General Emergency Lifeboats?

[Spinward Scout]

I was watching a video about a Lifeboat which was effectively turned into a houseboat. It could have held 64 People in an emergency.

What happens if there's a minor mishap in space?

Can the Starport send out a Lifeboat without Staterooms to hold maybe 100 People? 200? 500? Or more?

Is anything like this in any books?

 

[infojunky]

The 20 ton launch...

 

[Condottiere]

Starships: Lifeboatship

1. Thirty five tonnes streamlined, twenty six and one quarter tonne pod, two seven and a half tonne drop tanks.

2. Lifeboatship pod: streamlined, six tonne (small) bridge, ten tonne Venture (budget) jump drive, half tonne battery, sixty kilogramme drop tank fittings, two one and three quarter tonne docking clamps.

3. Primary hull, eight and three quarters tonnes: two and a half tonne dual cockpit, one tonne manoeuvre drive, two tonne early fusion power plant, one tonne fuel tank, two tonne airlock, quarter tonne fresher; computer/five, manoeuvre, library; sensors, basic; fixed mount.

4. Modular pod: streamlined, nineteen and a half tonne module, two tonne stateroom plus fresher, two tonne airlock, five acceleration seats, quarter tonne cargo.

 

[GLΩAMING]

I was watching a video about a Lifeboat which was effectively turned into a houseboat. It could have held 64 People in an emergency.

What happens if there's a minor mishap in space?

Can the Starport send out a Lifeboat without Staterooms to hold maybe 100 People? 200? 500? Or more?

Is anything like this in any books?

I would personally hazard a guess that this would only occur in dire emergencies, as life support on a tiny lifeboat would be insufficient to carry more than a few passengers without eventually killing them. Overloading a lifeboat is a lot more dangerous when air to breathe isn't free.
I can imagine a scenario where a very desperate captain, certain they'll lose their ship, crams passengers into a small lifeboat in the hope that someone can pick them up before the oxygen runs out. However, I really don't imagine this being anything other than a true last ditch effort. Even skinsuits or rescue bubbles would probably keep their occupants alive for longer than a 20-35 ton lifeboat with 200 people on it. And that assumes they don't all kill each other.
Potentially cool idea for a closed-room adventure, though!

 

[Spinward Flow]

I was watching a video about a Lifeboat which was effectively turned into a houseboat. It could have held 64 People in an emergency.

What happens if there's a minor mishap in space?

Can the Starport send out a Lifeboat without Staterooms to hold maybe 100 People? 200? 500? Or more?

Is anything like this in any books?

The answers to your questions ALL reside within the design details of the craft being used for this purpose.

If you're talking RESCUE mission, you're going to want something FAST (4-6G) that can respond to distress calls quickly and evacuate people.

With respect to how many people you can cram into a small craft built for this purpose, that depends on how "comfortable" you need your rescue/evacuation small craft to be.

• 4 persons per ton = Emergency Low Berth (suspended animation)
• 2 persons per ton = Low Berth (suspended animation)
• 2 persons per ton = Acceleration Couch (conscious, 24 hour life support endurance limitation)
• 1 person per ton = Emergency Low Berth (conscious)
• 2 tons per person = Small Craft Cabin

Acceleration Couches will be the cheapest option if you want to keep evacuees conscious, but comes with the limitation of a limited life support endurance capacity, which then also limits the radius of response.

Emergency Low Berths provide the greatest flexibility, permitting the highest density of evacuees when they are put into suspended animation, while also offering an alternative in which they can be kept conscious for longer duration transits (or when the number of evacuees is small enough to not overwhelm the rescue small craft's capacity).

Beyond a certain radius of action, depending on maximum acceleration power, the transit times needed to reach distant distress calls will typically shift from rescue operations into simply being salvage and cleanup. If a craft in distress is "so far out" that it takes any rescue effort "too long" to reach them before life support options expire ... well ... space is not an inherently "welcoming" environment to survive in for extended periods without life support (send in the coroners and the body bags). Simply due to the interplay between distance, acceleration and time, any kind of rescue that will have a chance at being successful will have "better odds" the quicker they can arrive ... and sooner will always mean "closer" because of how acceleration in space works.

So on balance, if you're using (stock, but modified for purpose) small craft in this role, your best option is going to be the LBB2 sourced 30 ton 6G Ship's Boat, loaded for rescue and evacuation being dispatched from a starport. Other craft in the area who are nearer to the source of the distress call can maneuver in to help stabilize the situation (including offering temporary shelter while the starport rescue craft is still en route) and extend the duration in which the situation is a rescue, not a salvage operation ... but that's about it.

So like I said, the answers to all of the questions depend upon the design of any rescue craft you might design, and the skills and equipment support that any rapid response team can afford to bring with them to a craft in distress (hull breaching demolitions charges, spare vacc suits, emergency battery power supplies, docking connector options, etc. etc. etc.). Once you've got your craft design nailed down into place, a lot of the answers to the questions you have asked will begin to emerge from the details.

