Oh, what the heck . . .

PeterZ wrote:That suggests to me Grayson, the SEM, Beowulfian and Havenite ship yards will be busy for decades to come upgrading their own ships while selling their cast offs to their Verge customers.

That's the driver for the next story arc; the growing wealth of the Verge worlds and the stagnation of the Core and Shell worlds. Yes, the MAlign will try to sell their Ubermensch BS, but they need to wrap it up in a package of discontent or their BS won't get bought by anyone.

kzt wrote:I just saw a presentation on YouTube by the guy who was the PM for what became the Ford carrier. He mentioned that the Enterprise had 180 watchstanders and something like over 4000 steam valves, the Nimitz had maybe half those and the Ford had 25 watchstanders and 400 some valves.

Jonathan_S wrote:Which is one reason the Ford switched to electromagnetic catapults (from steam powered ones in the other supercarriers). Though they've been having some teething troubles with them.

Having to run steam distribution trunks all the way from the reactors' secondary coolant loops all the way to to the flight deck midships and forward was a lot of moderately high pressure steam piping, with flanges to check, valves to monitor, insulation to maintain, etc.

Then there were other auxiliary machinery that was steam powered in the previous carriers that also converted to electrically powered in the Fords (because electrical distribution is lower maintenance than steam - and they made a design focus to minimize steam distribution as much as practical in the Ford).

kzt wrote:

PeterZ wrote:That suggests to me Grayson, the SEM, Beowulfian and Havenite ship yards will be busy for decades to come upgrading their own ships while selling their cast offs to their Verge customers.

That's the driver for the next story arc; the growing wealth of the Verge worlds and the stagnation of the Core and Shell worlds. Yes, the MAlign will try to sell their Ubermensch BS, but they need to wrap it up in a package of discontent or their BS won't get bought by anyone.

It's at most a 10 year advantage. At most. Are you going to buy military equipment from someone >500 light years away, or someone less than 100 light years away? Which is more likely to be able to provide spares and training?

kzt wrote:I just saw a presentation on YouTube by the guy who was the PM for what became the Ford carrier. He mentioned that the Enterprise had 180 watchstanders and something like over 4000 steam valves, the Nimitz had maybe half those and the Ford had 25 watchstanders and 400 some valves.

PeterZ wrote:

kzt wrote:quote="PeterZ"
That suggests to me Grayson, the SEM, Beowulfian and Havenite ship yards will be busy for decades to come upgrading their own ships while selling their cast offs to their Verge customers.

That's the driver for the next story arc; the growing wealth of the Verge worlds and the stagnation of the Core and Shell worlds. Yes, the MAlign will try to sell their Ubermensch BS, but they need to wrap it up in a package of discontent or their BS won't get bought by anyone.

It's at most a 10 year advantage. At most. Are you going to buy military equipment from someone >500 light years away, or someone less than 100 light years away? Which is more likely to be able to provide spares and training?/quote

Depends on getting the biggest bang for the buck. I can see Talbot firms getting licenses for supporting older RMN ships and systems. Bolthole is 70 LY travel time and two jumps from Talbot. Grayson is about the distance but only 1 jump away. Beowulf is 2 jumps away from Talbot and about 60 LY and 1 jump to Mesa. Maya is close to Erewhon and they have that older tech already. Getting support for that tech from Erewhon wouldn't be hard. Those WH termini give access to about 70%-80% of the Verge.

That suggests the SEM can provide support for those legacy systems pretty easily. Having the TQ produce legacy missile systems to support those ships sold to Verge nations is a good way to bootstrap the Quadrant. One suspects Dresden would jump at the chance to produce munitions and Rembrandt would jump at the chance to produce parts for the ships. Eventually each Verge nation would produce parts under license, but until then the Quadrant would have very attractive export products.

Fox2! wrote:

kzt wrote:I just saw a presentation on YouTube by the guy who was the PM for what became the Ford carrier. He mentioned that the Enterprise had 180 watchstanders and something like over 4000 steam valves, the Nimitz had maybe half those and the Ford had 25 watchstanders and 400 some valves.

Don't forget that all they did was replace the steam generators from a Forrestal on a one for one basis on Enterprise, oil for neutrons. There are going to be a lot of valves for watchstanders to watch.