Editing New Orleans Class (section)

==TRACTOR BEAM==

The New Orleans Class is equipped with a multiphase subspace graviton beam, used for direct manipulation of objects from a submicron to a macroscopic level at any relative bearing. Each emitter is directly mounted to the primary members of the ship's framework, to lessen the effects of isopiestic subspace shearing, inertial potential imbalance, and mechanical stress. Large steerable tractor emitters are located on the underside of the engineering hull at both the front and aft, allowing for easy towing or pushing of objects. Smaller mooring tractor emitters are located on each RCS thruster quad, which are located throughout the ship. A series of emitters, located around the Main Shuttlebay, allow for automated guiding of shuttles and small vessels into the ship's bay.

Each tractor beam emitter is built around two variable phase sixteen megawatt graviton polarity sources, each feeding two 475 millicochrane subspace field amplifiers. Phase accuracy is within 2.7 arc-seconds per microsecond. Each emitter can gain extra power from the Structural Integrity Field by means of molybdenum-jacketed waveguides. The subspace fields generated around the beam (when the beam is used) can envelop objects up to one thousand meters, lowering the local gravitational constant of the universe for the region inside the field and making the object much easier to manipulate.

Effective tractor beam range varies with payload mass and desired delta-v (change in relative velocity). Assuming a nominal five m/sec-squared delta-v, the primary tractor emitters can be used with a payload approaching 7,500,000 metric tons at less than one thousand meters. Conversely, the same delta-v can be imparted to an object massing about one metric ton at ranges approaching twenty thousand kilometers.