On Tue, Nov 26, 2019 at 07:43 Ethan McKinney <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:

Shhhhh!!! I had decided not to mention that!

Actually, a marginally smaller box module solves a lot of problems. Make the shuttle a cylinder with a rectangular bay in the middle and Space Shuttle clamshell doors on the underside. With the structure of the cutter extending most of the way around, you can make it strong enough to deal with most has lateral forces. The doors maintain your arodynamics.

I’m convinced that’s what MM had in mind when he originally wrote the stats on the Cutter, way back in 77 when everything was mass based - so the cutter was originally meant to carry a standard cargo container, before he realized that people visualize volume a lot easier than they do mass. Or people just took the density of LHyd and went “everything on this ship is that dense? Okay.”