How much actual volume required per crewman in a military spaceship?

[MarcusIII]

Setting aside policy, rules, laws, etc., how much space is required to keep a person alive and functioning in a Traveller spaceship?
Let's start with what we know from the real world. A nuclear attack sub is a good place to look.

Those carry about 145 crew. There are 4 heads (showers included) for the entire crew. Officers have a mess that seat all of them. The crew mess has only 34 seats. Each crew (unless hot bunking) has 0.14 cubic meters of storage and sleeping volume. There is a single 13 square meter galley. About 130 cubic meters of food storage which is enough for a 90 day deployment.

So far that makes: 1 head for every 36 crew (each about 2.7 sq meters). 0.09 square meters of galley per crew member. 0.22 cubic meters of food per person/week. 0.15 square meters dining/common area per person. I found a guy who was on an LA class and he said the total space per crew member comes down to 16 square feet per person aboard (1.5 square meters).

So other than life support equipment it looks like about 2 square meters of living area and .22 cubic meters for food/wee per crew member

 

[Condottiere]

Depends on length of mission.

I'd say you start off with a quarter tonne bucket seat.

If the hull is fifty tonnes and less, extend that to one and a half tonne cockpit, with twenty four hours of life support.

Add one tonne barracks, fresher optional, stuffed with life support maintenance items, plus food and water.

Water bottles and diapers can be (re)used for waste disposal.

Then enough space to carry out shipboard tasks.

Airliners have one fresher per fifty passengers.

Standard US military MRE (Meal, Ready-to-Eat) cases typically contain 12 meals, weighing roughly 18–22 lbs and measuring approximately 1.02–1.4 cubic feet per case.

0.0396 cubic meters over fourteen cubic metres, equals 353.5353535353535 times twelve, total 4'242.424242424242 meals.

 

[Limpin Legin]

how much space is required to keep a person alive and functioning in a Traveller spaceship?

An absolute Minimum Viable Build would be (Room Size + 20% for life support) / (Persons per Room) . Add more space to install more function.

 

[MarcusIII]

Depends on length of mission.

I'd say you start off with a quarter tonne bucket seat.

not talking about that type of gear. Just total space needed per crew member on a space ship. Types of seating isn't relevant because we are talking working and living in a ship for at least 1 week

 

[MarcusIII]

Room Size + 20% for life support

What room? and why would a room size dictate life support volume rather than the number of crew needing LS?

 

[rinku]

Very much depends on crew duties too.

No military or commercial vessel carries more crew than they need. Need does include around the clock shifts, traditionally several watches. That's already part of the Military crew requirements, but large commercial ships have some of that as well.

But marines are basically passengers. Even those that might be cross-trained to act as gunners or damage control really have nothing much to do in jump. They will need reasonable common areas.

And I'm not sure submariner crew are a great example for this. Those don't carry passengers of any description, and are HIGHLY specialised and trained for dealing with the conditions. Surface ship crew have decks to walk on, air to breathe and generally more than enough common room areas for recreation. Airliners and military aircraft are also poor examples - most of them are airborne for a day at most. And the ones that DO stay aloft for extended periods, with in-air refuelling, are also staffed with elite technical crew.

 

[Limpin Legin]

What room? and why would a room size dictate life support volume rather than the number of crew needing LS?

For a Minimum Viable Build (MVB) that would be just a Stateroom. Correction: life support tonnage depends upon 20% of total tonnage. Since your question only infers a MVB of one stateroom, then the total tonnage = stateroom size + 20% total tonnage.

 

[Condottiere]

In theory, the bridge has enough space for the requisite bridge crew to do their jobs, and a small bridge could be a third less, which makes it crowded enough for a minus one penalty.

Engineering has enough space for engineers to do their jobs, without getting penalized.

Outside of flight and gunnery, what's left?

Medical, laboratories and workshops.

 

[MarcusIII]

For a Minimum Viable Build (MVB) that would be just a Stateroom. Correction: life support tonnage depends upon 20% of total tonnage. Since your question only infers a MVB of one stateroom, then the total tonnage = stateroom size + 20% total tonnage.

No, I'm not talking about anything other than the amount of LS equipment to support X number of people. How much space their bedroom has is 100% irrelevant as beds don't consume LS. And rthe ship in general doesn't consume LS. So you can't determine amount of equipment needed by volume of ship

 

[MarcusIII]

In theory, the bridge has enough space for the requisite bridge crew to do their jobs, and a small bridge could be a third less, which makes it crowded enough for a minus one penalty.

