One size fits all

[Jessica Med-Beq]

After the prototypes of both items that required a Sasori Joshu were successfully built, Ringovinda StarYards was back at the Sasori Research facilities for more business. This time around, however, since Sasori Research needed more capacity to service capital ships than was available, Charzon was looking at selling something to them rather than to buy from Sasori. What Charzon was here for today was an adjustable dock, which could be fitted so as to fit the ship being built or serviced, within some rather broad limitations that very few shipwrights needed to circumvent.

"I am Charzon Loulan, CEO of Ringovinda StarYards. After successful trial runs on the Zamboni line, which included both a sanitation ship and a main battle tank that could clean the ground underneath it of mines, both making use of the Sasori Joshu, it has come to my attention that you may be expending capital ship production lines, or maintenance thereof"

[member="Matsu Ike"]

 

[Matsu Ike]

[member="Charzon Loulan"]

Someone was here... someone her daughter had met and given records for as the jedi master sat there in her small office. There wasn't much need for luxury when you were a jedi so a desk and projectors for the various projects she had going on such as their work to put the messive and impressive dar'yaim cannon into mass production. Few rifles in the galaxy could boast its range and stopping power let alone its new lightweight thanks to some clever work around. Add onto that the inertial dampener and it was easier then ever to fire without breaking your body as she spoke. "Send her in."

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"Greetings. It has come to my attention that you're in the market for expanding your ship production and maintenance capabilities in the capital ship range, and I have just what you need if you feel like you should enter the market for anything frigate-sized and above, or expand the line for such products"

The Sacul-class adjustable drydock is capable of building capital ships up to 900 meters wide or high of virtually any length, even though a ship that was Star Destroyer-sized or above would not fit inside the drydock in its entirety, even if the other two dimensions did not exceed 900 meters. Charzon wondered how much expansion was to be forecast as far as capital ship construction/maintenance is concerned. And there was the matter of either transporting the drydock from Ringo Vinda in an hyperspace-capable tug or to have it built on-site, which make it different as far as cost is concerned.

"You probably understand that an adjustable drydock the size of a Sacul is a large investment. I just want to make sure we are on the same page, so I may be wondering how do you see the future as far as capital ship construction is concerned"

[member="Matsu Ike"]

 

[Matsu Ike]

[member="Charzon Loulan"]

Matsu looked at the proposal as she was sitting there with some attention on a few of the things. Her fingers tapping for a moment though while she brought up some of her own screens. They had more then enough from Aurodium mines and Phenex had massive shipyards they could work with and Sakura station hosted a drydock designed to construct what they needed with its massive self sustaining manufacturing processes. The jedi master though looked at the screen. "Well your sales pitch could use a little work my dear." She was remaining there but left it opened to her to come. "But I am always up for working out new deals."

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

Charzon understands that sometimes having the right sales pitch can elude you. Now that she recovered, she seems more comfortable talking about how these retractable docks were different from the old ones then in use. When you need to fly anything through hyperspace, it would be advantageous to have as small a volume (or cross-section) as possible, so as not to suffer too great a penalty of speed.

"You see, the old generation of adjustable drydocks are simply liabilities when you move them into hyperspace. The old generation could have braces fit a ship but the process of extending or retracting them took days, or hours in an emergency but then it wouldn't be usable for weeks after the dock arrived to its destination, plus a few more weeks to carry out repairs on the hulk contained inside, if there was a ship inside the drydock. But that one could be adjusted in seconds, and still remain functional once it has extended or retracted to its desired configuration, so that you can have a ship clear the dock in a pinch. Or to fit a ship in it so that the drydock could be carried into hyperspace with the least penalty possible. Plus Phenex also have a throng of clients for capital ships outside of Sasori Research, too... and you can never tell when the next order would be the same as the last one. Also, in an emergency, you may need to move a drydock from a system to another. I can also tell that both Phenex and Sasori Research have their hands full of orders for ships"

[member="Matsu Ike"]

 

[Matsu Ike]

[member="Charzon Loulan"]

She was getting a little better at the sales pitch but at the same time she seemed to treat it like Phenex was something different. She owned Phenex and another large shipbuilder. It was well known they were constructing a massive series of drydocks that was nearly thirty kilometers of space plus more given how large it was height wise. They could construct something like twenty large destroyers almost twice the size of the imperial class twos. Thanks to Domino's help with it she even had facilities to develop massive ships like the Reason and originally the Shepard or any number of other ships that had been training vessels for the Republic. "Oh I am more then certain the Phenex drydocks can work with many of the things we need."

