Ship Design Philosophy

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Power Plants and Skin of the Teeth Scaling

Next stage up, would be a 0.7380952380952381 tonne power plant, that would produce 7.142857142857143 Scotts.

Ten Scotts is sufficient to push a hundred tonne Scout into jumpspace.

In case anyone is wondering, Striker scaling works out that once you drop below one tonne, power output is scaled back to two thirds, which means you won't have enough juice to transition a hundred tonne hull.

Unless it's a high tech, and/or overclocked power plant.

 

[Condottiere]

Starships: Hulls and Armour Plating

Panzerschiff.

 

[wbnc]

Spaceships: Power Plants and Skin of the Teeth Scaling

Next stage up, would be a 0.7380952380952381 tonne power plant, that would produce 7.142857142857143 Scotts.

Ten Scotts is sufficient to push a hundred tonne Scout into jumpspace.

In case anyone is wondering, Striker scaling works out that once you drop below one tonne, power output is scaled back to two thirds, which means you won't have enough juice to transition a hundred tonne hull.

Unless it's a high tech, and/or overclocked power plant.

so it looks like using a half ton units would only be practical on small craft that use minimal power. Trying to use them to power anything muhc bigger than ten or so tons resuts in a losing power to volume ratio.

Starships: Hulls and Armour Plating

Panzerschiff.

Looks like it's designed so that only critical systems are heavily armored and then only from directions hostile fire is likely to be coming in from. works if you are defending against big ships using direct fire, maybe not so good against small craft and missiles.

 

[Condottiere]

I pulled the calculations from Striker, thought FFS gives an efficiency boost of ten percent compound at ten, hundred, thousand, ten thousand, and presumably hundred thousand tonne power plants; probably should start looking up vehicle design sequence in Mongoose.

You could turn off most, if not all ship systems and divert all available power to the thrusters.

A tonner power plant outputs fifteen scotts, which translates to one hundred fifty thrust tonnes, or minus two scotts for a ten tonne smallcraft, one hundred thirty thrust tonnes for thirteen gees.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Power Plants and WanTon Noodling

Hyperspace tunnelling could be performed by a WanTon power flower, since it could generate fifteen scotts.

Practically, that would limit it to a hundred tonne hull, with five scotts leftover for basic ship systems; the five scotts are enough for twenty five tonnes, so that could be limited to the bridge (ten tonnes) and engineering, ironically including the power flower (one tonne) and the jump drive (still at a minimum of ten tonnes), totalling twenty one tonnes.

If the jump drive can be made mono only, even less space would need to be powered.

A bijump would need twenty scotts, plus another five scotts, so a one and two third tonne power flower.

If you have twenty three tonnes devoted to bunkerage, you're not going to need to power up more than seventy five to eighty tonnes of volume, so fifteen or sixteen scotts, and manoeuvring another ten or twenty scotts, sensors another two scotts; normal operations in realspace would require thirty eight scotts, so a three tonne power flower.

If you replace the thruster with a one gee drive, and a one scott sensor, plus fifteen scotts for basic ship systems, that would be twenty six scotts, which would be one and three quarter tonne power flower.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Hulls and Gold Plating

Fri, 22 Jul 2016-03:40pm , Washington , PTI

Alloy consisting of titanium and gold is about three to four times harder than most steels that we currently use.

Scientists have found that an alloy, consisting of titanium and gold, is about three to four times harder than most steels and could be used for stronger, more biocompatible medical implants.

Titanium is the leading material for artificial knee and hip joints because it is strong, wear-resistant and nontoxic.

"It is about 3-4 times harder than most steels," said Emilia Morosan, from Rice University.

http://www.dnaindia.com/scitech/report-titanium-gold-alloy-four-times-harder-than-most-steels-study-2236979


The hull of choice by discerning yacht owners.

 

[Condottiere]

In theory, double strength could make it as strong as crystaliron, four times would exceed that of bonded superdense.

 

[wbnc]

In theory, double strength could make it as strong as crystaliron, four times would exceed that of bonded superdense.

Layer the gold titanium alloy, with boron carbide plates, separated by aerogel packets. Boron is an excellent neutron inhibitor, and hydrogen also stops radiation as well, so fill the aerogel with a mixture of nitrogen and hydrocarbons. Good for kenetic impacts, radiation, and exterme tempretures. If you created the allows using high gravity fields and plasma welding you get even tougher alloys. thats not even using layers of carbon nanotube based fabric....which you can if ya really want to pile on the "High tech" materials...

 

[Condottiere]

Tee Five layers, though haven't really looked at it.

Presumably, the materials could be sequenced to enhance the qualities of preceding ones.

 

[wbnc]

Tee Five layers, though haven't really looked at it.

Presumably, the materials could be sequenced to enhance the qualities of preceding ones.

No doubt. The sequence of materials would be very important. I know that the exact composition, and sequence of materials for Chobham armor and the armor on the side of the M-1 abrams is highly classified. More than likely multiple manufacturers would have their own proprietary blends and sequences. While military armors would be fairly consistent across the board, private suppliers would be putting some effort into the sequence that provided the best return for the least investment of time, resources, and cash.

 

[Condottiere]

There's cost plus, but that comes with it's own set of trade-offs.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Life Support and Dispersed Power Grid

Now that we know five tonnes of inhabited or operating volume require on the average about one scott of power, we can set up an independent one tonne fusion power plant for every seventy five tonnes of inhabitable or system critical volume.

 

[Condottiere]

Starship: Classifications and Pseudo-Equivalencies

After tech level twelve, it's kinda hard to fit in starships, or at least warships, within the categories we are used and can categorize. Except Supertankers and ultra large container ships.