Engineering has enough space for engineers to do their jobs, without getting penalized.

Outside of flight and gunnery, what's left?

Medical, laboratories and workshops.

Exactly. And on a mil ship no labs are needed, workshop space subsumed in the engineering spaces like on a sub, medical space is a 2 square meters for the entire 140 man crew

 

[Endie]

Setting aside policy, rules, laws, etc., how much space is required to keep a person alive and functioning in a Traveller spaceship?
Let's start with what we know from the real world. A nuclear attack sub is a good place to look.

Those carry about 145 crew. There are 4 heads (showers included) for the entire crew. Officers have a mess that seat all of them. The crew mess has only 34 seats. Each crew (unless hot bunking) has 0.14 cubic meters of storage and sleeping volume. There is a single 13 square meter galley. About 130 cubic meters of food storage which is enough for a 90 day deployment.

So far that makes: 1 head for every 36 crew (each about 2.7 sq meters). 0.09 square meters of galley per crew member. 0.22 cubic meters of food per person/week. 0.15 square meters dining/common area per person. I found a guy who was on an LA class and he said the total space per crew member comes down to 16 square feet per person aboard (1.5 square meters).

So other than life support equipment it looks like about 2 square meters of living area and .22 cubic meters for food/wee per crew member

Your 0.14 cubic metre figure for sleeping and storage is out by an order of magnitude.

Given that a rack on a sub is about 1.9m long, that would make the bunk about 270mm wide and high. In other words, you want the person squeezed into a space about 11 inches wide and 11 inches high. This could be practical, but we’ll need a liquidiser.

This is roughly a third of the actual height and 40% of the actual width.

You substantially underestimate the square metre area of the galley: for a Virginia it’s bigger by a bit more than 100%. Your figure is accurate for the galley of a wide body jet.

I presume the rest of the figures were equally accurate.

 

[rinku]

Bunks aside, body bags are typically 36"/91cm by 90"/229cm. If totally filled so they became roughly cylindrical (with a diameter of 22"), that would be a volume of around 10,000 cubic inches. Call it 0.16 cubic metres.

So the 0.14 figure probably works for corpses. Stack 'em up like cordwood.

But as Endie points out, an actual bunk bed that a human can practically use needs more height and width.

 

[Major Bonkers]

I think that the trouble is that the High Guard volume requirements, which are given under broad headings, are taken as gospel when people start drawing up floor plans. This means, for example, that details such as life support (including water supply), kitchen and messes, and food storage, are ignored. In the scenario Shakedown Cruise (from memory), it is vaguely suggested that food for an Element-Class cruiser is stored in hitherto unacknowledged spare space. Hmmm. There would be quite a lot of space required.

The closest that we get to a Traveller military spacecraft nowadays is a submarine. Here, the great film Das Boot might be helpful. At the beginning of the voyage huge amounts of provisions are loaded, such that there is almost no room to move amongst already cramped quarters.

Also, a submarine works in 3 shifts - on duty, off duty, and asleep. Hot-bunking means that the same bed accommodates 3 ratings each 24 hours.

Regarding floor plans, bulkheads and compartmentalisation ought to be given more consideration, so that a decompression does not take out a whole ship. Also: why do ship plans invariably show the bridge at the front (bow) and the engines at the stern? Even today, a military ship has its bridge amidships, and a civilian vessel at the stern. The Element-Class Cruiser has its bridge at the front, with a nice picture window. One hit on the bow will take the whole bridge out. A military vessel will also try to create redundancies, and split critical machinery amongst different bulkheaded 'cells'.

 

[MarcusIII]

Also: why do ship plans invariably show the bridge at the front (bow) and the engines at the stern? Even today, a military ship has its bridge amidships, and a civilian vessel at the stern.

I place the bridge on a small ship where it can fit logically with other occupied spaces. There are no windows so it doesn't matter the seating orientation either. In large military ships it is buried as deep as possible. As far as propulsion goes, my game uses grav drives. The grav drive creates gravity well in front of the ship into which it then "falls". So the drive section tends to be in the front of the ship. The PP & J-drive can be put anywhere. Again buried on large mil ships if possible.