Escape pod design

[Condottiere]

Looking through vehicles, I came across the Grav Floater, that at forty kilometres per hour, seems the equivalent of s Segway, that could hover inside and outside of a space station, and allow evacuees to slowly descend to the planetary surface.

At five hundred schmuckers it seems a steal.

 

[F33D]

I am almost finished (using SRD) a design system that scales from vehicles through star ships. I am not including <TL 9 stuff. The armor scales too.

Sounds cool. Knowing how detail oriented you are, I have high hopes.

Simon Hibbs

Thanks. I'm trying to keep it simple (less fiddly than MT by far) but usable from 1 ton grav vehicles to 30,000 ton ships.

I discovered that if I just decided that material tech radically changed in quality (weapon power & armor protection) around TL 9-10 I didn't have the weapon & armor problems I had if I tried to have lower tech stuff use the same system altogether.

 

[F33D]

Looking through vehicles, I came across the Grav Floater, that at forty kilometres per hour, seems the equivalent of s Segway, that could hover inside and outside of a space station, and allow evacuees to slowly descend to the planetary surface.

At five hundred schmuckers it seems a steal.

Cool! The MT vehicle book has some REALLY wild grav vehicle stuff if you want more inspiration.

 

[Condottiere]

Page one oh four, Core.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

The vast majority of civilized worlds with any decent port facilities will have any number of dedicated rescue vessels such as the Retrieval boat, the Repair Ship or Police cutters for ships following the most common space lanes in a system in the 100d area. I'm sure there are enough small craft operating as part of the port resources to be called in for rescue duty as well as all ships in the vicinity of a distressed vessel are obligated to assist in gathering up the escape pods listed n the Core book. These Rescue bubbles are meant to protect it's occupant for small amounts of time without the need to sustain them with food and water. Bring a lunch box with you.

Assuming the PCs stay in civilized areas instead of going where the adventure is.

 

[Reynard]

PCs are the stuff of legends going where no sane sapient will go and either are remembered forever or remind other don't do stupid things.

 

[F33D]

The vast majority of civilized worlds with any decent port facilities will have any number of dedicated rescue vessels such as the Retrieval boat, the Repair Ship or Police cutters for ships following the most common space lanes in a system in the 100d area. I'm sure there are enough small craft operating as part of the port resources to be called in for rescue duty as well as all ships in the vicinity of a distressed vessel are obligated to assist in gathering up the escape pods listed n the Core book. These Rescue bubbles are meant to protect it's occupant for small amounts of time without the need to sustain them with food and water. Bring a lunch box with you.

Assuming the PCs stay in civilized areas instead of going where the adventure is.

This isn't about "PC's" It is about commercial craft design. "PC's" would not constitute a large enough starship purchaser demographic to influence standard starship design companies...

 

[phavoc]

Escape pods have a very narrow set of design requirements. A space ship needs to go up and down and up and down, etc, etc, for years, or even decades. The rules are set up for that, but not escape pods. The life boats used on cruise ships, oil rigs and civilian ships aren't built to regular ship standards either, for very good reasons.

The design rules shouldn't be followed for what is essentially a throw-away spacecraft. That would be like trying to design the Saturn V/Apollo craft for the trip to the moon and back using the 'ancient' ship design rules. Good luck with making that fit within the rule set!

 

[F33D]

Escape pods have a very narrow set of design requirements.

Exactly. So, what are they are how are they satisfied per the rules on propulsion (see football sized gravitic, laser firing machines of destruction), etc.?

 

[phavoc]

Exactly. So, what are they are how are they satisfied per the rules on propulsion (see football sized gravitic, laser firing machines of destruction), etc.?

Lemme dig out my Imperial Passenger Manual and list them....

They shouldn't be terribly different than what we have today for the same gear - the ability to evacuate the passengers and crew of the vessel in an emergency situation, the ability to transport the occupants away from the vessel, the provision of life support to exceed by a comfortable margin the time expected for rescue (a week, 2 weeks?), to be operated by crew but not require a lot of skill, and with spacecraft the ability to land on a planet one time to offload the occupants (and provide some medical, food and shelter).

All reasonable needs and fulfills the requirement of an emergency craft. The DSRV of the USN is 2.5m wide and 15m long (about the size of a 10 ton launch), can dive to 5000ft and rescue 24 people at a time. Cramped, but better that than alive. That's along the lines of what I see space-based life boats to be. Pure 'pods' might me more akin to Gemini or Soyuz capsules. In Space Stations the escape pods are 2 people per 1Dton.

 

[F33D]

Exactly. So, what are they are how are they satisfied per the rules on propulsion (see football sized gravitic, laser firing machines of destruction), etc.?

Lemme dig out my Imperial Passenger Manual and list them....

They shouldn't be terribly different than what we have today for the same gear - the ability to evacuate the passengers and crew of the vessel in an emergency situation, the ability to transport the occupants away from the vessel, the provision of life support to exceed by a comfortable margin the time expected for rescue (a week, 2 weeks?),

Since commercial ships aren't going to explode nor sink, how far away? Since a problem can occur while a ship is at high speed (normal space) they need to be spec'ed for x # of G/turns or hours. That makes the largest difference in design requirements. For the most part, "getting away" from the ship isn't not important at all. Getting SOMEWHERE is. Or, diverting from a dangerous course...

Not trying to be difficult. Just trying to figure minimum performance.

