Military to civilian ship conversion

Dauntless wrote:another reason the hauptman armed crusie liners worked was that they were being used mainly for the Silesia run where the odds of meeting a pirate were such that people were willing to pay the extra to improve the chances of making it to their destination safely.

from the way i read the text ev this pirate's haven existed in Silesia and almost nowhere else so using the same cruise liners for travel to say the Andermani's would not have been cost effective.

Nitpick, but the armed cruise liners frequently traveled to the Andermani as a part of their routes. It usually went Manticore, Andermani space, Silesia, Medusa, Manticore

blackjack217 wrote:

Dauntless wrote:another reason the hauptman armed crusie liners worked was that they were being used mainly for the Silesia run where the odds of meeting a pirate were such that people were willing to pay the extra to improve the chances of making it to their destination safely.

from the way i read the text ev this pirate's haven existed in Silesia and almost nowhere else so using the same cruise liners for travel to say the Andermani's would not have been cost effective.

Nitpick, but the armed cruise liners frequently traveled to the Andermani as a part of their routes. It usually went Manticore, Andermani space, Silesia, Medusa, Manticore

Yes, the Triangle Route mentioned in Honor Among Enemies (chapter 7). And it is a nitpick because if the cruise liners didn't go to Silesia, they would have no reason to be armed.

WELP, here we go with the "can't" crapola again...

RedBaron wrote:WELP, here we go with the "can't" crapola again...

Not can't, just why would anyone bother?

Weird Harold wrote:

RedBaron wrote:WELP, here we go with the "can't" crapola again...

Not can't, just why would anyone bother?

Yep. You could convert an Iowa-class BB to a container ship, or a container ship to a battleship. But it'd be more expensive and slower than building what you want from scratch - even ignoring the inherent compromises in starting from so drastically different a starting point from your desired end.

You could even convert and Iowa-class to a modern guided missile anti-air ship. But except for potentially holding more missiles it wouldn't get you much beyond building one more Arleigh Burke - and you'd have to spend time pulling the heavy guns, cutting away deck and internal armor (and possibly superstructure) to make room for VLS cells.
And you end up with a much more expensive, slightly slower, manpower intensive fuel hog of a ship that doesn't do much for you. And you had to tie up a bigger construction dock for a lengthy time to do the conversion. Again, it's possible but why?

RedBaron wrote:WELP, here we go with the "can't" crapola again...

Hey, if you have any good justification for why the thing Skimper described in his OP should be done, we'd like to hear it.

The E wrote:

RedBaron wrote:WELP, here we go with the "can't" crapola again...

Hey, if you have any good justification for why the thing Skimper described in his OP should be done, we'd like to hear it.

If I were head of Buplan—is it?—I'd give the go ahead for at least one. Done as a side project as a special kind of experience for the technicians and workers from which they may be able to learn other unseen methods and alternatives from the "exposure" that may prove invaluable. In hopes of cultivating many would be Paul Tankersleys who somehow knew of other ways to skin Honor's cat. And by cat I mean her problem of repairing Fearless. Without Tankersley's skills in that situation, how much time would it have set Honor back? I'll just assume that Tankersley acquired those rare skills working on a side project just like this one.

By the way, I wonder if these workers and technicians can acquire one of these captured ships headed for the breakers and refit it to their own personal tastes on their own time with help from friends, just to scratch an itch of their own design which may later be incorporated -- a personal testbed of sorts.

Necessity really is the surrogate mother of invention. And curiosity is the accomplice.

cthia wrote: By the way, I wonder if these workers and technicians can acquire one of these captured ships headed for the breakers and refit it to their own personal tastes on their own time with help from friends, just to scratch an itch of their own design which may later be incorporated -- a personal testbed of sorts.

Unfortunately, Honorverse warships are not old, broken down cars that a couple mechanics can work on in their spare time.

I'm curious, does the US Navy do this? Hand old Cruisers, Destroyers or Carriers off to a bunch of weekend mechanics to do with as they please?

The E wrote:

cthia wrote: By the way, I wonder if these workers and technicians can acquire one of these captured ships headed for the breakers and refit it to their own personal tastes on their own time with help from friends, just to scratch an itch of their own design which may later be incorporated -- a personal testbed of sorts.

Unfortunately, Honorverse warships are not old, broken down cars that a couple mechanics can work on in their spare time.

I'm curious, does the US Navy do this? Hand old Cruisers, Destroyers or Carriers off to a bunch of weekend mechanics to do with as they please?

I don't know.

Neither do I think that the US Navy has or will ever have hundreds of captured warships that they don't know what the hell to do with either.

Nor do they have the need to have technicians and workers with mad mad skills, above and beyond the call of duty, either.

I'd imagine that the Navy of the Honorverse is quite a bit different in many ways.

*shrugs*

cthia wrote:If I were head of Buplan—is it?—I'd give the go ahead for at least one. Done as a side project as a special kind of experience for the technicians and workers from which they may be able to learn other unseen methods and alternatives from the "exposure" that may prove invaluable. In hopes of cultivating many would be Paul Tankersleys who somehow knew of other ways to skin Honor's cat. And by cat I mean her problem of repairing Fearless. Without Tankersley's skills in that situation, how much time would it have set Honor back? I'll just assume that Tankersley acquired those rare skills working on a side project just like this one.

By the way, I wonder if these workers and technicians can acquire one of these captured ships headed for the breakers and refit it to their own personal tastes on their own time with help from friends, just to scratch an itch of their own design which may later be incorporated -- a personal testbed of sorts.

Necessity really is the surrogate mother of invention. And curiosity is the accomplice.

BuShips. And they already experienced a lot of pain trying to refit Andurils normally before the war and abandoned the Gryphon MDM project after doing a handful.

Paul solved the Nike's fusion reactor problem by cutting through the non-armoured parts of the ship. The problem is SDs are literally mountains of armour-grade metal. There are the nearly solid hammerheads, the broadside armour, the ventral and dorsal armour and inside all that, more internal armour protecting all the crucial components. On a single SD, the armour alone masses as much as several entire battlecruisers.

Frankly, I'm not convinced it'd be possible to find even a million tons of cargo space in a Scientist without carving all that armour out. The effort involved in that is probably equivalent to building a dozen enormous merchantmen hulls which can then be operated by 15-30 crew each.

And why bother, what's the demand? The Manticoran Merchant Marine must be desperate for work. They're currently cut off from the Solarian League - literally thousands of freighters of all kinds are available to the GA, probably willing to take short-term contracts which only cover operating costs. Not only that, the next phase of Laocoon involves active commerce raiding, so they'll be capturing even more freighters.

By all means use the ships for new technicians to mangle during their schooling phase. "Yeeeah, that's how not to do it. Now watch this." "Sorry, chief. I'll remember that." But they won't be spaceworthy after that kind of use, will they?