Ship Design Philosophy

[wbnc]

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.

Yeah unless you have a destroyer or light cruiser to run around in matching firepower with a First rank liner would be suicidal. It could pack bay weapons and not seriously decrease it's working volume. And if someone did get a case of the stupids it would be an imromptu entertainment for the passengers.

"If you are on the port side viewing platforms you can see a vargr Corsair has decided to give the shis crew a bit of target practivce. The firepower Of an Emerald Lines Liner is rather spectacular as the captainis about to demonstrate. Enjoy the show, and please rememberthat toights Grand reception begins at 19:00 Hours ship time. Tonights Dinner menu is....."

 

[Condottiere]

Destroyers and light cruisers might have been able to keep up with the express liners, but only for sprints.

In Traveller, there's no real category for warships between ten and twenty kay tonnes, and that would be required to seriously threaten a two hundred kay liner.

Even the liner designers could opt just to armour the engines and living areas, harking back to the all or nothing armour scheme.

 

[Condottiere]

Ancient Aliens on History: Is the Moon a space station?
29th July 2016 by James Wray

Giordano Bruno crater on the Moon
Did ancient aliens constuct our moon including the Giordano Bruno crater? Pic credit: NASA/Goddard

This episode of Ancient Aliens on History looks at whether our nearest celestial neighbour, the Moon, is actually a space station.

It might have been a giant leap for mankind when the Apollo 11 mission landed on the Moon, but why have we not gone back? Following Apollo 17 in 1972, man has never again set foot on the Moon.

Some “Ancient astronauts” theorists postulate that there is a good reason we have not returned, and it is not about money.

Instead, they suggest that NASA has been keeping quiet about what they found on the Moon.

Some photographic evidence points to possible extraterrestrial buildings and perhaps hints at what lies below the cratered crust.

Commander Eugene A. Cernan holds the American flag during the Apollo 17 mission, the last time man set foot on the Moon
Commander Cernan during Apollo 17, the last time man set foot on the Moon. Image: NASA

Others go even further and believe the entire Moon is artificial…a Death Star type object placed in our backyard millenia ago by aliens.

One says that after NASA crashed an object into the surface “the Moon began to ring like a bell”, showing it could be hollow. Another follows on saying “a natural satellite cannot be a hollow object. That would suggest it’s artificial.”

http://smallscreen.monstersandcritics.com/ancient-aliens-on-history-is-the-moon-a-space-station/

https://www.google.com/search?q=ancient+aliens+space+station+moon&oq=ancient+aliens+space+station+moon&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i60j69i61j69i60&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#q=ancient+aliens+space+station+moon&tbm=vid

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Care and Tendering

Apparently, an F-16 needs nineteen hours of maintenance for every hour of flight time, and who knows how much for the F-22s and F-35s.

Our fighters?

One hour for every twenty-five.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Smallest Possible and Striking a Balance

Basically, you start off with the cockpit, which is one and a half tonnes; possibly, you can still cramp it by ten percent to one point three five tonnes.

Then you have to add the power plant and the drive. Problem is, officially, no one wants to design one below a tonne, and as far as I know, they don't stage beyond being built at a higher tech level, which allows more compact sizes.

Your basic fusion power plant generates fifteen scotts per tonne, and basic manoeuvre drive one hundred tonnes of thrust per tonne; which plainly is far more that an ultralite smallcraft will need, since I believe acceleration is capped at nine gees, and fifteen scotts is enough for one hundred fifty tonnes of thrust.

First edition smallcraft drives do state sA grav drives weigh half a tonne, but at twenty tonnes thrust, really inefficient compared to B's three tonnes for four hundred tonnes thrust, which is a seventy percent loss in efficiency. So a half tonne grav drive in the new edition might only have thirty three and a third tonnes thrust divided by two, sixteen and two thirds tonnes thrust for a half tonne.

Going by Striker, a half tonne fusion power plant would generate three and three quarter scotts.

So basically, you could have a two and a half tonne ultralite spacecraft, with zero point one five tonnes for fuel, which is six percent

You need only half a scott for basic energy requirements for the two amd a half tonne spacecraft, which leaves three and a quarter scotts for propulsion. Gee nine acceleration would need only twenty two and a half tonnes thrust, which with a sixteen and two thirds tonnes thrust would seem unachievable, the best being six and two thirds gee.

This would require one and two thirds scotts of power, which brings the total to two and one sixth scotts, leaving about one and a half scotts of power in reserve.

Fixed mounts, I believe, take no volume, so you could have a laser powered by one and a half scotts.

So that's a two and a half tonne ultralite fighter, mediumish speed of six and two thirds gee acceleration, and a laser rated at one and a half scotts.

 

[-Daniel-]

Spaceships: Care and Tendering

Apparently, an F-16 needs nineteen hours of maintenance for every hour of flight time, .....

I had never heard that one. Wow, that is quite the ratio.

 

[Condottiere]

The problem with flying and gravity, is, that what goes up must come down, usually when you run out of fuel, the pilot makes a mistake, or something isn't functioning as designed.

Of course, in space this is less of an issue.

Still, you're not supposed to fly longer than twelve hours, and upto sixteen if your wing commander signs off on it.

This means that for single crew fighters, there's very little point giving them much of an endurance beyond twelve hours. Then they come back to the carrier, get a half hour check up, and the next pilot in the queue goes on patrol.

 

[wbnc]

The problem with flying and gravity, is, that what goes up must come down, usually when you run out of fuel, the pilot makes a mistake, or something isn't functioning as designed.

Of course, in space this is less of an issue.

Still, you're not supposed to fly longer than twelve hours, and upto sixteen if your wing commander signs off on it.

