[Origin] Starliner

Not very detailed, and I wouldn't mind seeing an interior layout picture but there is definitely a need for this kind of thing and I'd love to set up a spaceline company.

The reason why there's no interior layout is because I don't want to detail the location of over 4,000 seats, and without that it would just be three open spaces with different words in them. I tried being as descriptive of the interior as possible without being wordy, and it's also very generic, which leads to the lack of real detail, but I don't think that's chiefly necessary for a starliner that will probably only be referred to every once in a while or something.

Are there any other comments or concerns on this?

The commentary on mass transit feels misleading. In Yamatai for example, it's easy for a large amount of people to get around for relatively cheap using shuttles and other transfer systems, in the atmosphere lots of planets use different methods, such as subway systems, trains, etc. There are cheap public tickets on shuttles that hold 50~ people or so, and don't forget former and current members of the military can hop free transportation with military ships.

I can see the need for it in other governments, (maybe not UOC/YSE) but it doesn't seem to make that distinction in the article. It's a nice idea though, and I do support it- some more details (as Uso said) would be nice since I could see this being used in a lot of RP depending on how widespread you intend this to be?

Think on The word Mass transit, and then realize this Carries 4,000 people, as opposed to the 20 or so a shuttle could. This is mostly meant for transit between planets, to which end shuttles are often too slow to be practical, and military ships are often unavailable, especially to those whom have never been in the military. I know transit on a planet is easily done already, and that was not the focus of this submission, it's merely stated that this ship is also capable of intercontinental flight.

Furthermore, exactly what needs more detail in this submission? Please point it out to me so I can work on it, rather than just saying "More detail please" and leaving me to puzzle over which part needs more detail.

The fact of the matter is there are a lot of smaller craft, and larger ones running that carry civilians across the setting. It should be reworded before approval.

The containment units you describe for the seats in case of an emergency should be explained better, as well as how things might be expected to work in an actual emergency.

How many seats per row, section, etc? How do you get 2,000 people out during an emergency?

Allright. Thank you. I'll work on that. I also realized I had forgotten something that everyone forgets while making starships; Bathrooms.

The fact of the matter is there are a lot of smaller craft, and larger ones running that carry civilians across the setting. It should be reworded before approval.

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I do not think this is accurate.

Getting across the setting from planet to planet requires a lot of time and money be it purchasing a shuttle or booking passage on one of the few cargo ships in the setting (only a handful are listed on the wiki, and most are docked at Pisces station). There aren't any civilian 'airlines' (for lack of a better word) running between locations nor any standardized way of getting from point A to point B when they are on different planets. You have to hop a ride on a military ship most of the time and that isn't an option for some people. I definitely want to grab a few of these and set up a transportation company once the submission is approved.

The Starliner uses a fusion reactor, which uses heavy water (water with an extra Hydrogen atom) as its fuel. Running on normal power, the Starliner carries enough fuel for five years of regular activity.

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While I'm at it, where can you possibly store 5 years worth of heavy water on a ship that small?

Just a few other things, how likely is it that 4000 people are going to want to travel to the same place at one time? That's more than most cruise ships.

But more to the point, are there any accomodations for the passengers, a lounge similar to what some of the airlines had on the 747's. Are passengers given different seating, based on ticket class. Any inflight entertainment capability?

While I'm at it, where can you possibly store 5 years worth of heavy water on a ship that small?

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Dunno. It was mostly an arbitrary number that seemed to make sense considering ships 1/3 this size run on fusion, taking ten times the energy output, and can run 6 months to a year. Seeing as this ship has very little energy output (See: No weapons) I figured it made sense. I have no problem with making that timespan smaller, however.

Just a few other things, how likely is it that 4000 people are going to want to travel to the same place at one time? That's more than most cruise ships.

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I never said it had to only make one stop. It's up to the company controlling the ship to figure out how to divide up tickets and make routes to places, as well as figure out how many stops and layovers a ship might have. In this way one ship can make a single trip that spans 20 or 30 routes.

are there any accomodations for the passengers

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Are passengers given different seating, based on ticket class

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Any inflight entertainment capability?

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(Tl;dr, Yes.)

