Mesa occupation

Somtaaw wrote:

kzt wrote:No, the actual occupied portion of a typical freighter is very small. It's a few percent of the volume. The overwhelming vast majority of a freighter is empty space The cargo bay is hundreds of meters deep and wide by thousands of meters long and it's just empty space under the hyperdrive, reactor and pressurized walkway against the dorsal surface.

The interior of a freighter is inside the compensator so it's always at zero G without the grav plates. You don't really need to secure stuff that strongly as there isn't that much force that will ever be applied to the load.

Sure, but I'm still arguing against Relex's point that after you rip everything "slaver" related out of a slaver's ship, you magically have a freighter ready to go. If refits were that easy, there wouldn't be that huge arsed threadnought of "how to make SLN superdreadnoughts useful".

Hatches, rooms, docking bays large enough to handle full up cargo shuttles (which are presumably larger than a general personnel shuttle), internal cargo shifting, the list goes on and on. Yes the majority of any cargo ship is empty space, but a refit is a refit, whether it's a 200 year old SLN superdreadnought, or a slaver that was just came out of the yard last week.

I don't know of any cutaways showing the internals of HV warships and freighters, aside from one of the Shrike. These, of wet-water vessels, may provide a visualisation of how much more densely packed a warship is compared with a freighter.

http://ep.yimg.com/ca/I/yhst-1960572517 ... _267130594

http://i371.photobucket.com/albums/oo15 ... wing-S.jpg
http://image.slidesharecdn.com/shiptyes ... 1425938136

A different analogy could be a main battle tank compared with a HGV.

Somtaaw wrote:Sure, but I'm still arguing against Relex's point that after you rip everything "slaver" related out of a slaver's ship, you magically have a freighter ready to go.

Relax is correct that stripping out the internal partitioning of a Slaver would be fairly simple. Dealing with the ejection hatches that don't have interlocks to keep them from opening when there is air on one side might be more problematic.

Rebuilding a usable non-slaver interior is the sticking point. Modern seagoing ships are launched with little more than a hull and propulsion; a year or two later they are finally ready for service after internal partitions and equipment are installed. Relax's proposal would require the equivalent of that post-launch fitting out plus the time required for gutting the slaver.

My contention is that it would be easier and probably faster to build a new hull and fit it for cargo service than it would be to modify a slave-ship by stripping back to the hull and re-fitting. The only advantage of converting a slaver would be the availability of drives, compensators, evironmental plants, etc. If newer, more efficient parts aren't available, then re-fitting might make sense. If the parts are available, a new from the keel out ship should be more efficient and economical than a converted slaver.

I've always envisioned freighters to be the space equivalent of huge 18 wheelers of densely packed cab and cavernous trailers... pretty much.

Freighter vs slaver. They both have the same very basic requirements.

A framework of some kind to hold all the stuff you need in place That can be as simple as a single relatively large spine (as described at least once) and then several relativly lighter "ribs" plus cross members (curved between the ribs) for rigidity.

Propultion systems - Wedge, Sail, gas or ion for manuvering and whatever other things can be used for fine controls for docking etc- and the attendent equipment and fuel. Also those pesky nodes for the propultion system and their control runs also connected to various control areas.

Operations areas and crew quarters. That includes such things as at least the passageway(s) along the spine to get from one end of the ship to the other and access passageways to any other parts of the ship you will need for regular maintenace or inspection. Your Bridge, Engine Room, boat bays, Enviormenatal area(s), cargo handling control stations, tractor and pressor units for cargo, Life boats(pods), sensor and communications (both controls and actual equipment with access- shirt sleeve enviornment at least- and all the equipment to operate the hatches.

Scotty's working through cargo in OBS would seem to indicate that you can- in shirt sleeves or at least skin suites- can access most if not all of the cargo containers or holds which would contain things that would not do well without air and termperatue enviornments.
That should mean that all those containers had at least flexable access/boarding tubes with the attendant airlock equipment on the access tubes and the containers. Just a wild guess unless all that cargo was transfered -though airlocks - into the equivelent dozens of holds like the goverment warehouse at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. That doesn't sound like a good idea.
[Just how long did it take Scotty and Harkness to search just one 2, 4 or 8 million ton freighter full of things 40x the size of 40' shipping containers that 1) requred power and atmosphearic controls to maintain the cargo, 2) continers the same size that could be in "cold" shipping area not needing enviornmental controls and subject to be being opened for inspection from in vacuums conditons withing the hull), 3) all the regular operations compartments for ships stores? The two of them, working through compartment by container by storage area with scanners to read the invoice documents, inspecting the tags, opening containers and actually looking in? ]

So essentialy you really do use a "soap bubble" in the form of a dirigible layout with the massive cargo area inside and the things that make it work and people alive in it spaced as will work or as needed around the edges and/or ends.

For a slaver you seem to need specialy designed "cargo" space for handling a lot of slaves and yet put it/them with at least one section of it against the exterior wall of the ship with special doors such that you can blow the contents of at least the area closest to the doors out into space w/o explosive decompression wrecking the slave areas (and hurting other areas of the ship) You need a lot of extra gear to make those areas habitable for the slaves, feed said slaves, lock those slaves into those areas plus monitor them.
IF you have a layout that doesn't match "standard" internal plans for freighters, you could put you slave containers/ compartments stuck off in the mase of what would otherwise be standard enviormental transport containers and perhaps even use something like moveable false walls to hide the access to them. The problem is always going to be that if you have things like gas systems to control/move the slaves, that is going to PROBABLY be co-located with the slave containers/compartments. You are also going to need considerably larger enviornmental systems- another clue that something is not right. Not just enough to maintain "normal" ship enviornment in all the containers/holds that would need them per the ship's manifest or documents show they have, but all that other space with living, breathing and excreting humans crammed into them

So you have extra stuff like no handles/controls on the "inside" of doors. More hull mounted hatches than you have space allocated to doors. A lot of "extra" equipment and controls, possibly even separate (hidden) control areas for those unlisted spaces.

