Escape pod design

[F33D]

Using existing MGT spacecraft design rules, design rescue pod (<10 tons) for starships. There is one missing data-point in the rules that needs to be covered first. How much life-support equipment needs to exist per person. Consider complete recycle of air & water.

Let's say its 3.375M3 (a 1.5 meter cube). Propulsion for anything under 10 tons would have to be chemical (HG rules) + a PP.

Oops, the cockpit/bridge rules for small craft won't work for anything <10 tons.

Forget it. Now I know why they aren't spec'ed...

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

Ejector seats for cars are not spec'd out either.

 

[F33D]

Ejector seats for cars are not spec'd out either.

Go babble elsewhere

 

[Condottiere]

Rescue coffin, repurposed from a jump capsule.

 

[F33D]

Rescue coffin, repurposed from a jump capsule.

I vaguely remember Jump "torps" from early CT writing of some kind.

 

[Reynard]

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.

 

[phavoc]

We know from MerchantPrince there is a 10 ton container that can support 20 people. That works out to 2 people per 1dton. Yeah, in crappy conditions from what we'd expect or like, but it makes sense. A lifeboat would be even crappier, but you'd be alive, and that's what counts.

I would say you should be able to put 4 people per 1dton, along with say 1/2 dton for lifesupport providing basic air, recycled water. Or 8 per 3Dtons.

Also, since you are talking lifeboats, you don't need to build it to normal spacecraft standards. It needs to be protected against standard space issues (maybe not debris as much, since it's slow), and it only needs to land once. Which means you could put an anti-grav generator to get it down to a planet if there is one around. The hull could be a poly/resin mix or some other cheap compound. Sensors would be very basic (there lies a planet!), with a radio transmitter squawking help all the time. For power you could have batteries with solar covered hull to provide more power, but it wouldn't need a lot. Propulsion could be electric/ion, giving it say .5g...enough to move around. Control station should be pretty basic, with a couple of automated commands that anyone could activate, or the pod does it on it's own if certain conditions are met. Easy enough to do with more advanced computer tech.

I designed my life pods with a series of solid rocket thrusters that are designed to quickly fire the pod away from the ship - they can be fired all at once to provide 6g acceleration, or 1 at a time, or any way in between. All depends on how fast of a getaway do you need to make.

The deal is you don't build it using the book, because it's not a proper space ship. Just like lifeboats today aren't built to normal ship standards because they are meant to be used only in an emergency, and then serviced. Same goes for a pure lifeboat. Design it to the standards you think it should be, apply a price that seems reasonable and you are done.

Ships that travel between planets, stations, the outer system or the oort cloud dont' have the luxury of someone jetting to their rescue within hours. It may be a day or two before the emergency signal even reaches the nearest outpost or planet, and that's assuming somebody local has a ship in the vicinity to come and rescue them. Sure, planets with A starports and a billion or more population may have all kinds of rescue stuff lying around. But a system with a D starport and a few million may not even have more than a shuttle available, so you are outa luck if you expect the planet to come help you out. The issue here is you plan for the WORST circumstances and hope you don't have to use them. I don't know why people keep thinking there will always be rescue resources available and you just have to sit back and sip your mai tai while the Thunderbirds come and save your ass.

 

[phavoc]

Rescue coffin, repurposed from a jump capsule.

I vaguely remember Jump "torps" from early CT writing of some kind.

That was in Leviathan, on pg 35. Not a whole lot of info on them though:

Jump Message Torpedoes: Consists of little more than a jump drive, fuel and a recording unit. 'J-Torps' are used to send messages by automatically broadcasting a pre-recorded tape at the conclusion of their jumps.

The sourcebook was written by Games Workshop in the UK, but published by GDW. It may have slipped through editing. Or, because it was earlier enough, nobody thought too much about it and only later it was decided that ANY jump required a 100ton starship. Since they only appear in this supplement one could think the latter (it's not like inconsistencies slip through, right?).

 

[Condottiere]

Use a battery and something that will push you along at one tenth gee, rather than a rocket.

I believe there are Imperial regulations about letting robots use escape pods, since they could be transporting contraband.

 

[Epicenter]

I really don't think true "lifeboats" are necessary in Traveller, for a variety of reasons.

I do think ships might carry emergency re-entry pods, however. Otherwise, ships that fail in Jump are up a creek. A ship that fails away from a planet or at least in a somewhat stable orbit, you're probably better off just staying in the ship to await rescue.

