Space fleet

[Alonsua]

After reading a couple of books I designed the largest spaceships, which mission will be to navigate the solar system and the vicinity to mine asteroids.

The New Eden-class carry two-thousand Destiny-class spaceships (SM +6). The Eve class have robotic arms that allows them to hold on to the New Eden-class,

It can be observed that, although the fleet main mission is space mining, it is equipped for multipurpose, like space combat and the colonization of worlds. Destiny-class, Eve-class and New Eden-class spacecraft can penetrate planetary atmospheres.

What do you think of these ships?




Prometheus-class Station
This fully automated mining station, located on Mercury, the closest planet to the Sun, is dedicated to the manufacture of matter/antimatter. Its annual production volume is 15.55 tons and it has a flotilla of self-propelled spaceships to transport the materials to destination.

It has an unstreamlined 3,000,000-ton-0.7-km-long-hull (SM +15).

Front hull
[1] Hardened nanocomposite armor (dDR 300)
[2!-6!] Nanofactory ($15B/hour production capacity)*
[Core] Control room (C12 computer, comm/sensor 15, and 60 control stations)*
Central hull
[1] Hardened nanocomposite armor (dDR 300)
[2!] Secondary battery (10 turrets with 100GJ lasers)*
[3] Fuel Tank (150,000 tons of matter/antimatter)
[4-6] Solar panel array (one power point each)
[Core] Solar panel array (one power point)
Rear hull
[1] Hardened nanocomposite armor (dDR 300)
[2] Hangar bay (100,000 tons)*
[3!] Nanofactory ($3B/hour production capacity)*
[4-6] Solar panel array (one power point each)
*300 workspaces per system

TL 11
Prometheus-class
dST/HP 1000
Hnd/SR -
HT 14
Move -
LWt. 3,000,000
Load 150,000
SM +15
Occ -
dDR 300/300/300
Cost $3,830.8B




New Eden-class
It has a streamlined 3,000,000-ton-1.4-km-long-hull (SM +15). It has a stealth hull and dynamic chameleon surface.
Front hull
[1] Hardened nanocomposite armor (dDR 200)
[2!] Robofac ($300M/hour production capacity)*
[3] Habitat (20,000 bunkrooms)
[4] Habitat (10,000 luxury cabins)*
[5] Open space (10 acres of garden)*
[6] Multipurpose array (comm/sensor 16)*
[Core] Control room (C11 computer, comm/sensor 14, and 60 control stations)*
Central hull
[1] Hardened nanocomposite armor (dDR 200)
[2-3] Hangar bays (100,000 tons each)*
[4] Habitat (600 mixed establishments, 30 major labs, 120 large ops centers, 800-bed hospital sickbay)*
[5] Secondary Battery (10 turrets with 80cm missile launchers)*
[6!] Secondary Battery (10 turrets with 100GJ lasers)*
[Core] Fusion reactor (two Power Points)*
Rear hull
[1] Hardened nanocomposite armor (dDR 200)
[2] External pulsed plasma engine (2G acceleration)*
[3] Fuel tank (150,000 tons of bomb pulse units with 8 mps delta-V)
[4] Antimatter plasma rocket (0.01G acceleration)*
[5] Fuel tank (150,000 tons antimatter-boosted hydrogen with 120 mps delta-V)
[6] Cargo hold (150,000 tons)
*300 workspaces per system

TL 10
New Eden-class
dST/HP 1000
Hnd/SR -3/5
HT 14
Move 0.01G/120 mps or 2G/8 mps
LWt. 3,000,000
Load 350,000
SM +15
Occ 100,000ASV
dDR 200/200/200
Cost $636.47B



Eve-class
It has a streamlined 100,000-ton-400-m-long-hull (SM +12). It is winged, with a stealth hull and dynamic chameleon surface.
Front hull
[1] Hardened nanocomposite armor (dDR 70)
[2!] Mining (500 tons/hour)*
[3!] Chemical refinery (1,500 tons/hour)*
[4] Robot arm (ST 3,000)
[5] Habitat (600 bunkrooms)
[6] Multipurpose array (comm/sensor 13)*
[Core] Control room (C10 computer, comm/sensor 11, and 20 control stations)*
Central hull
[1] Hardened nanocomposite armor (dDR 70)
[2!] Major battery (1 turret with 30GJ laser)*
[3] Medium battery (3 turrets with 56cm missile launchers)*
[4] Medium battery (3 turrents with 28cm guns)*
[5] Hangar bay (3,000 tons)*
[6] Cargo hold (5,000 tons)
[Core] Fusion reactor (two Power Points)*
Rear hull
[1] Hardened nanocomposite armor (dDR 70)
[2] External pulsed plasma engine (2G acceleration)*
[3] Fuel tank (5,000 tons of bomb pulse units with 8 mps delta-V)
[4] Antimatter plasma rocket (0.01G acceleration)*
[5] Fuel tank (5,000 tons antimatter-boosted hydrogen with 120 mps delta-V)
[6] Habitat (35 mixed establishments, 1 major lab, 3 large ops centers, 30-bed hospital sickbay)*
*10 workspaces per system

