hulll, in places they weren't designed to go.

And then you get to a stage where, no-one, literally, knows exactly what's been done and how the current system works. Any upgrade therefore starts with "doing science" on the current design to experimentally determine its design. I've personally experienced this with old computer code.