Relax wrote:Weird Harold wrote:So in the 44th century they classify ships by how much water they would displace? Why not just say Cubic meters?
That would be a question to ask RFC. FWIW, read up on the "Great Resizing" for the exact fluid used for figuring displacement of spaceships; it isn't water is all I remember.
It is water by definition as he is using the SI system. 1kg is defined by water in earth's gravity.
As to why not say Cubic meters? Simple actually, because when he first started writing the series he started with mass... in kg... without a definition of volume/density. Then along came the observation that his ships were the density of smoke and that foopah. Then along came CLAC's/SD'P's/Tractored pods and why ships do not increase acceleration. To DIG HIMESELF out of the hole, he came up with compensator field which he had ALREADY semi defined in earlier books and then tied the compensator efficiency/field TO THE VOLUME, and not true "mass". Therefore the "mass" in said field just adds/subtracts "stress" on the impeller nodes.
Ultimately, the total mass, would eventually prove to great on the impeller nodes and here I would assume they would "burn out". For instance if you had a solid gold ship, it would be ~19X the true mass of a nominal 8M ton compensator field which is set at 250kg/m^3 which is actually fairly close to shipping tonnages for containers here on earth... 1 TEU = ~40 m^3 = ~10 tons
So, for those who can't do the math... 10tons/40m^3 = 250kg/m^3 or EXACTLY what RFC set his ships density to... A standard TEU shipping container here on earth...[/quote]
It is not water. From "House of Steel"
Reliant-class battlecruiser (Flights III-IV)
Mass: 934,250 tons
Dimensions: 727 × 92 × 82 mA honorverse ship is wider than tall, but necks down, so tha actual area should be close to a cyclindar the max height of the ship, or 82M in diameter 727M long has an are of 3,839,299 cubic meters. One cubic meter of water is one ton, or about 1/4 the density of water.
Most water ships have more of their hull above water than below water, so the great resizing would put a honoverse ship as the same volume. As an example a courier boat or frigate would be the biggest ship that would fit into the panama canal.
Tonnage: 52,500 DWT
Length: 289.56 m (950 ft)
Beam: 32.31 m (106 ft)
Height: 57.91 m (190 ft)
Draft: 12.04 m (39.5 ft)
and the new panamax would corrispond to an old light cruiser, as theroland would not fit.
Length 366 m (1,200 ft)
Width 49 m (161 ft)
Draft 15.2 m (50 ft)
tonnage approximatly 150K tons