Nomads & Conestogas (long)

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CrayModerator
10/08/03 02:05 PM
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CONESTOGA CLASS JUMPSHIP
Tech Base: Inner Sphere
Class: Civilian Jumpship
Tonnage: 500,000 tons
KF Drive: 465,000 tons (SI: 9)
Sail: 97 tons (SI: 6, 2000m diameter)
Station Keeping Engine: 6,500 tons
Structural Integrity: 3,350 tons (SI: 1)
Controls: 1,250 tons
Fuel: 1,000 tons
Pumps: 50 tons
Armor: 279 tons (Lamellor Ferro-Carbide)
….Front: 46
….Front Sides: 46
….Rear Sides: 46
….Rear: 49
Small Craft Bays: 2,000 tons (10)
Crew: 400 tons (40)
Escape Pods: 70 tons (10)
HPG: 10 tons
Lithium-Fusion Battery: 5,000 tons
Cargo: 994 tons
Weapons:
….12 ER PPCs (2/arc) 84 tons, 180 heat
….48 Pulse Small Lasers (4/arc), 48 tons, 48 heat
Heat Sinks: 0 tons (155 DHS)
Docking Hard Points: 8,000 tons (4 - special)
Docking Hard Points: 6,000 tons (6)

THE LAYOUT
The Conestoga-class Jumpship is the backbone of the Nomad "fleet." Each "squadron" of 1 to 6 jumpships always has at least one Conestoga (militia squadrons excepted). Often every ship in a squadron is a Conestoga.

These huge jumpships are barebones interstellar transports that do little more than carry ten dropships. They lack gravdecks in the usual sense and have few amenities despite their size. Their cargo capacity is negligible, crew facilities are meant to be short term, and their weaponry is intended to breakup dangerous debris, not scare off threats. Indeed, every squadron's important equipment (besides the KF drive) is in the attached dropships. Nonetheless, the Conestogas are viewed as the heart and soul of Nomad life. Without the Conestogas, the Nomads would not be nomadic.

The crew facilities are concentrated in the small bow section. The entire section is a carbon copy of a Nomad dropship crew section (with a limited industrial base, the Nomads are given to recycling designs rather than wasting tens of thousands of man hours designing a custom space frame for a new application). The bow facilities include the bridge, short-term crew quarters (in case the crew has to remain on station for days in an emergency), a zero-G cafeteria and attached lounge, and 8 small craft bays. There is also several emergency fusion generators in the area.

The remainder of the "bridge" tonnage (above and beyond that for a typical Nomad dropship) is in the engineering section at the stern, where the rest of the crew monitors sail deployment, engine operation, power generation, and so forth. This compact cylinder (100 meters in diameter and 100 meters long) houses the somewhat oversized stationkeeping drive (the drive is also used by 100000-ton, 50000-ton and 33000-ton Nomad dropships), which actually consists of 5 separate engines (for redundancy). Most of the drive is accessible from a shirtsleeve environment; only the nozzles are exposed to space. Above the drive (toward the bow) are the spherical liquid hydrogen reaction mass tanks. These theoretically only carry 1000 tons of reaction mass, but have the pump capacity and volume (35000 cubic meters) for 2500 tons. The tanks serve as ablative mass to protect the lithium-fusion battery from a catastrophic stationkeeping drive failure, or vice versa. The engineering section also houses 2 smallcraft bays for quick, direct delivery of spare parts.

Between the bow and stern sections of the ship is the 2500-meter long, 50-meter diameter needle of the KF drive. In fact, the drive core (with liquid hydrogen, vacuum, and liquid helium sheathes) is only 10 meters in diameter. It is surrounded (with a 20-meter gap) by a hexagonal latticework of the ship's frame, which mounts the millimeter thin plating of lamellor ferro-carbide armor. (Incidentally, at about 400000 square meters of surface area, the ship has 697.5 grams of armor per square meter. At a density half that of steel, 4g/cc, the thickness would be about 0.2mm, assuming no open gaps, foaming, etc.) The volume between the lattice and KF drive is open to space, except where an ugly network of piping, passage tubes (with surprisingly fast transport cars), and cargo bays have been installed. The smooth spine of the Conestoga glitters in flat, hexagonal facets some 5 meters across: the armor does not like to be shaped into curves, but it can take a fine polish (or glossy paint). Many Nomad ships favor an ivory or snow white paint with few adornments, but the trend has been to paint huge murals or scrollwork along the spine.

