Emergency Situations and responses

[Whipsnade]

Based upon that statement above, one could almost presume that rescue efforts in the Third Imperium would have similar constraints.

Not similar constraints, worse.

I purposely used SS Waratah as an example because it was one that was skewed in favor of a pre-radio/pre-aircraft response and rescue. The ship's "flight plan" was known, telegraphed ahead, and only three days long. Considering the period, her loss was suspected very early and a search was launched quickly. The location of her loss was even limited to the stretch of ocean between Durban and Cape Town.

Despite all that, the SS Waratah has never been found.

Now contrast that to a Beowulf making a "short" one parsec jump between two systems linked by X-boat. That vessel's loss isn't going to be suspected for a week or more and her location can be anywhere within a one parsec sphere(1).

Leaving aside the question of when the authorities will begin heir search, where are they going to begin searching?

If that is the case, then lifeboat strategies would either be non-existent, or they would be designed for worst case scenarios where the time required would be successively LONGER than implied.

Fritz has this right. There's no real reason for lifeboats. There are extreme reasons, one-of-a-kind reasons, to require lifeboats, but there are no real, everyday, reasons for having lifeboats. In all but the most outre events, it's better to stay with the ship.

So, CAN a lifeboat be crafted, whose only task is to get away from the ship in question, and permit a low berth system to remain running for long periods of time using standard rules? Therein lies the question.

I think a better question is that CAN a low berth system which remains running for long periods be crafted? And that question has already been answered.

1 - A one parsec sphere less all the 100D spheres it contains.

 

[whulorigan]

It's always good to be hopeful, and any gamemaster who wants to save his players from certain doom can certainly invoke that. However, let's be realistic: even a full-on star system is mostly empty.

... while constrained to less than a month's fuel and a drive that can't exceed the speed of light. And as for rescuers jumping out and trying to find them ... same problem.

I understand that the chances are astronomically remote at best, but a ship's captain (by training) is going to attempt something that represents the best chance (no matter how remote) of rescue. That needs to be factored into the discussion: what is a ship's captain going to do in the situation? He is not simply going to accept the inevitable if he is at all worth his Master's Ticket.

That being said, if the ship's captain finds himself at a distance of a lightyear or less from a system (or other body), the issue then becomes one of prolonging survival long enough to either reach that system/body or prolonging it until contact with that body can be established to secure rescue. Remember, the month of fuel you mentioned refers to its power plant duration under normal load. A Captain is going to reduce his Power Plant output to bare minimum for life support if he is outside the maneuver distance to a nearby system/body. (There are rules in T5 for Reduced Power Plant Operations on p. 361-362, BTW: In Quiet Mode the ship can Maintain Life Support [and little else] at 10% fuel consumption (= 10 months), and in Long Term Mode the ship can run at 1% fuel consumption (= 100 months) and do little more than maintain its environment without life support [you would have to determine just how much power Low Berths require, and possibly tweak the power plant low-consumption output to accommodate it]).

A ship could ... transmit a signal with its location/timestamp and velocity & acceleration vectors, and projected fuel reserves in a Signal GK toward the destination star-system, thus allowing the destination-system to get a fix on the current position of the ship.

Any starship should be able to determine all of the above parameters with precision. This is a prerequisite to its ability to astrogate in both Normal Space and for plotting J-Space Jumps.

1) If its location/timestamp can be determined (and its velocity vector will be the same one that it had prior to the initial Jump), and

2) Any acceleration vectors the ship makes after emerging from Jump are included in the aforementioned distress signal, and

3) The precise bearing of the distress signal is picked up by a receiving station in the targeted system (which it will be if it is picked up at all), then:

​

It should not be a problem for a rescue mission to locate the ship with a reasonable degree of precision, as all of the above parameters should allow a calculation of a fairly precise location of the vessel by anyone receiving the distress signal (the math is fairly trivial - a simple "ballistic" trajectory). The rescue ship would not need months-worth of search time.

The issue would be whether or not the ship could generate a signal strong enough to be picked up in the target system, and whether or not the ship power-plant on low-power fuel consumption mode could hold out for the time it took for the signal to be received, plus one week for the rescue vessel to make the Jump.

All of the above being said, perhaps the real issue should be that instead of lifeboats/pods, regulations for ships should require enough Emergency Low Berths for all crew and passengers (whether aboard ship or aboard Lifepod(s)). Some ships would carry Emergency Low Berths aboard, others would free up internal ship volume by carrying lifepods with Emergency Low Berths installed (that would not have to be launched from the ship unless absolutely necessary).

Hal & Whipsnade have already discussed this proposition above to some degree.

