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Originally Posted by Varyon
As I said, I don't have my books with me, but I seem to recall the SM table giving an approximate length for each SM, even though mass was the emphasis. Failing that, SS does use SM for purposes of targeting, so determining volume based on that should work.
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Those figures can vary
hugely. Spaceships gives rough estimates for length, but they're not meant to be taken literally.
Quote:
Not that using density wouldn't work, of course, but I'm somewhat-unconvinced that we can decide on a semi-accurate density very easily. With what I'm proposing, an SM+8 unstreamlined vessel (30x20x20 yards) has a volume of around 12000 yd^3, while a streamlined one (30x15x15 yards) has a volume of around 6750 yd^3. This is going to make things a good deal more cramped on the SL vessel (assuming we have systems each take an ~equal chunk of space), which is as it should be (although these numbers may have a bit too much of a difference).
An SM+8 sphere would have a volume of around 33000 yd^3, making it the roomiest option thus far.
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By RAW, a streamlined vessel of the same SM has about double the length of a non-streamlined vessel. That won't make it more cramped;) (it should also have the same volume as a non-streamlined vessel; no idea why it would have less, as the density of the ship shouldn't change just because it's streamlined)
I'm not sure why you're unconvinced about being able to get a semi-accurate density. It's not exactly all that difficult; we should be able to at least assume that the ship will at
most be as dense as water (most likely less so); this is because ships are likely to be roughly as dense as sea ships, which have to be less dense than water in order to float.
Even if we assume a density equal to water, we get a mass-volume multiplier of 32, yielding 32 cubic feet per ton. Thus, an SM+8 ship should have a volume of 32,000 cubic yards or higher.