visualizing a Light Cruiser in the Real World

I know this is like comparing apples to oranges, but I'm going on a cruise this month and it hit me, Starships in the Honorverse are HUGE!!!! The biggest Cruise ship at this time is RC Allure/Oasis
at 360 meters in length and 225,300 tons. the Avalon Class Light Cruisers comes in at 461 meters in length and 146,750 tons . from that point the ship sizes get bigger and bigger reading the books, you get caught up in the wonderful story, but seeing one of the largest cruise ships on this planet being a bit larger that a frigate,....just WOW

http://www.cruisemapper.com/images/scol ... arison.jpg

Interesting topic. I was on a Mediterranean cruise about four years ago, and our cruise ship shared a dock in Marsailles with a US supercarrier, side by side separated by about 50 metres of concrete. Both nominally about 110,000 tons, and about the same length, but the cruise ship was much bigger overall being made of ticky tacky.

When talking about spaceship sizes, this poster is a good reference.

There is a download-button on the top-right for a full size version. You can find the Honorverse-ships mid-right border.

dlewis0160 wrote:The biggest Cruise ship at this time is RC Allure/Oasis
at 360 meters in length and 225,300 tons. the Avalon Class Light Cruisers comes in at 461 meters in length and 146,750 tons.

Very quick-and-dirty mockup using the image you linked, assuming that the cruise ship in that image is the 360m length one you mentioned:

https://i.imgur.com/PHCPNQN.jpg

Amusingly enough, the Avalon line drawing I borrowed from the wikia site happened to already be almost exactly the right scale to within a half-dozen pixels, so I didn't even need to resize it (assuming I did my math right). And yeah, honorverse ships are BIG.

Awhile back, for another thread I was trying to come up with a way to visualize what one SD would look like to another ship in formation (minus the wedge.) I finally came up with an analogy everyone on earth can relate to, but it was too late for the conversation – so I never posted it.

Starting with the assumption that each SD in Formation was 5000 KM from each other, and each SD is 1 KM in length (they are actually ~1.25km, but that won’t really matter, as you will see).

We’ve all looked in the sky and saw a passing jet airplane leaving a contrail. On a clear day, with good eyes, you can actually see the plane itself. That plane is flying ~30,000 feet in the air. Imagine, Me (6 foot, 3inches) standing on the plane, walking to the bathroom. If you could actually see me from the ground, this is roughly what an SD would look like from the closest ship in formation (30,000 feet/6 feet) = (5000 KM/1 KM).

Now imagine I’m carrying an IPad pro – it’s screen is about a foot across. Try to imagine seeing that IPad in my hand on the airplane at 30,000 ft from your front yard. This is roughly what the hammerhead of an SD would look like end on , from the ship in front of it or behind it.

So it is virtually impossible to see any ship details of another ship in formation. At best it would be a glimmer of light.

Theemile wrote:Awhile back, for another thread I was trying to come up with a way to visualize what one SD would look like to another ship in formation (minus the wedge.) I finally came up with an analogy everyone on earth can relate to, but it was too late for the conversation – so I never posted it.

Starting with the assumption that each SD in Formation was 5000 KM from each other, and each SD is 1 KM in length (they are actually ~1.25km, but that won’t really matter, as you will see).

We’ve all looked in the sky and saw a passing jet airplane leaving a contrail. On a clear day, with good eyes, you can actually see the plane itself. That plane is flying ~30,000 feet in the air. Imagine, Me (6 foot, 3inches) standing on the plane, walking to the bathroom. If you could actually see me from the ground, this is roughly what an SD would look like from the closest ship in formation (30,000 feet/6 feet) = (5000 KM/1 KM).

Now imagine I’m carrying an IPad pro – it’s screen is about a foot across. Try to imagine seeing that IPad in my hand on the airplane at 30,000 ft from your front yard. This is roughly what the hammerhead of an SD would look like end on , from the ship in front of it or behind it.

So it is virtually impossible to see any ship details of another ship in formation. At best it would be a glimmer of light.

One quibble. At least in a wall of battle formation wouldn't the separations be more like 1000 km, or even less? An SD's wedge is only about 300 km across, IIRC, but then you need some separation to avoid wedge interaction. Closest possible approach might be more like 450 km, and then add some safety margin to that. But we know the RMN drilled on very tight formations so that when the entire wall rolled behind their wedges it was very hard for missiles to thread the gaps between them - most would just impact on the ship's imposed wedges.

Still, their size is tiny relative to the distance.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Theemile wrote:Awhile back, for another thread I was trying to come up with a way to visualize what one SD would look like to another ship in formation (minus the wedge.) I finally came up with an analogy everyone on earth can relate to, but it was too late for the conversation – so I never posted it.

Starting with the assumption that each SD in Formation was 5000 KM from each other, and each SD is 1 KM in length (they are actually ~1.25km, but that won’t really matter, as you will see).

We’ve all looked in the sky and saw a passing jet airplane leaving a contrail. On a clear day, with good eyes, you can actually see the plane itself. That plane is flying ~30,000 feet in the air. Imagine, Me (6 foot, 3inches) standing on the plane, walking to the bathroom. If you could actually see me from the ground, this is roughly what an SD would look like from the closest ship in formation (30,000 feet/6 feet) = (5000 KM/1 KM).

Now imagine I’m carrying an IPad pro – it’s screen is about a foot across. Try to imagine seeing that IPad in my hand on the airplane at 30,000 ft from your front yard. This is roughly what the hammerhead of an SD would look like end on , from the ship in front of it or behind it.

So it is virtually impossible to see any ship details of another ship in formation. At best it would be a glimmer of light.

One quibble. At least in a wall of battle formation wouldn't the separations be more like 1000 km, or even less? An SD's wedge is only about 300 km across, IIRC, but then you need some separation to avoid wedge interaction. Closest possible approach might be more like 450 km, and then add some safety margin to that. But we know the RMN drilled on very tight formations so that when the entire wall rolled behind their wedges it was very hard for missiles to thread the gaps between them - most would just impact on the ship's imposed wedges.

Still, their size is tiny relative to the distance.

Good battle formations are probably tighter, but I thought parking orbits were no closer than 1000Km from each other. Anybody have any text-ev of anything else?