[TML] Ship shapes

[Tom B]

Sphere:

Bad atmospheric landing configuration (Broadsword, I'm looking at
you...). Bad for the flight through atmo and bad for the 'how do I
land without legs of wonderous length?'.

Also bad for tight packing in a highport. Box freighters fit into
berths much more space efficiently if your highport is very busy.

I imagine most equipment is square. Even if you try to pack the fuel
in around the edges, it makes for a *very* oddly shaped fuel
container. And you'd think any sort of micrometeor puncture or
anything would cause fuel loss as a certainty. And any form of hostile
fire would become not just a bit risky if your outer hull's first
inner layer was fuel in almost all locations.

I'm not sure the heat radiation issue is valid in the empty space
between worlds. As I understand it, you pretty much need to vent
refrigerant mass to take the heat away. (Perhaps I'm mistaken here,
but without atmosphere around it, the radiation of heat would be
severely curtailed, not so?)

I think (for non planetoid hulls), the box or open structure would be
the answer. The latter because you can easily make a spine with key
components and then just attach the cargo boxes directly to the spine
for easy attach/remove options (LASH operations). The former because
it fits well in interior docking bays (for worlds where it isn't a
good idea to leave a ship outside) and in crowded highports. (Of
couse, depending on your high port design, pie shaped wedges may be
also a very good choice for maximum space usage).

Just some extra thoughts.