Aeolus Class Towship |
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The ITS RocketGirl is an Aeolus class Towship. She is owned and operated by her captain, Keir Derby. Captain Derby contracts his services through a large corperation called Interstellar Transport Systems. Though most of these towships are owned by small businesses (operating small fleets of at most 3 ships), most are forced to work through large conglomerants since most shipping companies don't trust independant operators. Even those who are under contract are seen as low class and are treated poorly in ports. Hundreds of these ships can be found buzzing around any busy Earth Alliance port. The serve a similar purpose as tug boats do today. They ferry several classes of large cargo and personelle ships into port. A small percentage of these ships are also given special military contracts to tow disabled warships in near sectors. Since the towships are often required to tow disabled cargo ships from territory with recent raider activity, the Aeolus mounts four light plasma weapons capable of delivering a crippling blow to a raider fighter. Most human ships large enough to be towed have the required connection points built into them all over their hulls. However, if the necessary connectors aren't present the Aeolus carries all the equipment necessary to install them. The four trailing buckey cables have several kilometers of slack. They are carried out by crewmen wearing heavy lifter EVA suits. The connections involve both a physical latching mechanism and a strong magnetic coupling. Each latch mechanism and cable can support approximately 1,000,000 tonnes before buckling (requiring 12-15 to tow an Omega class Destroyer). The Aeolus is 77.5 metres long (not including the trailing cables). It has a mass of 275,000 tonnes. A majority of its mass and volume is dedicated to fuel and power storage. This is because the shear amount of fuel used on average durring a single tow is equivalent to that expended by a large cargo ship on a five day haul. They can drain their fuel tanks in 5000 km if towing a warship in a team of 10 ships. |