Ship Design Philosophy

[Condottiere]

Inspiration: Star Citizen Piracy Show Moving on to Pyro 12-30-2019

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


1. Safe space for pirates.

2. Pirate community.

3. Jump portals (points)? What happened to the gatekeepers?

4. Meth labs.

5. Long legged corsairs.

 

[Condottiere]

Starships: Engineering, Power Plants and Minimums

18. Having a chemically fueled power plant in a spaceship seems a curious artifact, especially considering it's a gas guzzler of both fuel and oxygen.

19. There is a niche case to be made in that the fuel tank is a minimum of one tonne, even for a ten tonne spacecraft, and that you only need one power point for basic systems, and a laser requires four, which happens to be what a one tonne chemical power plant generates.

20. The ten percent fuel tank could last for about one day and nine hours, assuming there was no way to adjust power output and regulate fuel usage.

21. Gravitational based drives would default at one power point per gee of thrust and/or lift.

22. Because of it's non nuclear nature, the chemically powered power plant could probably be operated, maintained and repaired by a mechanic.

23. Likely to be used by very short haul spacecraft, intercontinental, orbital or lunar.

24. In terms of bang for buck, capital cost same as early fusion, which would make experimental models even more viable than a chemical power plant, if that option exists.

25. It has a very niche use, to the point that batteries could substitute for it.

 

[Condottiere]

Starships: Engineering, Jump Drives and Minimums

65. If you allow Collectors in general use in your campaign, it's almost guaranteed that interstellar navies will have the system installed on a quarter to a third of their starships.

66. Especially carriers and battle tenders, since they won't have to risk refuelling on any of the system gas giants, besides saving time in proceeding directly to the objective, usually the largest settled planet.

67. Or just bypassing any garrisoned choke points, since their fuel source would be more or less reliant on hydrogen, except for their fusion power plants, which probably could be topped up with fleet tankers, also equipped with collectors.

68. Placing it as technological level fourteen wouldn't be a hindrance to the civilized major players, whether the Imperium, the Consulate, the Confederation, the Federation, or My Little Pony.

69. With the Aslan, it may be hit or miss: they would certainly use it to bypass any major human garrison on their way to their Manifest Destiny.

70. I rather doubt that the Zhodani would do that form of technology transfer to the Vargr; on the other hand, some bright spark may invent it on their own, and would likely remain super pack specific.

71. Just counting core and not the five tonne overhead, it would take five thousand loads of raw fuel to cover the cost.

72. The five tonne overhead, like jump drives, would indicate greater economy at larger volumes.

73. The advantage would be, like non gassing up, the opportunity cost of that extra nine percent cargo space, minus overhead.

74. As long as the collector and canopy subsystem have regular maintenance, it can go along it's merry way.

75. You can charge up if you aren't accelerating, Tea Five explains this as the canopy being too fragile, and it has to be stowed away.

76. Deployment takes an hour, charging time is about a week, which lasts for a day after being stowed away.

77. Degradation starts after a hundred uses, with each charge cycle taking an additional day; not quite sure how this all squares up with taking only a default ten percent of the charge per day.

78. Canopy replacement is half the cost of the entire system.

 

[Condottiere]

Starships: Engineering, Manoeuvre Drives and Minimums

1. The problem with manoeuvre drive factor zero is that besides taking up half a percent in volume and being available at technological level seven, not much else is know, specifically the actual performance or since it's listed under manoeuvre drives specifically, if it actually is gravitationally based.

2. I suspect installing an orbital ranged manoeuvre drive, even at one percent, would be more productive, since you could still accelerate at one percent efficiency, and crashing is unlikely, once the spacecraft and/or station reached one and a quarter megametres above sea level.

3. You could use fractional manoeuvre drives, even limited range, and one tenth of a percent, for station keeping.

4. In fact, I suspect that if you use lifters at one hundredth efficiency, you'd go faster than if you raised up a solar sail, difference being you'd still be burning energy at around ten power points per hundred tonnes, default.

5. Most commercial ships appear not to exceed factor two, possibly due to the option of landing on human habitable worlds, and then getting off.

6. I'm going to guess that factor three is considered fast by commercial standards, for larger spacecraft.

7. Factor four may be the minimum acceleration tolerated for warships, with factor six the standard for frontline craft, at least for the Imperium Navy.

