05-25-2008, 10:57 PM | #1 |
Join Date: May 2005
Location: Oz
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[Spaceships] TL10^ exploration frigate
Necho-class exploration frigate (TL10^ superscience)
This is an interstellar naval vessel designed to carry a small multidisciplinary team of planetologists and social scientists on 'first contact' missions with non-starfaring cultures and exploring previously-unsurveyed habitable worlds. It is lightly armed and armoured, mostly for self-defence, but its tech edge might make it suitable for a little light gunboat diplomacy. The Necho class frigate is built in a 3,000-ton unstreamlined hull 70 yards 'high' and 46 yards in diameter. Artifical gravity was not available to the designers, and the habitats were clustered in the core for safety, so that spin gravity was not practical. When not under acceleration, the ships are intended to be occupied in free fall. So that it remains habitable while under acceleration, this vessel is laid out as a 'tail-lander', with decks perpendicular to the acceleration axis and the drives in the 'basement', pointing down. Necho-class frigates have a limited-superscience antimatter plasma torch drive giving 1 gee of acceleration, and allowing 3 gee of 'emergency thrust' when antimatter-boosted water from a special tank is used as propellant. They are capable of landing on and takeoff from any habitable planet under emergency thrust, but are not intended to do so because their drive exhaust would be immensely destructive. They therefore carry two ram-rocket-powered orbital shuttles for landing and recovering explorers with their gear. Interstellar performance is modest: Necho and her sister-ships were intended to proceed on their exploration circuits by a series of short hops from star to star. Forward hull [1] Hardened nanocomposite armour, $30M, Midships hull [1] Hardened nanocomposite armour, $30M, Aft hull [core] Control room (Complexity 8, c/s 8, 6 control stations), $6M, Basic Stat block PILOTING/TL10 (HIGH-PERFORMANCE SPACECRAFT)Crew
Fit-out Cargo holdNotes
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Decay is inherent in all composite things. Nod head. Get treat. Last edited by Agemegos; 06-10-2008 at 12:42 AM. |
05-26-2008, 12:43 AM | #2 |
Join Date: Jan 2008
Location: Phoenix, AZ
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Re: [Spaceships] TL10^ exploration frigate
I like it. From a quick first impression, it sounds like the Lewis & Clark from Event Horizon =)
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05-26-2008, 01:33 AM | #3 |
Join Date: Aug 2007
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Re: [Spaceships] TL10^ exploration frigate
Hm.
* Lot of armor in front. Not needed, giving you one more module (going to one module there). * 75 TONS of camping, construction, survival, and security equipment equipment? Seriously? What are they carrying there? I count a total of 29 people on board in the cabins. That makes it 2586kg (!) of stuff per person, and this includes people never leaving the shop (captain etc.). Weapons I assume are not in there - that is a LOT. I would cut down on that, raising the trade goods to more, in the allocation. Or storing some fuel for the shuttles - yes, they are ram jet, but you may need to do some orbintal maneucering, and there it is always good to have SOME fuel with you. * I would really get rid of the anti matter, if you can. Anti Matter is highly problematic. I can see it in use on military ships, but it is not something I would like to send to a first contact mission. Shooting starts, something hits the anti mater containment wrong, and next thing is you know you have a mortal enemy making a religion out of killing you because you killed half their planet, so to say. Without even wanting it. In addition, anti matter creation is problematic - unless they carry the equipment on board (which they do not). Getting some Hx (H2, H3) production going is a lot easier if you need more fuel than creating anti matter, and even if anti matter creation is simple (super-science) you may not want to tell the natives how that is done ;) |
05-26-2008, 02:07 AM | #4 |
Banned
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Europe
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Re: [Spaceships] TL10^ exploration frigate
Why only have 2 shuttles? IIRC SM+5 is 30 tonnes, so you'd be able to fit 3 such shuttles into a 100 ton hangar bay and still have 10 ton to spare.