This means that for single crew fighters, there's very little point giving them much of an endurance beyond twelve hours. Then they come back to the carrier, get a half hour check up, and the next pilot in the queue goes on patrol.

Combat aircraft are usually pushed to the ragged edge of available technology. so they are attention hogs. civil light aircraft seldom need more than a few hours of work at a time, usually routine and preventative maintenance.An airliner can, and do, fly hundreds of hours between maintenance checks.there is a routine check between flights but they are relatively brief.

 

[rust2]

Despite being juicy targets for German U-boots ...

Yeah, that dangerous German underwater footwear ... :shock:

Sorry, could not resist.

 

[Condottiere]

For the Germans, Boots in the water worked better out for them than slaughtered ships.

 

[Condottiere]

Outside of battle damage or running into a meteor, spaceship systems and hulls aren't really stressed in Traveller.

 

[-Daniel-]

Outside of battle damage or running into a meteor, spaceship systems and hulls aren't really stressed in Traveller.

Wouldn't there be stress when they land and take off from a planet with an atmosphere?

 

[Condottiere]

Depends a great deal as to how our reactionless thrusters work.

 

[wbnc]

Outside of battle damage or running into a meteor, spaceship systems and hulls aren't really stressed in Traveller.

Wouldn't there be stress when they land and take off from a planet with an atmosphere?

a geat deal of stress actually. depending on the shape, and airflow around the hull. Blocky designs would be bulldozing air out of the way, loading stress on the superstructure. It would be as if it were standing structure in a force five hurricane.

If a ship has a wide slab sided shape the side of the ship would act like a sail. In strong cross winds, the hull would be getting lesser stresses as the ship tried to turn act like a weather vane and turn into the wind, and the flight control system countered by applying thrust to counter the torsion forces. this doesn't sound like a problem, but the Tacoma Narrows bridge was destroyed by nothing more than strong winds and bad design. and some skyscrapers actually sway in the breeze enough to give people inside motion sickness.

Then there's heat stress. The ship has been in space for an extended period some of its hull is going to be welllllll below zero, now it's sucking heat out of the local atmosphere and expanding, changing shape and applying stress to everything attached to it. a temperature change of several hundred degrees from near absolute zero to room temperature can seriously distort materials.

The pressure hull of the ship is also going to react to the change in environment. It is designed to contain the pressure of the internal atmosphere, with no external counterforce. as it enters an atmosphere it will contract as atmospheric pressures apply a counter force to the gasses inside the pressure hull. this will cause it to change its shape slightly or if improperly designed it's shape will change drastically..

local Gravity would load on a constant strain against the ship. Long narrow designs would tend to try and bend in the middle. thrusters would counter but that transfers stress to the anchor points for the thrusters.

then we come to a serious issue, weight. cargo and drives are without a doubt heavy. now it's assumed thrusters, and hull designs compensate and negate these stresses. but depending on how the internal layout is arranged the stresses will try to warp the hull and as external gravity changes the internal gravity plates have to adjust to the new loads, which transfers strain to the superstructure of the ship. If a cargo is not properly balanced those stresses will be applied differently to various portions of the structure. this will try to warp the structure to find a point of equilibrium.

now all these forces can be countered by the use of thrusters, gravitics, and clever engineering. but the stresses are still there and if they aren't properly distributed across the entire superstructure of the ship it will result in sections of the structure taking undue stess, and potentially failing. A ship crew that doesn't take all the proper steps to ensure that stress damage doesn't occur, or the ship is improperly designed, has a manufacturing error, or is old as dirt, these stresses can cause a structural failure....at which point the ship can crumble and fall out of the sky on some poor souls head.

 

[Condottiere]

It really depends on how our propulsion system works.

Because if it's not an Atlas rocket, the ship may just float away through the atmosphere like a butterfly.

Then, the hull is supposedly made of really super strong material.

The rules do say that the hull configuration has to be more or less streamlined, and in Tee Five, there's an upper limit for acceleration, dispersed has a maximum of one, closed structure may be three.

Apparently, the Blackbird's skin becomes stronger each time it accelerates through the atmosphere.

But, without a statement in the rulebook, you can't be sure.

 

[fusor]

Ancient Aliens on History: Is the Moon a space station?

Good gods, are there people who actually believe this crap? (wait, there are people who genuinely think the earth is flat, of course there are some who believe the moon is a space station).

 

[phavoc]

Ancient Aliens on History: Is the Moon a space station?

Good gods, are there people who actually believe this crap? (wait, there are people who genuinely think the earth is flat, of course there are some who believe the moon is a space station).

Well, it's a sentient warship in Weber's Mutineers Moon.

 

[wbnc]

It really depends on how our propulsion system works.

Because if it's not an Atlas rocket, the ship may just float away through the atmosphere like a butterfly.

Then, the hull is supposedly made of really super strong material.

The rules do say that the hull configuration has to be more or less streamlined, and in Tee Five, there's an upper limit for acceleration, dispersed has a maximum of one, closed structure may be three.

Apparently, the Blackbird's skin becomes stronger each time it accelerates through the atmosphere.

But, without a statement in the rulebook, you can't be sure.

even if it floats like a butterfly. Mister Newton's laws brook no uppity gizmo to completely ignore them. And woe unto any device of man's conception that ignores these laws. For they do so at the peril of great vengeance. For when the day of accounting cometh Newton shall strike them down with great fury. There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth and great machines will be rendered smoking ruins the scattered across the land. Seeing this, the masses will know that Newtons Laws are mighty.

The blackbird also leaks like a sieve on the ground. To allow for heat expansion the fuel tanks are not perfectly sealed. it has to take off without a full tank of gas, then refuel.

 

[Condottiere]

But we've got rubber bladders to prevent that.

 

[Condottiere]

It's a bus, but it could be a bus to the stars.