hi,
Sorry about throwing things back, but I'm catching up on missed messages
and I couldn't let this pass by (-:
I think that there may be a way to produce a ship hull without
all the problems about welding plates together and so forth. If the hull
is originally formed as a solid lump of whatever you are building it out
of. We might as well assume that it is something disguisting to work
with (like the titanium stuff or supa-dense). Cast on big lump in the
approximate shape you want the finished product to be (this isn't even
totally necessary) and then cut away all the bits you don't want with
something that will cut stubborn materials (fusion torch? plasma welder?)
In effect you tunnel the ship out of a hunk of iridium or whatever. While
doing this smoothing out the exteriour wouldn't prove too hard.
Traveller already assumes that this is how planetoid hulls are produced, would
there be any major problems making all hulls this way (except for the huge
wastage it entails)?
Pauli
Paul Dale | [email removed]
Department of Computer Science | [phone removed]
University of Queensland |
Australia, 4072 | Did you know that there are 41 two letter
| words containing the letter 'a'?