[FT] Islamic Federation ships and Pournelle sensors

[quoted original message omitted]

> On Wed, 18 Aug 1999, Laserlight wrote:

> From: John Atkinson <johnmatkinson@yahoo.com>

otoh, since the cargo bays aren't tied to the drive assembly, you don't have
your expensive components (the ones in the tug) sitting in port for a
day or two while the ship is loaded - if trips between ports are on the
order of weeks and layovers are on the order of days, you have 10-15 %
of a freighter's working life being spent in dock. contrast this to the
tug-and-lighter setup, where your tugs can spend 100% of their uptime in
action. that difference is almost certainly enough to make tugs competitive.

it's interesting that this breaks down for longer trip times - if you
lay over for a few days at either end of a journey of a few months, the gain
from a tug is far less. thus, short-haul cargo transport may be handled
by
(small) tugs, whereas long-haul backbone traffic is handled by (larg)
conventional freighters.

tom