On Sep 15, 2014, at 3:36 PM, Cheng Tseng <xxxxxx@kennett.net> wrote:

> ObTrva: I am still confused over how Traveller gets the displacement tons from the mass and vice versa, for a ship design.  I always thought that going to a pure mass system (A la David Weber's Honor Harrington.) might be less confusing.

It might be, but since jump drive is volume-dependent, not mass-dependent it makes sense to size ships in volume. Why it isn’t in cubic meters is probably due to some un-nammed naval traditionalist during the Rule of Man shoehorning the term into use.

--
Bruce Johnson
University of Arizona
College of Pharmacy
Information Technology Group

Institutions do not have opinions, merely customs