GEN,VDES:Sub-Oceanic SDB Concealment.

A thread of 2 messages, 3 June 1994 to 7 June 1994, in the order they were sent.

#7866 GEN,VDES:Sub-Oceanic SDB Concealment.

Les Howie · 3 June 1994

How do you submerge an SDB to hide under the world's oceans?  Sorry if this has
come up on the list before, but the red light just came on for me last night.

The TNE 400 Ton SDB has a volume of 5600 m^3, and a laden mass of 4886.17
tonnes, for a specific gravity at 1G of .86.  It Floats!  (Dorsal surface
probably awash, but she is NOT going under.)

Now, I have not seen anything in the rules for using Contra-Grav for making
things heavier, so the base design is probably not going under water.

Clearly, any SDB designed to submerge must either be designed for it (ballast
tanks, probably some sort of prop. thrusters) or be locally modified (put
that crate of lead in stateroom three, and strap it down good!)

Just a thought, maybe a nasty to pull on some players who havn't thought
things though.

Les Howie
Prograph International

#7898 REPOST: FFS: SDB Floats

Steven M Bonneville · 7 June 1994 · reply to #7866

A slain message, trying to return from the dead....

Les Howie [email removed] writes:

>How do you submerge an SDB to hide under the world's oceans?
[. . .]
>The TNE 400 Ton SDB has a volume of 5600 m^3, and a laden mass of 4886.17
>tonnes, for a specific gravity at 1G of .86.  It Floats!

Oh yuck.  The MT 400 d-ton SDB had a specific gravity of about 2.0 laden,
so it wasn't a problem before.  You could give up some of the hydrogen fuel
storage and flood those fuel tanks with water, er, "unrefined fuel".  It
would take 29 G-turns worth to bring the SDB's specific gravity to just
over 1.0.  That would add about 725 tonnes of mass to the ship.  Since the
SDB has 112 G-turns, I suppose you could pay the price.

Seems to me that you'd be better served adding armor to the hull and getting
some added value out of the mass -- besides, superdense armor is more compact.
But maybe there'd be some value in "crash surfacing" with this design.

  Steve Bonneville
  [email removed]