Ship Design Philosophy

[Condottiere]

Starships: Engineering and the Venture type Manoeuvre Drive

V. Nominally, fourteen and two fifths megastarbux would pay for one factor three reactionary rocket and eighty eight thousand eight hundred tonnes of unrefined fuel.

W. Which would be 7'893.333333333333 hours worth.

X. In theory, one engineer is enough to keep an eye on the power plant and jump drive, mayhap with a minor in mechanics.

Y. In practice, you'd want a bunch of engineers supervising the jump drive, trying to eliminate the bugs, and designing a production model.

Z. Reactionary rocketry would give it short legs, but eliminate one variable in the form of a prototype manoeuvre drive.

 

[Condottiere]

The first hull, XXSS-1, would be optimized for planetary take off and atmospheric reentry, so that the engineering research and development team(s) have direct access to the prototype jump drive in a Terran environment.

The next phase, would involve building a space station, to act as the base camp for a reconfigured hull, that would include ramscoops, giving the starship unlimited endurance, as long as spare parts and life support hold out.

 

[Condottiere]

Ramscoops don`t have a listed technological level, though I would suppose higher teched ones would be more efficient.

Anyway, the configuration of the starship wouldn`t be streamlined, since there`s little point in atmospheric reentry.

Or you use breakaways to make the ramscoop detachable.

 

[Condottiere]

Breakawaying the ramscoops also ensures that the primary hull can remain put.

Breakawaying eats up two percent and costs two megastarbux per tonne; presumably, one of them could independently sport heat shielding, so twenty four tonnes would cost the same as the breakaway option.

 

[Condottiere]

Starships: AdVenture SubClass

1. I'm going to speculate that by 2108 Anno Domini, the Terrans had managed to achieve technological level ten.

2. Melon Muskrat had decided to recuperate part of the cost of starship operations of his interstellar starlines by selling advertizing space on their hulls.

3. As most Terrans tended to be aware of most of their branded products, the marketing would be aimed at a largely virgin audience, the Vilani.

4. Who had yet to appreciate the medicinal benefits of Coca Cola, the delicious taste of Bud Lite, or the placebo bestowment of athletic prowess by wearing Nike sneakers.

5. Muskrat equipped some of his starships with Holographic Hulls, at a cost of twelve megastarbux and adding eight tonnes of fusion reactors.

6. Pilots were encouraged by Muskrat to park in low orbit, above major population centres.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Engineering and Ramscoops

1. Minimum size ten tonnes.

2. Five tonnes of hydrogen collected, per tonne of ramscoop, per week.

3. Therefore, fifty tonnes of hydrogen per week.

4. 7.142857142857143 tonnes per day.

5. 0.2976190476190476 tonnes per hour.

6. 0.0049603174603175 tonnes per minute.

7. 0.0297619047619048 tonnes per six minutes.

8. Requires active manoeuvring.

9. No fuel scoops or fuel processors required, as bio hydrogen is produced as the collection process automatically purifies it.

 

[Sigtrygg]

Terra achieved TL9 in the 2050s and TL11 in the 2120s to 30s, skipping TL10 almost entirely thanks to "technology transfer" from the Vilani

(reverse engineering, trade and education missions, espionage, theft)

 

[Condottiere]

I don't doubt that there was massive industrial espionage, technological transfer, and reverse engineering; it's just something that we do.

So where are these dates drawn from?

 

[Sigtrygg]

GT:ISW

 

[Condottiere]

I'm rereading Interstellar Wars, and trying to reconcile the dates given.

In 2052, it was an UNSCA lab on Luna which produced the first practical “grav modules,” offering Terrans control of gravity for the first time.

That's technological level eight.

A UNSCA research station on Ceres also produced the first working reactionless thrusters in 2064.

That could be a prototype.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Engineering and Ramscoops

A. One tonne of reactionary rocketry consumes one and a quarter tonnes of fuel per hour, one eighth tonne per six minutes.

