SLN Reserve

kzt wrote:You really think that a planet with 8 billion people can't scrape up 10,000 trained spacers, of whom about about 1000 need to understand by the time the ship is in service the basics of how to maintain and operate military grade hyperdrives.

Do you think that if I offered you a million dollars and a year you could recruit 50 people qualified to be a ship reactor operator from just the 330 million people in the US if I was paying $150,000/year to them?

And people in the US do things like grow old and die. Nobody on a core world does that. Most everyone who served in the SLN over the last hundred years is still alive and healthy. There are something like 20 million people in the SLN at any given moment, which means likely over 150 million vets.

And if you already understand how to operate and maintain a hyperdrive you can probably be taught how to manage a more complex version given a year of training. Since the entire US navy nuclear power training program from street to graduation is on the order of 18 months a year of retraining seems pretty viable.

So yeah, I think this is totally doable.

pnakasone wrote:The biggest resource the SL lacks is time. It would take time to get in touch with SLN veterans that have the needed skills.

kzt wrote:You really think that a planet with 8 billion people can't scrape up 10,000 trained spacers, of whom about about 1000 need to understand by the time the ship is in service the basics of how to maintain and operate military grade hyperdrives.

kzt wrote:Do you think that if I offered you a million dollars and a year you could recruit 50 people qualified to be a ship reactor operator from just the 330 million people in the US if I was paying $150,000/year to them?

Theemile wrote:

JohnRoth wrote:Depends on the proportion of time you actually spend traveling at speed. And that depends on how far you're going. For relatively short trips, the amount of time spent loading and unloading at the termini as well as the time spent accelerating and decelerating while shifting hyper bands can dominate your transit time.

Military hyperdrives and military particle shielding cost more, both in capital expense and maintenance expense.

But, there should be a class of "long haul" freighters for the long, well, hauls, utilizing mil spec hardware. But it just doesn't seem to exist.

Tenshinai wrote:So, lets add that the USN has just lost all its submarines and 5 years worth of newbuilt ones.
That you´re switching to a completely new reactor model.
Halve the average manpower quality of the USN.
Kill 9 out of 10 instructors, including retired ones.

Somtaaw wrote:Some of the freighters that stop off at Montana, let alone others, which only carry perishable gourmet foodstuffs are described as fast.

Which can only possibly be mid-sized freighters, that either use their size to cram in the oversized military hyperdrive and shielding without notably decreasing their cargo capacity or are larger than their civilian hyper counterparts but use the size difference to carry the same tonnage at higher speeds.

Then there's actually the differential in normal speeds, even assuming they grav wave surf most of the time, we've seen evidence that ships still have to fly on impellers between waves, and from hyper limits to their stations. So real fast freighters, or your notional "long hauls" are not only going to have military hyperdrives, but military style impellers and compensators.

kzt wrote:They are not new, or high tech, or sophisticated. What you would use are the more than 200 year-old design for the hyperdrive used on every SLN SD. It's an extremely stable well understood design that any core world can make. It's like talking about how cutting edge and sophisticated a turbocharged diesel is. Except that turbocharged diesels are only 100 years old and, unlike the SLN, you don't find many 100+ year old diesel engines in daily use.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Somtaaw wrote:Some of the freighters that stop off at Montana, let alone others, which only carry perishable gourmet foodstuffs are described as fast.

Which can only possibly be mid-sized freighters, that either use their size to cram in the oversized military hyperdrive and shielding without notably decreasing their cargo capacity or are larger than their civilian hyper counterparts but use the size difference to carry the same tonnage at higher speeds.

Then there's actually the differential in normal speeds, even assuming they grav wave surf most of the time, we've seen evidence that ships still have to fly on impellers between waves, and from hyper limits to their stations. So real fast freighters, or your notional "long hauls" are not only going to have military hyperdrives, but military style impellers and compensators.

If you assume a route that requires 2 months in hyper the impact of the military hyperdrive dwarfs the other components for long hauls.

If we assume a 4 mton freighter on a 1 month transit (and some rounding off of numbers).
Full civilian
16 hours @ 210 gees = 0.5 c [1]
0.5c in the Delta bands = 1089c
Transit time 1 month (30 days)

Military hyper generator only
16 hours @ 210 gees = 0.5 c
0.5c in the Theta bands = 2500 c
Transit time 13 days (saved 17 days)

Military hyper + rad shielding
24 hours @ 210 gees = 0.6 c
0.6c in the Theta bands = 3000 c
Transit time 11 days (saved 3 extra days less about 8 hours)

Full military
14 hours @ 360 gees = 0.6 c
0.6c in the Theta bands = 3000 c
Transit time 11 days (saved 10 extra hours)

And if the system you're leaving has a hyper wave the acceleration time savings are reduced by about a factor of 10.

Providing freighters military grade acceleration is almost certainly never cost effective[2]. Some fleet train units will accept the costs to provide reasonable tactical mobility - but that's not really an economic decision.

The rad shielding to increase the top speed in hyper from 0.5 to 0.6 c might well be worth it, but the vast majority of the time savings comes solely from the access to higher hyperspace bands.

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[1] Deceleration time need not be considered because in excess of 99% of the ship's velocity will be lost dropping through the hyper bands to n-space.
[2] To be fair, if you have to change hyper bands mid-course , or transit areas subject to rogue waves, you may need to accelerate more than once per journey - that could cause the acceleration period to add to to a bit more of the total. However on any sane route that'll be a small fraction of the total transit time. I also ignore the difference in transit time inside the solar systems; but that adds up to less than time it takes to acceleration to top speed.

Jonathan_S wrote:
16 hours @ 210 gees = 0.5 c [1]

24 hours @ 210 gees = 0.6 c

14 hours @ 360 gees = 0.6 c

Somtaaw wrote:Then there must be some step between conventional civilian, and full blown military performance for the fast freighters mentioned in the Shadows books. Away from my PC atm, so I'll have to hunt down the references, but they were usually mentioned in reference to Montanan beef.

Somtaaw wrote:The perishable/gourmet foodstuffs seemingly have enough of a market investing in freighters with a superior speed, and utilizing the wormhole networks is smart money.