Narrowboats

Engineering Specifications Fully Loaded

• þ: 1,600,000,000W
• Mass: 32,700,000kg (Typical)
• Length: 100m (Hull) + 10m (Bridge)
• Width: 10m
• Volume available for cargo: 4000m³
• Max Acceleration: 9.9m²
• Propulsion: 1 Mini Merlin Engine
• Special Feature: Can separate and even stack both hulls and bridges
• Crew: 4
• Ship Design Focus: The ship was built to haul mass through portals, they portage.

Engineering Specifications Empty

• Mass: 700,000kg
• Max Acceleration: 67m²

The name is taken from the canal boats of old and the spaceship version is identical in concept. Narrow boats are built as cargo haulers where width is restricted but length is a far less consideration.

The design of a narrowboat entirely comes from the primary limitation of their hauling route. Regular intrasystem haulers can be any shape but intersystem cargo haulers must go through a portal.

Portals are created as a cylindrical volume, where distance is the height and the entrance and exit are the flat circle sides. Every metre wider is multiplied by distance, which makes every metre wider energy expensive. Over any distance, the more narrow the portal, the more economical. Company ships that are partnered across both sides of the portal, just send through the cargo holds and keep the bridges on their side of the portal. With coupling, a company only needs one bridge each side with a local crew who has local knowledge and isn't away from home very much.

Also to be economical, standardisation was introduced and adopted by all the portal syndicates.

The standards are as follows:
1. Portals will be created with a diameter of 12m. All ships will be 'near half cylinders', made up of a curved 'keels' and flat 'decks'.
2. The keel will be curved to the diameter of a 11m circle.
3. The deck will be 10.5m across.
4. All bridges will be detachable from their holds.
5. Holds will be able to be coupled like train carriages, but without movement.
6. Bridges must share the same profile as the holds, although they maybe reorientated or raised when not traversing a portal.
7. The side that created the portal called 'portal side', the other side is 'starward side.
8. The portal side lead ship chooses the orientation. Generally it's portal South.
9. If starward side has syndicated ships waiting, portal side may only have half of the portal.

Portals shrink by about 1m a day so smaller companies tend to make smaller ships in order to take advantage of a portal once it has shrunk below usability of standard ships.

Writers note:
Had the Astry written the standard they would not have used portal and starward sides of a portal due to the confusion with port and starboard sides of a ship. The Astry uses Jump and Landing. Jump is normally also outbound but if someone else creates a portal to you, outbound might be landing.