On 27Nov2019 0507, Cian Witherspoon wrote:

> 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.”

My '77 Book 2 talks about tons displacement, and 'displacement', so it's
clearly talking volume.

BTW, if MM meant a standard container, well there's a matter of which
one - at the time both 20-foot and 40-foot containers were in common use
(of course today there are a whole bunch of others as well - so much for
standardisation), both of which have the same maximum gross weight - 30
tonnes. Note that even the 40' container is actually quite a small
volume for that mass by traditional shipping standards, so most loads
can expect to be rather less than that, and this makes ships even
smaller than assuming their volume (aside from fuel tanks) follows the
old shipping rule of thumb of 100 cubic feet per ton. If he meant the
20' container (then still considered the main standard for shipping),
ships are quite tiny.

--
Rupert Boleyn <xxxxxx@gmail.com>