8. Combat smallcraft seem to have the fastest engines available, possibly with the lighter ones, as fast as can be fitted.

9. Commercial smallcraft seem to range between factors three to five, with three considered slow.

10. I'm not quite sure how the passenger shuttle gets off an Earth sized planet with factor one, though painfully slowly in anything smaller; could be optimized more for orbital and trans lunar communications.

 

[Condottiere]

Inspiration: What's inside the Millennium Falcon? (Star Wars)

Summary: This video covers a complete tour of the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars. The Millennium Falcon is a modified YT-1300 Corellian Light Freighter. The starship has had many owners including Lando Calrissian and Han Solo. The outside features of the ship include the mandibles, docking ports, sublight engines, heat exhaust vents, rectenna dish and the quad laser cannons. The inside of the ship includes the main hold area, 3 other hold rooms for cargo, the cock pit, crew quarters, engine room, gun turret access, escape pod access, quadex power core, fuel system, sublight engines and the hyperdrive. Due to heavy modifications to the ship - it is considered the fastest starship in the galaxy.

And yes...the ship is not real! The Millennium Falcon only exists in the Star Wars universe. But it's still fun to think about

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5-WI7XN6uo


1. Nine sublight modules.

2. Three heat exhaust vents.

3. Mini densitometer screen just covering the secret smuggling compartments?

4. Extra workstation in common area monitoring ship systems.

5. Another secret storage area behind the bunk.

6. Escape pod system.

 

[Condottiere]

Starships: Engineering, Jump Drives and Minimums

79. Coming back to energy efficiency, besides being inherently more stealthy (as opposed to being actually stealthy), there is one factor to consider.

80. The jump drives draws a lot less power, relatively, thereby permitting a lower volume assigned to capacitors.

81. Capacitors at default three megabux per tonne at technological level nine, are the most expensive component of a bubble based jump drive (who would have thunk?).

82. Tea Five mentions that a lanthanum grid costs an extra ten kilobux per tonne of hull, which probably makes it more reasonable for high factor communications starships.

83. Suspect like armour in dispersed structure, it requires double area for coverage.

84. Capacitors are separately maxed out at technological level twelve, at fifty power points per seven hundred kilogrammes at a premium of four and a half megabux per tonne.

85. While with the four tonne overhead (not counting the one tonne of capacitors), there probably is a case that it has to be manufactured at default jump factor of the attached jump core, otherwise this would cap the maximum range of said jump core; so a decreased volume technological level twelve overhead at two point eight tonnes can still only have a range of jump factor one.

86. One assumes that would make the minimum size of a jump drive eight point eight tonnes, meaning that you still have to fill out the other six tonnes, at default.

87. Energy efficiency seventy five percent would permit the reduction by ninety percent of jump core capacitors, at default, though with no margin of error.

88. Increased size capacitors can accommodate forty power points at two and a quarter megabux per tonne, assuming increased size is used as a budgeting measure, rather than as leverage for prototypical jump drives.

 

[Condottiere]

Starships: Engineering, Manoeuvre Drives and Minimums

11. Reactionary rockets used to be smaller, as I recall, about half that of the default, which means they've increased fourfold, for a relative twenty percent in terms of today's bang for bux.

12. Yes, rocket factor zero should be an option, in which event, I'd dearly would like to know the acceleration rate and fuel usage.

13. It's also seems to have been a handy way to replace Mongoose First high burn thrusters, which really were a more economical use of rocket motors for smallcraft.

14. Don't quite understand why reactionary rocket factor fifteen, or anything above five, would squash human crew members like a bug, since I doubt in any Traveller lore it's even been hinted at that reactionary rockets have or are combined with inertial compensation.

15. High burn thrusters have three primary uses at high technology levels.

16. Extra thrust for increased agility.

17. Fast interception of targets, and a quick getaway.

18. Outrun missiles.

19. It may well be that one thrust burn round may be enough in a furball, since you now have sixty subrounds to accomplish whatever you set out to do, and empty your magazine(s); if you only have energy weapons, you better have a lot of batteries.

20. Doesn't really seem feasible for larger combatants, but for an Azhanti, it could be used to surprise an opponent.

21. I'm told it's eight and a half minutes at three gees to reach orbit, Terran default, so perhaps a boost to those monomanoeuvre drives.

