Are Rolls-Royce's 'robo-ships' the future of seafaring?

[AndrewW]

With the recent discussions of automated ships thought this might interest some:

http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/18/sport/rolls-royce-robo-ships/index.html

 

[sideranautae]

It would be much more difficult to do this with ocean going ships than for space ships. With ALL that that implies...

 

[Pyromancer]

As far as I know (that isn't very far btw), most of the crew of a cargo ship nowadays is needed to care for the machine. And the machine needs that much care because ships burn cheap industrial waste grade heavy oil. If they would burn "clean" oil instead, they could probably already spare more than half of the crew, but a few sailors are cheaper. That wouldn't change in the future.

And I think under maritime law a ship without crew is considered abandoned, and an abandoned ship belongs to the first one who salvages it. Those pirates wouldn't even be pirates if they simply took a robot ship.

 

[sideranautae]

As far as I know (that isn't very far btw), most of the crew of a cargo ship nowadays is needed to care for the machine. And the machine needs that much care because ships burn cheap industrial waste grade heavy oil. If they would burn "clean" oil instead, they could probably already spare more than half of the crew, but a few sailors are cheaper.

Naw, that's not why most of the crew is needed. Who told ya that bald faced lie? They burn bunker oil which kicks out a lot of sulfur. The eco types are going crazy over it. My guess is that some eco nut is spreading that lie about crewing levels and fuel oil.

 

[Pyromancer]

Naw, that's not why most of the crew is needed. Who told ya that bald faced lie? They burn bunker oil which kicks out a lot of sulfur. The eco types are going crazy over it. My guess is that some eco nut is spreading that lie about crewing levels and fuel oil.

I heard it a few years ago and it sounded reasonable.

So, what DO they do an a ship the whole time?

 

[Reynard]

Hey, if we have spaceships in Traveller (not starships for all the reasons we discussed ad nauseum) that are completely or mostly robo, my pirates are all for it!! If they skimp on crew, they're skimping on defense and security. Sweet.

 

[AndrewW]

Hey, if we have spaceships in Traveller (not starships for all the reasons we discussed ad nauseum) that are completely or mostly robo, my pirates are all for it!! If they skimp on crew, they're skimping on defense and security. Sweet.

All robo ships come with their own corbomite device. Which is automatically armed when another ship approaches, and unless a deactivation code is input, bye bye.

 

[Ishmael]

laws concerning manning requirements may be in use depending on where the vessel is registered.

as an example, here are the manning requirements for vessels registered in the Marshall Islands, ( link is to a pdf file )
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=10&ved=0CGsQFjAJ&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ilo.org%2Fdyn%2Fnormlex%2Fen%2Ff%3Fp%3D1000%3A53%3A0%3A%3A%3A53%3AP53_FILE_ID%3A3130434&ei=cAzLU87AIsuyyAT2koHgBw&usg=AFQjCNEdAfF-L3PR1d45qwdEGWBjP-KoCw&sig2=evdOcH1IXe3s8rpvLuCXOQ

I'd assume that the crew when not on watch or performing within their rating are cleaning and doing preventative maintenance, something that Trav crew members seem to spend no time doing at all ( understandable as its boring and not very glamorous within a game of adventures ).

 

[Reynard]

A week or two intra-system or a week in jump seems to call for a lot of cleaning and maintenance when not indulging video games and... oh, I don't know.

 

[phavoc]

It's an interesting notion. But I don't see it happening any time soon. The people who are proposing this like to talk up the gee-whiz technology, but there's lot of issues going on. We already have human crews making dumb mistakes. Automation and centralization of the humans won't make it any different, it'll just centralize the blame for human error.

There's also the matter of the technology. We have the internet, but it's full of all kinds of security issues. Our phones get hacked because robust security still isn't implemented. We now know that people can hack 'smart' cars. And the GPS systems are also easily spoofed. You need not look any further than what Iran did to hijack and land a US drone.

A crew onboard at least allows for the unexpected to be handled by humans who can (sometimes) make leaps of logic that a computer can't because it didn't get that program update.

Normally a crew operates the ship on a round-the-clock watch from the bridge. You have engineering people who maintain the engines, and then support crew who are essentially deckhands, cooks, and whatnot. There's always something to fix or work on while a ship is at sea. So say you automate the bridge aspect, you still have the engines that need to be watched over. Ships engines break down all the time, and often at the worst of times. Sometimes they can be fixed at sea, other times the ship sinks or runs aground. Usually it's because the owners have skimped on maintenance.

So let's add even more automation to ships that fly flags of convenience so that some 17yr old pimply hacker runs a ship into something/someone because he's looking for cred on Youtube. Yeah, let's get right on that!

 

[sideranautae]

Naw, that's not why most of the crew is needed. Who told ya that bald faced lie? They burn bunker oil which kicks out a lot of sulfur. The eco types are going crazy over it. My guess is that some eco nut is spreading that lie about crewing levels and fuel oil.

I heard it a few years ago and it sounded reasonable.

So, what DO they do an a ship the whole time?

There are MANY positions. Galley/steward, deck, eng. Here is a good page to start getting familiar with it: http://www.wikihow.com/Work-on-a-Container-Ship

 

[Reynard]

Sounds great except shipping businesses hate rules and regulations stopping them from making oodles of money and resort to Flags of Convenience to circumvent. Among other nasty little issues, there's the regular occurrence of labor violations and hiring crews from 'lower wage countries'. Seriously, do you want passage on a cruise liner that cuts costs at every level because ship laws make prosecution unwieldy? Ships running aground (or capsizing) because the crew are lowest bid and the vessel is falling apart?

Let's take all that and put it on space and starships. Ow. That's a Sword of Damocles over the head of a world's population but, just like here on Earth today, a boon to even to least sophisticated pirate operation. Add automated vessels and you just made things worst by a magnitude.

Bring it on!

 

[Ishmael]

A week or two intra-system or a week in jump seems to call for a lot of cleaning and maintenance when not indulging video games and... oh, I don't know.

Here are some numbers for comparison.......
These are maintenance man hours per flight hour
Sorry, but I had to strip away the "http://www." of a number of references because of link limits here.

Got these from the Air & Space magazine January 2008:

Early F-117..- 113 to 1
Concorde.....- 18 to 1



Here's the compilation from this thread so far:

Saab Draken.- 50 to 1
Eurofighter....- 9 to 1
F-14............. - 24 to 1
F-18E/F........- 6 to 1
F-18E/F........- 15 to 1 (different source)
Saab Gripen..- 10 to 1

C-17.............- 20 to 1
F-15A/B........- 32.3 here thru f117 stats from (HaveBlue and the F-117A by David Aronstein)
F-15C/D........- 22.1
F-16A...........- 19.2
F-117...........- 150 (pre 1989)
F-117...........- 45 (after improvements, post 1989)
CH-46E........- 19.6 in 1995 GlobalSecurity.org
CH-46E........- 27.2 in 2000
CH-53D........- 24.8 in 1995
CH-53D........- 27.9 in 2000
F-20.............- 5.6 (f20a.com/f20maint.htm)
A-6E............- 51.9 DMMH/FH (yarchive.net/mil/fa18_vs_a6.html)
F/A-18C.......- 19.1 DMMH/FH
B-2..............- 124

"The actual B-2 maintenance man-hours per flying hour at Whiteman Air Force Base averaged 124 hours over 12 months ending in March 1997."
(fas.org/man/gao/nsiad97181.htm)

Mirage 2000..- 10 Dash 5 (mirage-jet.com/AIRFRAME/MAINTE_1/mainte_1.htm)
Gripen..........- 12 (mirage-jet.com/AIRFRAME/MAINTE_1/mainte_1.htm)



Interesting about the A-7A from a 1964 article...

The contract
between the Navy and Ling-Temco-Vought calls for an 80-per-cent
probability that the aircraft will all achieve mission success, and that
maintenance man-hours per flight hour must not exceed 11.5 or a
penalty will be imposed. If maintenance man-hours per flight hour
reach 13, the contractor must pay the Navy a penalty of $50 per
hour; if the figure reaches 17 the Navy is to receive $700 per hour.
If the maintenance requirement is higher still, then the airplane
will be returned to the contractor for a complete refund of its cost
to the Navy." flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1964/1964%20-%201850.html

That would be quite a lot of mmh's for a starship ( assuming both greater reliability per equipment and also greater complexity of equipment ). and the paperwork is enormous to keep up with various certifications.
Perhaps more man-hours than a small crew can supply. Contracting it out while in port where down-time of machinery is acceptable?

It is definitely non-trivial except in a game unless the ref uses this as an adventure seed ( and unless one likes the realism level to be cranked up to ultra-hard ).

Hmmmmm... applying rw stuff to Trav ships might be interesting....
http://reliawiki.org/index.php/Introduction_to_Repairable_Systems#Determining_Preventive_Replacement_Time

 

[sideranautae]

Here are some numbers for comparison.......
These are maintenance man hours per flight hour

Those numbers are for primitive tech items that have only been developed and used over the last 100 years vs. systems that have been optimized over thousands of years. Apples and dinosaurs...

 

[phavoc]

Here are some numbers for comparison.......
These are maintenance man hours per flight hour

Those numbers are for primitive tech items that have only been developed and used over the last 100 years vs. systems that have been optimized over thousands of years. Apples and dinosaurs...

Yeah, but that's all we have to go on. Examining submarine would be a better example probably, since aircraft don't have sealed environments.

Plus the Traveller tech tree progression and distribution has it's own faults, too. But that's for a different thread.