[House Rule] Life support

[CosmicGamer]

Anyway, back to the subject of the thread...

Well said. How about taking your own advice and responding to legitimate questions and feedback instead of spending your time playing in the muck with what you call trolls?

If you have a centralized life support system in engineering, how is it supplied to all the spaces throughout the ship?

I'd also like to know what your point is? Ducting is not possible because there wouldn't be clearance? Ducting is already included in the height? Something else?

 

[F33D]

Anyway, back to the subject of the thread...

Well said. How about taking your own advice and responding to legitimate questions and feedback instead of spending your time playing in the muck with what you call trolls?

I answered your question I thought. What didn't you understand about the absurdity of adding MILES of ducting to a small ship? (did I miss one? The number of embedded quotes could have caused me to miss something addressed to me. If so I apologize)

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

One thing to remember about submarines, is that they can surface if anything goes wrong with life support.

Exactly. They are close to a huge amount of air supply (not to mention all that water surrounding them). A belter ship would have to burrow into an ice shelf or H3 whatever and mine for water/air particles with a vacuum hose. But those are hard to come by.

 

[Condottiere]

How about extracting air from asteroid rocks?

It's mentioned in Mote.

 

[Reynard]

I believe that kind of extraction is still mining water. Pockets of nitrogen-oxygen or just oxygen would be an incredible unnatural find. If you had equipment to extract oxygen from rusty ore it would still take a lot of time and effort. Free oxygen isn't all that free.

Remember. a lot of the life support on a ship is in scrubbers and extraction from waste air, liquid and solids. They reach a saturation point and must be replaced making for a lot of the costs. One reason for costs related to a stateroom is the concentration of environmental usage. Those sinks, showers and toilets will process locally keeping the equipment as efficient and compact as possible. The rest of the life support is less intensive around the ship and mostly in air, light and heat. Air and water need pipes and ducts to circulate efficiently meaning they will take up room of optimal dimensions. Air needs proper arraignment throughout stations and vessels to safely move fresh air while effectively removing waste air while also allowing mechanisms to isolate environmental conditions for comfort and emergencies. All takes room and equipment.

 

[CosmicGamer]

I answered your question I thought.

You propose a centralized life support system.

QUESTION: How is it provided to all the spaces throughout the ship?

What didn't you understand about the absurdity of adding MILES of ducting to a small ship?

None. But
A) I believe this is the first reference to a "small" ship.
B) I don't know how your flippant responses to the "miles" statement are supposed to be taken - see Question #3 below

As for the whole "miles" thing, I took it as I believe the author meant it. Simply pointing out that an extensive network of life support services would have to be provided throughout the ship from the centralized system.

So, here are the questions

1) The highlighted question above repeated: For your centralized life support system, how is this service supplied to all the spaces throughout the ship? I can easily start getting into more and more detail like is the waste from all the freshers throughout the ship pumped from each fresher to the central system to be treated, does the central system somehow suck it, is it somehow done with grav tech piping, and so on but I wanted to start with what you have thought of.
2) You had a flippant response that referenced ceiling height: How do you feel ceiling height impacts the design of centralized and decentralized life support?
3) The "miles" of ducting is a simple exaggeration that points out the centralized system has possible limitations. Do you envision your centralized system scaling to a certain limit, is it only for "small ships", is there no limit?

I have additional comments about your proposed system I've yet to mention as they are down a different rabbit hole and this was the first hair to be split. Pun intended.

 

[F33D]

QUESTION: How is it provided to all the spaces throughout the ship?

Small high pressure pipes (for real engineering reasons in space that I don't have time to elaborate on. Having EACH stateroom contain LS means that FROM each stateroom you would ALSO need these pipes to go to all other parts of the ship to provide LS anyway.

What didn't you understand about the absurdity of adding

But
A) I believe this is the first reference to a "small" ship.

I said "unless the ship were huge". I said it in another way.

So, here are the questions

1) The highlighted question above repeated: For your centralized life support system, how is this service supplied to all the spaces throughout the ship? I can easily start getting into more and more detail like is the waste from all the freshers throughout the ship pumped to the central system to be treated, is all the shower water pumped from a central location, and so on.

Almost the same way it is on subs for example. SANS actual duct work which is a no no where you might have areas in vacuum and separate pressurized spaces.

2) You had a flippant response that referenced ceiling height: How do you feel ceiling height impacts the design of centralized and decentralized life support?

In Trav it has almost always been considered that electrical, L.S. and the like are in the 'tween deck spaces. I was simply reminding him of that. That space is assumed in the 3 meter high deck squares.

) The "miles" of ducting is a simple exaggeration that points out the centralized system has possible limitations.

Incorrect. It is tried and true on very large vessels already. If you go and study the subject you will see that. In addition, you would not place LS in the hands of passengers (where they can physically get at the machinery). That security consideration alone (NOT counting the huge introduced engineering inefficiencies of having many small units) would preclude such a design.

These are all well known engineering principles. No need for me to reinvent the wheel and re-document it. The thread is about breaking out the tonnage AWAY from the stateroom computation so as to allow design flexibility that doesn't exist in the current rule-set. You could shove the machinery anywhere. It is the calculation of X amount of LS machinery per person supported that's important. NOT the location of it. That was the troll deflecting the thread.

