This boat is supposed to dock with the central hub of 400ton Lab Ship / Ring Laboratory. The Boquist Class Research Pinnace differs from the ordinary Pinnace in it’s tubular shape. It is basically a shortened Cutter with a fixed interior configuration. The 40ton craft show here is designed to carry up to 24 Passengers plus 9tons of cargo in its hold. The cargo bay occupies most of the boat’s height in front of the engineering section, which can carry one or two 4-Seater Air/Rafts (e.g. a Hurricane enclosed Air/Raft). Or one such vehicle plus some Equipment and supplys.

The Research Pinnace serves a multitude of roles including but not limited to transferring Passengers and scientific personnel between the Lab Ship and orbital or ground destinations, performing supply and service runs to stationary sensor installations as well as various pieces of research equipment left on interesting sites or satellites as well as signalling and marker buoys deployed in a planetary or stellar orbit.

There are specialised equipment containers specifically designed for use in Aircraft or tubular spacecraft hulls, which have a bevelled short side normally facing the outer wall of the hold and a straight short side facing the inside of the hold.

I actually never planned to do a lab ship, but I like the idea of building it just to complement the Research Pinnace.

Has anyone ever calculated the Labship stats when docking a modular cutter instead of the Pinnace? Will it suffer dramatically in Performance (we might argue about the term “performance” but we know she’s no racing ship)? Well maybe I should just go for it myself…

Hope you like.

PS: Though I have a half finished Donosev on my workspace, I quite enjoy modeling tubular small craft atm, so a 20ton Launch and 30ton Ship’s Boat are possibly next in line.

Here’s a tiny preview to what I have in mind (click on image to jump to article)…

Stats and Info: Boquist Class 40ton Research Pinnace
Variants

Lundquist Class 40ton Modular Pinnace. This is basically the same Ship but configured to operate like the modular cutter. Pinace modules however are 20 ton modules.

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Small Craft – Boquist Class 40ton Research Pinnace
Category: 3D-Model,Pinnace,Space Craft,Traveller,WIP — admin @ 19:07
Apr
19 2013

Ever since I modeled my variant of the Horronon ATV the idea of doing a matching ATV-Module for the cutter was planted inside my head. So I finally started to tackle that darn thing. If you ever wanted to know why only one 10ton ATV fit into a 30ton Module: here is the answer, rendered and clear.

Above: A bold orange and red scheme that could belong to a deep space salvaging or SAR service.

The green scheme might fit to a local hauler or passenger service providing regular scheduled in system freight or ferry service where the craft ciuld be seen on a ground port regularily.

Actually this blue on ligt bluish grey reminds me of Scandinavia. The trucks from up there have these pastel colors sometimes. Translating to Traveller this could be the scheme of a freight service on the fringes of settled space.

The 50ton Modular Cutter and the 40ton Research Pinnace share a 6m diameter hull share same front section to. These cockpits have four windows out front. The 30ton Ship’s Boat and 20ton Launch also share the same hull and front section, but a 5m diameter hull. As visible at the cockpit window configuration these craft have three windows out front.

Setting out a module and ATV in 8 easy steps

I thought about a mechanism to deploy the Horronon ATV and stick as close to the vehicles description as possible. Accoding to CT Adventure 3 the ATV featured collapsible tracks. For this reason rolling onto the module was ot of the question.

So i came up with the heavy duty hoist mechanism attached to a rotating boom. The Horronon gets parked beneath the rotated boom under the module. The crew attaches the lifting hooks and lifts the Horronon, so the tracks can savely collapse. After rotating about 90 degrees, the Horronnon is lifted so that its rear gate can be opened to the cutters front compartment and that the tracks clear the path of the telescopic or clamshell gates of the module. After closing the gates the module is ready for pickup. Depending on the vehicle the hoist mechanism can mount clamping adapters that safely secure the vehicle during transport.

Above (1): The 50ton Modular Cutter as it would aproach with a module

Above (2): Touched down with main langing gear extracted

Above (3): The modules supporting landing gear will be extracted prior to the actual setout.

The Pilot might opt to land with both the cutter’s and module’s gear extracted.

Above (4): After unclamping the module (autoreleasing support circuity inside overhead spine of the cutter), the cutter lifts straight up from the module and turns onto its new course only when clear from the module.

 

Above (5): The Modular Cutter leaves the module and heads of again to fetch the next or to park away in the distance…

Setting out the ATV above (6): The open grounded ATV-Module

Setting out the ATV above (7): The open Module, with ATV rotated 90 degrees but tracks still collapsed

 

Setting out the ATV above (8): ATV hoist mechanism rotated by 90 degrees, ATV tracks deployed

 

Ready for exploration or action: ATV trundling away from the empty module

This is a work in progress, so changes are very likely.

I might go ahead and design a few variants of these small craft using these rules on CotI:

http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/showthread.php?t=29680&highlight=cutter

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Small Craft – 50ton Modular Cutter and ATV-Module
Category: 3D-Model,Cutter,Ground Vehicle,Space Craft,Traveller,Vehicle,WIP — admin @ 02:18
Apr
15 2013