TL 10
Eve-class
dST/HP 300
Hnd/SR -2/5
HT 13
Move 0.01G/120 mps
LWt. 100,000
Load 8,000
SM +12
Occ 3,000ASV
dDR 70/70/70
Cost $13,367.5M



Destiny-class
It has a streamlined 100-ton-40-m-long-hull (SM +6). It is winged, with a stealth hull and dynamic chameleon surface.
Front hull
[1] Hardened nanocomposite armor (dDR 7)
[2!] Mining (0.5 tons/hour)*
[3!] Chemical refinery (1.5 tons/hour)*
[4!] Robofac ($10K/hour production capacity)
[5] Habitat (1 bunkroom)
[6] Fusion reactor (two Power Points)*
[Core] Control room (C10 computer, comm/sensor 11, and 20 control stations)*
Central hull
[1] Hardened nanocomposite armor (dDR 7)
[2!] Magsail (0.001G acceleration)*
[3] Medium battery (3 turrets with 20cm missile launchers)*
[4] Medium battery (3 turrents with 10cm guns)*
[5-6] Cargo Hold (10 tons)*
[Core] Fusion reactor (two Power Points)*
Rear hull
[1] Hardened nanocomposite armor (dDR 7)
[2] External pulsed plasma engine (2G acceleration)*
[3] Fuel tank (5 tons of bomb pulse units with 8 mps delta-V)
[4] Antimatter plasma rocket (0.01G acceleration)*
[5-6] Fuel tank (10 tons antimatter-boosted hydrogen with 240 mps delta-V)
*0 workspaces per system

TL 10
Eve-class
dST/HP 30
Hnd/SR 0/4
HT 13
Move 0.01G/240 mps or 0.001G/375 mps or 2G/8 mps
LWt. 100
Load 10
SM +6
Occ 4ASV
dDR 7/7/7
Cost $20.65M

[Ulzgoroth]

Not sure what the Eve class is getting out of 41 seconds of chemical rocket thrust. Or streamlining, considering that they don't have enough high-thrust delta-V to climb back out of most atmospheres if ever they dive in.

The New Eden class cannot land or launch Eve-class ships, per the hangar bay door rule on page 43 of Spaceships. If you re-arranged the systems to put all four hangars in the same hull section they could, though.

[Alonsua]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Not sure what the Eve class is getting out of 41 seconds of chemical rocket thrust. Or streamlining, considering that they don't have enough high-thrust delta-V to climb back out of most atmospheres if ever they dive in.

How do I fix it so the Eve-class can climb back out of atmospheres when they dive in? I thought that by activating both propulsion systems at the same time, we could accelerate with one and maintain speed with the other.

I swapped it for an external pulsed plasma engine (2G acceleration) and a fuel tank (5,000 tons of bomb pulse units with 8 mps delta-V). That should work.

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

The New Eden class cannot land or launch Eve-class ships, per the hangar bay door rule on page 43 of Spaceships. If you re-arranged the systems to put all four hangars in the same hull section they could, though.

Rearranging.

[AlexanderHowl]

Well, spaceships can get much larger than SM+15 (in some settings, like W40K, SM+15 would be the smallest FTL capable spacecraft), it is just that Spaceships requires you to extrapolate larger sizes from the given sizes. As for the Eve-class spacecraft, they would annihilate the New Eden with their drives (the space bombs of external pulse are still nuclear bombs and would vaporize anything with 1 km, meaning they cannot be used for docking or undocking). Antimatter-boosted hydrogen is also insanely expensive, $12M per ton, meaning that refueling an Eve would cost over $60 billion, making it uneconomical for mining or combat (especially when TL10 fusion rockets provide an acceptable substitute). Refueling a New Eden would cost $1.8 trillion, meaning that it cost more to refuel both types of ships than to purchase them.

I am also not sure why either spaceship exists. The New Eden cannot do interstellar travel and the Eve is uneconomical. A realistic STL interstellar spacecraft is impossible at TL10 without superscience (it only really becomes possible at TL11), so neither ship would exist since there are more economically viable designs. For example, a lander that used HEDM chemical rockets would be much more economical and much less dangerous to the mother spacecraft.

