Insanity: Screening elements in the HV

penny wrote:A thought. Since the equation with compensation is concerned with volume and not weight, there is no reason those containers shouldn't be made of the strongest metal possible. Perhaps made of the same metal as bulkheads. They are moved around by beams and countergrav anyway. So if these containers are locked in place, they should offer some buffering against all but the most catastrophic blasts. That strength of material might also be recoverable.

@tlb. Yeah, I remember textev saying that freighters are configurable too. I just can't see why that would not mean that their “partitions” are movable for certain shape loads. Much like the cargo hold of 18-wheeled transit vehicles and some moving and storage vehicles. And I see no logical reason those reconfigurable partitions shouldn't pull double duty as blast doors.

(1) Background (General) wrote:Then, in 1384 pd, a physicist by the name of Shigematsu Radhakrishnan added another major breakthrough in the form of the inertial compensator. The compensator turned the grav wave (natural or artificial) associated with a vessel into a sort of "inertial sump," dumping the inertial forces of acceleration into the grav wave and thus exempting the vessel's crew from the g forces associated with acceleration. Within the limits of its efficiency, it completely eliminated g force, placing an accelerating vessel in a permanent state of internal zero-gee, but its capacity to damp inertia was directly proportional to the power of the grav wave around it and inversely proportional to both the volume of the field and the mass of the vessel about which it was generated.

Chapter 5 wrote:Honor's cutter drifted through the enormous hatch of HMS Wayfarer's Number One Hold. The small craft was a tiny minnow against the vast, star-speckled maw of cargo doors which could easily have admitted a destroyer, and the hold they served was built to the same gargantuan scale. Work lights created pockets of glaring brilliance where parties of yard dogs labored on the final modifications, but there was no atmosphere to diffuse the light, and most of the stupendous alloy cavern was even blacker than the space beyond the hatch.

tlb wrote:There is some mention of reconfiguring the cargo space of a standard freighter in the books, but it is not clear what is meant by that. I also doubt that it extends to blast doors.

Shadow of Saganami wrote:Like almost any commercial freighter, a Dromedary consisted of a thin skin wrapped around the minimum necessary power plant, life-support, and impeller rooms and as much empty cargo space as possible. In the Dromedaries' case, the designers had placed the essential systems along the spine of the hull to provide the maximum possible unobstructed hold space. The holds themselves were designed to be quickly and easily reconfigured to make the best possible use of the available space, but tucking the power systems and life-support up out of the way provided the optimum degree of flexibility.

Torch of Freedom wrote:It's one of those ideas that sounds really good on paper, but it hasn't worked out that well for the Sillies as a commercial proposition. It's actually less flexible, it turns out, than what you can do reconfiguring a standard cargo hold's interior. But that's not something that's going to be instantly evident looking at it from the outside,
[...]
Based loosely on the Silesian-designed Starhauler "modular" merchant ship, the Masquerade massed a shade over two million tons. The original Starhauler design had featured a downsized standard, configurable internal cargo hull, surrounded by an outer shell of "container" spaces. The idea had been to produce a vessel which could transport individually loaded cargo modules which could be dropped off in transit without taking time for routine offloading procedures. On paper, it had offered many advantages although, in practice, it had proven less successful.

Echoes of Honor wrote:Wayfarer's Number One Hold had been reconfigured solely to carry missile pods. Its size gave her room for literally hundreds of them, and judicious modification to her stern meant she could do something no regular warship could.
[...]
A single one of the new LACs was as heavily armed as a typical raider, and Wayfarer had been reconfigured to carry six of them in each of her modified cargo holds.

"In Fire Forged wrote:Reprisal was a small ship by the standards of most interstellar freight carriers. In fact, she was about the smallest size that was regularly used outside purely local, relatively short-haul traffic. Despite that, Hawkwing looked like a minnow beside her. The destroyer massed less than four percent as much as she did. In fact, Honor’s ship could have been tucked away in one of Reprisal’s cargo holds . . . assuming, of course, that it wasn’t one of the holds which had been reconfigured to carry human freight.

Storm from the Shadows wrote:Their cargo doors were considerably larger than usual, and the cargo holds behind those doors had been configured to provide secure nests for the roughly frigate-sized Ghost-class scout ships they concealed.

Jonathan_S wrote:

tlb wrote:There is some mention of reconfiguring the cargo space of a standard freighter in the books, but it is not clear what is meant by that. I also doubt that it extends to blast doors.

Now that I go and look for the text most of the references are to non-standard things; a non-standard freighter or shipyard modifications.

The one normal ship that talks about it the the Solarian designed Dromedary.