At tech level eleven, the upper limit of fifty thousand tonnes is about what's reasonably achievable in the beginning of the twentieth century, and a hundred thousand towards the end of it.

Because the Terrans encountered a race with an existing tech level eleven tech base, their classifications would have been based on that.

Fast battleships would have been between thirty five to fifty thousand tonnes, and considered the cutting edge of military technology.

Battleships would have been between twenty to thirty thousand tonnes, striking a balance between protection, firepower and (thruster) speed.

Battlecruisers would have been in the same weight category, but emphasized speed and firepower with the protection of an armoured cruiser.

Armoured cruisers would have had long range, and slightly above half of the maximum possible armour value technically possible for their industrial base; about ten to twenty thousand tonnes, and capable of taking on lower tech ironclads.

Protected cruisers would range between five to fifteen thousand tonnes, be selective about which parts of the ship would be protected, and be armed with the equivalent of quick firing six inchers.

Ironclads are the heaviest of tech level ten warships, between five to ten thousand tonnes, though could be referred to as battleships by it's users, or crystalironclads, due to the fact that this new material would become available for armouring hulls.

Warships below five thousand tonnes would have been armoured frigates, though in their case, this could have been between half and full armoured protection available.

Once the Terrans broke through to tech level twelve, their fifty thousand tonne plus warships would have been termed superbattleships.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Manoeuvre Drives and Fielding the Effects

Anyone know how inertial compensators costs, engineered, or where they are installed?

A lot of naval architects shortcut this aspect of the design by delegating the task to the manoeuvre drive type that creates a gravitic field to move the vessel, creating an inner and outer field.

The outer field moves the vessel in the desired direction, the inner field absorbs the acceleration.

The catch? Drive ratings are actual the total energy they can create, but have to split the energy between movement and absorption.

In other words, if the drive has a rating of eight, four could be used for propulsion, and four could be used to absorb it. You could change the settings to five and three, meaning that the ship can move at five gees, but the crew and passengers would experience two gees of acceleration.

 

[Condottiere]

Starship: Classifications and Pseudo-Equivalencies

Passenger Liners

When you read about them in Traveller, they tend to be lacking in the awesomeness, or at least in the capacity, that ours used to have, which of course have now been replaced by airplanes that can get you to most places on this planet in one or two days.

The most prominent examples would have been famous ships such as the Titanic and the Queen Mary, which were actually bigger than the battleships of their era, and faster than battlecruisers. Despite being juicy targets for German U-boots, being able to transport an entire division, they could outrun that threat, though depreciating their machinery a lot faster than envisioned.

The economics of Traveller being as relevant as hyperspace technology: it is, but no one understands it, and any explanation is Swiss cheesey, the case for really large passenger liners, and to my surprise these large ones were classified as express, would require a route between two populous terminii.

For various reasons, I tend to concentrate of tech level fourteen tech base, so let's say that cutting edge passenger liners would need a jump factor five range to justify it is an express ship, and fast thrusters to dock at the starport. In theory, you should have two billion plus rich worlds within ten parsecs of each other, and you'd have to assume that the one percenters could afford passage.

Fuel and engineering would take up three quarters of volume; say the equivalent of ten thousand standard staterooms would need a one hundred sixty thousand tonne hull, possibly two hundred thousand if you include priority mail and cargo.

 

[AndrewW]

The most prominent examples would have been famous ships such as the Titanic and the Queen Mary, which were actually bigger than the battleships of their era, and faster than battlecruisers. Despite being juicy targets for German U-boots, being able to transport an entire division, they could outrun that threat, though depreciating their machinery a lot faster than envisioned.

Try telling that to the Lusitania.

 

[wbnc]

The most prominent examples would have been famous ships such as the Titanic and the Queen Mary, which were actually bigger than the battleships of their era, and faster than battlecruisers. Despite being juicy targets for German U-boots, being able to transport an entire division, they could outrun that threat, though depreciating their machinery a lot faster than envisioned.

Try telling that to the Lusitania.

The Lusitania had the bad luck of sailing into the line of fire( or ambush depending on the version of history you go with). She was actually faster than the Titanic.

If a radier or pirate is significantly slower than it's target it has to be either very lucky, or have a skipper that can set up one heck of an ambush position.

The speed of a Passenger liner was key to making profit. They could make more round trips per year than a slower ship.The old school Liners were first and foremost transportation. They made their money by cycing back and forth as fast as possible. the J-5 high speed liner would be in the same family. The Old liners were alo intened to run at full power for long periods of time. it was a desing parameter. Thier engines were as reliable as possible, and at times more advanced than naval warship Engines.

A modern cruise liner ( a totally diffrent critter) speed is not as important since the trip is the entire point of the voyage, a series of liesurely cruises betwen tourist spots.....not getting from point A to Point B.

 

[AndrewW]

The Lusitania had the bad luck of sailing into the line of fire( or ambush depending on the version of history you go with). She was actually faster than the Titanic.

Just in terms of being able to outrun the enemy doesn't offer any guarantees.

 

[wbnc]

The Lusitania had the bad luck of sailing into the line of fire( or ambush depending on the version of history you go with). She was actually faster than the Titanic.

Just in terms of being able to outrun the enemy doesn't offer any guarantees.

When the shooting starts all guarantees are null and void. No one advantage can give you an absolute edge.

 

[Condottiere]

Both sides were better organized for the second round.

A two hundred kay liner is going to have semi-passive defenses, and even if it just turned it's sandcasters on a sub kay corsair, all that crystal will just erode away that hull, leaving them naked and afraid.