Aging ships

[drnuncheon]

Doors that are airlocks: Any doors that lead to a cargo area. The rest are normal doors.

I think you're confusing airlocks with airtight doors. An airlock is a small room with two airtight doors and a pump - you enter from one side, close the door, and equalize the pressure with your destination before opening the other door (after donning appropriate safety gear of course). Generally they are used for entering or exiting the craft, not normally inside.

I suppose if the cargo bay was usually kept depressurized and all entry/exit was through there you could do it, but it seems excessive to open up cargo doors just to do an EVA inspection of the ship.

 

[Madarin Dude]

Well one thing to consider is that Space without gravity and limited takoffs and landings is less stressful on a ship. One can consider a number of Air force planes which have service in excess of 50 years like the C-130 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C-130_Hercules not easy years lots of cargo being dropped off flying into hurricanes and a variety of other things. So with that considered 100 years is not a stretch.

 

[AndrewW]

Well one thing to consider is that Space without gravity and limited takoffs and landings is less stressful on a ship. One can consider a number of Air force planes which have service in excess of 50 years like the C-130 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C-130_Hercules not easy years lots of cargo being dropped off flying into hurricanes and a variety of other things. So with that considered 100 years is not a stretch.

B-52's would be another example of one where the planes are older then the pilots that fly them.

 

[Golan2072]

What about old ships which were dormant for about a century (as in TNE and TNE 1248)? If you find one in orbit and get rid of any Virus infesting it (if any), would it follow the same rules as a ship which was in use for all these years?

 

[BP]

Or better yet - find a starship boneyard (ala the Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Center) - mothballed starships vacuum sealed and cocooned in a thick protective spray on the perpetually dark side (avoid radiation) planet with a vacuum or suitable atmo. Such ships could be truly ancient and still very servicable (not to say completely undamaged - atoms still move - given enough time things will change - embrittlement, conductivity, magnetism, etc.)

 

[klingsor]

The lifespan of a normal ship in the modern world is about forty years. There are of course many exceptions going both ways but that is with relatively low tech materials [1] in a fairly corrosive and high stress environment. Aircraft generally have shorter working lives but are much more lightly built and airframe fatigue is a major concern. Aircraft generally also become obsolete before they wear out so there is little motivation to keep an obsolete craft flying but if there is a need they can have their lives extended – as can be observed with a surprising number of military types.

The hull might be sound but what about the wiring and electronics? I believe this is now a concern with many older airliners, the airframe and engines are sound enough but the wiring is at the end of its life – and this may have already contributed to some losses.

In Traveller the rate of technological advancement seems to be slower than our recent freakish rate of change so a ship can remain competitive for longer – it can also be cascaded down to more primitive worlds.

They are strongly built from sophisticated materials – they are more resistant to gunfire than current aircraft or ships.

So I do not see a hundred year old ship as being exceptional at all, she might be a little cranky but should still be basically sound.


Notes
1. One classic example is a late 19th century iron framed wooden planked ship still relatively sound while the other hull beached beside her is a WW II transport, with the hull now completely corroded away around the waterline.

 

[BP]

Over etremely long times - radiation effects (such as embrittlement) would be the biggest limiting factor - no material is 'immune' or reasonably (hard sci.fi.) expected to be...

Shielding - such as black globe style or simple mass (inside an iron core asteroid for example) would be required to avoid this issue. Not to mention placement far from radiation sources (stars, gas giants, nebula, etc.)

Note this would effect all systems - some more so than others (like materials with less molecular 'equilibrium' such as glass, versus say graphite or lead). The material may still be structurally sound - but not function properly.

For instance, fiber optics would fail, and insulators could now become conductors (not just an electronics problem - many atmos produce 'electrical storms' which would be interesting for hulls that were no longer able to protect against voltage differences - not to mention radioactive hulls)...

 

[Supergamera]

Regular jumping could also be the biggest contributor to wear and tear on starships. Crossing into and out of normal space, and spending a week surrounded by hydrogen and a highly inimical energy field, can't be good for equipment.

If a ship was not jumping regularly, I would stetch the maintenance/condition rolls out.

 

[BP]

If a ship was not jumping regularly, I would stetch the maintenance/condition rolls out.

Not to mention if the ship hasn't been manuervering at all...

Actually, the idea of regular maintenance (versus annual) is valid - but the mechanism is just too arbitray for me... <donning inhouse rule cap>

 

[BP]

Oops – I think I crossed the streams - that can't be good – tell me again what happens when we cross the streams

 

[AndrewW]

Oops – I think I crossed the streams - that can't be good – tell me again what happens when we cross the streams

You will know it when you do.

 

[EDG]

I think the biggest problem for ships is micrometeoroid impact - Traveller has usually ignored this, but a ship travelling at any clip is going to have big problems if it hits something. Heck, a tiny paint chip in Earth orbit almost cracked the shuttle's windscreen, and the shuttle's not even under any significant acceleration while in orbit - imagine what all the interplanetary dust is doing to the hull of ships going at 1g acceleration.

 

[Dave Chase]

I think we have Klingons on the starboard bow.

Must have picked them up around Uranus.

Then head for Saturn, and will run Rings around them.

That will knock them off.




Dave Chase

 

[BP]

I think the biggest problem for ships is micrometeoroid impact - Traveller has usually ignored this...

Yeah, I agree (it grates like a pebble...)
- I didn't mind in CT where I considered that the hulls had to be something exotic (since there is no shielding for this nor for radiation) and I didn't have any books to counter that notion.