Shadow of Saganami wrote:Like almost any commercial freighter, a Dromedary consisted of a thin skin wrapped around the minimum necessary power plant, life-support, and impeller rooms and as much empty cargo space as possible. In the Dromedaries' case, the designers had placed the essential systems along the spine of the hull to provide the maximum possible unobstructed hold space. The holds themselves were designed to be quickly and easily reconfigured to make the best possible use of the available space, but tucking the power systems and life-support up out of the way provided the optimum degree of flexibility.

Unclear what kind of configuration you'd need if you're primarily hauling standardized cargo contains (and there are various references to those in the books; at least the later ones. The cargo inspection / busting the smuggling scene in OBS does make is sound like that ship's cargo is "break bulk" style, individual pallets sitting under (presumably artificial) gravity on the floor of a pressurized shirt sleeve environment bay with plenty of room to walk around the pallets for inspection... (which hardly seems plausible, as it'd be super low density for cargo storage, even if containerization wasn't the standard)



Otherwise we've got a less than successful Silesian design for a downsized 2 mton freighter that moved (much? all?) the containers external to the hull for (theoretically?) faster access to them.

Torch of Freedom wrote:It's one of those ideas that sounds really good on paper, but it hasn't worked out that well for the Sillies as a commercial proposition. It's actually less flexible, it turns out, than what you can do reconfiguring a standard cargo hold's interior. But that's not something that's going to be instantly evident looking at it from the outside,
[...]
Based loosely on the Silesian-designed Starhauler "modular" merchant ship, the Masquerade massed a shade over two million tons. The original Starhauler design had featured a downsized standard, configurable internal cargo hull, surrounded by an outer shell of "container" spaces. The idea had been to produce a vessel which could transport individually loaded cargo modules which could be dropped off in transit without taking time for routine offloading procedures. On paper, it had offered many advantages although, in practice, it had proven less successful.

And the yard modifications; which don't seem to be the same thing -- after all any ship internal space is configurable if you're willing to spend enough time and money in a yard


The one's to Honor's armed merchant cruisers

Echoes of Honor wrote:Wayfarer's Number One Hold had been reconfigured solely to carry missile pods. Its size gave her room for literally hundreds of them, and judicious modification to her stern meant she could do something no regular warship could.
[...]
A single one of the new LACs was as heavily armed as a typical raider, and Wayfarer had been reconfigured to carry six of them in each of her modified cargo holds.

And Ballroom's ship Reprisal, a captured Manpower slaver

"In Fire Forged wrote:Reprisal was a small ship by the standards of most interstellar freight carriers. In fact, she was about the smallest size that was regularly used outside purely local, relatively short-haul traffic. Despite that, Hawkwing looked like a minnow beside her. The destroyer massed less than four percent as much as she did. In fact, Honor’s ship could have been tucked away in one of Reprisal’s cargo holds . . . assuming, of course, that it wasn’t one of the holds which had been reconfigured to carry human freight.

The MAlign's Ghost-deploying ships

Storm from the Shadows wrote:Their cargo doors were considerably larger than usual, and the cargo holds behind those doors had been configured to provide secure nests for the roughly frigate-sized Ghost-class scout ships they concealed.

Unclear what kind of configuration you'd need if you're primarily hauling standardized cargo contains (and there are various references to those in the books; at least the later ones.

penny wrote:
Think trains and their cars. Some materials cannot come into contact with others. So, some materials have to be carried on trains that have a certain length so that these materials can be separated by a safe distance. Or small accidents can become huge.

You wouldn't want a relatively harmless hit on a freighter to become a big deal because certain materials mixed.

The freighter that survived the attack but succumbed to the chemistry.

I believe they call that "Out of the frying pan and into the fire."

Jonathan_S wrote:

penny wrote:
Think trains and their cars. Some materials cannot come into contact with others. So, some materials have to be carried on trains that have a certain length so that these materials can be separated by a safe distance. Or small accidents can become huge.

You wouldn't want a relatively harmless hit on a freighter to become a big deal because certain materials mixed.

The freighter that survived the attack but succumbed to the chemistry.

I believe they call that "Out of the frying pan and into the fire."

Though you don't normally reconfigure a given train car for a given cargo type, you'd instead reconfgure the train with the types of cars needed to handle what was being shipped today (reefer car, tank car, vehicle transporter, intermodal container car, etc. etc.) -- and in some cases I think there are rules against mixing certain types of cars or materials within the same train.

Ships, at least today, also tend to be a case of pick the ship type based on what you want to transport; rather than reconfiguring cargo holds to go from containers to bulk material to liquids to gases.