Alternatively one SM+6 shuttle, since IIRC that equates to 100 tons. Or a third option, split the hangar module so that only 2/3 of it is hangar bay, and the last 1/3 is either cargo storage, reaction mass or habitat (extra lab space or garden space). Also, I agree with the armour. Why have double armour on front? Then again, the ship seems fairly upgunned, with one full mass module devoted to ECM. |
05-26-2008, 02:15 AM | #5 | |
Banned
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Europe
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Re: [Spaceships] TL10^ exploration frigate
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However, I don't believe there are any great secrets to antimatter production. It just happens to require expensive equipment, lots of energy input (seeing as antimatter is actually about energy storage, never energy production or energy generation), and take lots of time. I'm also unconvinced that even several tons of antimatter can cause significant damage to a planet. And are there several tons in this antimatter-boosted reaction mass? (I do have the PDF, but I'm too lazy to open it and check.) Perhaps the ideal solution would be for the ship to devote an entire module to carrying nothing but pure antimatter, and then a second module that enables it to use this antimatter to create boosted reaction mass, e.g. from ocean water or gas giant atmosphere or comet materials? |
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05-26-2008, 12:49 PM | #6 | |||
Join Date: Aug 2007
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Re: [Spaceships] TL10^ exploration frigate
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Even a kilo of antimatter exploding will look like a HUGH nuclear explosion. You do not want to dispute why you just did that to them ;) Remember that the biosphere, or the attitude of the peoples are more easily damaged than the planet. Quote:
Plus antimatter is tricky - if contianment fails you die. This can be a problem unless you get passive containment (i.e. a material that contains the antimatter without reaction, not something like a magnetic bottle that constantly needs energy). Quote:
You need a similar mechanism, otherwise you will always have EXPENSIVE antimatter, as the energy needs to be generated in the first place ;) Which - is not nice. Whateve, though, antimatter creation is tricky. You may not be able to get that in place if you need. Better just skim gas giants. |
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05-26-2008, 02:18 PM | #7 | |
Banned
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Europe
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Re: [Spaceships] TL10^ exploration frigate
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05-26-2008, 05:18 PM | #8 | |||||||||||
Join Date: May 2005
Location: Oz
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Re: [Spaceships] TL10^ exploration frigate
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The explorers of the Age of Sail never left home without a few tons of gunpowder. Quote:
That's a big bang, no doubt. But to speak of killing half a planet is hyperbole. And considering that the ship is intended not to landthe worst that can happen is an explosion in low orbit, setting fires and inflicting flash burns in a area 400 km across. Quote:
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Decay is inherent in all composite things. Nod head. Get treat. Last edited by Agemegos; 06-05-2008 at 05:44 PM. |
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05-26-2008, 05:39 PM | #9 | ||||
Join Date: May 2005
Location: Oz
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Re: [Spaceships] TL10^ exploration frigate
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Necho was originally designed in a system without modules (edit: or rather, in which each module as ten tonnes mass and there was no limit on the number in a ship), and it had one thirty-ton shuttle in a bay and another in an external clamp. But you can't do that in Spaceships without splitting modules. I didn't want to split modules because I wanted to publish a RAW design. I'll design the shuttles later, and see how much they end up costing. If they're cheap I'll consider adding a third. Or splitting the module and putting in a 30-ton shuttle fuel tank. Or indeed leaving bay space for visitor's craft. Not that I imagine any naval captains are going to give permission for foreigners to park a spacecraft inside their ships. Quote:
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On the other hand, the Navy says that this ship is going off into the lonesome all by itself, that it will certainly be encountering spacefaring cultures and maybe pirates, alien empires, and God-knows-what. And if it can't fight, it ain't going. The designer managed to not quite make either party pull the plug by stuffing the forward hull with non-vital systems that can sorta-kinda be considered ablative armour. Both sides are grumbling, but neither is quite cancelling the project.
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Decay is inherent in all composite things. Nod head. Get treat. Last edited by Agemegos; 05-28-2008 at 01:18 AM. |
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05-26-2008, 06:10 PM | #10 | ||||
Join Date: May 2005
Location: Oz
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Re: [Spaceships] TL10^ exploration frigate
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Each fuel tank gives 192 km/s at 10 m/s^2, implying endurance 19.2 ks. There are three tanks, giving a total burn time of 57.6 ks (sixteen hours). Total kinetic energy of the exhaust stream is 115.2 TW * 57.6 ks = 6.6 EJ. (Kinetic energy of the ship is negligible: about 3 PJ). Let's add 10% for waste heat. 7.26 * 10^18 J. Now a megaton is about 4.2 * 10^15 J, so we are talking about a 1.73 gigaton explosion. Now, the antimatter annihilates an equal mass of matter, so we need the mass-equivalent of 3.63 EJ. c is about 3 * 10^8 m/s, so it's m = 3.63 * 10^18 / 9 * 10^16 = 40 kg. Quote:
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Decay is inherent in all composite things. Nod head. Get treat. Last edited by Agemegos; 05-27-2008 at 03:51 AM. |
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exploration, flat black, spaceships |
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