 

[Carlobrand]

I understand that the chances are astronomically remote at best, but a ship's captain (by training) is going to attempt something that represents the best chance (no matter how remote) of rescue. That needs to be factored into the discussion: what is a ship's captain going to do in the situation? He is not simply going to accept the inevitable if he is at all worth his Master's Ticket.

Well, no, he's not, but the discussion as I understand it was about rescue, not about the final efforts of ships whose chance of survival - should they find themselves in the deep space between stars - are somewhat worse than winning the lottery. There's really not a lot to do to improve his chances except maybe carry more fuel instead of that lifeboat.

That being said, if the ship's captain finds himself at a distance of a lightyear or less from a system (or other body), the issue then becomes one of prolonging survival long enough to either reach that system/body or prolonging it until contact with that body can be established to secure rescue. Remember, the month of fuel you mentioned refers to its power plant duration under normal load. A Captain is going to reduce his Power Plant output to bare minimum for life support if he is outside the maneuver distance to a nearby system/body. (There are rules in T5 for Reduced Power Plant Operations on p. 361-362, BTW: In Quiet Mode the ship can Maintain Life Support [and little else] at 10% fuel consumption (= 10 months), and in Long Term Mode the ship can run at 1% fuel consumption (= 100 months) and do little more than maintain its environment without life support [you would have to determine just how much power Low Berths require]).

That's an interesting rule. CT/High Guard, the plant operates as Power-Plant-1 at the lowest setting - nice if you're a warship, little or no help for a lot of merchants. Ship emerges with anything from 1 to 3 weeks of fuel - assuming it hasn't run out in jump. Multiplying that by 10 only forestalls the inevitable when the ship can't even reach light speed and faces distances measured in light years.

Any starship should be able to determine all of the above parameters with precision. This is a prerequisite to its ability to astrogate in both Normal Space and for plotting J-Space Jumps.

1) If its location/timestamp can be determined (and its velocity vector will be the same one that it had prior to the initial Jump), and

2) Any acceleration vectors the ship makes after emerging from Jump are included in the aforementioned distress signal, and

3) The precise bearing of the distress signal is picked up by a receiving station in the targeted system, then:

​

It should not be a problem for a rescue mission to locate the ship with a reasonable degree of precision, as all of the above parameters should allow a calculation of a fairly precise location of the vessel by anyone receiving the distress signal (the math is fairly trivial - a simple "ballistic" trajectory). The rescue ship would not need months-worth of search time.

The issue would be whether or not the ship could generate a signal strong enough to be picked up in the target system, and whether or not the ship power-plant on low-power fuel consumption mode could hold out for the time it took for the signal to be received, plus one week for the rescue vessel to make the Jump.

The issue is how long it takes the signal to get somewhere. Precise location is only useful if the signal reaches rescuers in time. That signal is constrained by the same light-speed barrier the ship is constrained by. If you can manage to extend life support to 30 weeks by invoking the T5 fuel use rule, you still have to be lucky enough to be within a half light-year of rescue (and hope your signal reaches someone with receivers strong enough to detect it). Unless the ship is very, very, VERY lucky, the signal will not reach anyone until the ship and her complement are very, very dead.

All of the above being said, perhaps the real issue should be that instead of lifeboats/pods, regulations for ships should require enough Emergency Low Berths for all crew and passengers (whether aboard ship or aboard Lifepod(s)). Whipsnade has already mentioned this proposition above.

As they have mentioned the limited utility of lifeboats, so we mention the limited utility of ELBs. In the CT universe, they don't help - you are either close enough for rescue or your power is depleted and the ELBs fail before there can be any hope of rescue. There are ways around that IN a star system - I invoke again the solar panel - but there's little help there in deep space. In a misjump, you are pretty much either lucky or dead; the odds of ELBs being useful are so low that merchants would likely protest the added cost, especially when all they need to do to avoid a misjump is to take good care of their engines. You're more likely to see regulations prohibiting boarding of passengers without an annual maintenance - a prominent posting of the recent maintenance report, a certification for passenger transport and so forth - than you are to see regulations requiring tonnage allocated to safety devices for everyone based on those few who can't afford or be bothered to keep up with maintenance.

 

[whulorigan]

The issue is how long it takes the signal to get somewhere. Precise location is only useful if the signal reaches rescuers in time. That signal is constrained by the same light-speed barrier the ship is constrained by. If you can manage to extend life support to 30 weeks by invoking the T5 fuel use rule, you still have to be lucky enough to be within a half light-year of rescue (and hope your signal reaches someone with receivers strong enough to detect it). Unless the ship is very, very, VERY lucky, the signal will not reach anyone until the ship and her complement are very, very dead.
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As they have mentioned the limited utility of lifeboats, so we mention the limited utility of ELBs. In the CT universe, they don't help - you are either close enough for rescue or your power is depleted and the ELBs fail before there can be any hope of rescue.