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"I apologize for having wasted your time today. Perhaps if I needed to buy something from you, like additional Sasori Joshu units, I would come back at a later date. It appears that my assistants made a miscalculation that I did not correct. Now, if you may excuse me, I will simply go back from whence I came."

She calmly admitted failure but she still held her head high; she came to the grim realization that an adjustable, hyperspace-capable drydock may not be what they needed after all. She was probably better at designing ships and spaceborne facilities than at selling said facilities. But she knew that sales was just one part of their business. She drew up plans for what would be codenamed Ultima, which was a freighter that could carry more than a million tons of freight in one go, while still being sub-kilometer.

 

[Matsu Ike]

[member="Charzon Loulan"]

Matsu looked at her while she was there and spoke sitting back a little. "Is that all?" Her eyebrow raised up delicately for a moment. "Your company must have other things? Must be wanting to get funding for more ambitious products? Just because you couldn't sell one thing doesn't mean you have to give up trying. This company was in a position much like yours and it found a place it needed while buying out and absorbing other companies. A way to continue to expand our efforts forward and branch out. It allows for if one thing we offer is not what the person wants or needs then we can offer ten other products they might like. So come tell me about what else you have, what you want to make with the right amount of funding."

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"Oh, but perhaps you could procure us some medical equipment because we now have 20 Tofolk-class hospital ships on order. We already have a supply of IM-6 medical droids, just wanting to make sure that you have medical equipment for sale and that some of it can be used on a corvette-size ship without draining too much power. But also we are in the planning stages of Operation Noah's Ark, which requires what we codenamed a Maximum Battleship-sized ship and the only operator we trust for that ship is trusted primarily because they can evacuate a million refugees from the One Sith in one go if they could get their hands on one such ship, and they needed medical facilities onboard"

Even though there are rumors that the client may not even be using it for medical purposes, but more like Star Tours: transporting passengers in and out of One Sith space. The main clients of Ringovinda StarYards are in the business of extracting as many refugees as possible, for a fee. Ringo Vinda's position at a distance from One Sth is beneficial for the success of the operation. But there may be multiple meanings to the term Maximum Battleship as far as starship size is concerned, but there are four sizes that match possible definitions: they were either 1000m, 1700m, 2400m or 3000m in their largest dimension. But that "mystery operator" could cram a million passengers onboard a 1000m-long ship, let alone a 3000m one...

[member="Matsu Ike"]

 

[Matsu Ike]

[member="Charzon Loulan"]

"A million people transported on a ship is a very tall order, cramming them into places and then needing to make sure they don't starve or lack for water and facilities." SHe had worked on large ships and knew how many they could face but the more ambitious for passengers the more you needed storage and techs to fix all of the system. She had worked with some others like Domino to make some of the larger things with Phenex. "We do though have some very nice medical supplies, our hospital ships serve a purpose around the galaxy and we are working on ways to work it with module compartments that can be used to build it up before we encase it in a shell."

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"Let's say that prospective mystery operators know that, despite the need for the necessities, such as medical facilities, they often carry a lot more passengers than what is listed in the Factory, knowing that the one thing they cannot circumvent is volume. Once Operation Noah's Ark is over, that operator will operate the ship as a luxury liner, taking the passengers to a cruise around the galaxy with stops at ports of call, probably for about 50 to 75,000 passengers at a time. The Factory will probably allow the ship to be rated for a quarter of a million passengers at most; even so that ship will have to be almost a kilometer long. And yes, multiple medical stations are important. What's also important is life support systems to accommodate tens of thousands of people at once"

They have yet to secure the funding for later stages of Operation Noah's Ark but several factions are interested in a stake in Operation Noah's Ark. Veradune, JanFathal and Ringo Vinda have all expressed interest to be a reception point for Operation Noah's Ark, although JanFathal may be a little risky because it is the closest of the possible destinations from One Sith space. What is known is that the mystery operator already commissioned a preliminary feasibility study for such a massive ship. They can probably accept the ship is going to be slow, lumbering and have maneuverability that will make Star Destroyers look like Twi'lek acrobats.

