Small ship universe

[mike wightman]

I would be careful considering them experts when they don't even know that there are fusion reactions that generate no ionising radiation

It would mean mining helium 3 from the moon though...

 

[Dragoner]

I would think you would want some space below the staterooms to put the gravitic generators and inertial compensators into...

Traders and Gunboats gives an elevation view for the deck of a trav spacecraft, imo I just put it there between decks; I haven't really found anybody ever complains about that stuff when playing.

 

[Timerover51]

When things settle down a bit, I will get back here to post. Right now I am a bit busy with being parent and husband.

 

[aramis]

Traders and Gunboats gives an elevation view for the deck of a trav spacecraft, imo I just put it there between decks; I haven't really found anybody ever complains about that stuff when playing.

I have, but only because I wouldn't let him crawl through the ductwork, as it's only 8cm inside diameter. He was even more annoyed, because his character could have made it through a 20cm duct...

 

[Carlobrand]

There's another reason why the canonical stateroom is bigger than the ones on an oceanliner: there's no deck to sit on and look out to the horizon, there are no balconies, there's no hitting golf balls or launching skeet over the railings!...

The heck you say! Get yerself an X-box 9999, or whatever they're running by then. People crammed onto small ships, technology capable of bridging stars, you know SOMEONE's going to be getting rich building wall-sized graphics displays that people can interact with. Scenic horizons and golf are actually one of the easier options.

Me, I'd build a ship with video displays replacing the viewports so that the passengers could see out normally in normal space and then be fed an extrapolated image of starfields gradually moving past - based on our route and what it would look like if we could somehow magically travel the route in normal space - to replace that jumpspace view and give them a sense of getting somewhere rather than being cooped up in a tin can flying through an alien dimension. Then I'd have full-wall vid screens for the common areas, showing wide open scenes like the African veldt or a Hawaiian beach, make up the ceiling to look like thatch or wood rather then the ceiling of a starship. And, of course, the game wall with the option between golf course, skeet range, and perhaps a few other interesting bits. (I can see hosting a shipboard party and setting the wall to look like a balcony overlooking Time Square on New Year's Eve or a New Orleans Mardi Gras - or whatever equivalent that sector has. I've always thought I'd make a good steward.)

Do it up right, and the difference between a free trader and a full-size liner is more like the difference between sailing on someone's well-equipped yacht and sailing on an ocean liner. More personal service in a comfortable atmosphere.

Spacers may like their cozy little habitats, but grounders need horizons.

 

[SanDragon]

Solomani actually don't complain when their staterooms are 20% smaller...

 

[mike wightman]

Anyone interested in a canonical reference to charging 5000Cr for a jump trip?

 

[aramis]

Anyone interested in a canonical reference to charging 5000Cr for a jump trip?

Yep. Book and page appreciated.

 

[nDervish]

Maybe understanding of the Higgs field allows inertial mass to be partially reduced or completely negated.

A small multirole fusion engine, plasma drive or ion engine could then be used for actual velocity.

I've always enjoyed the idea of a full-on Lensman-style inertialess drive.

 

[mike wightman]

Yep. Book and page appreciated.

I found it while checking for mention of diplomats. Alien Realms page 2 Last Patrol, One Lousy Parsec first paragraph:

Finding transport to Emerald was not easy. Emerald's chief exports were agricultural in nature, moved about by enormous grain ships of every shape and size. One ship fitted with refrigeration cargo capacity had just completed a turn for a meat packing consortium on Emerald, and was heading back for yet another. The captain was taking on passengers for the return trip, and soon filled up with soldiers willing to meet his price- Cr5000 per head, so to speak.

 

[Fritz_Brown]

The heck you say! Get yerself an X-box 9999, or whatever they're running by then.

Well, if you're transporting gamers, you're going to need a lot bigger staterooms. *cough* Oh, and you're gonna need more food cargo space to carry all those cheese doodles.

Then I'd have full-wall vid screens for the common areas, showing wide open scenes like the African veldt....

Ummm... Are you sure you want to show an African Veldt?

And, of course, the game wall with the option between golf course, skeet range, and perhaps a few other interesting bits.

So, you have some numbnutz thinking he can smack real golfballs into the screen? Or some rich, privileged, idiotic gun bunny shooting real rounds at the skeet? Come on! These are grounders! You *know* it's going to happen eventually!

Spacers may like their cozy little habitats, but grounders need horizons.

Well, yeah. We like them cozy - meaning air tight, with solid structural integrity. Low berths for everyone! ("No, ma'am, please don't touch that again. And, no, we're not there yet. If you ask me that again before Tuesday, you'll spend the rest of the trip in the airlock.")

(Boy, has this thread gone far afield........)

 

[Carlobrand]

Well, if you're transporting gamers, you're going to need a lot bigger staterooms. *cough* Oh, and you're gonna need more food cargo space to carry all those cheese doodles....

