SLN Reserve

Jonathan_S wrote:

Bill Woods wrote:I have to go with the unreliable narrator hypothesis. Otherwise.... If a ship is moving at 0.6c (relative to something) and fires a Mk23, how fast will the missile be going at the end of its powered flight? And if its target is approaching at 0.6c, how fast will the missile be going relative to that?

(If only Weber had thought to ask you or me to preview his books, and check the numbers.)

Haha - crunching the numbers is easy compared to writing the stories.

Mostly he's helped by the fact that his hyper limits are so small that ship combat rarely involves significant fractions of c - so he can add, or remove, some range due to relative ship velocities without having to worry overmuch about accidental bumping into the speed of light

Right -- the difference between Newton and Einstein didn't come up before the multidrive missile, bar some character musing that time spent in space meant s/he was really a few days shy of a birthday, despite what the calendar said.

Though I'm still waiting to see what he says about the top speed of the 4-drive system defense MDMs. If you apply Newtonian accelerations to those you end up with a terminal velocity, from rest, in excess of c. (540 seconds at 46,000 gees + 90 seconds at 130,000 gees = 1.194c Oops). My bet is that he'll declare missiles have a top speed, no mater what, of 0.99c.

Or just cancel them? With relativistic acceleration, I was surprised at how little benefit a fourth stage adds. E.g.:

Shooting at a target 30 e9m away,
the 2DM (46kgee) takes 6.3 min,
the 3DM (96kgee) takes 5.4 min (ballistic: 2.2 min),
the 4DM (96kgee) takes 4.6 min (ballistic: 0.2 min).

Shooting at a target 70 e9m away,
the 2DM (46kgee) takes 14.7 min (ballistic: 8.4 min),
the 3DM (46kgee) takes 10.1 min (ballistic: 0.1 min),
the 4DM (96kgee) takes 8.9 min (ballistic: 4.5 min).

Shooting at a target 150 e9m away,
the 2DM (46kgee) takes 31.6 min (ballistic: 25.3 min),
the 3DM (46kgee) takes 19.1 min (ballistic: 9.1 min),
the 4DM (46kgee) takes 16.2 min (ballistic: 1.7 min).

Still given the choice between perfect relativistic math and a gripping yarn... I'm quite happy with the books as they are.

Definitely.

kzt wrote:They don't have to pay a premium, the fact that you get at least twice as many deliveries is where you make your money. The construction loan amortization is where the big costs are. You have a multi billion credit ship that you have to make payments on every month. And they are not small payments. Crew cost is a minor sum compared.

For example, a 3 billion ship on a 50 year 7% note means you have an 18 million per month payment before operating expenses. So your crew cost change from 60 crew to 90 crew goes from 500K to 750K month if you are paying them all 100K/year. If you can get twice as many runs I suspect it will work out.

But you wont get twice as many runs.
And you don´t count extra construction cost, nonpersonnel maintenance cost(including needing to use more of the ship for spare parts) or that those parts are produced by a tiny fraction of places(and the military has first pick there, obviously) compared to common stuff.

You´re also probably going to have to pay the crew more as they will need to have a higher average level of training and knowledge while serving on a ship that is slightly less safe(it´s a tiny bit less yes, but the difference still exists even if its mostly theoretical).
Oh, and expect to need to double the crew rather than +50%. Removing a lot more space for cargo. And that´s after you remove cargospace to squeeze in the better tech.

Tenshinai wrote:Oh, and expect to need to double the crew rather than +50%. Removing a lot more space for cargo. And that´s after you remove cargospace to squeeze in the better tech.

There is 32,000,000 cubic meters of space in a typical large freighter. Exactly how large do you think crew quarters are?

For example, a luxury 3 bedroom penthouse in London is 218 square meters. So assuming you use 3 meter deck-deck this is 654 cubic meters. So I could only fit 49,000 of these into a typical freighter.

And I suspect the typical crew member gets 50 square meters or less, so 150 cubic meters per. I can fit 210,000 of those in a typical freighter.

So I don't think that adding 20 or 100 crew will really impact my cargo capacity.

kzt wrote:There is 32,000,000 cubic meters of space in a typical large freighter. Exactly how large do you think crew quarters are?

For example, a luxury 3 bedroom penthouse in London is 218 square meters. So assuming you use 3 meter deck-deck this is 654 cubic meters. So I could only fit 49,000 of these into a typical freighter.

And I suspect the typical crew member gets 50 square meters or less, so 150 cubic meters per. I can fit 210,000 of those in a typical freighter.

So I don't think that adding 20 or 100 crew will really impact my cargo capacity.

I suspect you are a little low in the cubage needed per crewmember. While the three meters you used is probably enough for the HVAC ducting and the plumbing. The environmental plant is likely a significant fraction of the space reserved for crew. Also I would expect that civilian spacers expect and receive better accommodations than enlisted military. Crew accommodations would include common areas like Galley, gym, library, etc. and as the crew size gets larger these need to be larger.

Castenea wrote:I suspect you are a little low in the cubage needed per crewmember. While the three meters you used is probably enough for the HVAC ducting and the plumbing. The environmental plant is likely a significant fraction of the space reserved for crew. Also I would expect that civilian spacers expect and receive better accommodations than enlisted military. Crew accommodations would include common areas like Galley, gym, library, etc. and as the crew size gets larger these need to be larger.

If you think that typically honerverse military crewmen get 150 cubic meters per person for their cabin I would like to see your source.

