On 09Jan2021 1309, Kurt Feltenberger wrote: > I'm not sure how much faith I'm willing to put into this as something > even being "spitball accurate". A Nimitz class CVN comes out to about > 24.5kdtons, and when you compare that to existing known sizes of > Traveller shisp, it seems a bit...weak. Given her dimensions of about 333m long (overall length) x 77m beam (again, overall) x (11 + 17)m height (draught plus height to flight deck), her block volume is 666,666 m^3, or ~47,620 DTons. However, her underwater volume is only ~100,000 m^3, and her above-water volume isn't that of a block, so we know her volume is somewhat lower than that. Even if we assume a very chunky co-efficient of 0.9 for the above-water hull, it comes in at ~305,000 m^3. Add that to the submerged portion and we get a total volume of ~405,000 m^3, or ~29,000 DTons. So for her mass, Nimitz is a big ship, but within the 1/3rd to 1/5th range I gave. Remember that a surface ship's crew do not need full life support, and thus take up much less space than is assumed in Traveller. Thus Nimitz' complement of ~6,000 do not need three thousand staterooms (at 6,000 DTons just for them), or 20% of her volume. Space-Nimitz won't be carrying some of her sub-craft complement sitting on her flight deck much of the time either, so all storage, working, and deployment volume has to be accounted for. As a starship in the Traveller universe any such ship would need a lot of volume devoted to jump fuel, too - the usual standard for Third Imperium navy fleet ships in the classic era is jump-4, requiring 40% of the volume be fuel (plus a bit more for the reactor). Thus Space-Nimitz simply has to be much bigger than USS Nimitz is. At least she needs little to no space be put aside for her sub-crafts fuel. By the way, most of the aircraft would count as ~50 DTons, with some being smaller (the helicopters), and some larger (such as the Hawkeyes). This translates well to using 50 DTon fighters in Traveller, and implies hanger space for ~4,500 DTons of combat sub-craft. In High Guard this requires a little under 6,000 DTons. You'd want at least one, ideally two launch tubes at 1,250 DTons each. I think you could make a credible attempt at a 30,000 DTon interpretation of Nimitz. -- Rupert Boleyn <xxxxxx@gmail.com>
