Rule of thumb for passengers as cargo

[vladthemad]

The cargo holds are air filled, and you've always been able to carry livestock as cargo without problem,

That is a big assumption, especially considering the amount of life support overhead shipping awake live stock would need. The traditional assumption Livestock is shipped in Low.

Also Note while the cargo bay might have atmosphere, it doesn't have the active ventilation that the people occupied portions of the ship have.

Many versions of Traveller have listed "live animals" under speculative trading, including MgT1 and MgT2. Granted, there is no explanation of *how* they are transported, and my assumption is no more or less valid than yours. We are just looking at it from different perspectives. If there is going to be an explanation, it's likely in Gurps Traveller as Gurps always explains EVERYTHING. Whether Gurps is considered canonical depends on who you talk to. I know there's at least one adventure that involved hauling unfrozen livestock, but again probably not what everyone thinks of as canon. No matter how you look at it, there's a lot of handwavium involved and livestock is treated no differently than a hold full of ore.

So let me try to explain where I'm coming from before you roll your eyes. We are looking at hauling livestock from two standpoints really, if it were a real world situation and not a game mechanic, ease of transport vs. cost. Sure, if I'm hauling a hold full of livestock, they are going to stink and need to be fed, but if you're freezing them you'd have to buy the equipment to do so and supply massive amounts of power to keep them frozen. A weeks worth of feed and hiring someone to clean out the hold afterward would be a lot cheaper than buying lowberthing equipment for horses,chickens, and cattle. Low berths are a C100k for a human, even assuming there's no cost increase for the increase in size to hold large animals or needing a bunch more for smaller animals, that's still a substantial cost. The base price for a ton of "live animals" is C10k, so it's very unlikely that it includes any low berth equipment in the price. This doesn't even touch on the question about where all the power is coming from to keep 1000s of chickens frozen for the trip. Now, a quick google search shows that a month worth of alfalfa is $22 in today's prices per head of cattle. Even if you pay a group of dock workers C5k to clean the hold out, the cost differences are enormous. Investing in low berths for livestock would only make sense if that's what you were transporting exclusively.

It also makes very little sense to not circulate and scrub the air in the cargo hold, as well as monitor it. Not doing so would be dangerous to the safety of the crew and the existence of the ship. I have often worked in confined spaces. They are dangerous enough to go down in without testing and ventilating, I would never go into a 100dT hold that didn't have the air circulated and monitored constantly, let alone open the door! There are plenty of stories about people that don't know what they are getting into entering a storage tank, manhole, or other confined space and dying. Worse yet, sometimes their friends or coworkers try to go in to save them, and die too. A cargo hold is a very large space that could hold a lot of bad air. Now, I'm not a rocket scientist, but it's probably safe to assume that there's a lot of hazardous and dangerous materials involved in a starship. What if something leaks and fills the hold with CO2 or something more hazardous like hydrogen or more noxious gases? Especially if the tanks leak, it would create a pressure differential, so when you opened an iris valve all that hydrogen is going to come rushing into the rest of the ship, just looking for a spark! Logically then, if the assumption was that the cargo hold wasn't maintained by the life support system, there would be airlocks to enter and leave, and more than likely it would be a vacuum environment requiring a suit to enter. (As an aside, the Mongoose 2300AD setting has steerage, explicitly stating that passengers can be transported in the hold or anywhere else they can find a place to stand, and that the cost of the ticket includes one balogna sammich a day.)

The problem with all of this is that the cost for life support is based on staterooms in MgT, not ship size. Again, this is handwavium, as it doesn't state explicitly what is involved in the cost of life support or in what quantities. As noted in my previous post, this really seems to be more food and water than air. Air is pretty much free anywhere you go, assuming you run it through the fuel processors or scrubbers as you fill the tanks if it's tainted or exotic, why would you have to pay for it? If you gather and crack water for fuel you're getting hydrogen and oxygen and you aren't going to just vent the oxygen out the airlock. The only place you wouldn't be likely to get oxygen easily is if you are scooping on a gas giant because it's a good deal heavier than hydrogen. Meaning you'd have to go deeper into the gas giant, making it a lot more risky. Also, and more tellingly, the rules explicitly state that you have to pay for life support even if the stateroom is empty. Oxygen doesn't tend to go bad after a month sitting in tanks, but food in a fridge for a month does. Water goes stale too, although as far as I know it's still safe to drink, but you wouldn't want to give that to paying customers. So, my conclusion is that the majority of the cost involved in life support is for food and water, and a minor portion of it is for filters for the air scrubbers. Costs for the actual air would be negligible and probably included in the cost of fuel if not just sucked up from atmosphere.

Don't get me wrong, I know that from an ease of play standpoint the rules are what they are. An adventure involving a cargo hold full of carnivorous space pigs running amok would be a fun ONCE, but a party of adventurers isn't going to want to deal with that nonsense regularly. Life support, all the various cargoes available, and many other things are necessarily abstracted. Thankfully Mongoose didn't put out a new version of Fire Fusion & Steel! Even with the abstractions, I personally like to think logically within the rules as best that I can for answers. The OP was asking about what it would take to transport a hold full of people in an emergency and why. As a GM, I'd handwave it for whatever adventure element was involved and let the players rescue everyone they can, but the OP was asking why...so I gave him the an explanation which would satisfy *most* players that didn't break the rules.

 

[Condottiere]

You can freeze dry some cows, and take this along to save on bulls.

 

[steve98052]

When I saw the subject, I was reminded of reading somewhere that low passage passengers are counted as cargo in the Imperium, for purposes of paperwork. Maybe that's because they don't need any attention from a steward, and although it's good to have a medic to revive them, the medic could be hired from the destination starport if the crew doesn't have one of its own.

