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Starship construction times
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[QUOTE]Originally posted by Baloo: [QB] The Liberty ships were a special case. They were designed to be quickly constructed (and quickly wear out). Instead of the time-consuming (but much, MUCH stronger) method of riveting the hull together, the Liberty ships were welded together. The liberty ships were designed to have a service life of no more than 10 years (piffle as far as modern seagoing vessels are concerned). You'd think that welding would be more watertight than rivets, but apparently rivets hold the ship together better than welding. It was a trade-off that allowed a vast increase of available transport ships to be constructed in a minimum time. I suspect that much of Starfleet's additional ship construction was allocated to vessels that, like the Liberty ships, provided logistical support. Throughout history, the ratio of actual fighting forces to the logistical support required for them to fight has been creeping towards a higher amount of support required for each unit that fights. If that trend continues into the future, I would expect that each fighting starship requires a very large number of noncombatant vessels and personnel to keep it in fighting shape. Such logistical support would probably include resupply vessels to provide the ships with replacement stores such as food, medicine, and possibly personnel, hospital ships, salvage and repair tenders, etc. Some of the support vessels would be civil vessels that were subsidized by the Federation with the understanding that in wartime conditions, they would become support vessels for the war effort, much as many airliners are subsidized by the U.S. government with the agreement that in wartime, they will be subject to use as transports. The owners are compensated for their trouble, and the compensation is part of the agreement. It's sort of like being in the reserves, except airliners aren't required to do 2 weeks of Active Duty each summer [IMG]http://flare.solareclipse.net/wink.gif[/IMG]. The remaining logistic support vessels would be Starfleet vessels that had already been constructed, and would include vessels that were already in service, vessels that had been mothballed and returned to service, and vessels that were constructed specifically to support the present effort. This last group would probably have been designed to be quickly constructed and just as quickly recycled at the end of the emergency. After all, starships are made of valuably rare stuff. --Baloo [/QB][/QUOTE]
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