[member="Matsu Ike"]

 

[Matsu Ike]

[member="Charzon Loulan"]

She stayed there and listened to it but there was still large things of technical information in such a massive endeavor. She had seen and worked with large ships for transporting. The massive transports the one sith had made for delivering armies to planets. Hell it carried large amounts of sithspawn as needed. "It sounds impressive but such an endeavor is harder then speaking. Sasori has made in the past large ships and we are currently making stations that will be for taking hundred's of thousands with colonization efforts. We've developed the technology to sustain it while housing people over several years."

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

That mystery operator mystified Factory Judges on multiple occasions. They fit 525 seats (60 in cabins, 465 in bucket seats) in the upper deck of an AT-AT barge, while keeping the lower deck for two AT-ATs, legs folded, whereas the FJs only allowed for 160 seats. With them, the more volume they have, the more room they have to mystify FJs. But regardless of how they could circumvent the Factory specifications, which most operators don't do, if the FJs granted to a shipwright X amount of consumables for Y years, on the condition of having Z passengers onboard, the mystery operator will probably have to deal with the fact that consumables are not going to last Y.

"Perhaps I have misjudged the solutions required because your solutions for large-scale life support generaly assume that they are to be used under normal conditions. But how helpful would a few starship-grade Sasori Joshus be to deal with the consumables problem? Would it allow consumables to be recycled and reused? On a ship rated for 2 years of consumables, if the mystery operator was to load 4-5x as many passengers it was designed for, the consumables will only last about 5-6 months instead..."

She knew that Sasori Joshus could clear space of navigational hazards, and dirt on a road. But she only had a faint indication that they could be used in dealing with the consumables aspect of life support, and even consumables weren't the end of the story as far as life support is concerned. She had to oversee the whole enterprise of running Ringovinda Shipyards and, even though starship design was her favorite part of the job, it was far from the only one. And it's a shame that everyone on the life support team refused to go with her in the first place, and the new hire was brought in for the landing gears. Rumor has it that the landing gear lady is a Force-sensitive that failed to make it to the Padawan stage...

[member="Matsu Ike"]

 

[Matsu Ike]

[member="Charzon Loulan"]

Looking at her with a look on her face while she raised an eyebrow going over some of the larger works and bringing it up. "Yes the converter can handle it, the upgrades we have used on it allow for it to recycle air to clean and scrub it for continued use and it can as long as it has some base materials and energy." She kept the information up showing the changes they had done with it as she clasped her hands working on some of the larger things. "We've been working though on more and our ships are not able to hold the capacity you want but they will easily be able to feed far more then what you want. It just takes time and that is why we've worked to create easily produced foodstuffs to offset what we need. Water recycling and cleaning for it all and production can happen much easier."

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"Water and air cleaning are the primary purposes we might have for a Sasori Joshu. For food, we have the livestock module, which our life support team would also like to extend to plant-based foodstuffs, such as cereal, fruit and vegetables, even though it was originally designed for meat and seafood. It would then make sense to place livestock modules close but not quite adjacent to medical stations although I understand that configuring such a behemoth from passenger to cargo and vice-versa might take a lot longer than on a smaller ship"

Probably that it was sensible to proceed that way to reduce the on-board storage requirements for the pay-space areas of the ship, and to have multiple units of these items. But any of these implements also require some organic matter, nutrients and water to operate as well. The main question being: how many tons of these items were necessary to feed a million people onboard while these implements were operating all day, every day, so long as there are no power issues or structural integrity issues? Knowing how much food could a livestock module produce in that span would be helpful, and also help in knowing how many livestock modules would need to be fitted onboard.

"But how much help is the Force Fertilizer with operating onboard greenhouses?"

Said greenhouses would probably be best left with transparisteel panels on the topmost deck. At the same time, using onboard greenhouses the same way as they would a livestock module, so as to age-accelerate harvests and provide starship occupants with a daily supply of food, was not a bad idea.