I'm trying to ignore the whole 'Titanium Steel' 'armour' thing...

[I wish authors would keep the made up - made up. Give stuff a fancy name and define its properties in hard science terms. The best Sci-Fi authors do just that (of course they are often scientists by profession) - build on reality instead of trying to supersede or ignore it.]

 

[Dave Chase]

I think the biggest problem for ships is micrometeoroid impact - Traveller has usually ignored this...

Yeah, I agree (it grates like a pebble...)
- I didn't mind in CT where I considered that the hulls had to be something exotic (since there is no shielding for this nor for radiation) and I didn't have any books to counter that notion.

I'm trying to ignore the whole 'Titanium Steel' 'armour' thing...

[I wish authors would keep the made up - made up. Give stuff a fancy name and define its properties in hard science terms. The best Sci-Fi authors do just that (of course they are often scientists by profession) - build on reality instead of trying to supersede or ignore it.]

OK, other than Super fancy SciFi name of material what else would you want to ? Handwave, be realistic, or have some other feature fix the problem?

Dave Chase

 

[EDG]

The armour on the hull is one thing, but a window is still a window. If you've been pulling 1g for a couple of hours and your window has a run-in with one interplanetary dust grain (or, y'know, all those angular grains blown out of sandcaster cannisters, which is *insane* in a realistic space environment) you are going to be seriously screwed.

Even superdense armour is weird. So, great, it's stupidly dense... but does that necessarily make it invulnerable to impact? Do grains and other projectiles just bounce off it, even if it's wafer thin? Presumably it isn't brittle so it won't break, but how ductile is it? Would you just get a load of big dents in the armour, but no hole?

 

[BP]

... OK, other than Super fancy SciFi name of material what else would you want to ? Handwave, be realistic, or have some other feature fix the problem?

As stated - you also have to define the material using RW properties (so we can relate RW to it - hard part in hard sci-fi :wink: ) -

As hard sci-fi
- handwave – if fancy name with nothing else is equivalent to handwave, ok
- be realistic - not possible by definition, since our current science doesn't have anything
- some other feature - perhaps, but it will still be fiction and should follow the same rule as above

Part of the trick is to provide just enough details to be ‘believable’, but not so much that it becomes easily deniable (i.e. supports suspension of disbelief). Not addressing the problem is sometimes better than trying. Providing a name with no details doesn't add much - but at least acknowledges a RW problem exists. Relating it to RW without tying it to specifics is optimal.

So, for example, I can be given Titaniatum – it has a special molecular interlocking structure (like the web of fibers in a bullet proof vest) which absorbs and dissipates the impact of high velocity micrometeorites and ionizing radiation – resulting in a slightly heated hull, which facilitates the self repairing interlocking structure - part of its remarkable heat handling properties. There, that wasn’t so hard, and its so vague that punching more holes in it is – yet its 'scientific' in that it related to RW. From this I can make up specs (impact energy, absorption wavelenghts, thermal curves, etc.) that don't conflict with RW. Titanium Steel – I can wikipedia that!

[I have a whole write-up on Jump and problem with the ‘hydrogen expanded parallel universe’ stuffs, but I’ll leave that for now…]

 

[Ishmael]

I always said that there is a relatively thin layer of spaced armor backed by a gel/goop substance.
Micrometeor impacts thin cheap layer and is vaporised by impact with the momentum absorbed and dissapated by the layer of goop. The main hull doesn't feel small impacts directly.

Impacts with bit much bigger than that are exceedingly rare ( I guess ) and would mean repairs ( task roll to find hole and more to repair hole and more to fix anything inside that took damage ).

Part of maintainence is checking a reference patch for the number of impact points and once the impact density reaches a certain level, replace the spaced layer in a shipyard... the panels are cheap and expendable.
These mass prodoced panels also means that hull standardization make sense as opposed to having thousands of one-off designs. Cylinders, planes and small peices (like shuttle tiles) predominate and custom ships' maintainence costs are high as the panels have to be fabricated as opposed to being assembled from off-the-shelve sections.

Forcing spaceship to have the armor rating of a tank doesn't seem right to me because the space shuttle and station aren't plated with 40AV worth of armor are they?
just an idea

 

[Dave Chase]

The armour on the hull is one thing, but a window is still a window. If you've been pulling 1g for a couple of hours and your window has a run-in with one interplanetary dust grain (or, y'know, all those angular grains blown out of sandcaster cannisters, which is *insane* in a realistic space environment) you are going to be seriously screwed.

Even superdense armour is weird. So, great, it's stupidly dense... but does that necessarily make it invulnerable to impact? Do grains and other projectiles just bounce off it, even if it's wafer thin? Presumably it isn't brittle so it won't break, but how ductile is it? Would you just get a load of big dents in the armour, but no hole?

Then you might like The Legacy Trilogy . In there they describe a space battle where one of the main weapons was a huge ship that was accelerated carrying lots of sand. At a certain point they had explosions on the sand carrying ship to make a huge cloud of super fast travelling sand that when it hit the target, (a planet, enemy space fleet and spacestation) they had basically eliminated most of the super, high tech enemy. This worked because it was the first time used again that enemy and they had no idea of what it was.

Dave Chase

 

[Dave Chase]

Though this does not address EDG's point about windows/view ports, I thought it might be of interest. (It was pointed out to me on another thread/forum)


http://www.netcomposites.com/news.asp?5014

Dave Chase