What real use are escape pods?

[rinku]

I just looked at real life escape pods and the B58 fully enclosed ejection seat is an eye opener. Taking up no more space than needed for the normal seat it is pressurised allowing ejection at high altitude and contains survival gear and supplies (sufficient for 3 days on the arctic ocean completely unsupported). From that it looks like a 0.5 DTon escape capsule should be able to have similar performance (the air requirement is higher but life support in Traveller is quite low impact). We can be more efficient than 1960's tech.

Setting aside an additional DTon per stateroom is not beyond credibility. The cost is also negligible amortized over the life on the mortgage. The biggest hit would be the opportunity cost of the loss of 1Dton of cargo. There would be no ongoing life support costs as the pod will only need replenishing if it is used (and then it will likely need complete replacement anyway).

I think a full dTon is excessive, given that the overhead for a fully functional breakaway hull is only 2%. Earlier in the thread I suggested 1 ton per 10 staterooms to make staterooms ejectable.

Aside from "most commercial starships are usually 100D from habitation", the other situation where ejecting may be better than staying would be in a fleet situation, where timely recovery is possible. Naval fleets are also more likely to face immanent ship destruction, although even so staying with the ship or getting to the small craft would usually be best.

 

[Maxijohndoe]

Probably the most realisitic lifeboats were from the Aliens movies.

Basically a lifeboat needs to be able to sustain live long enough for rescue to be a possibility. In space that might be a really long time.

So a couple of weeks won't be worth it. If you are in a system where you are likely to encounter other spacecraft a rescue ball will do if staying with the ship becomes impossible.

But what if you are in a system where rescue could be weeks or months away?

Basically you need emergency cold berths. A small craft stuffed with multiple cold berths and enough power to run them long term might preserve life long enough for rescuers to come across you and thaw you out.

So a lifeboat should basically be a number of cold berths. Of course that requires the time to access them and go into hibernation but maybe you just slide in and hope that whoever opens the pod has a good medical skill.

 

[swordtart]

I think a full dTon is excessive, given that the overhead for a fully functional breakaway hull is only 2%. Earlier in the thread I suggested 1 ton per 10 staterooms to make staterooms ejectable.

Aside from "most commercial starships are usually 100D from habitation", the other situation where ejecting may be better than staying would be in a fleet situation, where timely recovery is possible. Naval fleets are also more likely to face immanent ship destruction, although even so staying with the ship or getting to the small craft would usually be best.

My 1DTon was based on two escape capsules at 0.5 Dton each per HG.

Breakaway hull might not require much in the way of tonnage, but a stateroom is generally not considered self sufficient. You either need to take the power plant, drive and "bridge" from the stateroom space or add it and make the stateroom bigger. Now per the small craft book these could all take up less than 1 DTon in total (the bridge would have to be virtual). Each stateroom having its own life support would be an attractive safety feature in it's own right even if it were not detachable.

Now you could basically build each stateroom as a small craft. Once you can do that you effectively have a shuttle with a stateroom as it's only payload. It would need to be capable of landing to fulfil the functions of an escape pod so thrust 1 minimum (but that could be very short duration reaction drive). It would need some sort of streamlining or it will break up on landing and that will either need increasing the hull volume or again eating into the space in the stateroom. The ability to dock with other escape pods might be a useful option to share resources and allow access to other passengers with specialist skills. You could build a small enclosed town if that was useful outcome either in space or on a less hospitable planet.

The issue is a 4Dton small craft would need 5 DTon for the bay. If it assumed that the 1 DTon for a bay is largely for access perhaps it could be waived as the access to the small craft is the front door to the cabin. I hadn't considered breakaway hull to reduce the overhead but that is entirely sensible as we have to assume a bay allows docking and an escape pod doesn't necessarily need to re-dock in the same way as a shuttle or air raft would.

It does tend to make the air raft look a little large if you can get a hotel room with more space, better duration and (as long as you have an m-drive) better mobility into the same bay.

 

[Micky]

Size of them would be variable, depending upon need and people carried. And also how they work (rack-em and stack-em and turn the lights off while they wait, or provide them actual seats and food/water/fresher facilities while they are awake the whole time). As they are escape craft making them cryogenic low berths isn't practical - a shot of fast drug is much cheaper and more flexible.