Most ships also use fusion engines as backups or starter motors, relying on aether or hyperspace taps to get around most of the time.

The amount of heavy water you'd need to run this ship for five years, even if you only make one or two trips to another planet, would be larger than earth.

Edit: Is it large enough to hold 4000 people? A 747 is about 1/3 the size and holds about 500 and it doesn't need to bring along all the equipment, fuel, ect for space travel.

Actually, a few people are starting to design ships that don't rely on aether or hyperspace taps anymore, since those power types are now fallible.

And i'm just going with SARP tech to say that it fits, but i'm working on lessening the time between fill ups as we speak.


And yes, it's large enough to hold that many people. I did the math and it can theoretically hold more around 4,800 people, but I nixed the extra 800 seats or so in favor of aisles and attendant stations. And this is subtracting for hull thickness, space taken up by the bridge, and space taken up by power generation and engines. Straight up volume-wise, if I just emptied the thing out, it could hold around 10,000 (very cramped) people.

Unfortunately, Aether and Hyperspace taps are the only power sources with enough energy to power an FTL device.

The fuel required to power your ship would take up something like 70-80% of the internal space and that is just if it wants to go into orbit so I'm having a hard time imagining that it can fit 4000 people.

Uso. It's SARP-tech. We're just going to go with saying it works. I've changed it from 5 years to one, in any case. I'm not going to argue with you about how much size fits what amount of fuel because, Frankly, I don't give a shit. There is a precedent for smaller ships using smaller fusion generators powering faster FTL drives, and we're just going to leave it at that.

I'm also doing more precise calculations on the interior spacing, and will soon come out with a better number of passengers (Since I have more than just seats inside)

5 years to 1 year is a large reduction, but we're still talking about more fuel that could possibly fit on board even 100 of these craft.

The Future Space Ship can travel at Future Space speeds. Or is that no longer enough?

We're not talking about speeds, we're talking about fuel.

I mean just imagine how big a 747 would be if it were carrying a years worth of fuel onboard? Saying a ship can run for a year or two without maintenance is one thing when we have future tech but saying it can carry all of its fuel for years worth of operation is more absurd than normal.

A nuclear carrier can run for 25 years without refueling. Is that preposterous? No. That's done with today's horribly inefficient technology. at SARP times, Tech is to the point where a fusion reactor can run at near 100% efficiency. It really isn't a stretch to say something with the relatively low power demands of a starliner can carry enough fuel for a year, because at near 100% efficiency the energy output would be enormous for a tiny amount of fuel. Anyways, That's the last I'm saying on this issue.

I've gone and done better math, and cut the passengers in half, as well as gone and figured out where everything goes. I expanded on the safety bubble thing, as well as added bathrooms and whatnot, as well as some basic safety procedures. Hopefully that is enough to satisfy Lilly and Nashoba.

Firstly, I would like to say good job for making one of these. The SARP has a need for a rapid-transit vehicle. Beat me to it.

In regards to passenger capacity, I don’t think even 4,000 passengers is that much out of whack. A 747-400 carries 530 passengers and is, by volume, somewhere in the range of 1/15th the size of this vehicle. The biggest issue with thousands of passengers is that you will spend far longer loading and unloading people then you will to get to your destination.

However, some of Uso’s other concerns /are/ valid.

For the power, since we are using what are essentially BS technologies for FTS travel with no real connection with actual science it is impossible to derive valid power figures for their use. As a result I can’t argue that its impossible to use fusion to power a FTL system, but I do say that it is not a ideal power method. Compared to M-AM power systems it produces less than 1/100th the theoretical energy output (i.e. the best-case scenario, ignoring any inefficiencies) per unit mass of fuel. Aether and other quantum-effect power systems (Hyperspace tap, CDDA, etc.) exceed the capabilities of any fuel-based system by orders of magnitude when looked at from a power-to-mass and power-to-volume perspective. Because of this, I would expect a rather large amount of internal space to be taken up by the things power systems to enable it to use such a subpar method to power FTL.

