FT cargo/aux ships.

On Thu, 19 Aug 1999, Tom Anderson wrote:

> otoh, since the cargo bays aren't tied to the drive assembly, you
don't
> have your expensive components (the ones in the tug) sitting in port
for a
> day or two while the ship is loaded - if trips between ports are on
the
> order of weeks and layovers are on the order of days, you have 10-15 %
of

Why not? If you are transporting bulk cargo, you're going to have a big 
volume freighter. Use sublight lighters to transport the material planet

side. To get it up to orbit, you use a rail gun on low grav worlds. 

What about the palettized container ship concept. Small orbital shuttles

(ala the trucks) transport the cargo up to the ship, they are attached 
(internal or external) to the freighter. 

I don't know that a Tug would be the same as a cargo freighter. In the 
case of the tug, its extending its drive field around a separate craft.
A 
freighter would already have the drive field emmitters placed at 
strategic locations around the ship to warp the space around it and jump

to light. 

Whether it had entirely internal cargo holds or attachment points, I 
don't see why it would count as a tug. Its always transporting the same 
volume of objects. 

This has me thinking about my idea for PT boats and an associated tender

for them. Essentially a ship just like a Landing Ship Tank that trucks 
around LCMs and LCIs (or what ever) for the actual interface to the 
surface. The PT boats would stay in system and get shuttled about to 
other systems with the tender. They'd get transported in the bays of 
the tender and be size 6-8 with no FTL drive. But the tender wouldn't
have 
to be costed out like a tug (just like the auxillary ships that move the

interface craft around). Still it'd be merchant like and not a good 
combatant. 

There benifit would be small, handy craft hardly worth A Batt shots at 
that moved pretty fast, but not as fast as fighters. The'd have pds, a 
torpedo and a 8 thrust engine to make maneuver easy. The perfect thing
to 
operate in systems that were in contention or that were transfer points
for 
merchant ships. The tender wouldn't necessarily have to be insystem all 
the time, just when they needed to make a strategic move. 

------------------------------------------------------------------
- Ryan Montieth Gill		DoD# 0780 (Smug #1) / AMA / SOHC -
- ryan.gill@turner.com	    I speak not for CNN, nor they for me -
- rmgill@mindspring.com 	     www.mindspring.com/~rmgill/ -
- '85 Honda CB700S  -  '72 Honda CB750K  - '76 Chevy MonteCarlo  -
------------------------------------------------------------------