Despite the Spartan design of the Conestogas, they are not primitive vessels. Nomads have been space travelers for centuries. The jumpship is as large as the largest civilian ships of the Star League era. It is equipped with an HPG as compact as the most advanced in the Star League era. (Okay, truthfully, the Star League did make a 9-ton model, but it wasn't as user-friendly as the Nomad HPG). The drive is somewhat lighter than the norm for the Inner Sphere, comparable to the more efficient designs of the Star League era (though not as light as the Scout's). The lamellor ferro-carbide armor is certainly as fine as any armor plate (foil?) rolled by the Star League.

THE HEART OF THE JUMPSHIP
While it's arguable the Conestoga's KF drive is it's heart, the docking hard points are also very important definitions to the Conestoga's existence. There is a cluster of 6 toward the engineering section, with 3 on both the starboard and port sides (in opposing pairs). These are spaced a "mere" 250 meters apart (and 125m from the engineering section), enough to give the largest Nomad dropships room to dock. These are docked adjacent to the spinal cargo bays and have elaborate connections that allow dropships to pump all manner of gases and fluids (including liquid helium and hydrogen) to each other and the Conestoga. (The dropships often act as fuel tanks for the Conestoga, carrying tens of thousands of extra tons of reaction mass.) Viewing the Conestoga as a town, this is the industrial sector. The dropships docked here are typically freighters, miners, factory ships, or shipyards.

1475 meters beyond the engineering section is the first pair of rotating docking hard points; a second pair is 800 meters further toward the bow ("only" 225 meters behind the bow section, in fact). Whereas the "industrial" hardpoints are little more than fancy airlocks indented into the surface of the Conestoga's smooth spine, the "residential" hardpoints are mounted on 75-meter "donuts" encircling the spine. These "donuts" are the frames that enable the remaining four hard points to rotate, giving people on the dropships a sense of gravity. (This also doubles the hard points' mass.) Prior to rotation, the dropships are extended away from the docking hardpoint on lightweight trusses of (about) 1000 meters length (with elevator access tubes running up through the center of the truss). This takes approximately 15 minutes, as does retraction. Spinning up to 1G (104m/s rotation, or 1rpm) takes another 90 minutes, as does slowing down. Most the energy involved in spin-up is recovered on braking and stored in power cells for the next spin-up. Emergency braking is done by coordinated use of the dropships' attitude jets and can bring the spinning dropships to a halt in 1 minute.

The dropships paired on a "donut" must be similar in weight; safety regulations require the lighter to be no less than half the tonnage of the heavier. Since Nomads rarely carry foreign dropships and Nomad "residential" dropships are all approximately of the same tonnage (100000 tons), this is rarely an issue. To accommodate gross mass differences (like a 50000-ton dropship partnered to a 100000-ton dropship), the length of the telescoping trusses are varied; the heavier ship is kept closer to the spine. To adjust for smaller mass differences (and mass shifts within a dropship), sliding weights (water or liquid oxygen storage tanks) move along the trusses. The telescoping trusses also include vibration and sway damping software that uses the extension/retraction motors to keep rotation very even and smooth. It wouldn't do to have a dropship snap off the truss. (Which will snap long before the Conestoga's spine breaks.) The low thrust the stationkeeping drive normally operates at (less than 1/10000th of a G) does not interfere with the rotation of the dropships.

Since the typical residential dropship carries 5000 people and Nomad laws limit a Squadron to 6 ships, some Nomad Squadrons have replaced their "industrial" hardpoints with additional rotating hard points. This increases a Conestoga's passenger capacity to about 50000 instead of the usual 20000.

