Orcinus orca [email removed] wrote:
>From: FELLOWS STEVEN B -5 CR [email removed]
>
> Someone mentioned that they could not understand why it would cost
>different amounts of money to ship different material. 100 tonnes of feathers
>as oppossed to 100 tonnes of machine parts. Well, in my system, it would cost
>more for the feathers, since they take up more volume.
Waitasec. I thought 100 tons referred to volume, as in equivalent
volume of 100 tons of liquid hydrogen. The rest of the ship is
designed using volume-tons and this makes it easy to figure out
how much space you have left in your cargo hold.
End of jokim's post.
- - ------------------------------
Okay, my error. I assumed that you were still talking about mass. If you
were referring to what I was talking about in an earlier post that 100 tonnes of cargo implies either 100 metric tonnes of mass or 100 cubic meters (volume) then they should cost the same.
I don't think it referres to that as the volume of an equivalent mass of liquid
hydrogen: that would be a cumbersome way of working. Of course, this could be
how it is referred to in Traveller, for something being too cumbersome has not
stopped them before.
I have never designed a starship for Traveller. However, designing a cargo
vessel for 2300AD, I just determined the volume of the cargo hold that I wanted,
and then determined the mass of the shell and supports used in manufacturing the
hold. Anyway, it is not too unlikely that the designers use a different unit
of measure than the users.
Steven B. Fellows
[email removed].