Dear Folks –

Tim asked:

> While I'm here though, how many sophonts could you squeeze into enclosed four man raft.

Well, let’s try with the _Hurricane_-class, the IISS 4-man air/raft shown there. It’s stats are on p45 of the MT World Builders Handbook.

It’s capacity is 1 pilot + 3 passengers + 7 kl cargo; with 2 seats folded, it becomes 1 pilot + 1 passenger + 14 kl cargo. That’s because each air/raft seat is halfway between Adequate (3kl) and Roomy (4kl). In theory, if you give each person zero (“None”) access, they can squeeze into a 1kl space; so *in theory* you could fit 14 people in the back, plus the two up front.

So 1 pilot + 10 cramped people is not unreasonable, over short distances.

As for performance: unloaded is 10t, loaded is 17t, therefore the 7 kl cargo has been correctly accounted for as taking up 7 tons in weight. Passengers are a *lot* lighter. The 2 rear passengers take up 7 kl space, but not 7 tons in weight (more like 100 kg each, or 0.1 tons). So 10 people would weigh somewhere around 1 to 1.5 tons – giving plenty of spare lift capacity.

Think of it this way: the _Hurricane_ is a severely over-engineered and Scout-proof design.  ;-)  ;-)

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David "Hyphen" Jaques-Watson ..at.. Beowulf Down (Tavonni/Vilis/SM 1520)
http://www.tip.net.au/~davidjw                    xxxxxx@pcug.org.au
"I file things in historical order, with a hashing algorithm of gravity"