Swappable Components

[Lighthawk]

But as Tyyr pointed out, with a big enough transporter, you can make the system work relatively easily. You don't have to haul things around, jam them through tight fits, or cut holes to get pieces out. Disconnect and beam away, then beam in the new part and hook it up.

[kostmayer]

Would a ship designed so that modules could be swapped out be inherently weaker then a ship that wasnt?

We've talked about how a ship capable of saucer seperation is weaker at the seperation point. If a ship was build so that parts of it could be easily removed and replaced, would it be a strong as a 'one piece ship'?

[McAvoy]

I don't think so. Easily swappable means easily removed. Ships are built on a skeleton which are welded/riveted/self sealing stem bolted/duct taped together which means that they part of the overall strength of the ship. Whereas while a module or easily swappable component can be made part of the frame but the easy part of it would mean it would not be as strong as a permanent piece of the ship is. There are ways of getting around it like excessive amounts of clamps which would make it heavier and much more bulky than a simple frame would be.

I hope that makes as much sense as it did in my head.

[Lighthawk]

I don't think so. Easily swappable means easily removed. Ships are built on a skeleton which are welded/riveted/self sealing stem bolted/duct taped together which means that they part of the overall strength of the ship. Whereas while a module or easily swappable component can be made part of the frame but the easy part of it would mean it would not be as strong as a permanent piece of the ship is. There are ways of getting around it like excessive amounts of clamps which would make it heavier and much more bulky than a simple frame would be.

I hope that makes as much sense as it did in my head.

Makes sense to me. However, someone in one of the other threads once brought up the idea of transporter "welding". Basically using the transporter to energize the edges of two objects and fuse them together at an atomic level, so that they become one solid piece. It'd be an extra step in the process, but it would let you regain that lost structural strength.

[Lt. Staplic]

Would a ship designed so that modules could be swapped out be inherently weaker then a ship that wasnt?

We've talked about how a ship capable of saucer seperation is weaker at the seperation point. If a ship was build so that parts of it could be easily removed and replaced, would it be a strong as a 'one piece ship'?

No, the main reason for this, as has been mentioned, is that with saucer separation you're actually just clamping together two frames, each frame then contains the different parts attacked to it that function and make it a ship, however at the point of intersection, there is minimal frame work which is what makes that point so week, they can have any framework crossing the area to reinforce it.

[Mikey]

I don't think so. Easily swappable means easily removed. Ships are built on a skeleton which are welded/riveted/self sealing stem bolted/duct taped together which means that they part of the overall strength of the ship. Whereas while a module or easily swappable component can be made part of the frame but the easy part of it would mean it would not be as strong as a permanent piece of the ship is. There are ways of getting around it like excessive amounts of clamps which would make it heavier and much more bulky than a simple frame would be.

I hope that makes as much sense as it did in my head.

Makes perfect sense to me, but if I were you I wouldn't take my agreement as a ringing endorsement.

However, this sort of "module swapping" would, to my mind, by used in a limited capacity - each type of ship would be "factory pre-set" to its intended role, and such custom modules would only need to be added in relatively uncommon circumstances.

[Bryan Moore]

I would think crew quarters would also be remarkably easy to fabricate and produce. Not for swapping out, but for easy dropping in. Plus, if you ever needed to remove some for extra storage or something, bam, there ya have it.

[McAvoy]

Modular makes sense if you can swap out a component that was always designed as a easily swappable component, such as aircraft drop tanks in exchange for bombs or missiles. Crew quarters can modular as easy as moving in or out of an apartment.

[Mikey]

Why would you need to swap in (or out) crew quarters? The optimum crew size of a given ship should be a pretty constant number; and if you need to billet troops, it would be easier to just convert a cargo bay or something than to swap in a barracks module.

[Bryan Moore]

Why would you need to swap in (or out) crew quarters? The optimum crew size of a given ship should be a pretty constant number; and if you need to billet troops, it would be easier to just convert a cargo bay or something than to swap in a barracks module.

Might be rare, but in a wartime situation, why have all those family crew quarters on the GCS?

[Mikey]

But there's a far easier way to change them into storage, or troop billets, or whatever, than trading out whole integral sections of the ship.

I think there is an idea that the highest-tech solution is the best one. Just because it is possible to swap out modular sections of the ship with 24th-century tech doesn't mean that it should be done. Like I said, they may be able to swap out officer quarters for cargo space or troop billets, or whatever; but because they can doesn't meant that it's the best way to go about it. Instead of taking the ship apart, just convert the rooms.

[McAvoy]

Well it wouldn't be that hard. Ships nowadays have something similar. Basically, you have frame which does all the structural loading it should and the room is big enough. Then you put up metal or even plastic dividers bolted down somewhere, then you got a two rooms. For example, onboard the aircraft carriers (safe to assume that the small boys aka anything-smaller-than-a-aircraft-carrier have this too), they use the bunks as a divider from outside a berthing to create a wall seperating the berthing and creating a passage way.

Of course what we have seen is that most ships don't give the typical crewman a 6x3, 1 foot deep locker that they sleep on and call it home. It's more like an apartment. Believe me, if the ships I have been on are like that then deployments would have been much more enjoyable.

[Mikey]

I'm all for flexible design. All I'm saying is that if you have a pair of the space-Hilton suites that senior officers on a GCS seem to get, and you could billet 30 troops in the same space, it makes more sense to just move out the beds and coffee tables and put in bunks; rather than tearing the officers' quarters out of the ship entirely and inserting pre-fab barracks.

[McAvoy]

I agree. Much more cost effective, if maimizing space is your goal. If you want to make the Galaxy class into a 30,000 person troop transport great idea. But to do with with only 1,000 people on obard on the ship the size of the Galaxy class would be a waste.

[Mikey]

Why would anyone create troop barracks for a ship that wasn't going to carry troops?