Like anything else you have to pay the credits and space for them. That's how ship designs work. Most players do min/max designs, so some certainly struggle with these kinds of ideas as "inconceivable!" (insert image of a semi-bald Sicilian here). In reality naval and and aircraf designers make these sorts of tradeoffs all the time. Most ships and aircraft tend to NOT be equivalents as designed by players.

I never bothered with the Singularity campaign as I thought its premise was too far out there - at least for my Traveller tastes. Kind of like the premise behind the Cymbeline lifeforms for TNE - conceptually I was ok with fall of the Imperium and even AI-crazed bots and starships... just not some of the other aspects of these things. In TNE's instance I picked up the supplements that I liked or were interesting and tossed aside some of the other ideas and went from there.

It's just like those floatation seats on airplanes. Yeah right..... they are there for the one in million possibility that they may actually save your life and you are not torn apart by a high speed impact, high-G sudden stop with water. Leave it to the airlines they wouldn't bother but are there for safety regulations which often are there for reassuring passengers they have that one in million chance of walking/swimming away from a catastrophic event that required their use. The Imperium for sure would require such things be available in starships that are designated as passenger carriers... perhaps much any polity with a regulatory bone its body would require them before a starship was certified to operate within its space. It is the far future, not the ultra-libertarian wild west. One reason why I think passenger travel in jenky Free Traders is a very overblown concept in Traveller... if you factor in a setting not the generic sci-fit rules. Would YOU pay more to have some unregulated no-name of dubious or unknown reputation fly you to the next city over. HELL NO!!! Perhaps in the wild west of the far future but again.. in a civilized polity such as the Imperium travellers will book with known, regulated, businesses whose business it is to move passengers, not just as a chance to earn a few extra credits.

Interesting point about Singularity. I love it, very well written and creative as all hell and well worth the wait for i think the author is the best Mongoose has but ... will never play it as written. I'm in process of writing up a new campaign based on it for the Core Sector campaign guide. Taking Act 1 and expanding upon it's premise, fixing some plausibly and setting issues I thought it had, and making a campaign out of that and without the crazy (though fun and creative!) AI backstory.

 

[MarcusIII]

Would YOU pay more to have some unregulated no-name of dubious or unknown reputation fly you to the next city over. HELL NO!!!

Actually, that depends on the safety record of such carriers. In the Trav universe unless attacked by pirates such carriers (Free Traders) are as safe accident wise as dedicated, large commercial passenger transports.

 

[lategamer]

When I was just designing a freighter I was about to add escape. pods and then I realized that for a ship of this type that just jumps from one large system to another there is no real need for them.

The rule in sailing is you step up to the life raft.
Stay with the boat until you can no longer stay with the boat.

There may be regulations on the life-pods. They may be large, may have a power planet of their own, at the very least will have batteries, possibly even solar cells.

 

[MarcusIII]

The rule in sailing is you step up to the life raft.
Stay with the boat until you can no longer stay with the boat.

Which is the core of my point. Spaceships don't sink. I grew up sailing blue water. I would never shove off into a life raft when the boat is afloat and not a raging inferno.

 

[WHULorigan]

The rule in sailing is you step up to the life raft.
Stay with the boat until you can no longer stay with the boat.

There may be regulations on the life-pods. They may be large, may have a power planet of their own, at the very least will have batteries, possibly even solar cells.

Or a simple RTG (Radioisotope Thermal Generator) or the equivalent.

 

[Condottiere]

Stateroom suites lifeships.

 

[actionman]

in a civilized polity such as the Imperium travellers will book with known, regulated, businesses whose business it is to move passengers, not just as a chance to earn a few extra credits.

Unless it's affordable, or there aren't other options available, or unless the people who want passage aren't the kind of people who would be welcome on regulated vessels.

 

[Micky]

Unless it's affordable, or there aren't other options available, or unless the people who want passage aren't the kind of people who would be welcome on regulated vessels.

Yeah. That is sort of what I was driving at by overrated. Not all passengers if one looks at it with the lens of a plausible realistic actions. I sure wouldn't trust my life or money to some bush pilot I found in the airport bar to fly me in his 100 year old plane with the paint flaking off. Would you!? haha. The vast majority of passenger traffic in settled regions will realistically go with businesses/corps/megacorp operating passenger liners a) it is cheaper (profit through volume and competition) b) lots of (known) schedule options c) 99% of the gen pop aren't undesirables or need to move clandestinely.