Nomad Dropships (exclusively spheroids) normally dock nose-first to the Conestoga. This is especially necessary for any dropship that will be spun for gravity. However, sometimes the Conestoga moves - 0.1G of acceleration will move the ship around a star system quite quickly. During these times, Nomad dropships reorient and use docking ports on their sides. These side docking ports are not capable of carrying a dropship through a jump.

LIFE ON A CONESTOGA
Most Nomad Squadrons operate in circuits through a defined territory of a half dozen to a dozen star systems. The circuit they operate through often encompasses hundreds of other stars - a 30 light-year jump can pass through a lot of stars. Within this territory are usually exceptionally choice resource spots that the Nomads mine - comets with extra-dense helpings of organics in addition to the usual volatiles, asteroids with excess germanium or platinum-group metals, etc. Visits usually last about two weeks, sometimes a month, as the product of robotic miners is gathered from an automated mining station.

Nomad philosophers (and the very productive Nomad economy supports a lot of deadbeats like philosophers) enjoy comparing the Nomad society to interstellar hunter-gatherers (or barbarian hordes taking tribute from peasant tributary villages). The go from star to star, plucking the ripe fruits of automated asteroid mines while enjoying the scenery and having little to do. (In fact, most Nomads work hard in the service sector: doctors, lawyers, marketing agents, sales clerks, restaurant owners, etc.)

Other Nomad squadrons prefer to live up to their name and wander on long journeys for scientific edification. Most Nomad trade with the Inner Sphere is in the form of the sale of scientific data (publishing rights, royalties, etc.), which is used to acquire hard currency. The little-known Nomad dollars have an abysmal exchange rate. The current record holding Nomad voyage went almost to the rim of the Milky Way galaxy, 30,000 light-years from Sol. This 20-year voyage may be surpassed by a 50-year mission to the Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy about 80,000 light-years from the Milky Way.

Upon arrival to a system (if a second jump off the lithium fusion battery is not planned), the Squadron (or Wing) deploys into a station-keeping format (usually a hexagon several tens of kilometers across and several thousand kilometers close to the local star than the jump point). The industrial facilities start up, food is harvested/slaughtered in the hydroponics and farm areas, and life continues normally. Small craft and cargo or miner dropships may be deployed to various stationary facilities in the star system. When it comes time to leave, the Squadron is usually ready to jump in 3 hours, 2 hours of which are used to de-spin the dropships and furl the solar sail. (Navigation calculations and scheduling will have been made well in advance.)

NOMAD IRONIES
Many Nomad ships rarely leave the approximate borders of Nomad space, a sphere about 3000 light-years in diameter beyond FWL space. Further, they rarely leave the trodden paths, the jump circuits preferred by Squadrons. Along these paths are automated HPG stations - a Nomad ship on the circuits has near-real time communication with the rest of the Nomad nation.

The Nomad Squadrons are not exactly independent, free-minded tribes wandering the universe. They have a "central" government, one they don't mind. (It asks little of them but raw materials and dollars, except in times of defense…this despite its extensive powers). Day-to-day operation of the central government is law enforcement and search and rescue operations. It also supports the militia and maintenance fleets.

Finally, the Nomads do have a stationary infrastructure. It's not necessary because each Squadron carries all the equipment it needs to be self-sufficient, but somethings are best left in place. The HPG network covering Nomad space is one example, as are all the mining facilities. Less than 1% of the Nomad population remains stationary, though. There are no fixed trading or recharge stations for people to stay out. The mining and HPG stations are automated just so a Nomad doesn't have to stay and tend the machinery.

A NOMAD SQUADRON & NOMAD ORGANIZATION
Legally, a Squadron is limited to six residential ships. It may possess up to 6 more for "utility" work. Utility work is usually something that would be too dangerous to bring residential ships to. For example, a Squadron on a scientific mission to a black hole may stop two jumps away and send a utility ship closer. Utility ships usually handle trade with Periphery and Inner Sphere states, too, and make jumps to pirate points near automated mining sites. Beyond 6 ships, the Squadron spawns a new Squadron that is duly registered with the central government. Each ship is owned by its residents or the Squadron; it is the equivalent of real estate to the Nomads, or shares in a corporation.