(There are rules in T5 for Reduced Power Plant Operations on p. 361-362, BTW: In Quiet Mode the ship can Maintain Life Support [and little else] at 10% fuel consumption (= 10 months), and in Long Term Mode the ship can run at 1% fuel consumption (= 100 months) and do little more than maintain its environment without life support [you would have to determine just how much power Low Berths require, and possibly tweak the power plant low-consumption output to accommodate it]).

Agreed for CT, but if you can run the ship at Long-Term 1% fuel consumption (w/o Life Support, but possibly with enough power to maintain ELBs) using the T5 rule, then you have a little under 100 months (~ 7-8 years) to work with. (I do not remember what the power consumption levels for ELBs are - presumably as low as possible considering their reason for existence). Even if you have to tweak it to run it at 2%, you have 3-4 years. The issue, as you mentioned, is what is the signal strength of the distress signal.

I would think that if it is within reasonable technological (and cost) considerations, for simple peace of mind it would it be common to equip ships with a communication system capable of at least being able to broadcast a detectable signal at 1-3 lightyears range, even if it would take 1-3 years for the signal to be received. At least I would want my ship to have that capability if I had ELBs aboard that might be able to last several years.

 

[Ishmael]

I'm not certain that Mr. Whipsnade's position is not neccesarily 100% the case in a universe like the OTU.

For misjumps the news of any mishap will be too far out of date to be of practical use for rescue ops*, but in-system, all the rescuees need to do is stay alive long enough for the main-world's ships to arrive. Given thrusts accepted in the OTU, how long could that be? a week? a couple of weeks for trouble in the outer system? With most ships supposedly popping in and out of j-space at a little more than 100d from the mainworld, less.

Searching won't be a problem if one uses the predominantly accepted idea that we can detect pretty much anything in space, especially anything as warm as a spaceship, even if it is using spoofing technologies, as has been argued in older threads. Presumably, a ship in distress will be doing everything possible to make itself easier the find by increasing its signature.

Personally, I think purpose specific lifeboats take up volume and mass which could be better used for other things. Any 'lifeboat' would simply be a general purpose carried craft with a decent life support system for a full load of people.

* potentially any system within 36 parsecs, but the ship only need to send a distress signal in the system it misjumps into for rescue in THAT system. If there is no ship traffic in THAT system, then a lifeboat won't help anyways.

 

[PFVA63]

...

Personally, I think purpose specific lifeboats take up volume and mass which could be better used for other things. Any 'lifeboat' would simply be a general purpose carried craft with a decent life support system for a full load of people.

...

Hi,

As I've noted before, I think that this issue would be highly dependent on the vessel in question and what kind of mission it does.

For a general cargo ship with a relatively small crew, something like this may be possible for that purpose, but for a ship that caries a large number of passengers and/or crew that may not be likely. The carrying of sufficient "general purpose" small craft to accommodate all passengers and crew may not be a viable solution.

On real world ships you can often see similar situations where a vessel may carry a small Rigid Hull Inflatable Boat that serves as a Lifeboat/Rescue Boat and general small craft, but the ship still carries other liferafts and such to ensure that the entire crew and passengers can be accommodated in the event of an emergency.

Additionally, if your ship is very small then the carriage of a full fledged general purpose craft may neither be warranted nor easy to accommodate, but a smaller lifeboat/lifepod and/or a set of them may be easier to accommodate.

And, finally, for lifesaving/rescue purposes, the carriage of more than one unit may ultimately provide benefits over the carriage of a single "general purpose craft" for some situations.

As such, as I've noted before, its my belief that the best solution may likely vary from ship to ship.

 

[Reban]

Agreed for CT, but if you can run the ship at Long-Term 1% fuel consumption (w/o Life Support, but possibly with enough power to maintain ELBs) using the T5 rule, then you have a little under 100 months (~ 7-8 years) to work with. (I do not remember what the power consumption levels for ELBs are - presumably as low as possible considering their reason for existence). Even if you have to tweak it to run it at 2%, you have 3-4 years. The issue, as you mentioned, is what is the signal strength of the distress signal.

I would think that if it is within reasonable technological (and cost) considerations, for simple peace of mind it would it be common to equip ships with a communication system capable of at least being able to broadcast a detectable signal at 1-3 lightyears range, even if it would take 1-3 years for the signal to be received. At least I would want my ship to have that capability if I had ELBs aboard that might be able to last several years.