Sure there is a certain subset of passengers that would want to use Free Traders instead of regular passenger services but... toss those tables in the Core book. You might find one occasionally. Especially on a quick turnaround at a starport. They could be seen as rare and perhaps tied in with adventure hooks, patrons. Not a dependable and reliable income flow expecting to fill your ship's spare cabins with passengers at every port of call. A good example is Jezzika Sixx in that writeup I did. She had the funds and a reason to avoid taking a liner. Those kinds of special passengers are rare, competition for them fierce among free traders, and the ones most likely to seek unregulated transport such as some jenky free trader with the risk that the hunk of junk may not even make it to the next star system without blowing out its jump drive haha.

 

[swordtart]

Plenty of people use UBER rather than established taxi firms. Just because you are in independent it doesn't mean you are carting people around in a death trap (though there certainly will be those available at a certain price point).

The prices quoted in the book are the prices available to independents. The big boys don't need to charge less to attract passage and why would they hurt their margins. They have more overheads (e.g. they have to provide profit to shareholders) but make savings elsewhere. If anything the independents need to be cheaper if they offer a less salubrious service (most free traders won't be offering a Steward-3 service).

The main point of the independents is that you might need to wait longer for a scheduled service to lower traffic systems. If the star port there only turns over 5 bookings a week for any specific destination then it won't be cost effective to run a liner between those points every week. Big companies make their money on volume. If they end up running 200 Dton ships to cover the feeder routes then they'll spend all their time administering that. Better they focus on the popular routes and leave the fiddling small change to the independents.

Independents can be a local firm that has a free-trader or two running between two points on a regular schedule running cargo and passengers, and can therefore afford to lay on decent passenger service. People can book passage months in advance and might be regulars. The firm might encourage trade with lay away plans, special offers etc. and will have local knowledge to ease you though the formalities (and source spares and replenishment more efficiently).
"Frobisher Trans-Space were attentive to my needs and provided an excellent service as usual. Would recommend 5/5"

It doesn't have to be some space bum who is in this system for the first time, happens to be going to where you want and is just looking to fill a single stateroom they freed up by moving the gunner with the gland problem in with the engineer temporarily as the needed the cash for fuel.
"Won't be using the "Flying Tiger" again. Service was whatever the pilot can manage in his spare time and judging by his ineptitude he must have barely qualified during basic training. We got filthy looks from the surly Engineer at meal times (which were shared with the crew) for some reason. There was an unpleasant smell in our stateroom the whole trip. Would not recommend unless you are desperate. 1/5.

 

[MarcusIII]

I sure wouldn't trust my life or money to some bush pilot I found in the airport bar to fly me in his 100 year old plane with the paint flaking off. Would you!? haha.

Certainly not. But who says That is an average Free Trader? haha.

Also the rules indicate that average person people DO trust Tramp Freighters for transport otherwise they wouldn't shell out 40 to 50 THOUSAND bucks per parsec of travel. The SAME amount paid if you use a large commercial liner.

 

[Fluffy Bunny Feet]

Breakaway hull might not require much in the way of tonnage,

2% of the mass of each component. So a 1 ton breakaway "life pod" only loses a small fraction of a ton. The 200 ton Far Trader uses 4 tons for each pod. If that 1 ton is composed of two .5 ton pods then the Far Trader has to allocate 4 tons for the breakaway of EACH .5 ton pod. Putting those same pods on a 400 ton subsidized merchant would mean 8 tons per .5 ton pod needed to be allocated.

That is why I made the house rule that each component has to allocate 2% of the smaller component. So that .5 ton needs to allocate .01 tons from each component which is viable.

 

[Limpin Legin]

Spaceships don't sink.

Isn't "uncontrollably sinking into a planet's atmosphere" a possibility? Okay, that's only analogous to sinking but the possibility exists, and that scenario is where escape pods should be a better option, IMO.

 

[MarcusIII]

Isn't "uncontrollably sinking into a planet's atmosphere" a possibility? Okay, that's only analogous to sinking but the possibility exists, and that scenario is where escape pods should be a better option, IMO.

I'm talking about while in space Why would a pilot go below orbital speed? AND, if you are hovering in Jupiter's atmosphere a 1 ton escape pod will probably not make it out of the gravity well. It just has a little solid fuel motor for a short burn.

