[gurps] [VEHICLE] of the week 759 - OHI Automated Heavy Lift Shuttle

[David Scheidt]

On Mon, May 11, 2009 at 2:17 PM, Onno Meyer <Onno.Meyer at gmx.de> wrote:

> But four miles or six, the ground pressure of this bird
> is 40 tons per sf. If 'extremely high' wasn't the last
> category, this would be three steps above 'extremely'.
> So I figured that the shuttle needs the facilities of
> a major spaceport - and where else do you unload 3,000
> tons of cargo, anyway?
>

3000 tons (These are normal 2000 lb tons, right?)  is only about 100
shipping containers.  given this is an osekmoi ship, it's going to be
usually carrying containerized cargo.  Star ship containers in this
setting are nominally 20mX10X10, and will hold smaller (roughly ISO
sized) containers if that makes sense for the cargo.  This shuttle
looks like it would carry four or five of them.  With suitable cargo
handling equipment on the ground, it would only take a couple hours to
unload them and then load new ones.  (breaking them down into their
component containers would take a while, but that doesn't have to
delay the ship.)

The ground loading is insane, though, isn't it!


-- 
David Scheidt
dmscheidt at gmail.com