Yeah, TL=15 in Imperial year -420 would seem to be a NO GO.
Only slightly less efficient. And TL 11.
This could be on the right track (although some specifics differ) because I was able to find this starship design in CT AM: 6 Solomani on page 43.
Bulk Carrier (type SK): Using a 1000-ton hull, the Buik Carrier is a mid-sized transport handling a number of varied cargoes. It mounts jump drive-K, maneuver drive-K, and power plant-K, giving it performance of jump-2 and 2G acceleration. Fuel tankage of 220 tons supports the power plant and one jump-2. Adjacent to the bridge, the ship carries a Model/2bis computer. There are 20 staterooms and 10 low berths. The ship has two hardpoints and two tons of fire control allocated to them; no weapons or turrets are mounted. There is one ship's vehicle: a 30-ton ship's boat. Cargo capacity is 536 tons. The ship is unstreamlined.
The Bulk Carrier requires a crew of nine: captain/pilot, navigator, three engineers, two stewards, gunner/boat pilot, and medic/gunner. The ship can carry eleven high or middle passengers and ten low passengers. The Bulk Carrier costs MCr369.7 to build (including 10 % discount for standard design) and requires 27 months to build.
The Bulk Carrier is a major component of the corporate fleets of the Solomani Sphere.
In "modern" USP format this LBB2 design would equate to:
Code:
Bulk Carrier SK-A7222S2-000000-00000-1 MCr 369.7 1000 tons
Passengers=11. Low=10. Cargo=536. Fuel=220. EP=20. Agility=2. TL=11. Crew=9.
Ship's Boat QB-0206601-000000-00000-0 MCr 16 30 tons
Passengers=6. Low=0. Cargo=6. Fuel=6.5. EP=1.8. Agility=6. TL=9. Crew=2.
So not an unreasonable starting point ... particularly with this note:
The Bulk Carrier is a major component of the corporate fleets of the Solomani Sphere.
Meaning, there ought to be "plenty of them" already built (and thus available for use) by the "banishment exile fleet" of what wound up becoming the Sword Worlds.
The most likely thing to do as a conversion then in order to cross the Great Rift with such a ship would be to have 300 tons of collapsible fuel tank installed in the cargo bay in order to extend range by an additional 3 parsecs (so reduce cargo capacity by -300 tons down to
236 tons).
If you increase the (live) passenger capacity up to 40 (16 high passage because the base design already has 2 stewards, plus 24 middle passage) you'll need an additional 29 staterooms (so reduce cargo capacity by another -116 tons down to
120 tons). The medic onboard can be responsible for 120 passengers, so the remaining 80 passenger capacity becomes low berths (reducing cargo capacity by another -40 tons down to
80 tons).
Fuel purification plants will ABSOLUTELY BE NEEDED for this voyage(!!!!) and a TL=11 fuel purification plant capable of purifying 220 tons of fuel will be required (so reduce cargo capacity down by another -7.7 tons down to
72.3 tons).
So what we wind up with, from a 1000 ton standard design Solomani starship that can
eventually be configured to be able to cross the Great Rift without risking misjumps on unrefined fuel during the LONG voyage from Terra to Gram in the Spinward Marches is:
9 active duty crew
40 "live" passengers (16 high passengers, 24 middle passengers)
80 "frozen" passengers (80 low passengers)
72.3 tons of cargo (some of which will need to be additional life support reserves to extend endurance)
the 255 person weeks per Td are from the asteroid mining rules in JTAS
JTAS 3, p18
Supplies: In general, each person in the expedition requires 1 kilogram of canned or packaged food and other essentials per day, costing an average of Cr25 per kilogram. One ton of such supplies in the cargo area will support 2000 person/days at a cost of Cr50,000. That translates to 285 person/weeks at a cost of Cr175 per week.
Uh oh ... looks like I just found an errata while reviewing this entry.
It would seem that there is a conversion error between metric tons (1000 kilograms) and short tons (2000 lbs). If 1 ton of ship capacity is 1000 kilograms, then 1 ton of life support reserves will support 1000 person/days at a cost of Cr 25,000 per ton.
Note that this kind of units conversion error is exactly the kind of thing which managed to doom missions to Mars. Best not to replicate it here then, I'm thinking.
So ... if our 1000 ton refugee ship has 49 "live" people aboard consuming life support, that means that 1 ton of life support reserves will last 20.4 days (1000/49=20.4), which is very nearly 3 weeks.
If our Sword Worlder refugee ship then devotes 7.3 tons of cargo space towards life support reserves, the starship will be able to endure for 7300/49=148.98 days (21.28 weeks) before needing to replenish their life support stocks ... and the 1000 ton Bulk Carrier has only
65 tons of cargo hold space remaining for carrying the necessary supplies to establish a colony settlement once they reach Gram ...
IF ... the fleet uses the J-5 Trade Route through Aslan controlled space.
If instead ... the Sword Worlder refugee ship were to route through Corridor sector, they would have 300 tons of additional cargo space to use that wouldn't need to be devoted to fuel.
Do I really need to point out that 300 tons of extra capacity means
a LOT more refugees (and a lot more supplies to establish a permanent colony somewhere) can be rescued from Terra for the journey per Bulk Carrier starship? I mean, 300 tons of extra cargo space can mean another 600 low berths(!!!) ... and you would only need to exchange 5 middle passengers for 5 medical crew in order to support that tradeoff.
49 live crew+passengers and 80 frozen low passengers via the Great Rift route through Aslan space
49 live crew+passengers and 680 frozen low passengers via the Corridor route through Vilani space
You tell me which is the better route for a convoy of refugees desperate to survive with limited resources and a limited number of starships available to them.
When the most precious thing you can carry is PEOPLE ... wouldn't you want to take the route that allows you to "save" the maximum number of people from Terra?
After all, the more people you can bring from Terra to your eventual destination, the more likely your colony (once founded) will be able to survive (many hands make short work of difficult tasks and all that).