 

[mike wightman]

Just for completeness sake, the small craft cabin can take advantage of double occupancy.

Small craft staterooms allow sleeping and privacy at two tons each, Cr100,000. Such staterooms may allow double occupancy (each person has the facilities for half a day) on non-commercial flights.

• 1 ton per person = Small Craft Cabin, double occupancy.

 

[whartung]

What's interesting is that there's no real treatment of any kind of requirement for lifeboats. I think that the expectation is that if anything sufficiently catastrophic happened, it's, well, catastrophic and there's no need for lifeboats. I don't know if there's much talk about emergency life support, which is arguably a better take on the problem than lifeboats. Spaceships don't sink, they just lose air. They don't capsize in high seas or high winds, or take on water. It may well be easier to patching escaping air than incoming water.

So, a practice of emergency repair, auxiliary backups for life support and sheltering in place is likely a better practice than lifeboats.

 

[mike wightman]

This topic came up years ago. I think it was Far Trader who settled the argument - every stateroom can act as an emergency shelter for a couple of days.

 

[Spinward Flow]

I agree.
For craft in space, shelter in place on minimal power consumption while awaiting rescue is your best option.

You won't "sink" or capsize like you would on water ... you'll just drift along in an orbit (until you hit something). The challenge of survival is going to be sustaining life support until rescue can reach you. Vacc suits are going to be the "most portable" emergency life support shelter option, but their consumables capacity is limited.

LBB S7, p10 mentions an inflatable rescue ball as being part of the Ship's Locker equipment on XBoats, usable when needing to ditch the hull and survive an atmospheric entry and/or needing to extend endurance beyond the capacity of an XBoat's life support reserves while awaiting rescue/retrieval. So there are emergency backup options ... but their longevity is going to be necessarily limited.

 

[kilemall]

I would personally hazard a guess that this would only occur in dire emergencies, as life support on a tiny lifeboat would be insufficient to carry more than a few passengers without eventually killing them. Overloading a lifeboat is a lot more dangerous when air to breathe isn't free.
I can imagine a scenario where a very desperate captain, certain they'll lose their ship, crams passengers into a small lifeboat in the hope that someone can pick them up before the oxygen runs out. However, I really don't imagine this being anything other than a true last ditch effort. Even skinsuits or rescue bubbles would probably keep their occupants alive for longer than a 20-35 ton lifeboat with 200 people on it. And that assumes they don't all kill each other.
Potentially cool idea for a closed-room adventure, though!

Classic lifeboat who lives who gets sent out the airlock trolley dilemma play.

Ratchet it up with a character that has a lie detector, so you can have a whole who deserves to live truth telling I didn’t really know the people I Travelled with.

 

[Spinward Scout]

I would personally hazard a guess that this would only occur in dire emergencies

I'm thinking that a Power Plant break down of some-sort on a ship outbound might be the most common reason.

Even if the Maneuver Drive fails, the Power Plant and Life Support would still work for about a month and the ship would only need to be towed to a Starport or such. Or saved from de-orbiting into a World or Star.

But if the Power Plant quits on a ship for some reason, then you lose everything except Jump Drive.

A Lifeboat shouldn't be much different than a Passenger Shuttle ( pg. 227 in the 2022 Update). That holds 240 passengers with 4 weeks of operations. I didn't know that was in there.

 

[Condottiere]

Classically, it would be a backup, but distributed power plants would be the answer, since technically, they only produce power, and jump drives create the effect.

 

[Spinward Flow]

But if the Power Plant quits on a ship for some reason, then you lose everything except Jump Drive.

Model/3+ computers require EPs, so unless you've got a model/1 or model/2 computer ... you lose the computer too.
No computer ... well, I suppose you can misjump, but you aren't going to be controlling that jump drive to any useful degree if you engage it to jump. Besides, if you're using the LBB5 "must spend EPs in preparation to jump" procedure detailed under the Black Globe rules in the combat section, without EPs you can't "warm up" the jump drive in order to jump at all, so loss of power plant service means you're effectively Dead In Space and just drifting along on whatever battery backup power you've got (which will be under 0.5EP reserves unless the design goes out of its way to add more reserve power).

Without nuclear power generation, most craft in Traveller are simply "dead hulks" drifting along awaiting salvage and need to be towed by something else with power to spare in order to alter course. Being trapped on a craft after it has lost power is going to be INCREDIBLY STRESSFUL and people without training are very likely to panic (which helps no one and wastes both time and whatever precious life support margins that remain).

DON'T PANIC!

 

[kilemall]

Model/3+ computers require EPs, so unless you've got a model/1 or model/2 computer ... you lose the computer too.
No computer ... well, I suppose you can misjump, but you aren't going to be controlling that jump drive to any useful degree if you engage it to jump. Besides, if you're using the LBB5 "must spend EPs in preparation to jump" procedure detailed under the Black Globe rules in the combat section, without EPs you can't "warm up" the jump drive in order to jump at all, so loss of power plant service means you're effectively Dead In Space and just drifting along on whatever battery backup power you've got (which will be under 0.5EP reserves unless the design goes out of its way to add more reserve power).