 

[phavoc]

Since commercial ships aren't going to explode nor sink, how far away? Since a problem can occur while a ship is at high speed (normal space) they need to be spec'ed for x # of G/turns or hours. That makes the largest difference in design requirements. For the most part, "getting away" from the ship isn't not important at all. Getting SOMEWHERE is. Or, diverting from a dangerous course...

Not trying to be difficult. Just trying to figure minimum performance.

A very efficient ion-like drive capable of say .2 to .5G that ran off solar or batteries would most likely fit the bill for a propulsion system. It doesn't need to be fast, just be able to get them somewhere safer. I would do the rating in G-days, so say 30 G-days is your propulsion capability goal (i.e. the ability to use the drive continuously at 1G for 30 days straight).

Since we are talking about ships taking ballistic courses, they may have to decelerate to zero relative to the star and then change course. That makes more sense.

 

[Condottiere]

You can achieve these objectives with the Space Station design process. Minimum hull, power plant and manoeuvre drive sizes appear to be up for grabs.

Atmospheric re-entry, that could be illuminating.

 

[phavoc]

You can achieve these objectives with the Space Station design process. Minimum hull, power plant and manoeuvre drive sizes appear to be up for grabs.

Atmospheric re-entry, that could be illuminating.

How so? I'm assuming you are referring to the drive table? The design sequence for Space Stations isn't any more applicable than the normal small ship design tables/formulas. Escape pods need to be equipment, that also happen to be ships, not ships first.

 

[simonh]

I think there are three different general types of situations an escape system might address.

The simplest case is hull breach or catastrophic damage in open space, but with a reasonable chance of rescue soon. For this situation, you just need to beable to get into a survival capsule, rescue ball, etc with enough oxygen and maybe some basic supplies (a water bottle, first aid kit). A capsule would just need enough propulsion to get clear of the ship and any local danger, then trigger a transponder and wait for rescue. It should also have a parachute or other single use soft landing system. I think this is what is refered to as escape capsules in the core rules, and individual survival systems would be fine.

The next step up would be a long-term survival capsule. For this case I think you'd want a larger capsule capable of taking perhaps 4 to 6 people and keep them alive for at least a week, but preferably several weeks. It would need a short range propulsion system capable of blasting clear of the main vessel and any nearby danger, a soft landing system and probably should also have something like the low thrust, high efficiency ion drive already suggested.

The highest class is a lifeboat capable of safely escaping from an accident during a high risk operation such as gas giant refueling, or planetary landing and takeoff, and be capable of boosting to orbit and even taking you back to the system's mainworld from anywhere in the system. The vehicle would need high thrust engines (1G minimum) and enough fuel for at least several hours of main engine operation. It should also be able to support it's occupants for several weeks. This is what the Ship's Boat is designed for.

Simon Hibbs

 

[Reynard]

If we're going to talk very long term, waiting for rescue at the level of weeks, you are someplace you shouldn't be. Either there is no local interplanetary traffic or your out beyond the orbit of Pluto. Even a 1G craft can reach Uranus in a week.

Weeks of life support for each person can be best illustrated from Beltstrike. One person-week of air, water and food is 0.007 dtons (0.09 cubic meters) and Cr1000. Multiply for the number of people and number of weeks and that's what also needs to be stuffed in whatever conveyance being used. If you say dry rations so food doesn't need to be replaced regularly then you must take on more water so at least the food and stale water portion will be probably an extra cost factor every month and you may never use the escape system. Again, planning for the absolutely worst case scenario may not be economically feasible. This is similar to ocean disasters. The farther away from a coast without satellite, air and ships to search and rescue, you're probably going to be another case of lost at sea.

 

[simonh]

If we're going to talk very long term, waiting for rescue at the level of weeks, you are someplace you shouldn't be. Either there is no local interplanetary traffic or your out beyond the orbit of Pluto. Even a 1G craft can reach Uranus in a week.

Plenty of vessels fairly routinely travel through lightly populated or low tech systems with no local interplanetary rescue service, and so will have to wait for another vessle passing through to happen to arrive in the system and travel to them to render assistance. In fact J-1 vessels do this as a matter of course, as many worlds along J-1 routes such as the Spinward Main fit this description. If the ship performs wilderness refueling, which common J-1 trading vessels such as the Type-R and Free Trader are both equipped to do, then they will routinely find themselves in parts of the planetary system that might be far from the mainworld.

Simon Hibbs

 

[Condottiere]

The consequences for a misjump into an empty hex are serious. Every cruiser sized ship should have a small jump capable shuttle for that event. You'd almost certainly have a couple in a Tigress.

As for anything within the Adventure Class, designers would be aware there are very real economic and space reasons for not including a large secondary craft. Within civilized regions, there are probably regular patrols of the outer system and empty hexes, but in the pirate infested, Cold War infected frontier, Wild West of the Spinward Marches, it could be added just as insurance.

So the question becomes more as to how to make the cheapest viable multi-role smallcraft that would pass certification.

 

[Reynard]

None of the vessels in 5000+ years have ever instituted mandatory lifeboat or escape pod requirements. Even commercial and military vessel, which seem to be the majority users of escape pod, are consistent, some do many don't and none have actual small craft sufficient to use as lifeboats. Escape pods are relatively small and inexpensive but it seems everyone would rather stay where it's safe or take their chances rather than give up tonnage. Why is that?

 

[Condottiere]

I don't know if it's ever been actually mandated or even that the mandate was implied. But it seems in the original book, the author does draw the reader's attention that the launch was also called the lifeboat.