They get maybe 3 cubic meters per the books I've read. 50 square meters is 450 square foot studio apartment, not one bunk in a rack of three.

How much is the average daily up keep cost of a running cargo ship?

What are the differences in costs between long routes and short routes?

What about the differences in cost between a direct route vs one that a ship makes multiple stops to pick up and drop off cargo?

How much can they charge for shipping to meet daily costs, have a decent level of profit, and still be competitive with the various levels of shipping needed?

Is there enough cargo on a route to make it worth being able to make twice as many deliveries/pickups with a faster ship?

Would it be more cost effective to simply have more standard ships available to assign to routes as needed?

pnakasone wrote:How much is the average daily up keep cost of a running cargo ship?

What are the differences in costs between long routes and short routes?

What about the differences in cost between a direct route vs one that a ship makes multiple stops to pick up and drop off cargo?

How much can they charge for shipping to meet daily costs, have a decent level of profit, and still be competitive with the various levels of shipping needed?

Is there enough cargo on a route to make it worth being able to make twice as many deliveries/pickups with a faster ship?

Would it be more cost effective to simply have more standard ships available to assign to routes as needed?

At this particular point in time, there is a drastic shortage of shipping, travel times for what is left have increased by very sizable amounts (often well over 100%), and hence a huge amount of cargo that once was routinely shipped is not getting shipped.

So absolute cost effectiveness isn't needed. In particular, one of the basic assumption is that each core world is building merchants to support their needs. Ships, while not cheap, are cheap compared to massive economic dislocation.

In the Honorverse you can blow up the entire industrial infrastructure of world, ban trade of all types with 95% of the wealthy worlds and ban 90% traffic from your incredibly profitable junction and not have any significant economic effects that anyone notices, so maybe my assumptions are not valid.

Did you means 'a 3-metre cube'? I don't see how anyone could fit into 3 cubic metres unless it's only the space for a bunk in a rack, without even room for small personal gear.

Cheers, John

kzt wrote:

Castenea wrote:I suspect you are a little low in the cubage needed per crewmember. While the three meters you used is probably enough for the HVAC ducting and the plumbing. The environmental plant is likely a significant fraction of the space reserved for crew. Also I would expect that civilian spacers expect and receive better accommodations than enlisted military. Crew accommodations would include common areas like Galley, gym, library, etc. and as the crew size gets larger these need to be larger.

If you think that typically honerverse military crewmen get 150 cubic meters per person for their cabin I would like to see your source.

They get maybe 3 cubic meters per the books I've read. 50 square meters is 450 square foot studio apartment, not one bunk in a rack of three.

Theemile wrote:We also know that most of the mothballed ships are at least months away from being usable, with the majority being much more than that (1 year +). Just loading provisions on an RMN ship requires weeks or months, and I doubt that the SLN is as proficient as the RMN or that there are sufficient modern ready provisions available for more than a few % of the fleet at any location.

Vince wrote:Referring to the text I bolded above: Do you have any text evidence of any instances where RMN ships took weeks or months to load provisions? I can't remember any.

The only textev I have come across is from SoS and it seems to confirm that loading is not very long, after all Hexapuma was a new build so wouldn't have had any prior supplies on board. But then again the reference was only for spare parts, not everything that would be required to prepare a ship for departure.

Shadow of Saganami Chapter 4 wrote:"No, Sir," FitzGerald replied. "I pointed out that whatever the exact numbers of spares we might have on board, all of our materials requests had been properly submitted and approved. I informed him that if he wishes to submit the required paperwork to have our original requests disallowed, all of our onboard spares off-loaded, new requests drawn up, considered, and approved, and the new spares loaded, that's certainly his privilege. I also pointed out that I estimated it would take him a minimum of three weeks, and that we're under orders to depart Hephaestus in less than two"

George J. Smith wrote:

Theemile wrote:We also know that most of the mothballed ships are at least months away from being usable, with the majority being much more than that (1 year +). Just loading provisions on an RMN ship requires weeks or months, and I doubt that the SLN is as proficient as the RMN or that there are sufficient modern ready provisions available for more than a few % of the fleet at any location.

Vince wrote:Referring to the text I bolded above: Do you have any text evidence of any instances where RMN ships took weeks or months to load provisions? I can't remember any.

The only textev I have come across is from SoS and it seems to confirm that loading is not very long, after all Hexapuma was a new build so wouldn't have had any prior supplies on board. But then again the reference was only for spare parts, not everything that would be required to prepare a ship for departure.

Shadow of Saganami Chapter 4 wrote:"No, Sir," FitzGerald replied. "I pointed out that whatever the exact numbers of spares we might have on board, all of our materials requests had been properly submitted and approved. I informed him that if he wishes to submit the required paperwork to have our original requests disallowed, all of our onboard spares off-loaded, new requests drawn up, considered, and approved, and the new spares loaded, that's certainly his privilege. I also pointed out that I estimated it would take him a minimum of three weeks, and that we're under orders to depart Hephaestus in less than two"

I suspect FitzGerald was exaggerating a little, note that time includes both offloading the currently loaded spares and reloading, thus loading the spares would take about 10 days. Where is the bottleneck that slows this down personnel, lock/passage capacity, or equipment for moving the spares? Personnel and equipment are easiest to remedy, but can affect getting other ships ready.

I believe that while ships can be reprovisioned much quicker, many take over a month in large part so that the crew can be rotated through shore leave. The main exception I can think of outside of a shooting war were submarines where they were reprovisioned in a week or less, and then manned by the alternate crew.