Thursday 14 January 2016

The Size Of The Ship

Turning down an offer from Wilson, Evan Friday quits his machine job to become the paid organizer of a Guildsmen's protective association about three weeks before Wilson's Brotherhood of Workers mutinies. Friday comments:

"'The ship is six miles long and two miles in diameter. How does Wilson expect to take it over with a thousand men at best?'"
-Poul Anderson, Cold Victory (New York, 1982), p. 88.

He can seize key points and officers but how can he resist the better armed police?

I never before knew the size of a generation ship. Is anyone able to calculate its volume or diameter?

I nearly bypassed "The Troublemakers" but it is proving to be the most substantial installment of the Psychotechnic History. Heinlein's generation ship crew had mutinied. They must have gone through experiences similar to those that Anderson describes here.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

If the ship is a cylinder, its diameter is given as two miles, and its volume is pi times the radius squared times the length, the radius being half the diameter, so the volume is 6 pi cubic miles, or approximately 19 cubic miles.

Best Regards,
Nicholas D. Rosen

Paul Shackley said...

Nicholas,
Thank you.
Paul.