According to T5 a minimal Quality Low Berth has a power cell that lasts 6 months. Adding the "Emergency" option doubles that time to 1 year. I think if I'm reading the rule correctly a Luxury Q=A ELB can last 20 years.

 

[Ishmael]

For a general cargo ship with a relatively small crew, something like this may be possible for that purpose, but for a ship that caries a large number of passengers and/or crew that may not be likely. The carrying of sufficient "general purpose" small craft to accommodate all passengers and crew may not be a viable solution.

Additionally, if your ship is very small then the carriage of a full fledged general purpose craft may neither be warranted nor easy to accommodate, but a smaller lifeboat/lifepod and/or a set of them may be easier to accommodate.

I don't feel lifeboats are worth the volume/mass/cost in any situation. A safer bet, considering the rescue times in the situations I've mentioned in the OTU, would be to stay with the stricken ship.

If the ship would damaged ( suddenly ) so heavily that there were no livable compartments, you're dead unless you're wearing your vac-suit 24-7 ( never know when a ship-threatening emergency will crop up ).

In any case, given the nature of surviving in a vacuum vs surviving an open ocean, I doubt that there would be many survivors anyways.

 

[whulorigan]

According to T5 a minimal Quality Low Berth has a power cell that lasts 6 months. Adding the "Emergency" option doubles that time to 1 year. I think if I'm reading the rule correctly a Luxury Q=A ELB can last 20 years.

But also keep in mind: This (I believe) is the Local Power Cell integral to the unit. This is how much power-life the unit has in the absence of external power. If there is a small trickle of power coming from a Long-Term/Low Consumption Power Plant, that lifetime may be significantly increased.

 

[PFVA63]

I don't feel lifeboats are worth the volume/mass/cost in any situation. A safer bet, considering the rescue times in the situations I've mentioned in the OTU, would be to stay with the stricken ship.

If the ship would damaged ( suddenly ) so heavily that there were no livable compartments, you're dead unless you're wearing your vac-suit 24-7 ( never know when a ship-threatening emergency will crop up ).

In any case, given the nature of surviving in a vacuum vs surviving an open ocean, I doubt that there would be many survivors anyways.

Hi,

I did a bit of brainstorming back in posts 17 & 19 to just give a couple off the top of my head thoughts on how lifeboats might be quite useful in some situations.

To me, because of the potential of illness and disease and/or erratic behavior of personnel exposed to warp sickness or a variety of alien flora and fauna (and/or microscopic space cooties) plus the potential for systems failure onboard a ship (where it probably wouldn't be too unexpected that a weakened and/or aging component may ultimately fail when it experiences high stress (such as when entering/leaving orbit around a planet or when an orbiting space ship 1st encounters the upper atmosphere of a planet) to me there seems a possibility that there will not always be the option of staying with the main ship.

To me, if I were on a non-streamlined ship in orbit above a planet with a non-friendly atmosphere and the ship's thrusters failed I may be left wishing for some sort of lifeboat or lifepod that may allow me and the other people onboard to either try and make at least a semi-controlled decent to the planet's surface or which may have enough thrust capability to allow us to try and attain a safer orbit rather than having to freefall to the planet's surfaced in a spacecraft that was not designed for atmospheric operations.

As for weight, volume and costs, similar arguments could potentially be made against modern car features like airbags, seatbelts, 5mph bumpers and padded dashboards, and in many cases those features may not provide any benefit to those in the car, but in same cases they will and as such to me they still kind of make sense to have onboard.

 

[Hal]

Just adding some thoughts...

Any medical emergency can be met with low berth if it become necessary. Any systems failure short of imminent destruction of vessel, isn't likely to be all too much different than being in a vessel - it's just that life support may become an issue. Having redundancy built into the ship's systems may take care of that issue.

Any ship leaving a planet in preparation to a jump, is likely to be within easy distance of the planet when it experiences problems prior to a jump, and likely won't need lifeboats then - or if it does because of self-destruction - the people may be able to get by with survival bubbles in space or what have you. Situations may vary depending upon the world of course.

When a ship mis-jumps however, that is when it likely needs to worry about long term survival if it is in deep space and well outside of ordinary traffic. This would be analogous to a ship going down with all hands and the ship not being found again any time soon.

This brings up my next point...

If all low berths are required to be able to sustain years worth of operation off a power grid, they may offer some form of survival insurance. However, any ship with a short duration of life support that misjumps into deep space - is almost always going to become "salvage" material.

