Re: FB - Thrust Ratings for Freighters

On Sat, 23 Jan 1999, Aaron Teske wrote:
> At 10:25 AM 1/23/99 -0500, IAS wrote:
> >Sean Bayan Schoonmaker wrote:
> > > This road leads to differing thrust according to fuel and
ammunition 
> > > loads. I don't even want to go there.
> >This will allow frieghters to dump cargo to increase thrust in
emergency
> >situations.
> 
> True... kinda.  The thing is, who's to say what is *in* the holds?  If
one
> hold is full of iron ore, and another full of... of... I dunno, goose
> feathers, they are going to have a considerably different mass to
begin
> with.  While everything in ship construction goes by mass, the cargo
holds
> actually take up *volume*.

i disagree. you get this with cargo ships today, and holds are very
rarely
totally filled with very dense cargo, so that a hold's carrying capacity
is mass-limited not volume-limited. it would be daft to build a ship
with
a million cubic metre cargo hold, capable of doing full acceleration
when
the hold is full of steel; it would be going ludicriously fast if you
decided to ship hollowfibre wall insulation instead.

what i meani is that the definition of 'full' for a hold will be based
on
mass, not volume.

besides, isn't it realistic to assume that most freighters will use
strap-on cargo bays? the ship itself is an engine, a jump motor,
sensors,
computers, a bridge and some crew space. the cargo is loaded into big
boxes and the boxes are fixed to the ship. feathers would just be
carried
in bigger boxes:

<============#		the ship

  [**]	[**]
<============#		the ship carrying steel
  [**]	[**]

  /--------\
  |%%%%%%%%|
<============#		the ship carrying feathers
  |%%%%%%%%|
  \--------/

since freighters don't need to wrap everything in an armoured hull as
warships do, there is no incentive to use internal cargo bays.

> So I'd opt for keeping things simple, as well.

i'd agree, but it's nice to have the option of having the option of 
dumping cargo, if you catch my drift.

> after all, warships won't be packed solid with
> stuff like merchies might,

oh, they will. why would warships have any free space? that would be
inefficient design. they are packed solid with power plants, drives,
computers, armaments, crew quarters, etc. look at how much room each
sailor gets on a current warship (on an rn destroyer, it's basically a
bunk in a cupboard).

Tom