Tug Concept

[kilemall]

To be fair, the TEU is a modular container intended for road/rail/ship multi-modal transport at the bottom of a 1G gravity well ... so ... y'know ... different priorities than bulk transport to the stars, I guess.

Same issues once it gets dirtside, has to go on a ground platform for lesser techs, or even direct grav from Starport Up, has to fit on a landing pad for final handling.

I prefer 5-ton/ 10-ton containers, nice neat rounding per lots. Slightly bigger than strict TEU but not appreciably so.

Less cubic space needed then implied because most of the time the density per dton higher then 1000 kgs per is going to mean the cargo isn’t using up the whole volume anyway. So bring on the space hulled container!

 

[Spinward Flow]

I prefer 5-ton/ 10-ton containers, nice neat rounding per lots. Slightly bigger than strict TEU but not appreciably so.

One of the things I've been mumbling over is the notion of how to "shape" the dimensions of a 20 ton Cargo Box that ought to be able to hold 2x 10 ton ATVs.

Starting with Geomorphs art, 10 ton ATVs "fit" into an outline that is 6 deck squares long by 3 deck squares wide, but that doesn't include any "white space" around the vehicle (that reaches the full 10 tons of displacement). So anything intended to "contain" 2x ATVs (side by side) will need to be (minimum) 6x6 deck squares.

Approaching the question from the other direction ...

• 20 tons * 14m³ = 280m³
• 280m / 3m = 93.333m²
• √93.333 = 9.66m
• 9.6 / 1.5 = 6.4 deck squares

And then the proof by reversing the computation ...

• (6.4*1.5) * (6.4*1.5) * 3 = 276.48m³
• 276.48m³ / 14m³ per ton = 19.74857143 tons ≈ 20 tons
• 19.74857143 / 20 = 98.74285714%

So ... pretty decent at being able to fit 2x ATVs into the "footprint" needed within the form factor of a 20 ton Cargo Box. A bit of a "tight fit/squeeze" but ... doable.

However, doing that as the form factor for 20 ton Cargo Boxes, which can then have fittings installed into them (such as 5x staterooms) then means that "interior decorating" deck plans with that (literally) SQUARE form factor is going to require some creativity.

 

[whartung]

I still prefer the name ... FedUps.

Then, of course, there's the deep space corporation. OOPS -- Outer Oort Parcel Service.

 

[kilemall]

Then, of course, there's the deep space corporation. OOPS -- Outer Oort Parcel Service.

Oooh I’m stealing that!

 

[spank]

LBB 2 says 10 tons but that has always struck me as very big. I think the 10 tons is the weight not displacement.

Until recently I didn't have anything to back that up, but I've been pawing thru alot of books lately, and co-incidentally I notice a few things. I was cleaning up my PDF folder and I found a supplement from Judges guild, "Starships and Space craft", it's available on DTRPG.

DriveThruRPG

www.drivethrurpg.com

It describes a number of Starships and Spacecraft, Type S Scout, Type A Free Trader, Subsidized Merchant 400 Ton, Subsidized Merchant 600 Ton (not called a liner in '77) , Yatch, and 800 Ton Cruiser.
Basically all the ships in LBB2, atleast the 1977 version.
Same price, same powerplants, same every thing.
But it gives additional description, length, width, height, flavor text.
But the interesting part is, it also describes all the ship's craft, in greater detail than LBB2. Again the Small craft all match LBBs, but there is more description of each, such as the cargo and passenger capacity, range, speed, endurance, dimension, ETC.
The ATV, Air/raft, G-carrier are also featured, and here's the interesting part.
They are listed as weighing a certain number of tons, not displacing a certain number of tons, and they have dimension listed,
Air Raft Weighs 4 tons, 3m*2m*2m -- 2 dTons {maybe 3}
GCarrier, Weighs 8 tons, 6m*3m*2m -- 6 dTons
ATV Wheeled , Weighs 10 tons, 5m*3m*3m -- 4 dTons
Tracked Wheeled , Weighs 10 tons, 5m*3m*3m -- 4 dTons
Also it includes a grid view, which shows the Air/Raft taking up 3 dTons and the ATV taking up 4 dTons


If you're still not convinced,
Last night I saw a write up for The ATV in the double adventure "Across the Bright Face"
" It masses 9.5 tons and measures 4.5 meters wide, 7.5 meters long, and 4.5 meters high. The vehicle is fitted with a
collapsible undercarriage which allows total height to be reduced to 3.0 meters for stowage and shipment."
4.5m * 4.5m *7.5m = 11.25 Dtons,
But it collapses to 3.0m * 4.5m *7.5m = 7.5dtons.
So even this large example does not take up 10 dTons.

