length of jumpships & warships

[Hairbear541]

i'm a little frustrated because some of the posts have omitted putting the length of their creations . for me to fully get a mental image of just how big something is i need at least one diminsion. so the question can one use the gross tonnage to get a rough estimate on length .


mispellings may be many and often !

[Tai Dai Cultist]

I'd check out the BattleTech wiki.  The info you're looking for is right at your fingertips!

For example, the entry on the Monolith class JumpShip tells you the length is 750 meters.

[guardiandashi]

In the original descriptions they were all around 500m to 1.5km and generally skinny cylinders

Its why there are jokes about phallic symbols

[Tyler Jorgensson]

The Leviathan is 1,700 meters and is one of the largest things in the 'verse.

[Vition2]

so the question can one use the gross tonnage to get a rough estimate on length .

Yes and no.

Yes, in a general way.  Larger tonnages tend to be longer, though this is not always the case.  Like Tyler Jorgensson said, the Leviathan is 1700 meters long and masses 2,400,000 tons.  The Newgrange masses 100,000 tons less than a Leviathan but is nearly a full kilometer longer. 

What it often ends up coming down to is usage and complement.  Similarly massed units with more dropships tend to be longer.  Civilian tech tends to be longer - jumpships tend to be longer than equivalently massed warships.  And yardships tend to be much larger than their mass ought to indicate.

[Daemion]

What's funny is that you could potentially make a BT map out of a lot of dropships, or a linked two maps.

[guardiandashi]

What's funny is that you could potentially make a BT map out of a lot of dropships, or a linked two maps.

not so much dropships but you could definitely simulate a warships hull with 2-3 maps typically

[idea weenie]

The other detail is figuring out the length, guessing the width/height based on the picture, then estimating volume.  From there, divide the mass by the volume, and see how it compares to balsa wood (.16).

As an example, the Leviathan is 1700 meters long, and masses 2.4 megatons.  I'm estimating it to be 5:1:1 for length:width:height (based on this image).  So 1700 meters long, and ~340 meters high and wide.  Assuming that is a cylinder, that gives me a circular base with a radius of 170 meters, for an area of 90,792 square meters, multiplied by a height of 1700 meters gives a volume of ~154 million cubic meters.  2.4 megatons divided by that volume is .0155 tons per cubic meter.

So assuming my math is right, the Leviathan 2 is ~1/10 the density of balsa wood.

[Daemion]

not so much dropships but you could definitely simulate a warships hull with 2-3 maps typically

Whoops.
I meant JumpShips.

[Sir Chaos]

The other detail is figuring out the length, guessing the width/height based on the picture, then estimating volume.  From there, divide the mass by the volume, and see how it compares to balsa wood (.16).

As an example, the Leviathan is 1700 meters long, and masses 2.4 megatons.  I'm estimating it to be 5:1:1 for length:width:height (based on this image).  So 1700 meters long, and ~340 meters high and wide.  Assuming that is a cylinder, that gives me a circular base with a radius of 170 meters, for an area of 90,792 square meters, multiplied by a height of 1700 meters gives a volume of ~154 million cubic meters.  2.4 megatons divided by that volume is .0155 tons per cubic meter.

So assuming my math is right, the Leviathan 2 is ~1/10 the density of balsa wood.

A lot of it is going to be empty space - but not enough to justify those dimensions.

(Not that BT is the worst offender here - in the Honor Harrington universe, with the masses and original dimensions given, the ships were, in the words of the author, "not quite as dense as cigar smoke")

I figure that a density around 0.25 tons per cubic meter is probably the lower bound of what is reasonable - again given that there´s a lot of empty space that weight barely anything, and that modern BT universe construction materials should be less dense than steel (which is around 8 tons per cubic meter).

That´d give the Leviathan, at 2.4 million tons, 9.6 million cubic meters. Assuming it is cylindrical, and five times as long as it is wide, it´d be about 425 meters long and 85 meters wide.

[ANS Kamas P81]

I could see something light like that.  A modern CVN is pretty cramped at 700kg/m^3 density, so that'll give you a baseline to consider when you're working with numbers.  Half that, or maybe say 333kg/m^3, gives you a rough 25% increase in 'empty space' in all 3 dimensions compared to a CVN's cramped nature.

I think.

[Sir Chaos]

I could see something light like that.  A modern CVN is pretty cramped at 700kg/m^3 density, so that'll give you a baseline to consider when you're working with numbers.  Half that, or maybe say 333kg/m^3, gives you a rough 25% increase in 'empty space' in all 3 dimensions compared to a CVN's cramped nature.

I think.

Whereas 250 kg/m^3 gives you a 40% increase of space in all dimensions.

I think.

Actually, I think I may have made a mistake and confused radius and diameter, so the dimensions of the 250 kg/m^3 warship would be 850 meters long and 170 meters wide.

At CVN density (and crampedness), the 2.4 million ton ship would be 600 meters long and 120 meters wide, then. For comparison, an actual CVN at 100,000 tons is (VERY approximately) a half-cylinder 320 meters long and 80 meters wide at the flight deck.

[I am Belch II]

The weights of Battletech Warships are way light compared to what the ships should mass in at. But that's the problem with the Aerotech designs.