You need to ship petrolium, you contract a tanker; natural gas an LNG carrier, iron ore a oreboat, etc.


I guess we haven't seen enough commercial shipping in the Honorverse to know whether they usually go for specialized freighters for different good type or go for specialized containers within a standard freighter (or a mix of both depending on volume being shipped)
We do know of a few specialized commercial ships like passenger liners or repair ships; and there are a very scattered few mentions of military and civilian tankers (in context seeming to carry gases or possibly liquified gasses; in one case from a gas giant's cloud scoop platform to a processing center, and in a couple others fuel [presumably hydrogen] for the fleet]
And at least fleet trains include medical / hospital ships; but probably aren't non-governmental versions of those.

Theemile wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Though you don't normally reconfigure a given train car for a given cargo type, you'd instead reconfgure the train with the types of cars needed to handle what was being shipped today (reefer car, tank car, vehicle transporter, intermodal container car, etc. etc.) -- and in some cases I think there are rules against mixing certain types of cars or materials within the same train.

Ships, at least today, also tend to be a case of pick the ship type based on what you want to transport; rather than reconfiguring cargo holds to go from containers to bulk material to liquids to gases.

You need to ship petrolium, you contract a tanker; natural gas an LNG carrier, iron ore a oreboat, etc.


I guess we haven't seen enough commercial shipping in the Honorverse to know whether they usually go for specialized freighters for different good type or go for specialized containers within a standard freighter (or a mix of both depending on volume being shipped)
We do know of a few specialized commercial ships like passenger liners or repair ships; and there are a very scattered few mentions of military and civilian tankers (in context seeming to carry gases or possibly liquified gasses; in one case from a gas giant's cloud scoop platform to a processing center, and in a couple others fuel [presumably hydrogen] for the fleet]
And at least fleet trains include medical / hospital ships; but probably aren't non-governmental versions of those.

Liquid carriers - They are called Colliers (Like the old coal carriers for navies in the last 1800s early 1900s). Bachfitch's ships were formerly Andi Colliers. They carry Hydrogen fuel for the fleets.

In the real world, as the US Navy switched to oil pre-WWI, and their Colliers were swapped for purpose built Tankers. The last US Navy Colliers were used to ship strategic bulk goods in WWI as the merchant marine was winnowed by sub warfare. The Cyclops was such a ship and was lost in the Bermuda triangle with a shipment of Potash IIRC. It's sister, the Jupiter, was converted to the USS Langley and became the US's first experimental carrier.

We've seen bulk cargo being shipped, but you would want any ore or grain in sealed containers of some kind - Even iron dust is combustible in standard oxygen , and no/low grav situations (like in cargo transfer) can be dangerous.

When we were seeing palletized cargo in OBS, we may have been inside a shirt sleeve cargo container, looking at individual breakbulk items in the container, or a special small goods hold.

Some items are probably too large to ship via container. We've seen Corvettes and LACs shipped via freighter; in addition to modular Forts and LAC bases, SITS discusses modular space stations, and collapsable mobile dry docks are seen at the Volsung base in "A Call Vengence". Oversized cargo is a thriving business in the Honorverse.

Two bills addressing hazardous-material rail movements reintroduced in House

By Trains Staff | February 6, 2025


https://www.trains.com/trn/news-reviews ... -in-house/

Deluzio (D-Pa.), U.S. Rep Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and 14 other Democratic cosponsors are supporters of the Decreasing Emergency Railroad Accident Instances Locally, or DERAIL, Act. It would define high-hazard trains to include a train with one or more loaded tank cars carrying a Class 3 flammable liquid such as gasoline or ethanol, or one with one or more cars of a Class 2 flammable gas, such as compressed hydrogen, ethylene, or butylene.


It would also require a railroad to report, within 24 hours, any derailment involving a train “carrying material toxic by inhalation” to the National Response Center, as well as state and local officials. Full text of the bill is available here.


Said Deluzio in a press release, “The DERAIL Act that I’m re-introducing with Rep. Khanna today is an important step to finally strengthen our rail regulations and improve rail safety in Western Pennsylvania, East Palestine, and across the country.” Khanna said the bill “will expand our safety regulations and help prevent future tragedies. Leaders from all parties must speak out loudly for better safety regulations.”


A version of the bill introduced in February 2023 died in committee.


Deluzio and U.S. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) are sponsors of the Assistance for Local Heroes During Train Crises Act, which would create a new Hazardous Train Event Emergency Reimbursement Fund. It would require railroads and shippers to contribute no less than $10 million annually to the fund through fees determined by the Secretary of Transportation. Emergency response entities would receive reimbursements of not less than $250,000 and up to $3 million following response to a hazardous-materials rail emergency to replace equipment, cover overtime pay, or address other expenses from such an emergency. The full text of the bill is available here.