Beyond the Squadron is the Wing. The Wing consists of (up to) 6 Squadrons. The Wing amounts to local, county-level government for the Nomads (while the Squadron is basically an individual township). Some Wings travel in a single, large fleet (and have a perception of being a city, rather than a county), while many simply wander a given group of neighboring circuits.

Wings are not yet organized into anything larger; the whole of the Nomad nation is referred to as "the Fleet," and it currently consists of 14 Wings (with an average of 27 residential ships each). Because this number is expected to double within the next 30 years (something about close quarters on dropships helps the population growth rate…) and quadruple within the next 60 years, there is discussion about forming some intermediary grouping between Wings and the Fleet, either a "division," "section," or "Fleet". (In the last case, the central government would be promoted to "fleet command" or "the admiralty).

While ship crews have a military (naval) organization, the bulk of the Nomad population is no more organized than a typical groundside civilian population. The dangerous environment they live in demands some organization to handle emergencies, in which case there is some neighborhood and business-level emergency response team organization.

MAINTENANCE AND MILITIA SQUADRONS
The fixed infrastructure of the Nomad Fleet requires attention. The HPG stations require the most attention, usually in the form of restocked spare parts and fuel. Mining facilities can usually produce the spare parts the robots need and, in any case, are usually tended by the Squadron that owns the facility. To meet these maintenance needs, the central government operates 11 Squadrons of "utility" jumpships spread through Nomad space. The squadrons are usually further broken down into pairs to cover more area. A 5-year tour on a maintenance fleet tends to satisfy the wanderlust of Nomad youths, and looks good on the resume.

The militia squadrons are the least known part of Nomad society. The central government doesn't actually talk much about what sort of vessels it has in each militia Squadron (as opposed to allowing the media to perform documentaries on this or that cool new combatant). It's known that militia Squadrons have the same design of fighter that each Wing operates (and usually distributes to residential Squadrons), a 100-ton anti-shipping fighter. Whether a militia Squadron only has fighters and (perhaps) assault dropships or actual warships is uncertain - there's no reason the Nomad Fleet should be incapable of producing compact core warships. The Fleet was not hit by the losses of the Succession Wars. The militia Squadrons are known to have very, very capable marines for boarding actions with some form of light power armor. Most action the militia Squadrons see is against rioters ("mutinies") after their Wing's G-Ball team lost a game; pirates are a distant second and dealt with by the fighters. Nomads have no compunction against destroying jumpships, save that they've learned that doing so upsets the Inner Sphere.

NOMAD TECHNOLOGY & INDUSTRY
Unlike Inner Sphere spacecraft, Nomad dropships and jumpships have completely closed life support systems. Except for emergency rations, they devote little tonnage to food stores. Instead, they have hydroponics and farms (particularly on the residential dropships, though some Squadrons may have dedicated farm dropships). Variety is usually excellent (each of the four residential dropships a Conestoga carries has different crops and animals) and supplemented by trade with other Squadrons. If raw materials (water, organic chemicals, etc.) run low, a Squadron usually finds a handy comet and strips what it needs.

Robots are the backbone of Nomad mining and material processing. Everything from inhuman, vehicular mining drones to humanoid "versatile repair and labor mechs" can be found in Nomad mining facilities (which tend to have adjacent material processing facilities). Robots do a lot of scut maintenance work on jumpships, too, handling trivial tasks like replacing debris-damaged armor plates, patching solar sails, etc. Many Nomads have robots for housework, too.

Nomad industrial facilities are usually stuffed into a handful of dropships in a Squadron; a single Squadron is an independent industrial base to itself. However, while a Squadron can build anything it needs, it cannot build every at the same time. Nomad industrial facilities are derived from the versatile machine shops of long-range scout jumpships and start-up colonial facilities. This versatile desktop manufacturing system can produce just about anything, but at a trickle. There is specialization of sorts - a single machine cannot produce everything. There are machines optimized for etching electronic components, wiring circuit boards, machining metals, etc. Each can just be programmed to etch a lot of different electronic components, wire a lot of different circuit boards, carve metal into many different shapes, etc.