So I think the only exception to staying in the ship is if your ship fails in atmosphere or in close orbit and your ship is going to burn up or smash into the ground in an uncontrolled landing after systems fail. Orbital rescue may be slow or not exist in your system (given the large number of low-tech worlds in the Imperium, this isn't unheard of). Of course if you're in orbit around a gas giant, a world like Venus, or some unlikely sci-fi world with oceans of lava or seas of "acids" (you know the sci-fi kind that eat through all materials quickly), you're simply out of luck as landing on the planet's surface is pretty much a death sentence, too.

However, ship-makers probably realize that most starships in the Imperium spend a large portion of their time around habitable worlds or vacuum worlds that can be safely landed on, correspondingly, most accidents occur upon departure and arrival as that's when there's the most variables. So ships might carry escape pods for such an eventuality, as well as just ejecting from a ship in a "rapidly decaying orbit" to wait for rescue for a few hours around higher-tech worlds. With anti-gravity and fusion power, space and weight are not at a premium as they are in 21st century airliners or automobiles, they're more like modern ocean-going vessels with lifeboats.

They probably wouldn't need a bridge. Probably relatively short life-support requirements (6h? 12h?) which can be extended using bottled oxygen or (more likely) some sort of air scrubber. A pretty basic computer that will put you into a longer-term stable orbit with the option of making re-entry at the request of the boat operator. Pods would double as a "panic room" - if the hull is severely compromised or something, it's a place where survivors can gather, knowing there's rescue supplies; in many cases the pods might not even launch from the ship.

 

[F33D]

Thanks guys. Lots of good stuff in your replies.

 

[simonh]

Perhaps escape capsules are best though of and designed as vehicles. I'm not sure that the vehicle rules cover space propulsion systems, by maybe you could approximate them at double the mass and cost of gravitics?

Simon Hibbs

 

[Reynard]

"Ships that travel between planets, stations, the outer system or the oort cloud dont' have the luxury of someone jetting to their rescue within hours. "

And there's the issue with abandoning ship in essentially wilderness systems and deep space. Your escape pod become a mass grave as it has no real ability to get you anywhere safe, if there's a safe haven, in time. By the time your paranoia builds this thing, you have a well stocked specialty launch which takes up a lot of space, costs a fortune and may never see use. In wilderness systems, you might not have a habitable world to go Robinson Crusoe on anyhow.

Commercial vessels stay well within safe spaceways and explains why they carry escape pods though mostly by those pesky Imperial regulations. Most other ships that expect to go places beyond timely rescue understand the risks and the low probability of catastrophic abandonment. Military units keep in top condition and crews that prevent all but the worst situation while adventurers take their chances.

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

Design is using the Vehicles Book and make it spaceworthy. I think you might be able to do that.

 

[phavoc]

And there's the issue with abandoning ship in essentially wilderness systems and deep space. Your escape pod become a mass grave as it has no real ability to get you anywhere safe, if there's a safe haven, in time. By the time your paranoia builds this thing, you have a well stocked specialty launch which takes up a lot of space, costs a fortune and may never see use. In wilderness systems, you might not have a habitable world to go Robinson Crusoe on anyhow.

Abandoning a starship isn't something you do on a whim. You'd only leave it if you had to. But if you NEED to leave it, for whatever reason, and you DON'T have a lifeboat, you are gonna die. That's the whole point of having any sort of rescue equipment.

Commercial vessels stay well within safe spaceways and explains why they carry escape pods though mostly by those pesky Imperial regulations. Most other ships that expect to go places beyond timely rescue understand the risks and the low probability of catastrophic abandonment. Military units keep in top condition and crews that prevent all but the worst situation while adventurers take their chances.

You do realize that in space there aren't any spaceways. A solar system is constantly in motion and the paths that spaceships will follow changes constantly too. Sure, if you had a daily shuttle run it might not seem like much of a change, but over time the paths will vary. But flights between planets, especially when they are in a circuit, will radically change over time as the planets move. Much depends on the local stellar real estate and orbital speeds/paths. It's somewhat similar to air routes that change depending upon the jet stream, or what sailing ships used to do depending on the season.

