Re: [OT] Honor Harrington miniatures

"Robert A. Crawford" wrote:
> 
>	  I was under the impression that the alpha and beta nodes
> are in part responsible for the fore/aft distinction, so that the
> ship itself has to flip in order for the wedge to flip.

As a follow-up I was just perusing through Deja News to find DW's
original post about the exact dimensitons of the HMS Nike.  In that same
post is this information:

> The impeller rings of any military starship mount a total of 24
> nodes: 8 alpha nodes and 16 beta nodes. The alpha nodes are mounted 
> at 0, 45, 90, 135, 180, 225, 270, and 315 degrees. The beta nodes are 
> mounted every 15 degrees between the alpha nodes. In terms of size, 
> an alpha node is about three times as large and massive as a beta 
> node; in terms of the generator support required, the difference is 
> more like six times as great, but a beta node provides about half as 
> much power to a standard impeller wedge as an alpha node does. Thus 
> each alpha node provides about 6.25% of a wedge's full power and each 
> beta node provides about 3.13%, so that the alphas and betas as 
> groups each provide 50% of the whole. (Actually, those values are 
> halved for the full power of the wedge, since both impeller rings 
> combine in a full-strength wedge.) The 8 alpha nodes, however, suck 
> up as much mass as 48 beta nodes would, which is the reason beta 
> nodes are used.

Tom

--
Thomas Pope
Human Computer Interaction Institute
Carnegie Mellon University
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~tpope