B. Fuel efficiency factor one - one tonne of fuel per hour, one tenth of a tonne per six minutes.

C. Fuel efficiency factor two - three quarters of a tonne of fuel per hour, seventy five kilogrammes per six minute

D. Fuel efficiency factor three - half a tonne of fuel per hour, one twentieth of a tonne per six minutes.

E. If you're using reactionary rocketry to actively manoeuvre and accumulate hydrogen, you're looking at around a half tonne rocket with sixty percent fuel efficiency, per ten tonnes of ramscoops.

F. Or in a twenty tonne gig, factor one and a quarter gravities.

 

[Ol'Weedy]

Construction Rule Grey Areas

Sooo...Building a 100 ton ship, 79 tons used up, and I add a Type 1 docking clamp bringing it up to 80 tons total. Drives are rated for a full 100tons.
Can the ship jump if it isn't carrying it's 20 ton launch?
Idea originally came about from trying to create a 'jump sled' for a ship's boat/pinnace. I can make it work fine using docking space, but i'm trying to keep the price down.

Another thing I wondered about was using the drives and sensors of a docked small craft. In the case of the jump sled, I'd leave the manoeuvre drive off the sled part, or maybe just use a mnoeuvre-0 drive to keep it in orbit.
Might not be the right place to post this, but OP seems to spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about this stuff....like me ;-).

 

[Geir]

I would venture that if the jump drive was for a 100 ton ship, you could still jump at 80 tons (not going to go into the whole bubble vs grid thing, because it's not worth it). But that's just my opinion; I could be wrong.

As for sharing sensors and drives, looking at a breakaway or modular ship rather than a clamped sled might be a clearer (or murkier) choice - be interesting to see how it would vary.

 

[Condottiere]

Short answer - yes.

Longer one - all you need are a hundred tonnes of volume; the rules don't say how you achieve that, as long as that volume remains stable throughout the transition.

As regards to tinkering around with the placement of ship components, you might consider a breakaway hull to centralize control, or rather more thoughtfully distribute them amongst independent primary/secondary hulls, as an independent hull can then be used as the primary mover.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Economies of Scale

1. Not really, optionally you have efficiencies achieved by advanced technologies.

2. I was looking at crew size, and wondering how much you actually save in salaries (and life support).

3. At five kilotonnes, thirty seven and a half hundred tonnes.

4. At twenty kilotonnes, seventeen and two third kilotonnes.

5. At fifty kilotonnes, thirty seven and a half kilotonnes.

6. At a hundred kilotonnes, sixty six and two thirds kilotonnes.

7. Presuming same percentage of engineering.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Why Does Rice Sink Ships?

In this video, we investigate the dangers of carrying grain cargo on merchant vessels and have a quick look at the reasons why special precautions need to be taken.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Construction and Modularization

On average, assume that it takes one day per million Credits to build a spacecraft at an average commercial shipyard. At the Referee’s discretion, very large ships can be built in a modular fashion allowing simultaneous construction. This means the total construction time can be reduced by up to 90%. This is typically done only on ships exceeding 50,000 tons.

That places me in a dilemma: fifty kilotonnes does not exceed itself, and breakaway hulls probably wouldn't benefit.

 

[Geir]

Spaceships: Construction and Modularization

On average, assume that it takes one day per million Credits to build a spacecraft at an average commercial shipyard. At the Referee’s discretion, very large ships can be built in a modular fashion allowing simultaneous construction. This means the total construction time can be reduced by up to 90%. This is typically done only on ships exceeding 50,000 tons.

That places me in a dilemma: fifty kilotonnes does not exceed itself, and breakaway hulls probably wouldn't benefit.

"typically" (and not "only") is the key word in that sentence as it allows for variance. I liked the v1 rules better with times for various hull sizes. And in any case a breakaway hull seems like a perfect use case for a modular build.