 

[F33D]

How about extracting air from asteroid rocks?

It's mentioned in Mote.

No need. In a complete recycle system you just crack the O2 from the exhaled CO2. There are no disposable filters, absorbers, et al needed in a higher tech system. It could be designed today. When Marc wrote Trav he didn't even know about TL 6 materials that existed for this purpose. Thus, we have Steam Punk in space with the L.S.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

Incorrect. It is tried and true on very large vessels already. If you go and study the subject you will see that. In addition, you would not place LS in the hands of passengers (where they can physically get at the machinery). That security consideration alone (NOT counting the huge introduced engineering inefficiencies of having many small units) would preclude such a design.

Not at tech-level 12 though.

How about extracting air from asteroid rocks?

It's mentioned in Mote.

No need. In a complete recycle system you just crack the O2 from the exhaled CO2. There are no disposable filters, absorbers, et al needed in a higher tech system. It could be designed today. When Marc wrote Trav he didn't even know about TL 6 materials that existed for this purpose. Thus, we have Steam Punk in space with the L.S.

Assuming a complete recycle system is working onboard a ship. So far, you're not answering much in this thread. Just explaining things away with Steam Punk.

 

[CosmicGamer]

A) I believe this is the first reference to a "small" ship.

I said "unless the ship were huge". I said it in another way.

Not in the original post. Not until responding to the "mile" post. You may know what you mean when you post but we are not psionic. This still left medium and large and by no means implied only small ships to me.

 

[F33D]

A) I believe this is the first reference to a "small" ship.

I said "unless the ship were huge". I said it in another way.

Not in the original post.

Whatever. It is irrelevant as it would NOT add significantly to the existing "plumbing" of any ship over what it would take in a "decentralized" configuration.

Now, back to the point of the post. Which is to allow more flexible accommodation designs.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

Whatever. It is irrelevant as it would NOT add significantly to the existing "plumbing" of any ship over what it would take in a "decentralized" configuration.

Now, back to the point of the post. Which is to allow more flexible accommodation designs.

Tech-Level 12 should allow for more flexible accommodation designs, rather than settle for 1980s heating and air tech. And passengers would hardly be messing with the life-support in their own cabins. To even get access to it would mean that passengers in general, on-board a ship, try to access all kinds of stuff at all locations of the vessel. How often do families in 100-unit apartment complexes mess with their fuse boxes in their unit and burn the place down? A TL12 complex would conceal things even better.

 

[Condottiere]

I wasn't advocating that life support should be embedded in each stateroom, just that it shouldn't be concentrated in one spot, and should be distributed evenly across the spaceship, so that all of it couldn't be taken out by any single event.

 

[F33D]

I wasn't advocating that life support should be embedded in each stateroom, just that it shouldn't be concentrated in one spot, and should be distributed evenly across the spaceship, so that all of it couldn't be taken out by any single event.

Not feasible to be "distributed evenly across the spaceship". No more so than doing that for a power plant would be possible.

 

[Reynard]

Unless TL 12 has matter teleporters to move gases and liquids around, circulation still needs certain minimal dimensions of ducts and piping for efficiency.

 

[F33D]

Unless TL 12 has matter teleporters to move gases and liquids around, circulation still needs certain minimal dimensions of ducts and piping for efficiency.

Of course. No said there were matter teleporters.

 

[CosmicGamer]

Now, back to the point of the post. Which is to allow more flexible accommodation designs.

Certainly. Lets start with a clarification.

"Standard Stateroom/corridor/lounge/dining room tonnage costs Cr80,000/Ton."

Does this include the bridge, sick bays, lab space and other spaces people might occupy?

Are there spaces that might utilize a different cost per Ton? Like maybe engineering with the power plant and drives taking up a large chunk of space but still needing fresh air - then again perhaps heat or air contaminants from the machinery or recycling the machinery waste put a higher stress on the system...

How about cargo space? Do you envision people always using vacc suits or is their some allowance for pressurizing it with a breathable atmosphere?

Will you also be adjusting space combat to reflect hits to the centralized life support?

 

[Condottiere]

If the problem is either slightly more space allocation to accommodate the same life support factor, it should be possible.

 

[F33D]

Lets start with a clarification.

"Standard Stateroom/corridor/lounge/dining room tonnage costs Cr80,000/Ton."

Does this include the bridge, sick bays, lab space and other spaces people might occupy?

No. Just spaces that aren't otherwise listed. (Dining facilities, recreation areas, etc. ) The ones you listed are already covered by rules/costs. Cargo space costs nothing per the rules. It is assumed that it can be pressurized in every version of Trav that I've played.

Will you also be adjusting space combat to reflect hits to the centralized life support?

I am still working on combat system. Right now it doesn't take into account different ship designs. Like having a bridge in the center of a large warship (where it logically would be placed.) So, including LS would be secondary to a logical hit location system.

This is about flexibility in ship design.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

including LS would be secondary to a logical hit location system

What does that mean?