Newcomer / Intro Cargo Specific Relative Size.

[Kr4ftw3rk]

Don't know if this has been asked before and since I couldn't come up with a short enough search term for the search function to help.... i'll ask it here anyways.

Are beer, algae, grain, food cartridges etc. transported as bulk items thereby taking up the same amount of space as ... let's say... one crop harvester, or power generator or whatever large piece of equipment?

Two slaves shouldn't take up the same amount of space (cargo capacity) as say two crop harvesters. One bulk item of 'basic meds' must be very large to equal the capacity of say... one 'land enrichment system'.

What am I missing here?

 

[Krepose Gavayne]

It isn't space that matters, it is mass. As such, everything is sold in tonnes. If you could walk around your cargo hold I dare say you'd find quite a bit of empty space for some of the commodities.

 

[Dommarraa]

ninjad..

 

[Kr4ftw3rk]

It isn't space that matters, it is mass. As such, everything is sold in tonnes. If you could walk around your cargo hold I dare say you'd find quite a bit of empty space for some of the commodities.

Space does matter because volume needs to be taken into account. If everything is bought and sold in tonnes then the volume of one item will not be equal to that of a different item and will take up a different amount of space. A tonne of food cartridges will not have the same volume as one tonne of power generators.

It would seem that, logically, one food cartridge would be much smaller than one power generator... therefore it would take more food cartridges to equal one tonne than it would power generators to equal one tonne. Therefore the one tonne of bulk packaged food cartridges would have more volume than bulk packaged power generators seeing that one power generator would weigh more than one food cartridge.

My point is, I should be able to transport more of one item because one tonne of one item could be less in volume than the other and therfore take up less space. The cargo capacity should only be relative to the volume of the items being transported, especially if items are subject specifically to being bought and sold in tonnes per unit. Oh well... I'm probably over-thinking this... so... carry on Cmdrs....

 

[Skip Intro]

In the old Traveller game, which has more than a passing influence on Elite, IMHO, Ton has two meanings:

1.A unit of volume equal to 13.5 cubic meters. It is derived from the volume of a ton (mass) of liquid hydrogen, the fuel used by starships.

2.Ton (or tonne) is a unit of mass equal to one thousand kilograms.

Where it is important to distinguish between the two the former is refered to as a dTon (for displacement Ton) and the latter as an sTon (for standard Ton).

Is it possible that the ton cannisters are based on dTon, rather than sTon?