22. Though seriously, it really has to be explained how sustained uncompensated thrust is workable with a human crew, unless we assume they can pumped full drugs and are strapped down, like the Expanse, and I doubt they hit fifteen gees.

 

[Condottiere]

Inspiration: How does the International Space Station work?

The International Space Station is the largest man made object in space. It was built in pieces and then launched into space and assembled in orbit. In this video we'll go over some background about the station and then walk through each module in the order that it was assembled.
This animation took a long time to make - enjoy and please share your comments with me!

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


1. Low Earth orbit, four hundred kilomentres.

2. Ninety two minutes orbit, twenty eight thousand kilometres per hour.

3. Integrated truss structure, the spine.

4. Modular.

5. Docking ports to connect modules.

6. Pressurized mating adapter, I suspect for module docking ports that aren't precisely synchronized to each other.

7. Radiator panels, foldable.

8. External stowage platform.

9. External robotic arm.

10. Mobile tracked modules.

11. Needs to be balanced.

12. Cupola, with sight seeing windows and presumably armoured covers.

13. Storage/Waste module.

14. Inflatable module.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Armaments and US weapons ship with CIA backdoors

by NICK FARRELL on31 DECEMBER 2019

Hands off our manpads

The CIA has been putting in security flaws into US-made weapons so that they can be disabled if they fall into the wrong hands.

The technology has been a feature of anti-aircraft missiles with the unfortunate name Man-Portable Air-Defense Systems (MANPADS),

Dutch researcher Jos Wetzels told a cybersecurity conference in Leipzig, Germany on Saturday. Wetzels said the system was laid out in a batch of CIA documents published by WikiLeaks in 2017 but that the files were mislabeled and attracted little public attention until now.

Wetzels said the CIA had come up with a “smart arms control solution” that would restrict the use of missiles “to a particular time and a particular place”. The technique, referred to as “geofencing”, blocks the use of a device outside a specific geographic area.

For example, Stinger MANPADS supplied by the United States are credited with helping mujahedeen rebels drive Soviet forces out of Afghanistan in a conflict that spanned the 1980s and 1990s. But US officials have since spent billions of dollars to clear the missiles from the country - and from other conflict zones around the world.

Wetzels said it was unclear whether the CIA’s design ever left the drawing board or where it was meant to have been deployed, but he noted that the apparent period of development in the documents’ metadata - 2014 to 2015 - roughly coincided with media reports about the deployment of MANPADS to rebels in Syria. Geofencing might have been seen as a way of ensuring the missiles were used on the Syrian battlefield and nowhere else, he said.

https://www.fudzilla.com/news/50041-us-weapon-s-ship-with-cia-backdoors


What has this to do with spaceships?

Any weapon system beyond the basic three, lasers, missiles and canisters, may be tweaked not to work against certain targets, not to work beyond a specific geographical area, and/or has an expiry date.

 

[Condottiere]

Starships: Engineering, Manoeuvre Drives and Minimums

23. Imperium light and fleet carriers are listed at two gee acceleration, which ironically, makes their designation unhistorical, as light and fleet basically means the carriers can keep up with the main fleet elements, which currently in the Imperium Navy is six gees.

24. At two gees they're sitting ducks, probably with the rest of the fleet train, and therefore prime targets in any breakthrough of the battle line.

25. It's hard to figure out what the actual difference, besides some minor details, is between strike cruisers and strike carriers; they both carry spinal mounts, fightercraft and are relatively short legged at factor three jump.

26. If by some coincidence the strike carrier is in the same system as main fleet units, it can keep up with them in combat.

27. Escort carriers need to be only as fast, or slightly faster, than most commercial shipping, as such, two gees.

28. While Confederation pocket carriers did have jump factor three, which was enough to keep up with their main fleet units, they also had acceleration five, which means they could keep pace with the line of battle.

 

[Condottiere]

Space Stations: Let's Put A Space Station Around The Moon! | Answers With Joe

Get 20% off a Brilliant subscription for life at http://www.brilliant.org/answerswithjoe
The Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway is part of the Artemis program to return to the moon and stay. It will serve as a waypoint between Earth and the moon and a gateway to deep space and Mars missions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODWq94L0HTs


1. Eastward trajectory from Equator plus one thousand six hundred and seventy one kilomentres per hour.

2. Moon thirty six hundred and eighty two kilomentres per hour velocity.

3. Slingshot trebuchet.

4. Lower gravity, less base energy requirement; in other words, less rocket or manoeuvre drive energy expended for total velocity.

