"Obsolete SDs" Waste not...

Short Victorious War wrote:"We're going to have to go through the armour and a lot of bulkheads, Milady, and then we're going to have to put them all back again," Tankersley went on, "We've got the equipment for it, but I imagine it's going to take at least two months - probably fourteen or fifteen weeks."
"Could Hephaestus knock that time down if we returned to Manticore?" She kept her tone as neutral as possible, but if Tankersley took any offense at the question it didn't show.
"No, Milady. Oh, Hephaestus has an edge in ancillary equipment, but I doubt they could shave more than a week off our time, and you'd spend twice that long in transit for the round trip."

That was concerning a 935,000 ton battlecruiser, before Paul figured out he could do it a bit quicker by cutting through the non-armoured portions of the ship. A SD has far fewer unarmoured areas than a BC does.

munroburton wrote:

Short Victorious War wrote:"We're going to have to go through the armour and a lot of bulkheads, Milady, and then we're going to have to put them all back again," Tankersley went on, "We've got the equipment for it, but I imagine it's going to take at least two months - probably fourteen or fifteen weeks."
"Could Hephaestus knock that time down if we returned to Manticore?" She kept her tone as neutral as possible, but if Tankersley took any offense at the question it didn't show.
"No, Milady. Oh, Hephaestus has an edge in ancillary equipment, but I doubt they could shave more than a week off our time, and you'd spend twice that long in transit for the round trip."

That was concerning a 935,000 ton battlecruiser, before Paul figured out he could do it a bit quicker by cutting through the non-armoured portions of the ship. A SD has far fewer unarmoured areas than a BC does.

And of course the SDs armor is several times thicker - so increase those time estimates accordingly.
It can be done, but is enough work that the end result needs to be worth the man-years of skilled effort spent to do so.

Granted, if they're not putting the armour or components back during any modifications, these estimates could perhaps be cut by up to 40%. But even so - each SD would cost a minimum of six months in a well equipped military-grade yard before they could be turned over to a civilian yard and turned into space tugs or whatever.

For my money, I'd rather those yards were focused on building more Invictuses, given that a single Invictus is capable of destroying Crandall's entire task force alone.

munroburton wrote:Granted, if they're not putting the armour or components back during any modifications, these estimates could perhaps be cut by up to 40%. But even so - each SD would cost a minimum of six months in a well equipped military-grade yard before they could be turned over to a civilian yard and turned into space tugs or whatever.

For my money, I'd rather those yards were focused on building more Invictuses, given that a single Invictus is capable of destroying Crandall's entire task force alone.

My estimate of the best way to turn a SLN SD into a freighter: Put into yard, remove hammerheads, send to reprocessing. Yank the alpha and beta nodes, send to adjacent yard to mate with keel received from reprocessor. Start chopping bulk heads out to access Fusion Plants, compensators, and Hyper drive, send panels to reprocessor. Send the recovered units to the adjacent yard and incomplete freighter. Finish closing up freighter, note the are likely to be a lot of leftover parts, like fusion plants and weapons.

Should have done that with the Missouri and Ohio. Just imagine how efficient they would be as container ships?(Not).

Castenea wrote:

munroburton wrote:Granted, if they're not putting the armour or components back during any modifications, these estimates could perhaps be cut by up to 40%. But even so - each SD would cost a minimum of six months in a well equipped military-grade yard before they could be turned over to a civilian yard and turned into space tugs or whatever.

For my money, I'd rather those yards were focused on building more Invictuses, given that a single Invictus is capable of destroying Crandall's entire task force alone.

My estimate of the best way to turn a SLN SD into a freighter: Put into yard, remove hammerheads, send to reprocessing. Yank the alpha and beta nodes, send to adjacent yard to mate with keel received from reprocessor. Start chopping bulk heads out to access Fusion Plants, compensators, and Hyper drive, send panels to reprocessor. Send the recovered units to the adjacent yard and incomplete freighter. Finish closing up freighter, note the are likely to be a lot of leftover parts, like fusion plants and weapons.

munroburton wrote:

Short Victorious War wrote:"We're going to have to go through the armour and a lot of bulkheads, Milady, and then we're going to have to put them all back again," Tankersley went on, "We've got the equipment for it, but I imagine it's going to take at least two months - probably fourteen or fifteen weeks."
"Could Hephaestus knock that time down if we returned to Manticore?" She kept her tone as neutral as possible, but if Tankersley took any offense at the question it didn't show.
"No, Milady. Oh, Hephaestus has an edge in ancillary equipment, but I doubt they could shave more than a week off our time, and you'd spend twice that long in transit for the round trip."