 

[swordtart]

2% of the mass of each component. So a 1 ton breakaway "life pod" only loses a small fraction of a ton. The 200 ton Far Trader uses 4 tons for each pod. If that 1 ton is composed of two .5 ton pods then the Far Trader has to allocate 4 tons for the breakaway of EACH .5 ton pod. Putting those same pods on a 400 ton subsidized merchant would mean 8 tons per .5 ton pod needed to be allocated.

That is why I made the house rule that each component has to allocate 2% of the smaller component. So that .5 ton needs to allocate .01 tons from each component which is viable.

That's not the way I read it. The rule covers breaking into one or more sections.

"This whole process consumes 2% of the combined hull tonnage for the extra bulkheads and connections needed, and costs MCr2 per ton consumed." It doesn't indicate that it is per subs-assembly.

For a 200 Dton ship you loose 4Dtons in total regardless of the number of sub components it is divided into. The real cost is that each sub vessel requires independent bridge, drives and power etc.

 

[swordtart]

I'm talking about while in space Why would a pilot go below orbital speed? AND, if you are hovering in Jupiter's atmosphere a 1 ton escape pod will probably not make it out of the gravity well. It just has a little solid fuel motor for a short burn.

It doesn't have to have a little solid fuel motor and short burn. It could as easily (and more logically) have a short duration high thrust engine or just a decent M-drive (as dawdling away at 5m/s from a potentially exploding ship isn't going to help much).

A 5G M-drive only takes up 5% of the hull volume. The power to push a 1 DTon escape pod is minimal and the plant and fuel required is also tiny. Likely far less than the fuel required for a reaction drive.

Clearly I am going to have to build one now

EDIT:
Yep a Thrust 5 M-drive plus the plant and fuel to drive it is less Dtonnage than the reaction drive alone, let alone the fuel.
Getting a small craft down to KCr20 per person is pretty difficult as the hull alone is KCr50 and that is without streamlining. You can halve it by going non gravity (and that probably is the least of your worries). Since it has less than 1 Hull Point we might as well make it a light hull as well since it makes no odds, but that is a b it cheesy. Make a bad landing regardless and it's all over. I added Aerofins to try to improve your chances in atmosphere.

It might be better to design it from the vehicle handbook (a single person enclosed air raft would probably suffice - KCr30) but adding in vacuum protection and life support starts adding spaces and cost (as the Vehicle Handbook considers the space as the minimum and that equates to 0.5 shipping DTon).

A size 7 robot with a medical chamber passenger compartment and grav thrusters could work - looks like a job for MixCorp.

For a good comparator the automated Lifeboat in the Small Craft Catalogue can take 16 passengers in acceleration benches, is 5 Dtons (so needs a 6Dton bay) and costs MCr1.62 (of which MCr1 is the cost of the virtual crew software). You could save that by halving the capacity and putting in a cockpit instead.

You could build a 2DTon small craft that was basically just cockpit, powerplant and drives with most of the cost going on the drive.

Escape Pod	Dton	MCr
Hull (non-grav)	2	0.05
Streamlined	-	0.008
Aerofin	0.1	0.01
M-drive (T4)	0.16	0.32
PP(TL12)	0.031	0.031
Fuel (8 wk)	0.012	-
Comp/5		0.03
Cockpit	1.5	0.01
Basic Sens	-	-
Cargo	0.195
Total	1.998	0.411

 

[actionman]

I sure wouldn't trust my life or money to some bush pilot I found in the airport bar to fly me in his 100 year old plane with the paint flaking off. Would you!?

But consider, how many people in Charted Space live on desolate worlds with one city where the only ships that call are free traders? How many poor people scrape out a miserable existence on these worlds, and will risk anything to get out of there? If a reputable carrier ever called at these ports, how many people couldn't afford even a low passage?

 

[MarcusIII]

But consider, how many people in Charted Space live on desolate worlds with one city where the only ships that call are free traders? How many poor people scrape out a miserable existence on these worlds, and will risk anything to get out of there? If a reputable carrier ever called at these ports, how many people couldn't afford even a low passage?

According to the rules, passengers on the richest, highest TL planets pay top money to travel on a Tramp Freighters to nearby systems. So the argument has already been settled by the setting rules.