[Alonsua]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

I am also not sure why either spaceship exists. The New Eden cannot do interstellar travel and the Eve is uneconomical. A realistic STL interstellar spacecraft is impossible at TL10 without superscience (it only really becomes possible at TL11), so neither ship would exist since there are more economically viable designs. For example, a lander that used HEDM chemical rockets would be much more economical and much less dangerous to the mother spacecraft.

Shouldn´t they be able to mine, refine and manufacture antimatter-boosted hydrogen though? The Eve-class specifically uses it so that the fuel tanks can be used for that purpose, filling them for later sale.

In relation to nuclear bombs it is necessary to take into account that they are only used for takeoff, when the spaceships are together that propulsion system is not used for obvious security issues.

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by Alonsua

Shouldn´t they be able to mine, refine and manufacture antimatter-boosted hydrogen though? The Eve-class specifically uses it so that the fuel tanks can be used for that purpose, filling them for later sale.

The cost to refuel an antimatter reactor should put an upper bound on antimatter production per power point (you should not be able to keep a power plant fueled using antimatter produced with power from that power plant), and it looks like it might be decades or centuries to refuel the tanks using the ship's own power output.

[Alonsua]

Originally Posted by RyanW

The cost to refuel an antimatter reactor should put an upper bound on antimatter production per power point (you should not be able to keep a power plant fueled using antimatter produced with power from that power plant), and it looks like it might be decades or centuries to refuel the tanks using the ship's own power output.

Is this written somewhere or do we assume so directly? I have looked at the space stations and I do not see that they have relevant power generators they just have some solar panels and they do not move. Lets look at the CLASS III ORBITAL SPACEPORT (TL8) which has a single power array to power a fabricator or to the SPACE FACTORY (TL9) which has 4 solar panel arrays to power 4 fabricators.

[Humabout]

Alonsua, I feel like your ships suffer a bit of mission creep. It helps tremendously to choose a specific mission when designing any vehicle (Spaceships, GURPS Vehicls 3e, etc.), and consider what it needs to do and in what environment it will operate.

Frex,

Asteriid mining ship:
Operates outside of atmosphere -> no streamlining necessary
Mines Asteroids -> high-efficiency engines to propulsively intercept asteroids, which due to inclunation changes and fast transfers, eats up fuel. Also, more dv puts many more asteroids in reach.
Mines Asteroids -> needs mining equipment and cargo storage suitable to what is mined (might need fuel tanks for volatiles)
Mines Asteroids -> requires extensive autonomous intercept and docking systems because people just arent good enough to deal with the downright wonky gravity fields around asteroids.
Mining Asteroids -> good sensors to locate and identify good places to mine

Note what didnt show up:
Weapons
High-thrust engines
Anything people-related

You can do the same for a fleet carrier:

Operates in Space - as above
Carries smaller craft -> Hangar or docking clamps needed
Detect and analyze asteroids -> good sensors
Decide which asteroids to mine -> might need people
Reach as many asteroids as possible -> high-efficiency engines
Retrieves Mined Resources -> cavernous cargo storage
Mines Asteroids -> not a lot of methane/volatiles in asteroids (small percentage have them; they do exist though) -> Refining fuel onboard is low priority; more profitable to hold more mined materials

You'll find that colonizing ships have somewhat different priorities, and warships are VERY different. Trying to do all three will net you a ship that is inferior in all categories.

That said, if space is dangerous, some defenses are warranted. That or opersting with a warship escort. I could also see mining fleet carriers accompanying a colonization mission to provide raw materials to the new colony.

I also seriously applaud the choice to use a fleet carrier and smaller mining craft. Two weeks ago I attended a paper presentation on this exact concept for a massive sample return mission in our asteroid belt. With current technology, it was estimated that a probe launchable on current platforms could sample 24 asteroids and choose from around 3,000.

[AlexanderHowl]

Antimatter is extremely expensive at TL10 ($2,500 per microgram according to Ultra-Tech), and it needs highly specialized facilities for production. The design of the spacecraft may be sufficient to produce nanograms of antimatter per hour, but it would not be capable of producing the grams of antimatter required per ton of reaction mass (which really should cost $12 billion per metric ton at TL10 because of the price of antimattet). Factories require raw materials, and the antimatter is the raw material for the antimatter-boosted hydrogen.

Even if you had the antimatter, it would take 6,000 hours to refuel the spacecraft (by comparison, a carrier with two fusion rockets and two fuel tanks could use a SM+15 refinery to refuel in 54 hours). It would also cost practically nothing, as the require ice would cost $180 per ton of fuel, so a fusion carrier is a lot more efficient and effective than an antimatter carrier. Anyone who invested in a fusion carrier would run circles around the antimatter carrier and do so at a fraction of the cost.

[Dr. Beckenstein]

The numbers seem okay to me, but why do all this mining ships have stealth hull and dynamic chameleon surface?

And why are they all streamlined?