Ship modification - stretching

[Linwood]

I keep thinking about The Flight of The Phoenix (the original movie with James Stewart)....

There’s also a story (possibly apocryphal) about one of stretched DC-9 variants that had a prototype fuselage break in two at the plug on the runway prior to a test flight. And the Liberty ships that broke in two due to weld issues - sometimes one or both halves were recovered, towed back to the shipyard and used again.

How the hulls are built should be a consideration as to whether they can be readily expanded with new sections. For example, if crystaliron hulls are grown from a single crystal (which I think may have been canon in one Traveller version) it might be very difficult to add in a new section. You could simply rule that such modifications can only be performed at starports at least one TL higher than the ship’s original TL, or restrict those sort of changes to unarmored hulls. Dispersed structures should be the easiest to alter in this fashion.

Drive upgrades and replacement would be another matter. That should be allowable in most cases, I think.

 

[Anonymous]

I should probably mention that Star Fleet Battles has a lot of ships like this. E,g Lyran cruisers are built by cutting a catamaran destroyer in half and adding a new center section.

 

[Old School]

I have this idea for a referee's briefing.....

Don’t you have enough work on the kickstarter?

 

[Anonymous]

thought it would be interesting to put a full high power maneuver drive on an element cruiser module

 

[AndrewW]

Don’t you have enough work on the kickstarter?

There is never enough work.

 

[Condottiere]

I doubt there's a commercially viable method to stretch a planetoid.

 

[Linwood]

You could add another to it....

 

[Condottiere]

High speed collision, wait for the iron nickel to cool down.

 

[Linwood]

Exactly!!!!

 

[Anonymous]

Intelligence reports show an unusual spike in hypernet searches for rock glue. Analysts believe enemy may be upgrading their planetoid monitors.

 

[phavoc]

I doubt there's a commercially viable method to stretch a planetoid.

There are proposals to expand them from the inside, which would add some length to them, though the goal is to expand it along the axis so you can spin it for gravity.

 

[Condottiere]

I would think they'd have to account for the centre of gravity, which their configuration would complicate.

If it's supposed to be a spinning top, I would think the exterior ring might expand beyond the body of the planetoid.