 

[Sinanju]

4 people per dT is something like this:

You get to choose between a bunk or a place to sit, but not both...

I really doubt regular starships are built with that much life-support capacity; for 16 people per stateroom.

But I guess it is technically possible...

My understanding of "coffin hotels" is that there is room enough in a coffin to sit upright. Or if that's not the case, in any coffin hotel system *I* built there would be.

On the more general topic, I would concur with the idea that the cargo deck is has full life-support (i.e., the temp, air pressure, composition, quality and so forth are regulated and monitored)--but that it isn't intended to support more than a handful of people; i.e., whatever crew might be needed to work there. To transport large numbers of animals or humans, you would need additiona life support added.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

My understanding of "coffin hotels" is that there is room enough in a coffin to sit upright.

By comparing to what appears to be a doorway at the left edge of the picture, each module seems to be about 1 m tall on the outside, lets say 90 cm on the inside. To sit upright I need 90 cm headroom and I'm not tall. A random saloon car seems to have about 95 - 100 cm headroom for passengers. I guess most people would have a problem sitting upright in the "coffin".

On the more general topic, I would concur with the idea that the cargo deck is has full life-support (i.e., the temp, air pressure, composition, quality and so forth are regulated and monitored)--but that it isn't intended to support more than a handful of people; i.e., whatever crew might be needed to work there. To transport large numbers of animals or humans, you would need additiona life support added.

I would agree. I have always considered life-support to be a part of the stateroom tonnage, and hence dimensioned for 2 people / stateroom (with some safety margin) for the entire ship.

Note that MgT2 allows you to transport 1 person / 2 dT in the cargo hold as Basic Passage.

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

I would think no more than 1 person per ton. It is a nice general rule.

For shorter flights (no sleeping), 0.5 tons per person would be OK - very short flights (orbital) you might even be able to go to 0.25 tons per person.

As mentioned above Life Support will be your limiter and since Traveller hand-waves that into Stateroom/Acceleration Couches, there isn't much guidance.

Using Car/Ship/Plane dimensions only works so far, since they don't have to deal with the vacuum of space, extremes of temperature and more importantly air and recycling of such.

 

[phavoc]

I would think no more than 1 person per ton. It is a nice general rule.

For shorter flights (no sleeping), 0.5 tons per person would be OK - very short flights (orbital) you might even be able to go to 0.25 tons per person.

As mentioned above Life Support will be your limiter and since Traveller hand-waves that into Stateroom/Acceleration Couches, there isn't much guidance.

Using Car/Ship/Plane dimensions only works so far, since they don't have to deal with the vacuum of space, extremes of temperature and more importantly air and recycling of such.

For shorter trips you should look at it from a passenger aircraft perspective. For anything longer than say 12hrs, look at it from a rail car perspective. Small cabins like they have on trains would be fine for intra-system trips of 1-3 days. Beyond that you should probably move into normal staterooms.

Emergency transport is one thing, or transporting prisoners or soldiers (ironically the size of accommodations seems to be about the same!) you can go with more cramped quarters. And that was the case early on in ocean going liners. But today that sort of thing is not tolerated. So it should be equivalent in the 52nd century.

 

[Condottiere]

From personal experience, thirteen hours is just about tolerable in Economy, but I tend to fly Singapore Airlines, not United.

While you can stuff soldiers in like sardines, you have to remember that they still can go on deck, stretch out, and breathe the free air.

 

[Sinanju]

My understanding of "coffin hotels" is that there is room enough in a coffin to sit upright.

By comparing to what appears to be a doorway at the left edge of the picture, each module seems to be about 1 m tall on the outside, lets say 90 cm on the inside. To sit upright I need 90 cm headroom and I'm not tall. A random saloon car seems to have about 95 - 100 cm headroom for passengers. I guess most people would have a problem sitting upright in the "coffin".

Well, based on some quick googling, I've found figures for sleep cells that are 180cm long by 100cm tall and wide, and some 200cm x 110cm x110cm. So I think it's possible for most people to sit up in them without having to hunch. Yes, the ceiling will be right above your head, but you could sit or lie as you chose. (And in any case, if I'm designing such cells for travel, they'd definitely be big enough to spend time in sleeping or reading or watching videos or listening to music or whatever, with as large a common space as possible for when you want to move around and interact with other passengers. Not as luxurious as a having a stateroom to yourself (or sharing with someone), but definitely a heck of a lot better than Low Passage.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Well, based on some quick googling, I've found figures for sleep cells that are 180cm long by 100cm tall and wide, and some 200cm x 110cm x110cm. So I think it's possible for most people to sit up in them without having to hunch.

Real numbers, thanks. 180 cm is less than the average height of men in Scandinavia, I will simply disregard those (shudder)...
200 × 110 × 110 cm will be possible for most adults, but still 10 - 20% of men will not fit.
Wiki suggests that the pods are taller than they are wide, that should help to allow people to sit up.

Distribution of height, blue for men, 2010.

To accommodate the vast majority, we would need an internal length of at least 200 cm and internal free height of 105 cm. I would suggest something like 210 (l) × 110 (w) × 120 (h) cm external dimensions.

Not as luxurious as a having a stateroom to yourself (or sharing with someone), but definitely a heck of a lot better than Low Passage.

Certainly.

 

[Condottiere]

Capsule hotels were really catered to and optimized for the Japanese sarariman, who's shorter in stature and may be less picky.

The ones that cater to women seem more comfortable, and Western tourists don't seem to complain.

Even if they require some tweaking to compensate for a larger frame, in our Traveller dimensions it wouldn't signify.

On the other hand, cattle class for short haul flights may bring a more United reaction.