Remote start a ship?

[Stattick]

A player asked me a weird question last week. It had totally slipped my mind until just a moment ago (and I'm supposed to be running the game in a few minutes).

He plays the pilot of our little ship. He wanted to know if there was a way to remotely activate the ship to start the pre-flight warm up. You know, at a distance, pull out a fob/remote control thingy, press a button, and have the ship automatically start the warm up procedure.

(Sorry if this is covered in the corebook... I've been too busy working on Sector Gen to actually get to reading that section of the book yet.)

Also, I'm assuming that most ships take a while to warm up and do the pre-flight, like aircraft do. Am I mistaken? Can they just blast away from a Starport at a moment's notice when the guys in armor show up with their blasters and a bad attitude, ala the Millenium Falcon at Mos Eisly in A New Hope.

 

[Fireflame]

I personally don't see why not. If the computer has intellect software running and a preprogrammed automated start up function, potentially you could call the ship, have it register your voice via voice rec or however, and begin a start up sequence.

Alternatively, the communicator used might have a specific signal that means only that comm can be used.

 

[alex_greene]

'Exasperation from Cmdr Webley. Initiate sequence Barn Swallow Delta. Authorisation Webley two seven alpha tango. Enable."

That'd work for me.

 

[rust]

In my setting it is quite common to communicate with the ship's compu-
ter and inform it about intended actions involving the ship, so to tell it by
communicator to prepare for departure would be a routine thing.

 

[AKAramis]

IMTU, it depends on just how "shut down" the ship is.

See, if the PP's cold, nope, you are not going to be able, since it requires human intervention in the startup sequences for security reasons. The computer and a human have to collude to start the PP... and you need at least 1000MW for 1 minute to cold-start a PP... (Yes, this means that the output is only 20% of the cost of initiating fusion...)

If it's running, the rest of the prep can be done mostly via remote... the cutoff valves for the jump tanks are usually doubled; one set manual control only, one set computer linked. Why? to prevent hackers from being able to easily steal ships!

If the PP is in "idle", you're starting up the other bottles from the one in "Idle"... it can take a bit of time to do so.

YMMV.

 

[GJD]

I don't imagaine that ships would sit around with their tanks full, either. Fueling of the cryogenic fluids on the shuttle takes place just before lift off, and the fluids start to boil away almost immediatly. To avoid the tanks rupturing this excess gas is vented away. It's only just before lift off that the tanks are sealed, and the pressure starts to build. The same will be true for grounded ships. With all that supercooled fluid in the tanks you'd need to keep them empty or cooled, which would be a power drain.

G.

 

[rust]

With all that supercooled fluid in the tanks you'd need to keep them empty or cooled, which would be a power drain.

Perhaps this is a very silly question, but I really do not understand why
the hydrogen for a fusion reactor would need to be supercooled at all ? :?

 

[Vile]

If it wasn't liquid, wouldn't you need HUGE tanks?

 

[rust]

If it wasn't liquid, wouldn't you need HUGE tanks?

I do not think so, because a fusion reactor does not really need much hy-
drogen (which is why fusion reactors in GURPS Traveller run for 200 years
without a refill of hydrogen).
In Mongoose Traveller a fusion reactor type A, the smallest one, requires
1 dton of hydrogen per week. Even if this were hydrogen stored at room
temperature and at a comparatively low pressure, 14 cubic meters (!) of
it should be far more than enough to run the fusion reactor for a week.

 

[GJD]

Liquid hydrogen is about 800 times denser than gaseous hydrogen (gaseous H2 has density of 0.09 g/l as opposed to 71 g/l of liquid hydrogen) and, supercooling (liquid hydrogen needs to be stored at about 20K) aside, is easier to handle. Tanks of gaseous hydrogen pose a massive fire risk as well as being an inefficent way of storing hydrogen. The dTon of Traveller displacment is measured as the volume a ton of liquid hydrogen displaces.

You can actually get higher H2 density than just standard liquid H2 if you use some weird natural gas and methane clathrates to trap a hydrogen molecule within a methane lattice. You can up the energy density by about 5 or 6 times this way.

G.

