[TML] Firefly, wait no it is a Subsidized Merchant ship.

[Jerry W Barrington]

On 5/1/08 1:03 PM, "Garry Ward" <garry.e.ward at worldnet.att.net> wrote:

> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Tom B" <kaladorn at gmail.com>
> To: "The Traveller Mailing List" <tml at travellercentral.com>
> Sent: Thursday, May 01, 2008 12:24 PM
> Subject: Re: [TML] Firefly, wait no it is a Subsidized Merchant ship.
> 
> 
>>>  According to the info in BL, a loaded Gazelle Close Essort averages
>>> 1,000
>>>  Kg/M^3  while the loaded Subsidized Merchant comes out to 697 Kg/m^3.
>>> 
>>>  A fully loaded scout comes in at 494 Kg/m^3.
>>> 
>>>  A Midu Agashaam Destroyer with a volume of 4,200 m^3and a loaded mass of
>>>  28,839.61 tonnes comes in at 686.66 Kg/m^3, less than the Subsidized
>>>  merchant.
>> 
>> Okay, they'll float.
>> 
>> But you'll need some hellacious landing gear to put that mass down on
>> anything other than bedrock or a technologically created equivalent.
>> If the scout needs 93 square feet to land on bedrock, 280 on sandy
>> soil, and possibly twice that on clay, then you can add 50% to those
>> numbers for the subsidized merchant (loaded) and the Midu Agashaam and
>> about 100% for the Gazelle.
>> 
>> To put it another way:
>> 
>> Gazelle would need about 186 square feet of landing pad on bedrock,
>> 560 square feet on sandy soil, and as much as 1100 square feet on
>> clay. That's some pretty humongous landing gear/pads.
> 
> hmm, they'll float but they take a huge foot print to set on dry ground....
> 
> perhaps the proper model for a star port is a vast lake or network of lakes
> where the ships float rather than an expanse of concrete where they sit.
> 
> Didn't Hienlien do that for his ships in Time for the Stars?
> 
> Seems to handle the issue of take off exhaust as well; vaporized water just
> comes back down as rain, vaporized concrete would be nastier.

I take this as good justification for Drake's use of water landing as
standard.  Not only does it avoid the problem of good landing gear, the
water absorbs most of the heat of the plasma exhaust.

Of course, his ships have huge pontoons.  This is for stability, and to keep
the rocket nozzles on the bottom of the hull up out of the water.  From his
descriptions, I imagine something looking a bit like a scaled down
Battlestar Galactica, only pontoons on the sides instead of Viper launch
bays.  Well, a *lot* bigger pontoons.  :)  The harbor usually *is* a harbor.
Or part of one anyway.  Lets small craft make deliveries & such, plus most
planets will already have a harbor anyway.  Then you don't have to move
stuff from the sea harbor to the space harbor to tranship.

In a pinch, the pontoons are also a large surface on which to land on the
ground, but this is prone to damaging them.  They're built in partitioned
cells, so you can lose a few cells without sinking, but too much damage can
cause "issues".