“It is time to make the railroads pay for the messes they cause in our communities,” Deluzio said in a press release. “… This bill will help communities across the country better prepare for future derailments with improved information-sharing and will cover the cost of damaged equipment, overtime pay, and more—all paid for by the companies that ship and carry these materials.” Fitzgerald said the bill will “ensure real accountability and give first responders the support they deserve. When crisis strikes, first responders step up—we must do the same for them.”
The earlier version of the bill, introduced in April 2023, failed to advance beyond the House Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines, and Hazardous Materials.

penny wrote:Rereading Storm from the Shadows. One of my favorites.

Anyway, I proposed a CM warship laden mostly with CMs and control links. I couldn't sell any of you any of that stock. But I'm more convinced of it now that I'm rereading SftS.

Moriarty is a system of platforms that was deployed throughout Solon on its first use. It consists of a main platform about the size of a heavy cruiser receiving information from many other platforms deployed through the system. It provides ~ 25,000 control links, give or take a link. But that system was pre-placed. Making it useless in enemy territory.

A CM warship would always be there with the fleet. Something the size of an SD should be able to supply much more than the capacity to control 25,000 control links. And an SDCM(P) could be stuffed to the gills with CMs, making it an inter-system platform giving much more tactical depth.

penny wrote:Rereading Storm from the Shadows. One of my favorites.

Anyway, I proposed a CM warship laden mostly with CMs and control links. I couldn't sell any of you any of that stock. But I'm more convinced of it now that I'm rereading SftS.

Moriarty is a system of platforms that was deployed throughout Solon on its first use. It consists of a main platform about the size of a heavy cruiser receiving information from many other platforms deployed through the system. It provides ~ 25,000 control links, give or take a link. But that system was pre-placed. Making it useless in enemy territory.

A CM warship would always be there with the fleet. Something the size of an SD should be able to supply much more than the capacity to control 25,000 control links. And an SDCM(P) could be stuffed to the gills with CMs, making it an inter-system platform giving much more tactical depth.

The above summary raises some reasonable questions/speculations, but overall, it's a no-go. First, there's no need in the Honorverse for an Aegis-analogue. When the United States Navy deployed Aegis, it did so by creating specialized units designed to carry the necessary sensors and computer systems to make the entire system work. In effect, they created something analogous to the command datalink ships in Starfire. But the Honorverse doesn't face the same constraints. Essentially, any ships are capable of performing -- and routinely do form -- complex data linkages which weave entire squadrons and task forces, even fleets, into precisely coordinated, multi-platform [tactical] units. There are, of course, limitations. You're talking about exchanging a tremendous amount of information, and communications light-speed lags can also impose serious constraints. That's why it's not uncommon for a particular ship to be assigned particular responsibility within the datanet. The ships so assigned are managing specific functions, specific zones for missile defense, etc. Now, there are some significant differences. Aegis was designed to coordinate the defensive umbrella of an entire task group -- effectively, controlling any missile in the "basket" of the task force's engagement envelope. In the Honorverse, ships do not normally swap off control of their missiles in the sense that one ship "takes over" the control links on a missile or missiles fired by another ship. Instead, in the Honorverse, the coordinating ship assigned responsibility for, say, the outer counter-missile zone, handles targeting priorities, assigns a given target to a given ship, and then monitors the overall situation and performance of the missile defense. Recent innovations in Manticoran point defense have changed this somewhat, however. Current RMN warships are being built with additional control links. Those links are capable of assuming control of counter-missiles "handed over" to them by other ships, which permits a ship which is better placed to see the incoming attack missiles to actually engage them with other ships' counter-missiles. There are still limitations on how effective this is, because of the traditional problems of wedge interference and "gunsmoke," but it is a step towards evolving a more effective counter missile capability in the face of pod- sized salvos. It is, however, unlikely in the extreme that the Manticorans will ever build a dedicated anti-missile ship. There's no need to do so, given the capability already built into their existing vessels and the fact that they have deliberately spread the capability over all of the Navy's hulls. In practice, they have sought the survivability of their anti-missile capability by dispersing it, instead of concentrating it, and nothing in the current technology pipeline is likely to change that. They will undoubtedly continue to look for even more effective ways to integrate cooperation and shared capability, but this is an approach they are extremely unlikely to undertake. In reference to the last point raised in your summary of this thread, yes, the construction of specialized ships most definitely would divert construction capability from wallers, which is one of the reasons it's not going to happen.