We'll set up a stateroom with couches and gaming aids instead of the usual bed. As long as we keep the pizza coming, they'll be happy.

Ummm... Are you sure you want to show an African Veldt?...

That's covered in the passage ticket, in the fine print ...

So, you have some numbnutz thinking he can smack real golfballs into the screen? Or some rich, privileged, idiotic gun bunny shooting real rounds at the skeet? Come on! These are grounders! You *know* it's going to happen eventually!...

... under "Consequences of Damage to Ship Property":devil:

 

[Timerover51]

This is in response to the following comment.

(Ships carry fuel only for the power plant and J-drive, not M-drive fuel. Power plant fuel is consumed at the same rate regardless of whether the M-drive is in use or not. Therefore, the M-drive does not consume fuel or any other visible reaction mass.)

The following material is taken from The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, Dept. of Army Pamphlet 50-3, March 1977. Said document is an official US government publication and is therefore in the public domain and copyright free.

The complete fission of 0.057 kg. (57 grams or 2 ounces of fissionable material is equivalent to 1 kiloton of TNT. Equivalents to this are:

10 to the 12th Calories
2.6 X 10 to the 25th Million Electron Volts
4.18 X 10 to the 19th Ergs
4.18 X 10 to the 12th Joules
1.16 X 10 to the 6th Kilowatt-hours
3.97 X 10 to the 9th British Thermal Units

Weight for weight, therefore, the fusion of deuterium nuclei would produce nearly three times as much energy as the fission of uranium or plutonium.

I understand that fuel for power plants in Traveller is Liquid Hydrogen, not Liquid Deuterium, but all that is going to do is increase your energy yield per unit mass from the fusion of hydrogen into deuterium. However, for the purpose of the following discussion, I will use the deuterium energy value.

A standard 200 ton Free Trader uses 10 metric tons or 10,000 kilograms of liquid hydrogen for its power plant every 28 days. That means an average fuel consumption of 14.88 kilograms per hour, or 14,880 grams per hour. Now if you assume that 57 grams of liquid H will yield 3 X 10 to the 6th kilowatt-hours (that assumes your fusion reaction is equal to 0.86 that of fission, the actual figure is 0.9475, so this is quite conservative), or 3 X 10 to the 3rd Megawatt-hours, or 3 Gigawatt-hour of power, the the fusion yield of the power plant is going to be 783 Gigawatts of power per hour on the average. If you are not using that energy, which is quite a lot, for maneuvering your Free Trader, what is the ship using it for?

In Thrust into Space, by Maxwell Hunter, he calculates that it takes 4 kilowatt-hours of power to place 1 pound of mass into Earth orbit. That equates to 1.764 Gigawatt-hours to put a 200 metric ton mass into Earth Orbit. Your power plant is producing, on the average, 443.9 times the power needed to place a 200 metric ton Free Trader into Earth Orbit.

Now, if you are getting ready to jump, then your power plant is going to use 20 metric tons, or 20,000 kilograms of fuel in a very short time. Twenty metric tons of liquid hydrogen will supply 1,052,631 Gigawatt-hours of power. To put this in context, the US in 2008 used 4,401,698 Gigawatt-hours of power. You also have 20 metric tons, essentially, of extremely hot Helium plasma to get rid of in some manner.

The MegaTraveller Imperial Encyclopedia, on 81, lists the power plant output for a 200 ton Free Trader at 990 Megawatt-hours. Based on the data from Thrust into Space, mentioned earlier, that would be sufficient to place a 200 ton Free Trader into Earth orbit in 2 hours. However, based on the fuel consumption of 14.88 kilograms per hour, the power plant is using only about 0.126% of the potential energy of the fuel if complete fusion takes place. That does leaves you with 14.88 kilograms of extremely hot Helium plasma to dispose of in some manner. If you actually need Terawatts of power to make a jump, that less than a Gigawatt power plant is going to take a long time to generate that much power.

If you are sitting on a planet, with a D or E class starport, which I would assume that a Free Trader would do on a regular basis, for what exactly are you using those 990 Megawatts, going with the MegaTraveller reference? A 729 Gross Register Ton former US Coast Guard buoy tender, which would equate to 153 displacement tons in Traveller uses two 170 Kilowatt ship service generators for all of its power needs, to include A/C, full ship lighting (using incandescent lights for the most part), electronics and computers, galley, etc. It actually only needs one, but has to have two for a backup. A 1945 aircraft carrier was requiring somewhere between 5 and 10 Megawatts of power for full operation. That would be roughly a 7500 ton ship under Traveller's displacement ton rules.

Again, if the maneuver drive is not consuming power from the power plant, where is all of that power going?

 

[BytePro]

Running XBox-9999s, of course.

CT (reprint edition) does not state that M-Drives require no fuel, but rather that it is factored into PP Fuel requirements.

