Anthony Jackson wrote:
Pauli Hakala wrote:
Nonetheless, this is what brings about a large difference in
performance. Civilian shuttle the size of a military starfighter
most likely wont be built with so little maintenance space..
Actually, there's a good chance it will be. In any case, access space
doesn't really bring about a large difference in performance. It gives a
lot more performance at the same volume, but at the same mass the
performance isn't really changed, and outside of Traveller mass is what
mostly matters for spaceships.
At the same mass performance is also changed, because a ship with
more volume due access space needs to put larger portion of it's
mass into hull, armor and surface features, and this slows it down
as compared to a ship with more compact design.
At the same volume removing access space can increase performance
by +200% or so. This is what I would call a large increase.
It is also possible to get some weight savings and performance
improvements by putting thrusters etc. into pods, but this is not
as radical increase in performance as making everything relevant
easily removable modules, since the pods increase the ships
surface area and thus increase the mass fraction of hull, armor
and surface features somewhat.
I know what I am writing about here, I have been making different
ship designs for a scifi-setting (3rd edition TL 10-11) of my own
for years, and the importance of access space has become very
obvious for ship performance specs. In practice, going modular
can give a starfighter 3G STL acceleration instead of just 1G
with full maintenance access space.
-Pauli
--
"..Wings on my back, I got horns on my head. My fangs are sharp
and my eyes are red. Not quite an angel or the one that fell.."
-Lordi, Hard Rock Hallelujah
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