Hughes Modular Space Station

[snewsom2997]

So what do you guys think the theoretical limits are for adding a really large number of these together.

Say as an orbital ring to a large Asteroid like Ceres or Even something the Size of the Moon.

If this is how Star League Mega Engineering made O'neil Cylinders, certainly the limits are fairly large.

I suspect this was how the SL Exiles built that giant spacer community in Clan space, along with adding in Jumpships, Warships, etc.

Thoughts???

[SeeM]

I think only Department of Mega-Engineering, especially after successful terraforming of Mars, cound have enough funding for those projects. There is no limit of what can be built in space, it's more a convention of the fictional universe: how big we want to be? Clans have their own standard size space stations for building space vessels, such as Hephaestus Station, built by Wolf's Dragoons. A simple Alliance Station is more than enough to construct and refit most dropships.

Remember that it's a miniature Wargame, so ideally every space facility should be represented as a metal cast. :) I have really neat miniature of Alliance station and it size is already barely practical on the old Aerotech 1 hex map.

[snewsom2997]

I think only Department of Mega-Engineering, especially after successful terraforming of Mars, cound have enough funding for those projects. There is no limit of what can be built in space, it's more a convention of the fictional universe: how big we want to be? Clans have their own standard size space stations for building space vessels, such as Hephaestus Station, built by Wolf's Dragoons. A simple Alliance Station is more than enough to construct and refit most dropships.

Remember that it's a miniature Wargame, so ideally every space facility should be represented as a metal cast. :) I have really neat miniature of Alliance station and it size is already barely practical on the old Aerotech 1 hex map.

Hephaestus Station is hypothesized to be a Heavily modified Hughes Station, in InerstellerOps.

I am think more along the lines as not having the Station as a Mini, but having the station as a map, or on the case of an Orbital Ring or Oneil Cylinder several mapsheets, with multiple levels.

I was asking about the maximum number that can be glued together, since at some point you will reach a mass that will have its own gravity.

[marauder648]

This is a non-canon design but she's a big lass with each Axis being 2.5 million tons, she weighs in at 7.5 million which is of course well over the games 2.5 max, but by docking them together you can get round it.

[kato]

Theoretical limit?

Take the entirety of mankind in the BT universe and plan them as crew. That results in about 3,663 million stations combining a mass of 9,157 teratons. Now, installing a NCSS in each of those stations makes them able to send commands once to 87.9 billion SRCS-equipped stations every turn, thus extending that multifold. Provided the SRCS stations require a software update at least once every millenium - as the scoping span of Battletech - we can therefore deduce about 277.3 quintillion stations thus sharing in our network massing up to about 693 million exatons.

For plasticity, if we wanted to install this in the solar system we'd basically convert all planetary masses except Jupiter into such a station complex. Built as a Niven ring at 1 AU distance this ring would have - at a thickness of 1 km and the density of Earth - a width of 1,150 km, providing a population density upon it of 1.85 people per square kilometer area or about one-eighth what it is today on the planet.

[Daryk]

Doesn't sound like much of a limit to me...  ^-^

[cray]

Say as an orbital ring to a large Asteroid like Ceres or Even something the Size of the Moon.

There's a point where you don't really want to try using standard space station rules for space structures. I never expected the Ancients' giant habitats in the Terran system to be modeled by linked stations, for example, because structures like that could easily reach a few billion tons when they were just a couple of kilometers across. Soil, water, and air get heavy very quickly as you scale up the volume like that.

My suggestion would be just make a map and not worry about the tonnage. If you want some guns or fighter bays here there, install some sub-modules modeled as regular space stations.

[kato]

I never expected the Ancients' giant habitats in the Terran system to be modeled by linked stations, for example, because structures like that could easily reach a few billion tons when they were just a couple of kilometers across.

It's the cost that gets a bit astronomical rather than just the weight. Somewhere around 74 trillion C-Bills per square km for the above Niven ring.

For the scale of that number you could instead install a pony express jumproute system connecting Terra daily in direct point-to-point connections with every single star of the Milkyway - and its next five neighbors.