CS-Porad-Altina

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Graham Kennedy
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CS-Porad-Altina

Post by Graham Kennedy »

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A typical small cargo vessel, the Porad-Altina type is designed to be operated by a crew of three persons, carrying up to ten standard cargo containers across interstellar distances. With a top cruise speed of 30 kc the class is fast for a civilian vessel. It is designed for missions of up to 30 days, the crew typically manning the cabin in shifts. Quarters are cramped, to say the least, and it is a requirement of the crew that they be on very friendly terms.

The cargo containers attach at the rear of the ship, stacked in tandem. A loading mechanism along with two EVA cargo handling pods allow the ship to mount and dismount containers by itself. They can thus function in places with minimal dock support.

Altinas are relatively cheap, reliable, fast, efficient, and highly effective little craft, and are extremely popular both within the Coalition and beyond it. Literally millions have been sold, and they are a common sight and likely to be so for decades to come.
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Re: CS-Porad-Altina.jpg

Post by Tsukiyumi »

It's the semi (or lorry) of the Coalition universe!

Awesome, Graham. :)
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Re: CS-Porad-Altina.jpg

Post by Graham Kennedy »

Tsukiyumi wrote:It's the semi (or lorry) of the Coalition universe!
Yup. About as close to that as I'm gonna be getting, anyway.
Awesome, Graham. :)
Thanks. We have both ends of the scale of cargo ships, now!
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Re: CS-Porad-Altina.jpg

Post by Graham Kennedy »

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Added a front view and a smaller scale version with a maximum load of ten cargo containers.
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Re: CS-Porad-Altina.jpg

Post by Mikey »

Does maxing out the load significantly decrease the speed?
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Re: CS-Porad-Altina.jpg

Post by Graham Kennedy »

Yes. For any given midspace drive, speed is proportional to the square root of the mass. Take the forward section to mass about two container's worth, so the fully loaded vehicle is 10+2 = 12 container's worth. So the full to empty ratio is 12/2, or 6/1. So a fully loaded ship is 6^.5, or 2.45 times slower. A reduction from 30,000 c down to 12,000 c.

Of course containers rarely carry their maximum weight. More realistically they'd be about half loaded, so speed would be about 16 kc with ten of them, or about 20 kc with five.

As a guide, at 12 kc, you clock a light year ever 44 minutes.
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Re: CS-Porad-Altina.jpg

Post by Tsukiyumi »

GrahamKennedy wrote:...As a guide, at 12 kc, you clock a light year ever 44 minutes.
Man, that's fast. I don't recall if you've mentioned before, but what's the endurance for your ships? I mean, how long could they hold their top speed?
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Re: CS-Porad-Altina.jpg

Post by Graham Kennedy »

Depends on the ship. Typically the "top speed" I quote here is the maximum cruise speed, which is the speed the ship can safely hold basically indefinitely. The limiting factor there is generally fuel, and I have deliberately pitched the Coalition ships as having fairly low endurance compared to some. It varies with ship type, but at top cruise speed your fuel will generally last from about 10 up to about 50 days. A Kororra class battleship can go 24 days at its top cruise speed of 45 kc, a range of about 3,000 light years.

Reducing speed helps considerably with that. The rule of thumb is that at half the speed you go twice as far, taking four times as long.
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Re: CS-Porad-Altina.jpg

Post by Tsukiyumi »

Neat. Well thought out, and logical for sure.
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Re: CS-Porad-Altina.jpg

Post by Sionnach Glic »

Aye, nice to see a sci-fi universe where things are actualy thought out for a change.
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