I looked back at my '77 edition of LBB2 and all the small vehicles are listed separate from the small craft, so it's entirely possible that the "tons" entry is weight, not displacement. I think that they just got confused somewhere along the way. S
If you want even more evidence, look at book 3, all the vehicles have a entry that include weight, and it has to be weight, because there are entries like Bi-plane 1 ton, Heilcopter 1 ton, and Grav belt negligible weight if on, 10 kg if off.
So the weight of the vehicles got confused with the dTons dispcement.

 

[mike wightman]

CT cargo was indeed measured in metric tons not displacement tons, this detail is to be found in the example of trade where the 1 ton lot is described as 1000kg. This is repeated in 77,81, TTB, SE and never changed. So the intent was a 4 ton air/raft is 4000kg - which explains how it can carry a 4000kg cargo and four passengers. All of the vehicles are similarly their metric tonnage not displacement tonnage.

 

[spank]

But, you ended up with this table in LBB2, and the units are not the same.
Some of these are weight, and some are displacement.

CT cargo was indeed measured in metric tons not displacement tons, this detail is to be found in the example of trade where the 1 ton lot is described as 1000kg. This is repeated in 77,81, TTB, SE and never changed. So the intent was a 4 ton air/raft is 4000kg - which explains how it can carry a 4000kg cargo and four passengers. All of the vehicles are similarly their metric tonnage not displacement tonnage.

 

[mike wightman]

In 77 LBB:2 there were no displacement tons, it was possible to read the rules in such a way that the spacecraft tonnage is also per 1000kg.

Following the revision to displacement tons the best aaumption is that smallcraft are displacement tons but vehicles are metric tons with vehicle hangers measured in displacement tons for ship construction

This leads to the conclusion that the cargo displacement ton is capped at 1000kg per displacement ton by mass of cargo and is therefore mostly "empty space" for dense cargos.

 

[spank]

That turns out not to be the case, almost everything in LBB2 '77 is in displacement, the Ship's life boat displaces 20 tons, the Cutter displaces 20 tons, and the Ships's vehicles section says that the listing for the Air Raft, and the ATV are the amount of space that must be allotted to house them on the ship. "Hte several possible vehicles are indicated by the ship's vehicle table, which shows the tonnage required to be devoted to hangar
or stowage, and the price for the item in millions of credits." There are only two vehicles, the ATV costing 3,000,000 Cr and Requiring 10 tons of hangar, and the Air/Raft costing 6,000,000 and requiring 4 tons of hangar space. Later editions expanded this to include other vehicles, and raft got a 90% price cut the ATV got a 99% price cut!
The real issue was that both vehicles' weight and required hangar space were the same 4/4 for the Air raft and 10/10 for the ATV. LBB 3 '77 listed all vehicles by weight, a ground car weighs 2 tons, a Gcarrier weighs 8 tons eTc.
Later editions of LBBs dropped the weights, now a GCarrier is 8 tons. LBB2 pulled these other vehicles from LBB3 to LBB2 and kept the same tonnage, make a GCarrier displace 8 tons.

I wonder if this is part of why MT switched to Liters and Kiloliters?

 

[mike wightman]

77 does not define what it means by mass displacement. And all later editions of CT maintained the cargo rules that a ton is 1000kg.

Note that the word hydrogen never appears in CT 77 edition. The word fuel is used, but nowhere does it state what this fuel is.

 

[spank]

77 does not define what it means by mass displacement. And all later editions of CT maintained the cargo rules that a ton is 1000kg.

Note that the word hydrogen never appears in CT 77 edition. The word fuel is used, but nowhere does it state what this fuel is.

It does however specify that fuel can be skimmed from gas giants, so presumably it is not exceedingly dense.

 

[mike wightman]

You can get antimatter from the radiation belts that surround gas giants...

 

[spank]

You can get antimatter from the radiation belts that surround gas giants...

Interesting,
However antimatter is TL-17, presumable power plants are fusion. I guess they could be fusing anti-hydrogen.

 

[Spinward Flow]

You can get antimatter from the radiation belts that surround gas giants...

And Terra in the Sol system, as it turns out ...

Not a lot ... but there is more anti-matter trapped in the radiation belts than has been produced by particle accelerators on the ground ...