Ship Design Philosophy

[Condottiere]

Startrucks: Venture Drive

V. At two hundred fifty one years, a spacecraft has ten quirks.

W. Assuming that the jump drive is the original, chances are that it would have a minus one to repairs, and has double maintenance costs.

X. If you end up with a minus two on repairs, your engineer could probably hack it.

Y. With quadruple maintenance costs, you probably would want to scrap the starship, and the jump drive with it.

Z. You should treasure any component with halved maintenance costs.

 

[Condottiere]

Startrucks: Venture Drive

1. The default ten tonne bridge will cost a semimegastarbux, whether the primary hull is hundred tonnes, or less.

2. Which means, that if you do have a hundred tonne primary hull, twenty tonnes will be in secondary hulls, or attached.

3. If we waffle a bit with the tonnage, say, drop it to ninety nine tonnes for the primary hull, it defaults to six tonnes, which also happens to be the default for a small bridge option.

4. You can tell the difference, if you pay half or a quarter of a megastarbux for the command centre.

5. Apparently, you could control the spacecraft with a dual cockpit, at two and a half tonnes and fifteen kilostarbux.

6. And delegate the jumping aspects of the starship to a jump sub command centre, at six tonnes and a quarter of a megastarbux.

7. You could go for a monolithic hundred tonne hull, plus twenty tonne attachment(s).

8. This might be a rather viable option for a hundred tonne planetoid, with an externally docked launch.

9. But, after thirty six centuries, most combinations and varieties are possible, and probably, tried already.

 

[Condottiere]

Spacecraft: Engineering and Prefusion Reactor

1. Technological level six should make it easy for repairs and maintenance, if not manufacturing.

2. Budgetted/increased size would two hundred forty kilostarbux per tonne, for six and two fifths power points.

3. Or, more likely 0.15625 tonnes for one power point, at thirty seven and a half kilostarbux.

4. Which should provide electricity for how many households?

5. Which would require 0.005580357142857143 tonnes of hydrogen per day.

6. I suppose an atomic engineer could check on it, every month.

7. Not much point in manufacturing an advanced version.

8. At technological level eight, you have an early fusion reactor, with a twenty five percent increase in energy production

9. And would require the same expertise in handling it.

 

[Condottiere]

Spacecraft: Engineering and Chemical Power Plant

1. Between this and the prefusion reactor, I'd go with the prefusion reactor, all things being equal.

2. But, they're not.

3. A (certified) mechanic could operate, maintain, and repair a chemical power plant.

4. But you need an engineering degree for the prefusion reactor.

5. Fuel consumption is two hundred times less.

6. At sixty percent power power output.

7. Early fusion reactor costs the same and has the same power output as a very advanced prefusion reactor.

8. So, in that sense, it might be a question of existing production lines, and not expending research and development costs.

9. Though, at technological level nine, highly technologized prefusion reactor has a fractionally larger power output, 2.8571428571429 percent, than early fusion, though at a tad over nine percent cost premium.

 

[Condottiere]

Inspiration: The TAS Guide To Traveller: Interstellar Wars

This is a video explaining the lore of the Role Playing Game Traveller created by Marc Miller and currently published by Mongoose Publishing. Know this video took me over a year to make as the research for this video was extensive as the lore was spread out though a lot of book most of which are no longer in print.

 

[Condottiere]

Inspiration: The Sage's Library: Traveller

The Sage has a look at the classic sci-fi RPG, “Traveller”.

1. Me, Myself and Die! - Ironic, considering character creation system.

2. Up and out.

3. Old folks home.

4.

5. Comfort and accessibility.

6.

 

[Condottiere]

Spacecraft: Engineering and Early Fusion Reactor

1. Should we adopt, in general prefusion reactors onboard spacecraft past technological level eight?

2. Not really.

3. We'll tend to have the same issue as with other consumer and industrial goods.

4. Chances are, they don't make replacement parts for them, anymore.

5. Since it's possible that prefusion will revert back to fission, early fusion is the best bang for buck in power generation.

6. Budgetted/increased size would three hundred kilostarbux per tonne, for eight power points.

7. One eighth tonne for one power point, at thirty seven and a half kilostarbux

8. Fuel consumption 0.0004464285714285714 tonnes of hydrogen, per day

9. At a minimum, the controls will resemble current ones, rather than steampunk.

 

[Condottiere]

Spacecraft: Engineering and Early Fusion Reactor

A. One power point is sufficient to keep the lights on, on a twenty tonne non gravitated hull section.

B. Essentially, what we have is fusion minus.

C. We distribute monopowerpoint around hull sections.

D. We then water the power plants regularly.

E. We still connect them up in the power grid, so that if one becomes disabled, you can borrow energy from another.

F. All things considered, the early fusion increased size is probably the most cost effective.

 

[Condottiere]

Spacecraft: Engineering and Early Fusion Reactor

G. If they can take water, we could hook each one up to a urinal.

H. Technological level twelve two fifths tonne highly technologized energy efficient manoeuvre drive could produce a thrust of forty tonnes on one power point.

I. Which, with a thirty five tonne hull, and an upgrade to technological level thirteen, you'd have a smallcraft that could actually reach orbit at Terran norm gravity.