 

[Gee4orce]

Ah. but it's all due to the way that the handwavium field interacts with the madeupium particles that causes a higher than expected fuel yield :?

but yeah, I think a powerplant could realistically stay ticking over for months or years with no appreciable fuel consumption.

My default position on issues of pseudo-science like this is "what would be the most dramatic ?" (without feeling unrealistic). If ships can last for years without refuelling it lessons the options for drama as characters can just bypass all that dangerous planet-side stuff. It lessens the drama too if ships are always on standby ready for action at a moment's notice...there should be some handwave reason why this isn't always the case.

I'm reminded of two dramatic situations involving SF star/space ships in films: the Millenium Falcon's narrow escape from Hoth, and Bishop's need to get to the uplink tower to prep and remote fly the second dropship in Aliens, before the atmosphere processor goes critical and nukes everybody. Neither of these situations would have been exciting if the ship was powered up and fuelled and ready to go straight away.

 

[Gee4orce]

Liquid hydrogen is about 800 times denser than gaseous hydrogen (gaseous H2 has density of 0.09 g/l as opposed to 71 g/l of liquid hydrogen) and, supercooling (liquid hydrogen needs to be stored at about 20K) aside, is easier to handle. Tanks of gaseous hydrogen pose a massive fire risk as well as being an inefficent way of storing hydrogen. The dTon of Traveller displacment is measured as the volume a ton of liquid hydrogen displaces.

You can actually get higher H2 density than just standard liquid H2 if you use some weird natural gas and methane clathrates to trap a hydrogen molecule within a methane lattice. You can up the energy density by about 5 or 6 times this way.

G.

I think gaseous Hydrogen also has a tendency to escape from whatever it's contained in, over time.

I wonder, is there a reason why the lattice method of storage isn't used in Traveller (apart from it being discovered after the game was originally written) ? Maybe the H2 can't be extracted from the lattice fast enough for use in Jump ??

 

[GJD]

I think gaseous Hydrogen also has a tendency to escape from whatever it's contained in, over time.

I wonder, is there a reason why the lattice method of storage isn't used in Traveller (apart from it being discovered after the game was originally written) ? Maybe the H2 can't be extracted from the lattice fast enough for use in Jump ??

It does. It's got a very low molecular density, so it actually seeps through containers.

You'd need to add a couple of bits of doo-hickery to the ship to break down the clathrate and process the methane, plus the byproduct is carbon monoxide.

The majority of the H2 in the jump fuel is dumped outside the ship to form the bubble that will comprise the jump field, iirc, so you need all of the volume available in one go. The processor might not be able to convert from the methane to hydrogen fast enough.

G.

 

[alex_greene]

But assuming the power plant's up and running, or the ship's got enough juice in the chemical battery backup or auxiliary drive to enable her to get to the characters on thrusters, a remote startup could be doable.

It could be programmed into the ship's navcomm before the mission, along the lines of "If you don't receive a signal from this comm by 06:00, fire up thrusters and proceed to last scanned coordinates" or whatever. Also, the ship could easily be programmed to proceed at best reasonable speed to the coordinates of the character's coded transmission there and then.

Yes. Doable.

What'd the skill checks be like for such a feat?

 

[kristof65]

IMTU, I've always assumed that there was really no reason to completely shut down the PP under most circumstances, unless it was for the annual overhaul. Instead, it would get idled back to run critical systems, like computers, security, comm systems, etc.

On some planets, it might not get idled back at all, as the ship providing electricity to the local grid would be expected as part of their "port fees".

Remote start and pre-flight procedures are a definite possibility, but that's not an option that's enabled until the players specifically tell me how they want to do it - special control, communications command, etc AND they tell me they've enabled it. There are so many different ways remote start up/control can be done even with today's technology, I leave it up to the players to define a reasonable method for their starship.

 

[rust]

On some planets, it might not get idled back at all, as the ship providing electricity to the local grid would be expected as part of their "port fees".

Thank you for yet another very useful idea for my setting.

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

I might argue the other way on this. If the ship can be computer started and computer flown, then why have a crew? Why have a HUGE crew?

It seems to me one of the basic assumptions of Traveller (and other SF settings like Star Trek) that people are necessary for the normal operation of the ship.

You may not need EVERYONE to start the ship up, but I would think that you would need at least ONE engineer-type.

