[TML] Ship shapes

[Tommy Grav]

On May 2, 2008, at 10:26 AM, Garry Ward wrote:

> From: "Tommy Grav" <tgrav at mac.com>
>> On May 2, 2008, at 4:03 AM, Ross Winn wrote:
>>
>>> Jerry W Barrington wrote:
>>>> So... civies should be spheres and warships long and thin?
>>> I think having a unified design philosophy after some three thousand
>>> years is not out of the realm of possibility.
>>
>> I would actually argue that civies, especially merchants will opt  
>> for a
>> box configuration. A box is easier to fill, making use of all  
>> available
>> internal space for cargo. A would also think that a box is much  
>> easier
>> to build than a sphere. No need for bending hull plates and the  
>> internal
>> support structure is much simpler.
>>
>> I must have missed something on why spheres are to be prefered???
> Internal volume vs surface area. You can get more in a sphere than  
> in a box
> relative to the surface area.

But for a starship you want maximum surface area as well to went heat,  
to
avoid frying your crew and cargo. I see no reason why a merchant would  
be
overly worried about surface area being minimal. Am I missing some  
argument
here?

> Granted, filling something with nice angles and corners is easier  
> (from our
> perception). Perhaps the actual design structure is a box inside a  
> sphere.

The problem with this is that it limits the access to you cargo hold.  
A nice box
structure (with cylinders, spheres tacked on for water, fuel and so  
on) can have
numerous cargo doors to allow access to parts of the cargo hold. That  
makes
is easier to unload the part of the cargo that is due at destination,  
while avoiding
the need to shift around cargo going to a future destination. Numerous  
access
points to the cargo also speeds up loading and unloading, which to  
merchants
in the Traveller universe is the only portion of their itinerary that  
they have any
control over.

> Cargo area is a box embedded in the sphere with the fuel, water and  
> air
> tankage filling in the space between the outside of the box and inner
> surface of the sphere. Lhyd, water and air confrom to the spherical  
> inner
> suface easily and the more rigid shipping containers are safely stowed
> inside box where they can be stacked tightly using every m^3  
> effectively.

But you would then have unusable space between the cargo hold sides and
the sphere. You can't have anything between the cargo doors and the
outside.

Cheers
   Tommy