On 9/14/2013 2:15 AM, Onno Meyer wrote:
Dear List,
I've been wondering about interstellar passenger liners, and one obvious
question are lifeboats or pods. I'd like to brainstorm a bit.
The real answer is going to be based on the "world" model you use, how
interstellar travel is accomplished, the level of government
oversight/regulation on the shipping industry, the way ships are
designed, and how the rules are interpreted.
* A starship can't sink, so why abandon ship? If required, find a way to
eject the reactor core, not the passengers. The damaged ship is easier
to find than a bunch of little pods.
There's a bomb on board.
The ship is damaged in orbit and the orbit is decaying.
Most ships don't have an ejectable reactor "core". Pretty much all of
the Traveller designs I've seen over the past 35 years or so have not
had this or even been designed in such a way that this would even be
conceivable.
What if the ship misjumps?
It's fine if the ship is simply moving in deep space and never comes
close to a planet, but that isn't where the people are located. A ship
is going to be at its most vulnerable within a couple dozen to a couple
hundred planetary diameters of the world and it will be a lot quicker to
"take to the lifeboats" than it would to wait for rescue. If one thing
has gone wrong to force an emergency, than something pretty bad has
already happened that's gotten past a myriad number of failsafes or it
was external action, neither of which really inspire confidence
remaining on the ship. Abandon ship and stay close, but abandon ship.
* Abandoning the ship can be a great roleplaying opportunity. A 'random'
collection of characters in a life or death situation, but without the
usual chain of command. Who will take the lead? Wo will panic?
Whoever is part of the ship's crew would be in charge.
* The starship could have passenger shuttles, anyway. But shuttles won't
have seats for 100% of the passengers and crew. Nice drama, of course.
* There is a difference between lifeboats and shuttles, too. I wrote a
TL15 lifeboat (back in February 2011) to explore the upper end of the
scale -- hyperdrives, cryosleep chambers, nanofactories in the hold.
* ISTR that real-world ships require lifeboats for 125% of their maximum
capacity, in case some are blocked/disabled by the accident.
Lifeboats don't need to be one shot/one trick devices. They can be
designed for other uses such as planetary excursions and liaison work.
* Just eyeballing the numbers, a passenger liner could be 10 tons per
person -- 1,000 passengers and crew in a 10,000-ton starship. Roughly.
Can I get a lifeboat with less than 1 ton per person? That would mean
10% of the liner for escape mechanisms. Too much?
* Of course it would be possible to build a TL11+ escape pod with less
than 0.1 tons per person, but that again raises the question if the
survivors are better off in a pod than in the wreck.
* Default assumption that survivors stay in/with the ship, but escape
capsules only for the specific case that the ship is going to crash
really soon. No long endurance, just a safe reentry and soft landing.
* But then, why not space suits with grav belts/manned maneuvering units?
They could be used for comet sightseeing, too.
Space suits take training and they isolate people at the time when they
need to be close to others.
--
Kurt Feltenberger
[email protected]/[email protected]
“Before today, I was scared to live, after today, I'm scared I'm not
living enough." - Me
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