Hulver's site || Comments || Thrown in the fire but never get burn

If it's that useful by R Mutt (2.00 / 0) #8 Tue May 13, 2008 at 06:56:12 AM EST

Why process it on an FTL spaceship?

If the stations need the processed output, why not have their own processing plant, especially if they are huge clusters like Vulch thinks.

Or if it's used on planets, just ship it to the planets in a standard freighter and process it there.

Why have the interstellar equivalent of a "sewage processing truck"?

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You're examining this too closely by Vulch (4.00 / 1) #9 Tue May 13, 2008 at 07:25:19 AM EST

Why have a Tylium ore processing ship with FTL capability? It would make more sense for it to be something fixed to the asteroid being mined. When the asteroid was exhausted you'd maybe move the refinery to a new one in several sections.

Why do so many of the transports previously used for hops between the colonies have living quarters for passengers when the journeys are relatively quick? The longest route seems to be about the same duration as a trip to New Zealand.

Why is the prison transport ship so big? A Raptor carries an FTL drive, with that you'd expect something more the size of a Group 4 truck.

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I assume FTL drives are expensive by R Mutt (2.00 / 0) #11 Tue May 13, 2008 at 07:49:57 AM EST

And from the last episode it seems a Raptor FTL drive is powerful enough to move a base star. So if you're not in the military, it's more cost-effective to stick a big spaceship on your expensive FTL drive.

An ore processing ship makes more sense. If the asteroids are small, you may have to move it around quite a lot: you don't want to have to keep disassembling and reassembling it every few days. Not sure what advantage it would give you to split it up into sections. On Earth you might want to split it up to truck it around more easily, but from the diversity of the fleet it seems that you can move pretty much any shape you like with ease.

And if you're only extracting a little Tylium from a large amount of ore, you don't want to have to lug all that ore back to a planet for processing. With sewage, presumably you want most or all of it.

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I thought they were using the Raptor for by wiredog (2.00 / 0) #12 Tue May 13, 2008 at 08:05:09 AM EST

navigation, and to control the Cylon FTL drive.

As to why Raptor's have FTL, they're scout ships.

Earth First!
_{(We can strip mine the rest later.)}
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If FTL drives are expensive... by Vulch (4.00 / 1) #16 Tue May 13, 2008 at 08:35:00 AM EST

...Then you don't want to have them sitting around at all. You'd be more likely to build a very large frame with an FTL drive and conventional engines to move large things around and keep it working. Imagine something getting on for the size of Galactica but the shape of Thunderbird 2 without a pod.

The using a Raptor to jump a Basestar thing throws this comparison off a bit, but jet engines are expensive yet non-military users still build small airframes around them instead of everything being an A380. There aren't many 747s used on short haul flights, and just how many prisoners need to be transported to parole hearings at once anyway?

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: Prison ship by ammoniacal (2.00 / 0) #24 Wed May 14, 2008 at 07:34:29 PM EST

I've put way too much thought into this and it seems apparent to me that the prison barge is simply a freighter of sorts which has been converted to prison duty. It's best for the operational fleet to isolate the prisoners who can't be reformed immediately and to do it safely. Niven teaches us that all spacecraft are weapons, so keep the number of vulnerable ships to a minimum. Additionally, it's a great plot device.
Irony: ammo says it's time. Tom is blocked.
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