Of course, Nomad industry is slow compared to Star League large-scale industrial facilities, but not necessarily compared to 21st Century industry. Indeed, if it weren't for the cultural need to have each Squadron be completely independent, the number of industrial dropships would be far fewer, and each would be far more optimized. The inefficiencies of trying to get a few industrial decks to do so much actually throttles back Nomad industry to a level the economy can handle.

Because Nomad industrial facilities are limited to producing a few items at a time, Nomad technology tends to be efficient and recycle components into new designs. The 5 engines that make up a Conestoga's station-keeping drive find their way (in various numbers) into the dropships used by the Nomad Fleet. Only 4 smaller fusion engines are in production: a 25-rated engine, a 150-rated engine, a 300-rated engine, and a 400-rated engine (found with standard and XL shielding). Only two CPU chips are in production - every computer from common PDAs to robot brains to the KF controller supercomputers made of thousands of "blade" servers use just one of two CPUs. Air ducts are standard, pipes are standard, hydroponic trays are standard, and wiring is standard. Dropships, while apparently available in about a dozen varied forms, actually have only two crew modules available and use a standard engine module; the specialized equipment is built around those modules. This has its advantages. Within the Fleet, Nomad technicians are extremely adept at juryrigging repairs, and can work extremely quickly. For example, with a new set of drivers, a PDA can substitute for a shuttle's autopilot.

The topic of industry includes the Nomad shipbuilding capacity. Nomad Squadrons usually carry one or more mobile shipyard dropships. These dropships include an unpressurized shipyard with a (surprise) 500,000-ton capacity. The shipyard is a telescoping network of struts that can enfold any other dropship in the Nomad fleet, but can only grapple portions of a jumpship at a time. The main feature of the shipyard dropship is the KF drive core extruder. This is fed in germanium and titanium from carefully accumulated stockpiles (left at mining sites) and extrudes the titanic drive core needles into open space. Construction of new jumpships for a Squadron (or a new Squadron) usually begins years ahead of time, accumulating the thousands of tons of components on freighter dropships and directing the appropriate mines to accumulate titanium and germanium. Once the parts are brought together, a new Conestoga can be assembled in 6 months (if the KF core is extruded properly; repairs can add months, and recasting is a despised, 6-month chore). While the core is cast, the rest of the jumpship is brought together in large modules. When the core is completed, the modules are docked to the core and the new ship is put through its paces. Extra dropships are usually built after the jumpship is completed.

In essence, each Nomad Squadron is a self-reproducing organism, a cell that fissions every few decades into a copy of itself. Those philosophers like to talk about out-populating the Inner Sphere in a few centuries.

Nomad spacesuits are the finest known in Human Space and can keep a wearer alive for weeks, while being lightweight and comfortable. (Just don't think about how it keeps recycling the food supply, and the self-adjusting…connections…take some getting used to.) The modular lifesupport packs are easy to repair and can go years between routine maintenance.

The Nomads seem to have maintained or improved upon Star League medical science, particularly genetic engineering. This seems to have gone some distance toward adapting Nomads to long-term exposure to zero-G and vacuum exposures (rumors persist of Nomad space workers who do without spacesuits, just thermal protection, for up to 15 minutes in space). It's also rumored their jumpship navigators can calculate pirate point jumps manually, and calculate zenith/nadir jumps as fast as computers. They seem to have increased human longevity, too, which would partly account for their high growth rates.
Mike Miller, Materials Engineer

Disclaimer: Anything stated in this post is unofficial and non-canon unless directly quoted from a published book. Random internet musings of a BattleTech writer are not canon.
CrayModerator
03/09/04 04:07 PM
147.160.1.5

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Bump-di-bump. See the supporting Nomad "Mark IV" Protomech and Nomad Orbital Bus threads.
Mike Miller, Materials Engineer

Disclaimer: Anything stated in this post is unofficial and non-canon unless directly quoted from a published book. Random internet musings of a BattleTech writer are not canon.
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