Book 2 - '...Power plant fuel under the formula (10Pn) allows routine operations and maneuver for four weeks.'
Book 5 - '...Fuel consumption for maneuver drives is inconsequential, and is assumed to be part of the power plant consumption, regardless of the degree of maneuver undertaken.'​

Book 5 also mentions that TL requirements for M-Drives cover grav-plates in decks for high-G maneuvers. Such are as good a place as any to handwave away 'excess' energy. Fortunately, for purposes of not even having to worry about such details, the CT Books at least (no telling with the wealth of other material) have no RW units of energy production/consumption for starships.

Given RW units of fuel, one can, of course, determine theoretical max RW energy release, but without knowledge of efficiencies, material densities and masses, and with the inclusion of 'gravitics' taking things outside knowns, such is not so much an issue.

MT sounds like it lacks that buffer, what with going into Megawatt-hours and the like .. using such RW units is bound to snap plenty of suspenders of disbelief. <shrug>

 

[Timerover51]

CT (reprint edition) does not state that M-Drives require no fuel, but rather that it is factored into PP Fuel requirements.

Book 2 - '...Power plant fuel under the formula (10Pn) allows routine operations and maneuver for four weeks.'
Book 5 - '...Fuel consumption for maneuver drives is inconsequential, and is assumed to be part of the power plant consumption, regardless of the degree of maneuver undertaken.'​

Book 5 also mentions that TL requirements for M-Drives cover grav-plates in decks for high-G maneuvers. Such are as good a place as any to handwave away 'excess' energy. Fortunately, for purposes of not even having to worry about such details, the CT Books at least (no telling with the wealth of other material) have no RW units of energy production/consumption for starships.

Given RW units of fuel, one can, of course, determine theoretical max RW energy release, but without knowledge of efficiencies, material densities and masses, and with the inclusion of 'gravitics' taking things outside knowns, such is not so much an issue.

MT sounds like it lacks that buffer, what with going into Megawatt-hours and the like .. using such RW units is bound to snap plenty of suspenders of disbelief. <shrug>

If maneuver drive power is inconsequential, then why are you using 14.88 kilograms of fuel for your power plant, every hour on the average? Your power plant is either extremely inefficient, or your endurance should be not 28 days, but more like 28,000 days assuming 100% fuel burn efficiency, or say 2800 days, assuming a 10% efficiency, and an average energy consumption of 783 Megawatts per hour. The latter figure is not that far off from the 990 Megawatts given in the MegaTraveller Imperial Encyclopedia.

 

[Dragoner]

You can also add a ionizing radiation/particle shield for the hull to absorb power and protect the crew from errant cosmic radiation and dust.

 

[rancke]

Perhaps it costs a lot of power to keep the subspace heat sink open.


Hans

 

[Timerover51]

Perhaps it costs a lot of power to keep the subspace heat sink open.

Hans

I see that you figured out about the heat problem as well. There is actually a lot that I ignore when it comes to the science of Traveller. One is the heat problem, along with simply handling that much energy, hundred of Gigawatts, is such a small space. Then there is the radiation from the fusion plant, along with all of that extremely hot Helium plasma, especially when jumping. Then you have the non-science issue of the lack of insurance requirement for any ship.

When I bought my house, I had to carry an insurance policy for full replacement value to satisfy the mortgage holder requirements. A basic liability policy for my example buoy tender runs $30,000 per year, and does not cover replacement value. I cannot see a mortgage entity in Traveller loaning millions of credits for a starship without requiring a full replacement value and "skipping" policy. I suspect that such a policy would run well into six figures of credits annually, driving up your monthly operating cost. That is one of the reasons that I keep looking at ship economics and building costs.

Saying that the Real World has no relevance for Traveller is not something that I am going to accept, as Traveller is based on extrapolations from the Real World and how things might look if certain technologies existed. Then you have the worlds that are lower than Tech Level 9. As I see it, our Real World knowledge is fully relevant to them.

 

[Dragoner]

Figuring the power output and seeing the inefficiencies is a rite of passage of passage in Traveller it seems.

 

[Timerover51]

Figuring the power output and seeing the inefficiencies is a rite of passage of passage in Traveller it seems.

No, actually, I like the Classic game. I would not be using it as an example of a good role-playing game for my game design class if I did not. It is easier for students to get a handle on the D&D, as it deals with material that they see or can extrapolate from in real life. There are problems, but such is the nature of gaming. Given my background, I think that I might notice more problems than other people. I doubt if the average player has a copy of Stephen Dole's Habitable Planets for Man, books on how to build realistic aliens, a copy of Barlow's Guide to Extraterrestrials, books on naval architecture and tank design, along with a literal ton (based on my move in 1985) of military history books and other reference books. I finally found an affordable copy of Maxwell Hunter's Thrust into Space online today, so I should have that by the end of the week to supplement my photocopies of it.

Space: 1889 drive me nuts the same way when it comes to space ship design.