Subject:
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Re: Displacement Tonnage for Spaceships?
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.space
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Date:
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Mon, 30 Dec 2002 04:47:37 GMT
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Viewed:
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1724 times
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In Traveller, spaceships use a convention of how much hydrogen might
> be displaced by the ship. (Presumably, the authors concluded that simple
> hydrogen is about as close to empty space as you can get and still have
> measurable mass. Also presumably, hydrogen is less dense than water, and
> thus a 1000 ton spaceship is actually larger than a 1000 ton seaship.)
>
> I don't have the exact text to quote, but my friends explain it as follows:
>
> Each cubic space of 1.5 meters X 3 meters X 3 meters (roughly 5 feet X 10
> feet X 10 feet) equals 1 ton of liquid hydrogen displacement.
Whomever created "Traveller" obviously didn't think things through. Nor did
(s)he know much about physics or space. Mass is a MUCH better way of
comparing the sizes of space vessels, since it needs to be known to engineer
many systems on a ship. "Hydrogen displacement" for a space vessel is an
utterly useless measurement.
For our purposes, a conversion based on the actual volume of a ship (which
should be measured in cubic centimeters or meters) would be best. If your
scale is 100:1, then simply multiply the ship's actual volume by 100^3 to
get the fictional volume.
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Displacement Tonnage for Spaceships?
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| (...) I would agree that it is not based on any true science. Rather, I suspect hydrogen displacement was chosen because of the potential "sounds cool factor", since it sounds like a nautical term. Some sci-fi's (not all) like to draw comparisons (...) (24 years ago, 30-Dec-02, to lugnet.space)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Displacement Tonnage for Spaceships?
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| A long long time a go, in a thread far away.... actually, I think it was buried somewhere in this thread here: (URL) again here: (URL) of us had discussed ways of indicating a spaceship's size, perhaps measuring it in hundreds of studs with Roman (...) (24 years ago, 29-Dec-02, to lugnet.space)
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