The electronics of Star Wars

[Warspite]

Phyre, you must be thinking of the victory ships during WW2. These prefab kleenex ships, were assebled in the dry dock, but built in inland factories. They were assebled in six months. They also broke into pieces when stressed. (Torpedo, bad weather.) Keels made in pieces and assembled=broken back ship.
This modular design is no longer used. For obvious reasons.
Ships are built from the keel up. Even "The Voyager of the Sea," cruise ship only used the prefab construction on the superstrucure. (The part ABOVE the waterline.)

*AHEM*
Modern steel ship construction follows the principle of blocks. A ship is made of several blocks, each one already fitted with the necessary piping, wiring, and machinery. This method saves time (=money), is tailored for the indiosincracies of suppliers, weather and the shipyard's own economy.
Any modern steel ship is built in blocks, usually by different (sub-contracted) shipyards.

Only in small shipyards, composite and wood construction, and were there isn't an economical advantage, isn't this method applied.

The breaking of the Liberty ships was due to improper welding (the weld joints had its material properties severely changed and cracks developed in the cold Atlantic waters, this was mainly a technologicall restriction of the time), or from rivets suffering fatigue, not from the method of assembly.

[Sea Skimmer]

Phyre, you must be thinking of the victory ships during WW2. These prefab kleenex ships, were assebled in the dry dock, but built in inland factories. They were assebled in six months. They also broke into pieces when stressed. (Torpedo, bad weather.) Keels made in pieces and assembled=broken back ship.

The problem sank the whole of 6 ships and was related to poor welding and low steel quality, not the fact that the vessels where partly prefabricated. It was easily corrected by welding an additional length of steel along each side of the ship. They also where not built inland, beyond specialized components like the engines but that was normal for all ships, nor assembled in dry-docks.

[Sea Skimmer]

*AHEM*
Modern steel ship construction follows the principle of blocks. A ship is made of several blocks, each one already fitted with the necessary piping, wiring, and machinery. This method saves time (=money), is tailored for the indiosincracies of suppliers, weather and the shipyard's own economy.
Any modern steel ship is built in blocks, usually by different (sub-contracted) shipyards.

I'm not aware of a single shipyard which doesn’t build its own superlifts on site, its rather impractical to move a 200-1000 ton hunk of hull any significant distance. Shipyards generally do all of there own fabrication work. Its also important that the blocks all get built in the same location and thus climate so that the proper gaps for expansion and contraction are present.

[Warspite]

I'm not aware of a single shipyard which doesn’t build its own superlifts on site, its rather impractical to move a 200-1000 ton hunk of hull any significant distance. Shipyards generally do all of there own fabrication work. Its also important that the blocks all get built in the same location and thus climate so that the proper gaps for expansion and contraction are present.

They use barges for the transportation of the blocks, for example, several cruise liners were built this way (the names escape me this time, but Chantiers d'Atlantique is one of the shipyards which use this process, along with Fincantieri of Italy, and our very own Viana do Castelo Shipyards).
Sub-contracting to several shipyards can happen when the main shipyard's capacity, or workforce, versus contract deadlines can't be met, that is usually determined during the contract negotiations.
All contracts possess penalty fees for delays, and for the shipyard administrators, sometimes it's more cheap to subcontract than to suffer the penalties, the balance check of a shipyard is always a very thin line between a small profit (we're talking hundreds of thousands of dolllars in profit) and a hefty bankruptcy, the Korean shipyards are good examples, they practice lower prices than most of the world, but they only survive due to governments subsidies.

As for weather and weldings, true, but sometimes, a block can spend several days on site before being assembled, that is enough time for the metal to accomodate the new conditions. Even so, the night-day /contraction-expansion cycles are easily acomodated by tolerance allowances (determined during the project phase), bad welding and the stresses suffered during the ship's lifetime are a worst concern than stresses created by the changing dimensions of the metal...
I recall one episode in our Navy, when one of the corvetes had to make repairs on the aft deck, bad welding procedures led to the whole stern to raise several centimetres! One consequence was the realignment of the two propeller shafts, a not so funny task.

[Patrick Ogaard]

The Empire would certainly have access to Room temperature Super Conducters.

We don't even know if room-temperature superconducters are possible, and you say that the Empire certainly possesses them? By no means am I saying they don't, but you can't just grant them technology with no basis in official or canon.

If they have turbolasers you would think this one would be child's play BTW 10 years ago they didn't think Liguid Nitrogen Superconductors were possible it seems you have shot me in the foot on that one but since they have only one major power source for the Death Star they must have better "wires" then we do right now

Whether or not the Empire has RTSCs or not, it certainly has access to superconductors that do not require particularly elaborate cooling. In the Essential Guide to Weapons and Technology there is the entry on subspace transceivers. There, the following is noted regarding the Falcon's subspace transceiver:

"The Millenium Falcon has a relatively common Chedak Frequency Agile subspace transceiver equipped with a Carbanti Whistler encryption module..."

"The transceiver's subspace antenna has twelve kilometers of tightly wound, ultrathin superconducting wire that allows it to achieve a broacast range of approximately forty lighty-years, and the receiver atuomatically montiors standard clear frequencies for distress signals and heailing messages from nearby vessels."