In regards to fuel, I would agree that it is problematic to hold that much fuel on the vehicle. To use some IRL examples, surface ships warships use a considerable amount of their internal volume to hold the fuel necessary for a months-long cruise and receive in-trip refueling during these. Modern cargo and cruise ships use far less space, but they only carry enough fuel for a handful of months travel (many times much less) since they are going to and from built-up ports where refueling is easily available. It just wouldn’t make sense for them to carry 6 months of fuel when the longest trip they can reasonably expect to take is only going to be 6-7 weeks. A modern jetliner carries enough fuel for 8 hours on the upper end so that they can make transoceanic flights. Most carry far less. It doesn’t make sense for them to haul around the extra weight of several trips worth of fuel when they can easily pick it up when they land.

Similar logistics would apply to your ship. It is going from populated, industrialized worlds to other populated, industrialized worlds. Also realize that even a long trip is not going to go much over two hours with its FTL speed. Considering these two it makes no sense for it to carry a years worth of fuel. Heck, it wouldn’t make much sense for it to carry more than a days fuel. Anything beyond that is cutting in to space that could be used for paying customers.

From a technical standpoint, it also presents problems. As a first, you are carrying the fuel in a incredibly inefficient form. The part of the heavy-water you want is the deuterium or tritium (It should be noted here that these are isotopes of hydrogen, containing a extra one and two neutrons per atom respectively. Heavy water does not contain a extra hydrogen atom as the submission suggests. T wouldn’t be water if it did. Also be aware that tritium is radioactive with a half-life of ~12 years.). These make up somewhere between 1/8th (only one deuteride atom per molecule) to 1/2.7th (two tritium atoms per molecule) of the total fuel mass. The rest of that mass (all the oxygen and normal hydrogen) is wasted mass. This is exacerbated by the fact that water is pretty much incompressible, so even with supertech its is still going to take up a lot of space. A far, far more efficient method to transport it would be to extract the deuterium or tritium (whichever one you are using in this design) and freeze it to a slush state. This would massively increase the ratio of fuel to mass.

Even with that part of the issue solved, you will still have problems with the shear mass of fuel you would need for a years travel. For any reaction engine (be it a ion drive, a rocket engine, or a ship propeller) you need to accelerate a mass one direction to get the engine to go the other way, requiring both a input energy and a input mass. On a nuclear surface ship it only needs to carry the first of these, the input energy. The mass involved is surrounding it as the ocean. It doesn’t expend any mass, volume, or energy to carry this with it, it will be wherever the ship operates. Aircraft have the same advantage, only needing to carry the fuel to heat the air the jet engines expel.

A space ship, regardless if it is using a kerosene/O2 rocket, a ion drive, or a nuclear fusion torch, doesn’t have that advantage. It must carry both the input mass and energy. As a result they are vastly less efficient in regards to thrust produced compared to engine mass (including fuel). You simply can’t compare any space-based reaction drive with one within a massive media (be it air or water).

Lastly, the amount of acceleration needed to reach .15c in anything like a useful time frame for a vessel that crosses a light year in two minutes is going to be in the thousands (it would take it 15 minutes to reach that speed at 5,000Gs) which is not low in any sense. Nor is a top speed of 45,000 km/s. Within the context of the setting they are not terribly abnormal, but they are by no means low.

All of these things point toward the same conclusion, together and as a whole, that this ship would need a huge amount of internal space devoted towards its fuel. Assuredly more than its passenger capacity.

This brings us back to the first point.

Why would they waste so much space on fuel?

Its meant to operate within the sphere of modern space, where fuel is plentiful and easily available, why waste all that potentially profit-making space on heavy fuel? It just doesn’t make sense.

The Heavy water thing is a copy/paste from older articles, which i've just been using as a standby for a while. I've never seen objections to it before, in any case.

I must admit, on the fuel issue, I was thinking of this more as a normal starship than an airliner in the sense of when and where this thing can get its fuel from, so that's one thing. the fact is, SARP's so full of supertech that no one ever bothered me with ranges on things before because it's always just been "That seems fair compared to the precedents."

If you know a better fuel for this, please tell me so I can take Heavy water out of this and my other submissions. Also, Keep in mind that a M/AM reactor is dangerous, and might not be looked upon too kindly by the passengers. In any case, I see your point, Vesper, it's just that the amount of ridiculousness in SARP has let me get by on limited knowledge.