If the ships were as automated as some have suggested, then we don't really need crews except to do maintenance and robots would work for that.

Now, do I think that is completely realistic for 5000+ years from now? No, but it appears to be a basic assumption of the game the live crews are needed to run the ships.

 

[rust]

No, but it appears to be a basic assumption of the game the live crews are needed to run the ships.

I am not sure about this. :?

For example, in GURPS Traveller you can easily have ship computers that
can handle all routine operations under all routine conditions, and at least
for me that does not reduce the "Traveller feeling" at all.

Although my own setting has a somewhat lower technology level than the
average Traveller setting (it is mostly at TL 9 / TL 10), at least the more
expensive computers are far more competent than in the OTU, rather clo-
se to expert systems that border on artificial intelligence, but still I do not
see a loss of "Traveller feeling" because of this.

Rather, I see it as a plausible way to free the characters from routine cho-
res ("Who has the watch on the bridge tonight ?") and let them concentra-
te on the more interesting and "adventurous" parts of the campaign.

 

[kristof65]

I might argue the other way on this. If the ship can be computer started and computer flown, then why have a crew? Why have a HUGE crew?

It seems to me one of the basic assumptions of Traveller (and other SF settings like Star Trek) that people are necessary for the normal operation of the ship.

You may not need EVERYONE to start the ship up, but I would think that you would need at least ONE engineer-type.

Until you get true AI, design as you might, computer programs can't seem to anticipate and react to things at the instinctive level humans can. But where that isn't needed, automation can do a lot.

Remote startup and pre-flight checks aren't that unreasonable, given that you can buy systems to do just that for automobiles today for less than $100. Heck, I work on equipment that can be remotely controlled via phone line thousands of miles away. I'm often reprogramming these systems functions from my basement office hundreds of miles away.

But the ability to do all that is no replacement for having someone on site actually observing things.

So my view has always been that, yes, we can build the starships, machines, etc smart and independant enough to NOT require humans, but we don't because of the ramifications of doing so - be they ethics, fear, etc. Even so, that doesn't mean we can't occassionally do things without requiring humans.

 

[Cyphr]

I might argue the other way on this. If the ship can be computer started and computer flown, then why have a crew? Why have a HUGE crew?

It seems to me one of the basic assumptions of Traveller (and other SF settings like Star Trek) that people are necessary for the normal operation of the ship.

You may not need EVERYONE to start the ship up, but I would think that you would need at least ONE engineer-type.

Until you get true AI, design as you might, computer programs can't seem to anticipate and react to things at the instinctive level humans can. But where that isn't needed, automation can do a lot.

Remote startup and pre-flight checks aren't that unreasonable, given that you can buy systems to do just that for automobiles today for less than $100. Heck, I work on equipment that can be remotely controlled via phone line thousands of miles away. I'm often reprogramming these systems functions from my basement office hundreds of miles away.

But the ability to do all that is no replacement for having someone on site actually observing things.

So my view has always been that, yes, we can build the starships, machines, etc smart and independant enough to NOT require humans, but we don't because of the ramifications of doing so - be they ethics, fear, etc. Even so, that doesn't mean we can't occassionally do things without requiring humans.

Quite true. If a human* crewman is injured they can still but function, but at a reduced capacity. If an automated unit is damaged or lose power then a critical function is lost to the ship. Humans have better redundancy factor. Also larger crew help absorb injuries during combat.

Now that's not saying you can't have some automated/expert assist to jobs on a ship. Each crew station can have a small dedicated system that's there to help the crewman or take over if no one is qualified. For physical jobs (tech, damage control, cargo) then astromechs/cargobots can be used.

There is also the fear (justified or hyped) of our creations revolting (ie Cylons, Virus, Grey Goo).

The balance is how much do you rely on your fancy tools and toys when going gets tough.

This entire concept has been an interesting topic in an ongoing RPG game with some friends. The use of AI assist was developed as a labor multiplier, but the fear of a "Cylon/Terminator" Revolt was always brought up as a counter. In fact the most powerful AI is a germ-phobe about computer viruses. (He is absolutely terrified of TNE Virus)

*human - used to indicate any sentient bio organism. :wink: