Deck Plans

[Condottiere]

Airlocks, cargo hatches.

Though airlocks, assuming standard human use, can range from a circular hole large enough for a vacc suit to pass through, to a hangar large enough to accept an Imperial Courier.

 

[AndrewW]

This is somewhat covered under Spacecraft Operations:

A ship has at least one airlock per 100 tons. The average airlock is large enough for three people in vacc suits to pass through at the same time.

Ships with cargo space have cargo hatches, allowing up to 10% of their cargo to be transferred at any time. Some ships, such as the Corsair (see page 129) have specially designed cargo hatches that open onto the entire cargo bay but these are the exception rather than the rule.

 

[MongooseMatt]

Matt,

Will the checklist include guidance or recommendations on things like airlocks sizing, how big you should make a corridor, etc?

Yes and no - we want to keep it short and easy, but there will be guidance.

 

[Condottiere]

That would be the standard one-tonner at around 1.5x3.0 metres.

 

[Infojunky]

That would be the standard one-tonner at around 1.5x3.0 metres.

Where is that listed as the "Standard"?

 

[GypsyComet]

Airlocks in movie SF are big enough to fit the camera crew...

Early editions did not define the size of the airlock itself, only the hardware to make a room into an airlock.

 

[phavoc]

Where is that listed as the "Standard"?

That's where I'd like to see the guidance aspect. Is the airlock supposed to be on a 100ton ship that has 2 crew and no passengers, or a 1000ton liner? Some airlocks can be tiny (maintenance), while others need to be much more roomy to accommodate passengers, or are used say during underway replenishments and you have to put a 3dton container containing food/stores/ammo inside.

I figure about half of players could give two shits about it, while the other half wants more, more, more details! Kinda like ship discussions, deck plans and the various discussions go in regards to building or using ships.

 

[Condottiere]

I made a link between the comment that three vacc-suited humans can pass through the airlock at the same time, and the given size in Smallcraft design.

I extrapolated that 1.5x1.5 metres would be sufficient for a single vacc-suited human.

 

[Reynard]

I noticed most of the iconic adventure ships have airlocks one maybe two squares in size rather than three as per the description mentioned above. Sounds like airlocks are just enough not to take too much of extra space. So it's recommended three but it's what the designer decides will suffice.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Where is that listed as the "Standard"?

That's where I'd like to see the guidance aspect. Is the airlock supposed to be on a 100ton ship that has 2 crew and no passengers, or a 1000ton liner? Some airlocks can be tiny (maintenance), while others need to be much more roomy to accommodate passengers, or are used say during underway replenishments and you have to put a 3dton container containing food/stores/ammo inside.

I figure about half of players could give two shits about it, while the other half wants more, more, more details! Kinda like ship discussions, deck plans and the various discussions go in regards to building or using ships.

I think passengers wouldn't go in through an air lock the ship would either be docked to a space station, and the passengers would walk in through one standard atmosphere in the space station to the spaceship, or the ship would be on the surface of a habitable planet and wouldn't need to use the airlock to come in while in space suits from a vacuum or otherwise poisonous or deadly atmosphere. You know when you board a commercial airliner, you go through a gate, you don't usually go out on the tarmac and climb a set of stairs to board the airplane. Airlocks are for EVAs in space suits. Most passengers wouldn't get into their spacesuits and go on a spacewalk, so they wouldn't need to use the airlock except in emergencies. And by use the airlock I mean use it as an airlock, that is on one side is a hostile environment and on the other a breathable atmosphere. When both sides are a breathable atmosphere both doors to the airlock are open at the same time and they function as simple doors for the purpose of passenger boarding.

 

[Reynard]

Unless I missed it somewhere above, In High Guard I also found page 61 stating they are normally 1 ton and MCr 0.02.

 

[AndrewW]

You know when you board a commercial airliner, you go through a gate, you don't usually go out on the tarmac and climb a set of stairs to board the airplane.

Actually, I do this a bit with regional jets. And get to do it again in April... Or out to the tarmac and up a ramp if they happen to be using that instead of the stairs. Still involves going through a gate out to the tarmac though, just doesn't involve the use of a jetway.

 

[Condottiere]

I figure that you could get three vacc suited humans pass simultaneously through the standard one ton airlock, and perhaps squeeze two in a half ton.

 

[phavoc]

I have always thought that the primary airlock needs to be roomy enough to not only get the people inside, but to have all the stuff you would need for emergencies, to store 'stuff', plus it needs to be reasonably sized in order to carry things inside.

There is a lot of merit to the idea that passengers might not use an airlock, and instead they board through pressurized connection tubes. That mirrors what we have today for aircraft, or ocean liners. The difference is that space is far less forgiving, and there may be times when you need one (i.e. the primary one) to be properly sized. The rest can be smaller and meant for personnel or maintenance access. Obviously larger ships are going to have more to cut down on how far you have to walk on the hull to get where you need to be.

 

[Condottiere]

This is an area where you can be creative enough, since most of us have seen enough scifi films to figure out what would work for what we believe is required.

 

[Reynard]

Problem with airlocks in Traveller is the very spartan construction process. You want a large airlock, you have to sacrifice other space. Movie starships have construction budgets and resources based on script and Star Wars really ramped that up. So far, the airlock on our Harrier and the one's on out prey have proven not to be a hindrance or story barrier.

Can you imagine having the two story hangar on the Enterprise on a Traveller ship?! They NEVER use that upper space in any show or movie for shuttle flight or storage (that's below the hangar). That's why I think Traveller deck plans make more sense but remove the flashy awe factor.

 

[phavoc]

Problem with airlocks in Traveller is the very spartan construction process. You want a large airlock, you have to sacrifice other space. Movie starships have construction budgets and resources based on script and Star Wars really ramped that up. So far, the airlock on our Harrier and the one's on out prey have proven not to be a hindrance or story barrier.

Can you imagine having the two story hangar on the Enterprise on a Traveller ship?! They NEVER use that upper space in any show or movie for shuttle flight or storage (that's below the hangar). That's why I think Traveller deck plans make more sense but remove the flashy awe factor.

In Enterprise (the tv show), they had some cargo bays that got stacked pretty high. The shuttle bays on TNE were pretty generously sized, but then again we only saw the smaller shuttles dock in there. I don't recall if the runabout-class shuttles were ever in those docking bays, but I think they easily fit.

Having the upper gallery isn't necessarily a bad design or a flaw. We had very little exposure to anything outside the smaller craft. In Space Stations the hangar is now sized at 300% of the tonnage of the ship. That's not exactly small.

 

[AndrewW]

Having the upper gallery isn't necessarily a bad design or a flaw. We had very little exposure to anything outside the smaller craft. In Space Stations the hangar is now sized at 300% of the tonnage of the ship. That's not exactly small.

That's due to them being generic bays that are designed to fit different ships of that size, some of which may be longer, wider or have a different number of decks.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

You know when you board a commercial airliner, you go through a gate, you don't usually go out on the tarmac and climb a set of stairs to board the airplane.

Actually, I do this a bit with regional jets. And get to do it again in April... Or out to the tarmac and up a ramp if they happen to be using that instead of the stairs. Still involves going through a gate out to the tarmac though, just doesn't involve the use of a jetway.

You don't have to put on a spacesuit when you go out on the tarmac and then board a spaceship through the airlock. I'm sure if a planet had a hostile environment like say Titan for instance, the spaceship would either dock with a gate or enter a pressurized heated or climate controlled space for passengers to board in comfort. I think a Moon base would have a special vehicle that goes out to a spaceship that has just landed and docks with it so passengers can walk from the spaceship to the pressurized rover which then docks to the base so passengers don't have to cycle through the airlock in their spacesuits to go from lander to base.

 

[Condottiere]

Jump Drive

I think there needs to be an absolute ruling whether you can split a jump drive.