Imperial safety regulations are only "pesky" to players who want to min/max their designs. Most people don't care at all about safety features till they have to use them. Airline and rail designers and operators have to include pesky safety features in their designs. How many people actually pay attention to the flight crews when they give their safety briefings, or when on a ship or train where the exits are and what they should do in case of an emergency? Very few. But, when that emergency hits, having the equipment, or a trained staff can make the difference between life or death (or cake or death, depending on your television watching habits and how many people choose cake... it's not like they are prepared for a lot of cake selection).

There's never been any real work or adventures done on the in-system economies and inter-planetary trade. Everything in-game is focused on starport to starport travelling. The books and various supplements do state that the other things exist, but beyond that we've gotten nuttin substantial. In the US we talk about the major trade ports receiving ships and goods. But most people don't realize how much cargo is transported within the US via barges on rivers or the intracoastal canals. We see lots of trucks but people don't understand just how much freight moves by rail. It's right there in front of everyone, but nobody is seeing it. I would suspect there should be a great deal of in-system commerce and traffic as well in the future. It's far cheaper to ship raw materials locally than bring them in from another star system.

SOME military units may have well maintained equipment, others will not be the same, especially as you get further down the naval food chain. Why? Because that's how it works today, and most probably will work the same in the future. It's about money & spares, the same things that plague us today. Maintenance is put off, and you can bet free traders and other peripheral people are going to defer paying for that as long as they can - unless they happen to have loads of credits lying around.

 

[CosmicGamer]

Breaking it down to a single failure.

"your ship fails in atmosphere"

First you need an occurrence where the ships life support system is totally compromised and dysfunctional. Next you need to have a situation where the system is totally unrepairable. Still, having an escape pod/lifeboat and leaving an otherwise functional ship just because of atmospheric issues is... well, just such an extreme measure. There are so many other ways of preparing and dealing with this situation.

Stocking some extra atmo canisters for the vacc suits? Rip out the seats on the bridge to make space to set up the 2,000 credit pressurized survival tent?

If all else fails, instead of abandoning the ship, how about trying to
1) patch the ships life support system from from the life support system in your emergency escape vehicle
2) jury rig some ducts going to the bridge from the emergency escape vehicle
3) operate the ship remotely from the safe environment of your "escape"/"emergency life support" pod

How about instead of an entire escape vehicle, just installing a more cost effective and space saving life support system as a backup for the bridge? Another perhaps in the common area for passengers?

Emergency berths, medicines, blah blah blah... it's been said many times, many ways.

Anyways, to me, there needs to be a tragic and likely extremely rare occurrence of multiple issues for abandoning a ship to be the viable and necessary option due to atmo issues.

Not saying there is are no scenarios where an escape pod/vehicle might be wise. So back to the OP

I was reading the Core Rulebook, and in the section of small craft, under Launch it says it is also termed a "life boat" So I am currently designing a ship that uses these launches as life boats. It has 14 "life boats" with 7 "life boats" mounted on each side. They are there in case the passengers and crew need to evacuate the ship. So how big a starship do you think this would be?

Lets just assume "in case the passengers and crew need to evacuate the ship". No matter how rare, such a situation could happen, especially if a ship operates in very remote areas where assistance from planetary and other sources is unlikely.

However, Tom, when you ask "how big a starship do you think this would be?", it is just shooting in the dark to answer this with the limited info available.

For starters, a large ship can be designed with minimum crew and few passengers, while a smaller ship can be designed for a larger crew and many times more passengers.

 

[Condottiere]

It's cheaper to have a general purpose escape system, though I think you also have to consider in what specific circumstances the bovine by-product intercepts the ventilator.

This includes by isn't limited to:

1. Refuelling at the local gas giant, and you're about to make a catastrophic re-entry; I rather doubt anyone wants to escape pod to the surface there.

2. Pirates have disabled your Fat Freighter, you need something fast to slip out of their hands. Or at least, faster.

While I tend to view a detachable bridge more as part of my overall modular design scheme, it is meant to act as an escape module.

 

[F33D]

Ships that travel between planets, stations, the outer system or the oort cloud dont' have the luxury of someone jetting to their rescue within hours.

Other than going out to the oort cloud (~1 ly) you don't need rescue in hours. You need it within 30 days. Fast + Vaccsuit gives you that time. Which is why almost no ships EVER carry life boats. Lack of reason to.

 

[F33D]

Perhaps escape capsules are best though of and designed as vehicles. I'm not sure that the vehicle rules cover space propulsion systems, by maybe you could approximate them at double the mass and cost of gravitics?

Simon Hibbs

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.

 

[simonh]

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