Cargo in Traveller

[Timerover51]

Yeah, a centimeter or so on either side is more than ample room to maneuver the thing.

You simply need to use proper care and planning. See this historical example for comparison.

I assume that you have never seen the average forklift driver maneuver items.

Getting the Iowa-class ships through the Panama Canal was always an exercise is near-disaster. They were also built when the planning was to widen the locks so as to along for the follow-on Montana-class ships to be able to transit the canal. The Montana-class was to have a 121 foot beam. The steel shortage in 1943 halted the building of the wider locks.

 

[boomslang]

I assume that you have never seen the average forklift driver maneuver items.

Heh.

The crane operators (soon to be replaced by robots, no less) who load those TEUs onto container ships are pretty skilled, though. Probably because they get paid significantly more than the average stevedore... which is also why the task will soon be automated, alas.

 

[Enoki]

As for hazardous materials... There are more than CT takes into account...

That's the common DoT ones today. They would likely be more in the future, along with warnings about not putting something a vacuum, about maximum atmospheric pressures, etc.

 

[coliver988]

BITS had a cargo supplement that goes into quite a lot of detail for cargo, including species specific hazards.

 

[Redcap]

Heh.

The crane operators (soon to be replaced by robots, no less) who load those TEUs onto container ships are pretty skilled, though. Probably because they get paid significantly more than the average stevedore... which is also why the task will soon be automated, alas.

I was thinking along similar lines myself. Here's my personal take on the issue:

There are three ways to get cargo into and out of a ship.

1. By a loader, be it wheeled, tracked, grav, or on legs.
2. By the on-ship cargo crane, and
3. By using the cargo belt (in fact, the TL version is a series of precision cargo grav lift repulsor/directors built into the deck plating at the time of building the ship).

Aside from the sophont-crewed/operated machinery or pallet lifting equipment at may be used, the crane and belt/repulsor systems employ precision expert software to assess (mass and listed contents, and when they're due to be off-loaded) and direct all containers coming onto a ship to their proper stowed positions. This those systems do with millimetre precision.

It's the loadmasters task to ensure that the initial offloading/loading plan is correctly set up in the expert system's database.

 

[boomslang]

As for hazardous materials... There are more than CT takes into account...

<snip>

That's the common DoT ones today. They would likely be more in the future, along with warnings about not putting something a vacuum, about maximum atmospheric pressures, etc.

And of course, in the typical Trav scenario, there is somehow always a 1 in 6 chance that any unusual, hazardous cargo being carried by the PCs will get loose in the hold and cause any number of problems for the hapless crew...

No wonder Hortalez et Cie is a megacorporation, eh?

 

[Redcap]

BITS had a cargo supplement that goes into quite a lot of detail for cargo, including species specific hazards.

101 Cargos, iirc. I think I've got it in storage somewhere. I'll have a shufti for it next time I'm at the lockup

 

[Redcap]

And of course, in the typical Trav scenario, there is somehow always a 1 in 6 chance that any unusual, hazardous cargo being carried by the PCs will get loose in the hold and cause any number of problems for the hapless crew...

No wonder Hortalez et Cie is a megacorporation, eh?

Why is it that I'm now imagining a HeC associate sidling up to the PCs and suggesting that they take out a policy, as ... accidents... do happen in hyperspace...!

 

[Whipsnade]

As usual, all this bloviating about shipping container handling ignores the fact that shipping containers are already handled every hour of every day by people with none of the equipment the Usual Suspects believe is necessary.

And then, as usual, the binary "thinking" employed by the Usual Suspects "proves" that, if containers cannot be handled in the only manner in which they can conceive, shipping containers will not be handled at all.

All of that is, of course, complete nonsense.

I've watched shipping containers on low boys fashioned out of truck axles being pulled by bulldozers down a "road" consisting of knee deep mud. I've watched shipping containers winched by stationary engines off of lighters, onto skids, and then onto the quay. I've seen shipping containers "handled" by opening them first, emptying them by hand, and then lifting them off a barge or rail car.

There more things done in more ways on this actual Earth than occur within your First World blinders.

As for how shipping containers are handled aboard ship, this passage dates from 1983 and TTA:

The floor of the cargo area is fitted with grav plates, which are reversible. When modules (or other cargo) are loaded, the plates are reversed, and the modules pushed about and into place.

While mass will still be a concern, a crew using devices as simple as chainfalls and come-alongs can easily move containers off their ship where they then become the locals' problem.

Not every port on every world will or needs to host the equivalent of the Keppel Container Terminal and the OTU would be pretty damn boring if they did.

 

[Enoki]

Exactly. I've had them unload using "ground tackle" in scenarios. That is, a combination wench / chain fall with a somewhat larger version of machinery skates that will pull the containers out of the cargo bay. Once on the ground out of the ship you can use a crane or whatever to load it and haul it off.
A lot would depend on tech level and what's available locally however.

I doubt showing up on some planet with a C class starport and a population of maybe a few thousand at most with half a dozen containers for some local company is going to have the crew finding there's anything whatsoever for them to use to unload them. Why would there be? That shipment is probably the only one in months, and the locals have little or no need for equipment to move shipping containers.

 

[Timerover51]

Pardon my ignorance. but what does "BITS" stand for? I have seen in referenced before, without knowing what it is.

As for my cargo weight and cube data, I am getting that from FM55-15, Transportation Reference Data, Dept. of Army, December 1963. There is a lot of material in there that could be used as cargo that is not in any of the Traveller books. And it sounds like someone has already put out something on cargo, but a while back. Hmmm, put on project burner.

 

[Redcap]

As usual, all this bloviating about shipping container handling ignores the fact that shipping containers are already handled every hour of every day by people with none of the equipment the Usual Suspects believe is necessary.

And then, as usual, the binary "thinking" employed by the Usual Suspects "proves" that, if containers cannot be handled in the only manner in which they can conceive, shipping containers will not be handled at all.

All of that is, of course, complete nonsense.

I've watched shipping containers on low boys fashioned out of truck axles being pulled by bulldozers down a "road" consisting of knee deep mud. I've watched shipping containers winched by stationary engines off of lighters, onto skids, and then onto the quay. I've seen shipping containers "handled" by opening them first, emptying them by hand, and then lifting them off a barge or rail car.

There more things done in more ways on this actual Earth than occur within your First World blinders.

As for how shipping containers are handled aboard ship, this passage dates from 1983 and TTA:



While mass will still be a concern, a crew using devices as simple as chainfalls and come-alongs can easily move containers off their ship where they then become the locals' problem.

Not every port on every world will or needs to host the equivalent of the Keppel Container Terminal and the OTU would be pretty damn boring if they did.

I wondered where I'd first read about the grav-plate-assisted loading/unloading of a ship before now - thanks

Exactly. I've had them unload using "ground tackle" in scenarios. That is, a combination wench / chain fall with a somewhat larger version of machinery skates that will pull the containers out of the cargo bay. Once on the ground out of the ship you can use a crane or whatever to load it and haul it off.
A lot would depend on tech level and what's available locally however.

I doubt showing up on some planet with a C class starport and a population of maybe a few thousand at most with half a dozen containers for some local company is going to have the crew finding there's anything whatsoever for them to use to unload them. Why would there be? That shipment is probably the only one in months, and the locals have little or no need for equipment to move shipping containers.

It's usually understood that containers going to the middle of nowhere won't come back, and will instead be used for some form of building or other, once emptied, after all

Pardon my ignorance. but what does "BITS" stand for? I have seen in referenced before, without knowing what it is.

British Isles Traveller Support. It's a group of fans here in the UK who promote and support the game (I'm also a member. We held TravCon UK '17, a very small residential con for Traveller the other weekend, and it was a great deal of fun

http://www.bitsuk.net/About/About.html

As for my cargo weight and cube data, I am getting that from FM55-15, Transportation Reference Data, Dept. of Army, December 1963. There is a lot of material in there that could be used as cargo that is not in any of the Traveller books. And it sounds like someone has already put out something on cargo, but a while back. Hmmm, put on project burner.

 

[aramis]

Pardon my ignorance. but what does "BITS" stand for? I have seen in referenced before, without knowing what it is.
.

British Isles Traveller Support. http://www.bitsuk.net/

A publishing group producing licensed materials for Traveller since before MGT...

 

[Quint]

British Isles Traveller Support. http://www.bitsuk.net/

A publishing group producing licensed materials for Traveller since before MGT...

They put out some nice stuff. I picked up a range of "101" booklets from them years ago (probably heard about them via some GZG folks) and am quite happy with them.

D.

 

[Silverhawk]

That's a limitation of what the loading can be for the container, both structurally and whatever they have to do to balance the containers by placement.

Truck trailers and railroad stack cars are also limited, to save on structural tare weight I suspect and certainly by typical axle loadings against their respective roadbeds.

I can speak to this at least from the railroad side. Most railcars today are 100 ton for loading. Most mainlines will handle 143 tons total weight. That is car and commodity.

So a covered hopper car for carrying grain or plastic pellets for example is physically bigger than a covered hopper for cement due to the density of the cargo.

The railroads, shippers, and the railcar manufacturers are very aware of the fact that weight on the car reduces the amount that can be loaded in car.

 

[Takei]

It is quite tempting to put such hatches in the floor of the hold, raise the vessel up on its landing gear, and load/unload the cargo onto trucks/wagons/dollies rolled underneath it.

The Thunderbird 2 Free Trader!

Also the drop ship in Aliens, but Thunderbird 2 was the first thing that sprang to mind.

 

[kilemall]

Floor hatch is how the premier 'do everything' ship of the Star Citizen

universe does it.

Here is a youtube sales trailer in which they are dropping the cargo hatch to use their ground vehicle-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ok_JC-ClscY

 

[Condottiere]

That's an elevator.

 

[kilemall]

That's an elevator.

For a 'floor hatch', the distinction eludes me, as a 'bomb bay' type hatch would be highly troublesome to load, and unloading stands a good chance of being a quick opportunity to damage the cargo.

Just went back look at the Thunderbird 2. Yikes, hydraulics to lift the whole ship two stories. I'll stick with the elevator, thanks.

 

[Enoki]

I agree. A floor hatch / bomb bay has the issue of having to support all the weight of whatever is on it, along with having to have the lift capacity to bring it up into the ship's bay. That's a lot of machinery and space taken up by the lift mechanisms.
It's far cheaper to have a cargo bay floor and a ramp or hatch at the end or side that opens. A ramp need only support the weight of stuff being moved over it and the open / close mechanisms need only be able to handle the weight of the ramp itself.
Better still, if you design a ramp / hatch system right, unloading is quicker than with a floor hatch unless the entire floor of the cargo bay is the hatch (very heavy design there). Open the ramp / hatch and basically push or pull the entire cargo out in one shot.

Then there's making clearance for the floor hatch beneath the ship. That means taller landing gear and more space taken up to store it (assuming it retracts in some fashion). That's more weight and space again for no particular gain. Also, the area beneath the ship will need to be pretty flat to lower the floor such you can get stuff of and onto it.

There's just lots of expensive, weight and space consuming problems with a floor hatch like the one shown.