According to the illustration accompanying the entry, the subspace antenna itself surrounds a cooling block, and that appears to be the system's only cooling requirement.

If the Empire has the capacity to produce superconducting wire in bulk for use in subspace antennas, then it could also be produced in bulk for power transfer purposes. Even with an integral cooling system, an Imperial power conduit using such technology would certainly appear to be safer than plasma conduits.

[Traceroute]

If the Empire has the capacity to produce superconducting wire in bulk for use in subspace antennas, then it could also be produced in bulk for power transfer purposes. Even with an integral cooling system, an Imperial power conduit using such technology would certainly appear to be safer than plasma conduits.

Absolutely! You'd find out about damage to the wiring through monitoring your systems, not redshirts getting splatted against the next console. Plasma conduits never really made sense to me.

[FU PICARD]

Funny I thought this "was" an electronics topic, hence my lead time comment. As for Fabricated parts, do you really think the military builds to order? That's just silly, at any time shipyards whom specialize in military applications store several millions of dollars of equipment. Here is are good words for you, "standard builds" you think that every ship ever made has different props and piping? Really think about how stupid that is for a minute.



Remember people, we are talking electronics, not steel fabrication.

[Isolder74]

Funny I thought this "was" an electronics topic, hence my lead time comment. As for Fabricated parts, do you really think the military builds to order? That's just silly, at any time shipyards whom specialize in military applications store several millions of dollars of equipment. Here is are good words for you, "standard builds" you think that every ship ever made has different props and piping? Really think about how stupid that is for a minute.



Remember people, we are talking electronics, not steel fabrication.

Yes but that would only affect how fast you can wire something once the prefab section is attached. The time to finish any ship is dependant on how fast you can build the pieces.

[Darth Wong]

Remember people, we are talking electronics, not steel fabrication.

True. However, you said "the Empire has no real lead time issues" without adding qualifiers, so others thought you meant this in a general sense rather than specifically discussing electronics. A simple miscommunication, I'm afraid.

As for the wiring issue, we can float a few ideas:

1. Given the amounts of energy required by basic systems such as surface turbolasers (which fire quantities of energy measured in megatons for small guns and gigatons for big guns), the Empire must have some kind of insanely superconducting power transmission technology, otherwise they would have monstrous heat dissipation problems inside the ship.
2. Given the delicate current levels presumably required for electronics and the monster power levels required for tactical systems, I'd say it's a foregone conclusion that they don't draw from the same bus. They must have separate power supplies, drawing power directly from the reactor in whatever form is required.
3. It is always possible that the power is supplied from the main reactor to the "power converters" (a term I believe Luke used) in some form other than electricity, and then converted to electricity for use in instrumentation. This would imply some kind of non-electric ship-wide power transmission grid and local power supplies, hence electrical wiring only for instrumentation and something else for other systems (although this alternate power transmission method would have to be something rather exotic, since it wouldn't be something as goofy as Trek's "plasma conduits").

[Isolder74]

Remember people, we are talking electronics, not steel fabrication.

True. However, you said "the Empire has no real lead time issues" without adding qualifiers, so others thought you meant this in a general sense rather than specifically discussing electronics. A simple miscommunication, I'm afraid.

As for the wiring issue, we can float a few ideas:

1. Given the amounts of energy required by basic systems such as surface turbolasers (which fire quantities of energy measured in megatons for small guns and gigatons for big guns), the Empire must have some kind of insanely superconducting power transmission technology, otherwise they would have monstrous heat dissipation problems inside the ship.

I agree this was my assumtion in saying that the Empire must have superconducting materials. The power requirements of Turbolaser and Shield systems requires superconductor to make feasable. I have research into superconductors and they are farther along today than most people think(may super conducting projects are top secret and I was not able to get any info on them but the ones I have seen are quite amazing).

[*]Given the delicate current levels presumably required for electronics and the monster power levels required for tactical systems, I'd say it's a foregone conclusion that they don't draw from the same bus. They must have separate power supplies, drawing power directly from the reactor in whatever form is required.

They have to be on separete buses and since that is not hard to do with a system using normal electricity unlike Plasma Condiuts which require all system to run off of the same "bus" because of the space they take up AKA wires are not all that large in footprint and cross section.

[*]It is always possible that the power is supplied from the main reactor to the "power converters" (a term I believe Luke used) in some form other than electricity, and then converted to electricity for use in instrumentation. This would imply some kind of non-electric ship-wide power transmission grid and local power supplies, hence electrical wiring only for instrumentation and something else for other systems (although this alternate power transmission method would have to be something rather exotic, since it wouldn't be something as goofy as Trek's "plasma conduits").[/list]

Power Converters appear to turn energy from the ion engines into electrical energy that can then be used to power system in addition to the ships main reactor. This makes sense because the fuel is expensive and every thing I can squeeze out of my engines the better. Whether or not a Star Destroyer uses these systems is not clear. But both X-Wings and Tie Fighters have them which makes sense because neither ship has the room for large reactors.