You don't have to rip out everything, just the spaces, equipment and controls/enviormental conduits that deal specificaly with the slave quaters. Sure, you will have to cap off and secure every line/pipe/tube/duct that went into the slave areas and patch the holes that pass though the ships internal bulkheads to the slave areas. But you should be able to do that if the internal areas beyond the regular crew and operating compartments are modular.
Pull the modules, remove the enviornmental and all other connections (or replace with normal ones for "normal" containers) and replace the hull evacuation doors & weld hull patches into place.

cthia wrote:I've always envisioned freighters to be the space equivalent of huge 18 wheelers of densely packed cab and cavernous trailers... pretty much.

Even a simple Box Trailer (or train's box-car) has more technology involved than you might think. Just inside the box you have to have reinforcing and tie-down points to secure cargo without ripping the box apart.

Then there's outside the boxes -- suspension, brakes, doors/latches, etc.

Compared to the Train's locomotive or the Tractor of an Eighteen-wheeler it's not much, but it's more than just "cavernous."

munroburton wrote:I don't know of any cutaways showing the internals of HV warships and freighters, aside from one of the Shrike. These, of wet-water vessels, may provide a visualisation of how much more densely packed a warship is compared with a freighter.

There was one at the first Honorcon. It showed how many Nimitz class aircraft carriers you could fit in the cargo bay. At least 8 in two dimensions. 16-32 in 3 dimensions.

Somtaaw wrote:

kzt wrote:No, the actual occupied portion of a typical freighter is very small. It's a few percent of the volume. The overwhelming vast majority of a freighter is empty space The cargo bay is hundreds of meters deep and wide by thousands of meters long and it's just empty space under the hyperdrive, reactor and pressurized walkway against the dorsal surface.

The interior of a freighter is inside the compensator so it's always at zero G without the grav plates. You don't really need to secure stuff that strongly as there isn't that much force that will ever be applied to the load.

Sure, but I'm still arguing against Relex's point that after you rip everything "slaver" related out of a slaver's ship, you magically have a freighter ready to go. If refits were that easy, there wouldn't be that huge arsed threadnought of "how to make SLN superdreadnoughts useful".

Hatches, rooms, docking bays large enough to handle full up cargo shuttles (which are presumably larger than a general personnel shuttle), internal cargo shifting, the list goes on and on. Yes the majority of any cargo ship is empty space, but a refit is a refit, whether it's a 200 year old SLN superdreadnought, or a slaver that was just came out of the yard last week.

UH, no. You see dreadnaughts are compartmentalized with ARMOR which according to DW is near impossible to cut/weld etc. Freighters are not. It is as simple as that.

UH, Just how do you think Shuttles get their goods transported onto them from a freighter currently? Hrmm?

Lets see how Honor "entered" Wayfarer in HAE. It sure as heck is not through an airlock.

"Honor's cutter drifted through the enormous hatch of HMS Wayfarer's Number One Hold. The small craft was a tiny minnow against the vast, star-speckled maw of cargo doors which could easily have admitted a destroyer, and the hold they served was built to the same gargantuan scale. Work lights created pockets of glaring brilliance where parties of yard dogs labored on the final modifications, but there was no atmosphere to diffuse the light, and most of the stupendous alloy cavern was even blacker than the space beyond the hatch."

Cargo holds are airless but can be pressurized. Shuttles land in em, load up, and leave. Yes, they are able to pressurize/depressurize.

I do know this, a 1000 tons of cargo is an immense volume of goods simplicity is the name of the game.

A cargo bay is not a boat bay. A cargo shuttle, is not a pinnace, let alone a cutter for personnel transport. The former is vastly larger than the later.

Weird Harold wrote:

cthia wrote:I've always envisioned freighters to be the space equivalent of huge 18 wheelers of densely packed cab and cavernous trailers... pretty much.

Even a simple Box Trailer (or train's box-car) has more technology involved than you might think. Just inside the box you have to have reinforcing and tie-down points to secure cargo without ripping the box apart.

Then there's outside the boxes -- suspension, brakes, doors/latches, etc.

Compared to the Train's locomotive or the Tractor of an Eighteen-wheeler it's not much, but it's more than just "cavernous."

Why would that equipment not still be there on a slaver? As the Marianne proved, it acts as both cargo freighter and slaver. This means ultimately it is easy to reconfigure the inside. Means the gear for both operations is present.

Relax wrote:Why would that equipment not still be there on a slaver? As the Marianne proved, it acts as both cargo freighter and slaver. This means ultimately it is easy to reconfigure the inside. Means the gear for both operations is present.

It would be there. The problem with Marianne and other slavers is the other equipment and partitioning that simple cargo vessels don't have. The stuff RFC says can't be totally erased.

To me a Honorvers merchant freighter is the space going equivalent of a RW container ship. But instead of square container their hexagon shaped.