Without nuclear power generation, most craft in Traveller are simply "dead hulks" drifting along awaiting salvage and need to be towed by something else with power to spare in order to alter course. Being trapped on a craft after it has lost power is going to be INCREDIBLY STRESSFUL and people without training are very likely to panic (which helps no one and wastes both time and whatever precious life support margins that remain).

DON'T PANIC!

This is why if you are really serious, you have multiple power plants a la Leviathan.

Say each plant is limited to service its cluster of customers (one is mdrive/jump drive/computer, another is weapons, etc) and it’s a task to rewire the power distribution. Or one plant services everything, each one can, but only one plant can be online at a time.

Can be pretty cheap backup if you don’t run the alternates except in emergency therefore no extra fuel, and are for minimalist level 1 or 2 operations.

 

[Spinward Flow]

If you're really serious about wanting an emergency backup option, you're going to want something akin to a <1EP output power plant and a collapsible fuel tank of up to 1 ton capacity and a cargo bay of up to 1 ton to hold to keep this reserve fuel supply segregated away from the internal fuel tanks (so if you vent all the internal fuel tanks as a result of a casualty, you've still got reserve fuel for your emergency backup power plant).

For small ACS, you can probably accomplish this backup option within 1 tons of backup power plant + 1 ton of cargo bay loaded with collapsible fuel tank reserve fuel using LBB5.80 custom power plant installation.

Compared to the alternative to wanting to install drop capsule launchers (and extra capsules) to evacuate with, that investment in 2 tons of backup power capacity equates to 1 drop capsule launcher plus 2 extra capsules in order to evacuate the ship. I'd be hard pressed to find a small craft/vehicle option as small as 2 tons that can operate as a backup power plant option that will probably remain operational after taking a severe casualty and thereby have a high probability of sustaining life support long enough for rescue services to arrive and stabilize the situation. Just about the only alternative that I can think of would be use of Jump Capacitors (as battery backup), but that depends on how long those Jump Capacitors can maintain power storage without discharging (so you could purpose them as emergency batteries). The power density of Jump Capacitors would be MUCH higher and so could potentially be smaller (and therefore cheaper) than the 1+1=2 tons of backup custom power plant option.

 

[whartung]

Life Support would still work for about a month

Is the primary thinking that Life Support on a ship is limited? That even with power, air and water are on a ticking clock? Food, obviously. But, simply, does a ship have a finite capacity for air and water? There will always be some losses. But it's not just how big of an oxygen tank they're carrying I think. I assume the CO2 scrubbers are more high tech than a simple filter. I would think that air and water on a powered ship would be long lasting, and over provisioned to the point of not being a real concern.

 

[Grav_Moped]

This is why if you are really serious, you have multiple power plants a la Leviathan.

Say each plant is limited to service its cluster of customers (one is mdrive/jump drive/computer, another is weapons, etc) and it’s a task to rewire the power distribution. Or one plant services everything, each one can, but only one plant can be online at a time.

Can be pretty cheap backup if you don’t run the alternates except in emergency therefore no extra fuel, and are for minimalist level 1 or 2 operations.

There's also the implication from the damage tables (especially in HG) that drives (and computers, but far less strongly so than in HG) include integral redundancy -- each non-critical hit drops one rating point, only criticals disable the hardware entirely.

 

[Condottiere]

Life support is very vague.

There are a lot of possible ad hoc solutions, but tend to require power.

 

[Spinward Flow]

Is the primary thinking that Life Support on a ship is limited?

Yes.
Citations ... LBB2.81, p7-8 and CT Beltstrike, p3.

If you want a closed loop regenerative life support system (which is NOT the default in starship construction!), I would refer you to my own research on the subject in the House Rules forum (link).

Using the concepts advanced in Fire, Fusion & Steel as a good starting point, the various types of Environmental Control relevant to your question are Type III (stateroom standard) and Type IV (consumables reserves) ... while any kind of closed loop regenerative life support setup would be Type: V-a through V-e.

Needless to say, the default option for starship staterooms is Type III.
You can upgrade to Type IV by allocating cargo space and filling it up with consumable reserves (1 ton = 150 person/weeks @ Cr150,000) which get depleted over time and will need to be replaced (eventually).

 

[kilemall]

There's also the implication from the damage tables (especially in HG) that drives (and computers, but far less strongly so than in HG) include integral redundancy -- each non-critical hit drops one rating point, only criticals disable the hardware entirely.

Actually the computers in LBB2 are much hardier, requiring many hits before they start seriously failing.

I also consider the ships to be more fragile in HG in general. Not a design flaw per se, after all HG is a ship design QA via demolition derby, just not a good indicator of robustness.