5. Near rectilinear halo orbit.

6. With a suitable natural satellite, would any world bother with a Hi(star)port?

 

[Condottiere]

Starships: Engineering, Manoeuvre Drives and Minimums

29. With orbital range, you could NOE a couple of times until you build up the preferred velocity and just slingshot towards a large enough gravity well.

30. I'm pretty sure the navigator can figure out if you need to decelerate at one percent of the manoeuvre drive factor, in case of overshot.

31. Limited range could do the same thing for the outer planets.

32. Or use the gravity wells as way points.

33. Gravimetric distorters might produce a gravity well that's too weak to gain traction on, though it's a thought.

34. If they did have one that does have traction, would project it just behind the manoeuvre drive.

35. Same would apply to jumpbreaker missiles, for sudden stops; or possibly Orion style propulsion.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Hulls and Options

1. Heat shields cost a hundred kilobux per tonne, which you'll need in lieu of gravitational based drives when reentering an atmosphere.

2. Doesn't help in combat.

3. A manoeuvre drive is cheaper.

4. Emission absorption grid is nice if you have the space to spare.

5. Radiation shielding is something else nice to have, at twenty five kilobux per tonne, though might be questionable in commercial craft, except high class starliners.

6. It could be also strategically located to the bridge, accomodations, and engineering, like armoured bulkheads.

7. Reflec, when you don't care who knows where you are.

8. You could paint over it.

9. Stealth is an option, viable if you have the money, for the higher end of your fleet mix.

10. Superior stealth basically multiples the base cost of your hull by a factor of twenty; you'd really need to justify having it, and being discovered, that justification is going to need to be convincing.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Hulls and Options

11. Heavy hulls are reinforced by complicated bracing, which doesn't take up more volume, but whose geometry is optimized to increase structural strength.

12. I'd have said they used stronger materials, like bonded superdense, except that technological level doesn't matter.

13. Lighter hulls are aerated.

14. While mass is irrelevant in calculating tonnage, leaving holes in the bracing keeps it withing ninety percent of rated strength, but has cost savings of twenty five percent.

15. With a double hull, what happens when you spin the inner hull like a washing machine, and leave the exterior hull stable relative to the rest of the universe?

16. You could reinforce the hamster cage, and during boarding actions, use it as a battering ram against the boarded ship.

17. Like the Roman corvus, use it to both spike the targetted ship, and provide a bridge for the boarders.

18. You could have two hamster cages act like a giant vice, and grab the hull of another spaceship.

19. Modular hulls require one to six hours to change a module, though the example used was a thirty tonne module.

20. One assumes that larger modules require more time.

21. It's possible that it's faster to expel a module, than having to carefully position one and then connect the plumbing.

22. Breakaway sections only need six to thirty six minutes, regardless of tonnage.

23. Modules don't require set aside volume to account for the connections, whereas breakaways have both a two percent penalty and cost associated with it.

24. However, since modules appear to use interior volume, and breakaways exterior, the primary hull gets to adjust it's performance.

25. Also, modules can't have bridges, engineering, armour or structural options; this probably will have to be explored further.

26. By implication, modules can't have exterior weapon systems, since it would seem that they are exclusively interior tonnage.

27. It's possible that they can have ordnance magazines, though traditionally, anything with gunpowder onboard a ship tends to get heavily armoured and protected.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Hulls and Options

28. Every enclosed hull needs some way of egress, so the first one could be given as a freeby, and the cost could be subsumed by the hull.

29. However, changes in calculating the various ship systems doesn't really find space for the assigned airlock; the airlock itself is not necessarily part of the door, and therefore needs to be specifically assigned to it, together with the requisite tonnage and cost.

30. Anything that compromises the integrity of the hull is likely to have a need to be reinforced, whether doors, hatches, windscreens or portholes.

31. The one per hundred tonnes could be an indication that one such opening may be created without seriously needing further measures to be reinforced.

32. Or could be considered a freeby in the sense you don't have to pay specifically for the creation and placement of the door itself.

33. Additional airlocks option states a minimum of two tonnes, though this isn't necessarily so, since you might just one just sufficient for a spacesuited human to squeeze through.