J. Forty divided by thirty five being 1.142857142857143 gees.

K. You could bundle those two together, one dedicated power point power plant with highly technologized manoeuvre drive.

 

[Condottiere]

Spacecraft: Engineering and Early Fusion Reactor

L. One interesting issue being, that switching out any power plant is considered a major refit.

M. I tend to imagine that fusion minus power plants would be the size of large refrigerators.

N. You could disconnect them from the wall, insert a hand trolley underneath them, and cart them off.

O.

P. Of course, this would need to be done by an actual engineer, or supervised by one.

 

[Condottiere]

Startrucks: Venture Drive

A. We're going to need a platform for all these components.

B. Basically, fifty tonne hull, plus two thirty five tonne pontoons.

C. At the prototype stage, engineering is the big ticket item, so trying to save on the hull costs doesn't really matter.

D. It's once we get to series production, that corners really get cut.

E. I really would like to know if artificial gravitation tiles are invented by the Terrans during this time period.

F. That does have an effect on the cost of the hull.

 

[Condottiere]

Startrucks: Venture Drive

G. Six tonne jump sub command centre, one and a half tonne cockpit, ten tonne Venture drive, ten tonne jump fuel tank.

H. With a fifty tonne hull, that's a balance of twenty two and a half tonnes.

I. Which would be a ten tonne ramscoop, four one tonne early fusion reactors, two tonne power plant fuel tank, two tonne stateroom, two one and a quarter tonne docking clamps, two tonne airlock.

J. Two thirty five tonne shuttles

K. Or pontoons, but in this case, I think they'll want connectors.

 

[Condottiere]

Startrucks: Venture Drive

L. I guess we could drop one of the reactors, and replace it with a one tonne prototype manoeuvre drive, since the reactor isn't.

M. That means in the primary, central, hull, we have a ten tonne jump drive, three tonnes of fusion reactors, and a tonne of thrusters.

N. That's fourteen tonnes of engineering.

O. Presumably, the ramscoops are positioned in front, continuously feeding.

P. Like a whale, straining out the hydrogen.

 

[Condottiere]

Startrucks: Venture Drive

Q. In theory, though I don't think it's worth the effort, you could highly technologize the ten tonne jump drive at technological level twelve.

R. Fuel efficiency would drop that requirement from twenty to seventeen tonnes.

S. Energy efficiency would be a decrease from twenty to five power points.

T. Size reduction would be from ten to seven tonnes.

U. Early and stealth jumps are circumstantial.

 

[Condottiere]

Startrucks: Venture Drive

V. Anyway, the original RV Venture is a hundred tonne hull.

W. That would be because hundred tonnes is the minimum buoyancy for a safe transition, and you don't want to lose pieces from your starship, at any time(space).

X. The extra twenty tonnes is an attached lander, since it's human nature to want to plant flags on foreign soils.

Y. The ramscoop discourages atmospheric reentry.

Z. Though it pretty much ensures you never run out of hydrogen.

 

[Condottiere]

Startrucks: Venture Drive

1. Minimum ten tonne ramscoop harvests fifty tonnes of hydrogen per week.

2. That would be thirteen tonnes of hydrogen in one day, nineteen hours, forty minutes and forty eight seconds.

3. Which should be long enough for the astrogator to orientate himself in the empty hex, and calculate the next leg of the voyage.

4. This would tend to obviate the need for a waystation.

5. It's kinda like collectors, but instead of exotic particles, it's indigenous elements.

6. Also, you don't have to risk trying fuel skimming gas giants.

7. You could launch surprise attacks through regions of space others thought moated off.

8. To be fair, I already came up with this for the Confederation Navy, a while back.

9. It was just time to commercialize it.

 

[Condottiere]

Startrucks: Venture Drive

A. Ten tonnes of extra fuel is, for all intents and purposes, free.

B. Ten tonne ramscoop is two and a half megastarbux.

C. Which works for a seventy two megastarbux jump drive prototype.

D. Not so much for the nine megastarbux production model.

E. Also, no technological level is mentioned.

F. You have to wonder if the ramscoops can harvest hydrogen within jump bubbles.

 

[Condottiere]

Startrucks: Venture Drive

G. You could feed the reactionary rockets directly with the ramscoops.

H. That would be fifty tonnes, divided by seven, and by twenty four.

I. 0.2976190476190476 tonnes would be a tad under thirty percent gees of thrust for a hundred tonne spacecraft.

J. Basic systems could be covered by solar coating the hull.

K. Or, it's established exactly at what fractioned factor of acceleration, the solar panelling gets ripped off.

 

[Condottiere]

Inspiration: The Jetsons - 1950s Super Panavision 70

1. Tea/up?

2. Fris/gee?

3. Onion domes.

4. Edges seem minimized.

 

[Condottiere]

Startrucks: Venture Drive

L. Going by Aerospace Engineer's Handbook, solar sails have an acceleration of one hundred thousandths of a factor.

M. That's never going to work for me.

N. Ion drive has a thousandth acceleration factor.

O. One percent efficiency beyond gravity welled range seems darn attractive for manoeuvre drives, in comparison.

P. Also, precision microjumps in empty hexes.