[TML] Ship shapes

[Garry Ward]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Tom B" <kaladorn at gmail.com>
To: "The Traveller Mailing List" <tml at travellercentral.com>
Sent: Friday, May 02, 2008 11:17 AM
Subject: Re: [TML] Ship shapes


> 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).

What about the effect of the jump field? Spheres tend to the natural shape 
for a lot of stuff (look at the pattern iron filings make in a magnetic 
field).

Now, if the displacement tonnage a jump drive has to handle is based on a 
sphere where the diameter is the longest dimension of the vessel, spherical 
hulls would make better use of the area contained in the jump field.

Garry
>
> Just some extra thoughts.
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