Hello everybody, I've been wondering how you optimize a starship for extra-vehicular activity. Sure, every spacecraft should have enough space suits for the crew and passengers, and a couple of airlocks, but is that all? What needs to be done if spacewalks are a daily job?
* I'm deliberately going to minimize the impact of robots. This is a game, and most characters are organic. Or, as my old Traveller GM said, "no risk for PCs means no fun for players." * In Pushing Ice, Reynolds seems to have taken a diver support ship as an example. A good start, but what happens at TL10 or TL11? * For high pressure, you need decompression chambers. Suits with low internal pressure might have a different gas mix that the ship itself, but we're not talking about days or weeks here, right? Just a room with some chairs, at most. * The standard VE airlock is 50 cf per person. That could be a box roughly 6'8" by 3' by 2'6" -- not really comfortable. So give it at least four times the routine capacity, 8' by 5' by 5' per person. At TL11, forcelocks should be given a similar amount of empty space. Net result, I take an airlock for the full crew, even if just a quarter are actually EVA workers. * Would it make sense to take a 'proper' airlock even at TL11, at for the main work airlock? That might depend on the look and feel of the forcelock technobabble. Will it strip dust and gunk? * The suit-up area should be different from the airlock itself. In GT Starships, there is a Battledress Ready Room module, 500 cf for 20 suits. That gives 25 cf per suit, probably enough for storage but not for suiting up. Maybe another 200 cf per user? * A dedicated workshop for suit maintenance, and dedicated crews to work there. A control room for the airlock and outside ops, at least one dedicated bridge crewman. * More medical facilities than a passenger liner with the same capacity, but probably no telltale specials. What do you think? Anything else? So far most of the special EVA gear is color text in the writeup, not game mechanics. Regards, Onno _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