That was concerning a 935,000 ton battlecruiser, before Paul figured out he could do it a bit quicker by cutting through the non-armoured portions of the ship. A SD has far fewer unarmoured areas than a BC does.

Nike was a flight 1 Reliant, so was smaller then that, approx 55K tons smaller.

still your core point is accurate.

if it takes that long to do serious work on a ship one seventh the size of the solly SDs in a well equipped military grade yard, then any serious mods to the Solly SDs would take much longer then construction of new yards and construction of a fully modern SD(P).

Dauntless wrote:
Nike was a flight 1 Reliant, so was smaller then that, approx 55K tons smaller.

still your core point is accurate.

if it takes that long to do serious work on a ship one seventh the size of the solly SDs in a well equipped military grade yard, then any serious mods to the Solly SDs would take much longer then construction of new yards and construction of a fully modern SD(P).

Honor's Nike was the first flight 2 Reliant, with improved compensator performance and FTL com capability built in at construction.

Theemile wrote:

Dauntless wrote:
Nike was a flight 1 Reliant, so was smaller then that, approx 55K tons smaller.

still your core point is accurate.

if it takes that long to do serious work on a ship one seventh the size of the solly SDs in a well equipped military grade yard, then any serious mods to the Solly SDs would take much longer then construction of new yards and construction of a fully modern SD(P).

Honor's Nike was the first flight 2 Reliant, with improved compensator performance and FTL com capability built in at construction.

Aye, the Reliant class started about nine years before the Nike commissioned, so Flight II is probable. Still closer to the lower figure than the tonnage given for Flight III/IVs, though. I goofed that one up.

Oops!

Daryl wrote:Should have done that with the Missouri and Ohio. Just imagine how efficient they would be as container ships?(Not).

Castenea" [quote="munroburton wrote:Granted, if they're not putting the armour or components back during any modifications, these estimates could perhaps be cut by up to 40%. But even so - each SD would cost a minimum of six months in a well equipped military-grade yard before they could be turned over to a civilian yard and turned into space tugs or whatever.

For my money, I'd rather those yards were focused on building more Invictuses, given that a single Invictus is capable of destroying Crandall's entire task force alone.

My estimate of the best way to turn a SLN SD into a freighter: Put into yard, remove hammerheads, send to reprocessing. Yank the alpha and beta nodes, send to adjacent yard to mate with keel received from reprocessor. Start chopping bulk heads out to access Fusion Plants, compensators, and Hyper drive, send panels to reprocessor. Send the recovered units to the adjacent yard and incomplete freighter. Finish closing up freighter, note the are likely to be a lot of leftover parts, like fusion plants and weapons.

[/quote]
You probably mean Iowa not Ohio. The only battleship USS Ohio was built about 1900.

Just how much time do you think anybody has to gut an SD and leave enough of the control/enviornmental/power systems in-place to safely operate the ship?

If **ALL** you are going to do is cut a couple of big honking openings in the hull and gut all of the missile magazines, this might not be too bad. Do you really want to cut down to the point of pulling out all but one fusion plant? Might be much simpiler to just shut down the 2nd power plant, close (and weld closed) all the the inter-connecting systems to cut the thing out of accidental back-feed of anything.

Where are the things located that could be stripped (and then retrofitted with handling gear) to use as cargo holds?

You are still going to end up with a lot of armor and areas that were intended to probide buffer and dampening against weapons hits- like compartments and corridors which would be sealed and evaculated of air but otherwise had some on-going function in normal course of operation.

Since much of the SLN anti-missille weapons are almost useless against the GA level weapons, you might gain some space by pulling out all of the counter-missile magazines, feeds, local controls plus eliminating (or repursposing) the allocated crew space for those systems. Remember that you are going to have to seal ALL of the openings between decks/compartments and hull that those systems required.

Someone is going to have to recalculate the balance and configuration of the drive, navigation and internal gravitational systems for the ship so that it will actually go and do what the people operating the control systems intend it to do. Slid that into the folder marked "BALANCE AND TRIM the Ship".

So you end up with a very large, still heavlily armored ship which will require X crew and Y amount of power to move under impeller or in hyperdrive, let alone use a sail to go through a wormhole (which is still going to be a requirement). For the most part, you are going to have to train you people to operate the SLN equipment under SLN practices since that is what you are going to be dealing with.

This is NOT taking a captured 18th or early 19th century purpose built warship and turning it over to a trained crew from your own navy. You could strip off all of the guns and required materials to work them but you would still have to be able to re-set the running gear of the ship plus adjust the disposition of you cargo (and ballast) to safely operate it even if you might be able to do it with a somewhat reduced crew.