On 09Jan2021 1309, Kurt Feltenberger wrote:
> I'm not sure how much faith I'm willing to put into this as something
> even being "spitball accurate".  A Nimitz class CVN comes out to about
> 24.5kdtons, and when you compare that to existing known sizes of
> Traveller shisp, it seems a bit...weak.
Given her dimensions of about 333m long (overall length) x 77m beam
(again, overall) x (11 + 17)m height (draught plus height to flight
deck), her block volume is 666,666 m^3, or ~47,620 DTons. However, her
underwater volume is only ~100,000 m^3, and her above-water volume isn't
that of a block, so we know her volume is somewhat lower than that. Even
if we assume a very chunky co-efficient of 0.9 for the above-water hull,
it comes in at ~305,000 m^3. Add that to the submerged portion and we
get a total volume of ~405,000 m^3, or ~29,000 DTons. So for her mass,
Nimitz is a big ship, but within the 1/3rd to 1/5th range I gave.

Remember that a surface ship's crew do not need full life support, and
thus take up much less space than is assumed in Traveller. Thus Nimitz'
complement of ~6,000 do not need three thousand staterooms (at 6,000
DTons just for them), or 20% of her volume. Space-Nimitz won't be
carrying some of her sub-craft complement sitting on her flight deck
much of the time either, so all storage, working, and deployment volume
has to be accounted for. As a starship in the Traveller universe any
such ship would need a lot of volume devoted to jump fuel, too - the
usual standard for Third Imperium navy fleet ships in the classic era is
jump-4, requiring 40% of the volume be fuel (plus a bit more for the
reactor). Thus Space-Nimitz simply has to be much bigger than USS Nimitz
is. At least she needs little to no space be put aside for her
sub-crafts fuel.

By the way, most of the aircraft would count as ~50 DTons, with some
being smaller (the helicopters), and some larger (such as the Hawkeyes).
This translates well to using 50 DTon fighters in Traveller, and implies
hanger space for ~4,500 DTons of combat sub-craft. In High Guard this
requires a little under 6,000 DTons. You'd want at least one, ideally
two launch tubes at 1,250 DTons each.

I think you could make a credible attempt at a 30,000 DTon
interpretation of Nimitz.

--

Rupert Boleyn <xxxxxx@gmail.com>