[member="Matsu Ike"]

 

[Matsu Ike]

[member="Charzon Loulan"]

She was looking at her with raised eyebrows thinking about it. "For growing it creates larger yields of what is grown, larger products themselves and it uses force energies to enhance the growth itself to make it move faster." She had some other ideas and some bigger things but growing enough foodstufs would be tricky at first. "We've created food stufs to fill peoples stomachs until the first crops and cloned meats can be taken from the modules. Water recycling and producion is another thing as making the water can be done easily with each modules allowing some to he siphined for the rest of the ship and all of it recycled."

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"A normal-height deck may be sufficient when dealing with cereal and vegetable crops, but some fruit crops, such as apples, peaches, lemons and oranges, which grow on trees rather than on plants that can be constrained to remain at most the height of a ship deck, like muja fruit bushes, may cause some problems if the Force Fertilizer is used: it may overgrow the deck rather fast and, if the tree is big enough, punch a hole through transparisteel. Other than to regularly cut down fruit trees, whose wood can be used for other purposes, what else can be done about the resulting trees? Using Force fertilizer would mean the tree would also grow along the fruit it bears"

There would be 40 acres for each deck so allocated, or perhaps 50 acres. 50 acres would be pushing it a little bit. The question remaining is; how fast can crops be grown using the Force Fertilizer and how does that translate to yield? Food is the main issue here. Arboretums full of rather small fruit-producing trees would be required, and fruit seem to use less land than cereal crops. Assuming Reytha standard bushels, which are 27.3 kg apiece, apple trees could yield 300 bushels per acre in each crop, potatoes twice as much, without Force Fertilizer.

[member="Matsu Ike"]

 

[Matsu Ike]

[member="Charzon Loulan"]

"easily handled, our force fertilizer can handle it as need as can out modules for growing what is needed on a trip. Anything else we need we are able to clone in larger numbers." She said it with a small look of slightly raised eyebrows before she was moving over some of the information on her desk. "This is what we do, making everything able to be used to improve lives. The more self sustaiing the better in my opinion." She had to admit to a few other things but they should be able to help her make a ship larger should, they might just have to lose a couple of the amenities is all. "We might be able to make what you want with a massive three kilometer cube flying through space. Enough height and length to it you can have the modules to feed everyone and maximize the passenger levels."

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"A three-kilometer cube floating in space, or should I say, a Droid Control Ship, would house a million refugees all right, but this assumes long-term needs are met. Refugee displacement missions are short-term; the operator said something about being able to accept a short-term loss in amenities, and the level of comfort of the refugees in that ship would be, simply put, minimal. They will only have access to basic medical facilities for a few days. If the rumors are anything to go by, extracting a million refugees from Coruscant or Dulvoyinn to Malastare would take two or three days for the flight itself, and they would only need to be able to sustain their needs for that length of time; they can always use the ship for anywhere from 50,000 to 100,000 passengers for the longer term, once Operation Noah's Ark ends. What I can see is that they can equip the top deck with arboretums, livestock cloning devices for about 50 acres, growing food all day, every day, at accelerated rates, fill the first leg with some bulk materials to deliver to the target world but not to capacity, and no organic passengers, so that the return flight with the hordes of refugees, even though it may not actually end up being a million in one flight, will not starve en route"

The main problem with Coruscant is that it's a lot riskier to whisk away that many refugees due to Coruscant having a lot more One Sith forces capable of taking out a kilometer-long ship than Dulvoyinn would. At the same time, however tempting it would be for the Galactic Alliance to repopulate Malastare, Malastare also have an urgent need for supplies. The latest issue of Taking Off on a Star Tour said as much, with a guest column from Wolf News on Fondor, even though Wolf News has often been criticized for being a little inaccurate at times. Taking Off on a Star Tour being a weekly magazine, a lot of the information can be subject to change from one week to the next, especially since the issues should normally be as self-contained as possible and not to rely too much on previous issues.

[member="Matsu Ike"]

 

[Matsu Ike]

[member="Charzon Loulan"]

Matsu was looking at her with a nod of her head while she thought about it and if they made it like a droid control ship that wouldn't really be a bad thing. A lot of space as well as a lot of systems so they could work with all of the bigger things. "It can be handled as needed, long term or short term Sasori has the supplies to last for decades without docking again. It is why our extragalactic mapping and scouting missions have been able to start showing routes to the companion galaxies and around the black as needed."