34. Or to let the cat out.

35. This can be scaled up to hangar size.

36. And the booby trapped variant more for decontamination, rather than nerve gassing or frying visitors.

37. I would bet that the Imperium authorities would look at askance at using any atomic, biological or lethal chemical means at deterring unwanted guests.

38. Essentially, launch bay doors, launch tube doors, bay weapon doors, and cargo hatches, would count as one means of egress.

39. And let's include the UNREP system.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Refuelling and We Just Figured Out How Some Planets Become Super Puffs

Hello and welcome! My name is Anton and in this video, we will talk about new paper that may have solved the mystery of unusual planets known as super puffs, while also discovering they're a lot weirder than we thought.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGcX-4trgEw


1. New gas stations.

2. Ethanol, or is it methane?

3. Normal gravity?

4. Use it or lose it.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Hulls and Options

40. I suspect, given enough time, you could let life support deal with the loss of pressure and air, if the door is only opened shortly.

41. This would work if you add two extra doors along the corridor, minimizing and controlling the amount of atmosphere involved.

42. Probably an extra door would be sufficient.

43. Too bad we don't know the cost of purchasing and installing the various types of doors on a spaceship.

44. For exterior connections, perhaps it's the same as cargo hatches, which may or may not have been quoted at some time; I forget.

45. It's true that there's an inclination to install more than less vacuum tight doors on a spaceship, and it tends to be subsumed under hull costs.

46. Anything termed a bulkhead would certainly have such a feature.

47. Luckily we do know the cost of a portable airlock, which is an attractive kilobux.

48. This could be set up when you don't have an integral airlock set up with a default exterior exit.

49. Even better, having a two tonne corridor between two doors let's you set it up semi permanently.

50. Arguably, a larger variant could be used in either a hangar or cargo bay, to act as a sort of vacuum curtain; it's cheaper than a force field.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Hulls and Options

51. Part of the cost of the airlock would be the flexible, presumably plastic and textile, extendable docking tubes, though it's not clear how far they extend.

52. One assumes that airlocks and/or UNREP system could be integrated with a docking clamp; or a series of docking clamps.

53. The docking clamps as demonstrated in High Guard appear to have three discrepancies, Type Two has a ratio of less than one to twenty, compared to the Type Ones and Threes, Type Fours are one to a hundred, while Type Fives appear to have no limitations; Type Fours could be assumed to be economies of scale.

54. How close is close range for Forced Linkage Apparatus?

55. A technological level seven Forced Linkage Apparatus is a two tonne magnetic clamp on a retractable arm: you could use it like a tailhook when landing a smallcraft on a spaceship.

56. With a holographic hull, you can change the appearance of a ship, though it's shape remains the same? One assumes this means basic hull configuration, which would allow quite a wide range of said shapes.

57. Perhaps adding a wire cage allows the hologram more traction, without adding additional volume, possibly enough leeway to create the illusion of another similar hull configuration.

58. Still, there has to be more to it in order to fool non visual sensors.

59. Gaming space and acceleration seat:

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Hulls and Options

60. Like pop up turrets, if aerofins are extendable, than it follows that it increases the volume of the hull.

61. If you assume that all volume has to be taken into account for and paid in terms of total hull tonnage, than retracting the aerofins could shrink hull tonnage by five percent, or maybe two and a half percent; it's less, in all events.

62. Unless there are external and foldable, which isn't mentioned.

63. Not really an issue, unless you happen to be a hundred tonne starship, in which case, the aerofins have to be extended in order to jump, the opposite of the Galactica.

64. You could have, less a hamster cage, and more of a hamster platform, with attachments such as grappling arms, that could be positioned on any side of the spaceship where it's most convenient.

65. It could also be an external elevator.

66. If the hamster cage is large enough, you can affix a firm or hard point, which could be a big surprise to anyone trying to board you, at what they thought was a blindside.

67. Just assigning a percentage to tow cables tells us nothing.

68. Tow cables can be stressed to breaking, so how do you determine the breaking point?

69. Is the percentage connected to the thickness of the tow cable?

 

[Condottiere]

Inspiration: The Singularity Of A Romulan Warbird

The Romulans have their own way of doing things and that includes their form of powering interstellar travel.
Unlike Starfleet that uses matter-antimatter reactions, they decided to use a singularity core. But how does it work and why do they choose this over the most common options?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SX5q9QJXBEE


Hold my Romulan ale.