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

Condottiere said:
Space is probably dependent on time spent onboard.

Most people can probably tolerate a fortnight spent at close quarters.
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Considerably longer than that. Read Roger Moorhouse’s latest work (Wolfpack: Inside Hitler’s U-Boat War): the sailors in WW2 uboats were routinely taking 6 week tours by mid-war, and type IXD2s eventually took that up to 200 days.

U-196 made a 225-day journey, and her crew had to hot bunk. That’s like putting 48 men into a slightly smaller volume than a type-S scout and sending them out for a 25-jump journey with only wilderness refuelling.
 
shirgall said:
Recommended reading, from NASA:
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So in summary, less that 2 DTon per person and that includes a galley\dining area, EVA area and a work area. It is a zero-G environment but that really just affects configuration, not the volume itself. We could reasonably discount the lab area as our ships have bridges, cargo areas, workshops etc that include space to work in. That would give 1.5 DTon per person, less if the EVA/exercise area portion is transposed to the airlock.

For a 2.5 year mission so we can assume the crew would be carefully selected to avoid any claustrophobia. If the journey allowed a few days off ship every 2 weeks then we needn't be so exacting and this level of accommodation could be logically tolerated by any trained crew.

If using 1DTon Barrack then you would need to ensure that the common areas were somewhat bigger to meet the extra 1/2 Dton requirement but the report recognises that common space does not scale in a linear fashion and the smaller the crew the greater the proportion of shared space would be (and vice versa). Actual berthing is approx. 1/3 of the total volume (0.5 DTon) which is a hard minimum per person. This sits well with autodoc and low berth dimensions. The remaining 1 DTon is therefore negotiable.

The Common Areas rule suggests 1DTon per stateroom. This would be 0.5 DTon per person in a shared cabin (who are working so probably don't spend as much time there as passengers might).

On that basis Barracks seems eminently plausible for crew. Would they prefer 1/2 a stateroom - of course. I am sure they would prefer a luxury suite. Whether crew will put up with it is a referee question. Maybe using the morale rules, or requiring some relationship to of relative skill/pay range. Personally I'd use SOC since that sets your living expenses requirement. Low SOC people are used to more austere lives. They are also more likely to be argumentative or otherwise unpleasant to be around. This strikes me as a built in balance.
 
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Pioneer uses Traveller game mechanics, but there's little comparison between Traveller naval and commercial vessels with near future spacecraft.

However, Pioneer craft will neccessarily be cramped because every gram of payload matters, and while volume doesn't equal mass, the enclosure of a larger volume has more mass than the enclosure of a smaller one does (as well as the mass of the air), so there's always a tradeoff.

Being in freefall does help with the issue, fortunately.

Also... submariners are able to deal with their cramped situation because they're highly trained, highly screened elite sailors. Astronauts take that to eleven.
 
To a small degree, yes. But freefall design vs grav plate deck design changes things a lot, but moreso the real world limits imposed in thrust and fuel, vs M-Drive (in fact, even without grav plates, a constant 1G thrust ship will have very different internal design than one that spends most of its time in freefall, or spun).
 
You have to look at the available propulsion, and if reactionary, rate of fuel consumption.

Traveller technology is based on the understanding and application of gravitation, which provides the means of cheap and endless energy, artificial gravity, and propulsion.
 
Condottiere said:
You have to look at the available propulsion, and if reactionary, rate of fuel consumption.

Traveller technology is based on the understanding and application of gravitation, which provides the means of cheap and endless energy, artificial gravity, and propulsion.
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It doesn't provide energy. That's fusion
 
However, I rather suspect that it doesn't work without a magnetic bottle, and that fusion reactors, coincidentally, became available together with gravitational motors.
 
Condottiere said:
However, I rather suspect that it doesn't work without a magnetic bottle, and that fusion reactors, coincidentally, became available together with gravitational motors.
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I don't see any connection. Grav drives can work with fission PPs or any other power source and magnetism have nothing to do with space curvature (gravity). Remember gravity isn't a force.
 
I rather suspect that someone figured out how to unify them, and thus, everything flows from that.

Including, breaking the fifth dimensional wall.
 
In my interpretation, there's 3 different kinds of fusion power plants for a reason: The TL8 one is electromagnetic, the TL12 one is a complete redesign based on miniaturized gravitics, and the TL15 one is a complete redesign based on miniaturized nuclear dampers. If you track advantage/disadvantage scaling (and enforce a limit of no more than 3 advantages for a high TL), each advance is a clear improvement over the previous.
 
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