So, how would a deep space mis-jump ship hope to be salvaged? Long term radio beacons broadcasting the location of the ship?

If any ship were to try and find the missing ship, it would almost have to hope that it can jump to the middle of a location (aka hex) and listen for radio signals. This would perhaps be an occupation for those salvage ships?

One thing to keep at the back of your mind is that in classic Traveller, it was hard to misjump unless you missed your maintenance and/or used bad fuel, and/or were stupid enough to jump within a gravity well that was closer than 100 diameters away.

Just thinking aloud here...

 

[whulorigan]

If any ship were to try and find the missing ship, it would almost have to hope that it can jump to the middle of a location (aka hex) and listen for radio signals. This would perhaps be an occupation for those salvage ships?

Actually, that would probably be futile. First, you would have to have a reasonable idea of what hex(es) it might have mis-jumped to, and have ships go to each of those hexes to listen. That would be a LARGE volume of hexes.

Salvage would almost certainly depend upon the lost ship being able to reliably transmit its location in a tight/narrowcast transmission to the nearest system, hoping that some monitoring computer would alert an operator in the system monitoring distress frequency bands of a faint distress signal. The information in the S.O.S would have to contain the information that I mentioned in my previous post.

Survival would depend upon having those long-term ELBs; otherwise, you are done.

 

[mike wightman]

If you missjump you could be up to 36 parsecs in any direction from your system of departure.

An no way to call for help.

If only there was a jump capable distress missile...

 

[CosmicGamer]

I'm thinking that before one can credibly discuss what the design parameters for a lifeboat should be, that we first examine what happens in an emergency situation. To that end, I'd like to propose that we discuss potential emergency situations, and then - either within this thread, or perhaps start a new thread "Solutions to Emergency situations" and keep an ongoing running thread.

I think this was a good starting point - First list potential emergencies.

However, in this same original post the issue of a missing ship is brought up and we've gone into discussing miss jumps, the response times for missing ships and procedures for star ports to exchange information and so on.

My question to Hal is, should we create yet another thread for just listing possible emergencies, like the mentioned disease and virus outbreaks, mechanical failures and so on, or is this missing ship scenario the one you intended to delve into?

On the topic being discussed

leaving the ship doesn't achieve much

I'd think this would be the case most of the time.

A situation where somehow the ship and crew survive a miss jump yet the ship is somehow, I guess, "in trouble" and quickly transitioning to becoming not only incapable to sustain life but a danger to the crew such that the crew must escape it yet somehow the unspaceworthy deadly circumstances are occurring slow enough to allow egress to life boats which somehow was lucky enough to survive whatever the calamities are that affect the ship and are somehow in a more habitable condition than any parts of the ship: to me, this shouldn't be an event that life boats are designed around.

Fritz has this right. There's no real reason for lifeboats. There are extreme reasons, one-of-a-kind reasons, to require lifeboats, but there are no real, everyday, reasons for having lifeboats. In all but the most outre events, it's better to stay with the ship..

While not so black and white, my thoughts are along these lines.

 

[Fritz_Brown]

To me, because of the potential of illness and disease and/or erratic behavior of personnel exposed to warp sickness or a variety of alien flora and fauna (and/or microscopic space cooties) plus the potential for systems failure onboard a ship (where it probably wouldn't be too unexpected that a weakened and/or aging component may ultimately fail when it experiences high stress (such as when entering/leaving orbit around a planet or when an orbiting space ship 1st encounters the upper atmosphere of a planet) to me there seems a possibility that there will not always be the option of staying with the main ship.

Again - none of those things are more survivable by leaving the ship. The only possible exception is the crashing from orbit scenario - and that would necessitate the lifeboats have propulsion and adequate power systems (or really good ablative systems and shock absorbers)... which would increase their size and make them even less likely to be considered useful.

Having redundancy built into the ship's systems may take care of that issue.

Actually, even having things like vacc suit packs onboard (or rescue balls or anything else) will provide you with the necessary means to survive - as long as you remain on board.

However, any ship with a short duration of life support that misjumps into deep space - is almost always going to become "salvage" material.

Unless your life support can handle 3.26 years minimum (distance of a 'parsec'), I would call it "short duration" - at least if you're mis-jumping to an unknown hex.

So, how would a deep space mis-jump ship hope to be salvaged? Long term radio beacons broadcasting the location of the ship?

I don't think the ship hopes to be salvaged, unless you're playing in McCaffrey's universe. But, yeah, it would have to broadcast for at least 3.26 years + 1 week.

If you missjump you could be up to 36 parsecs in any direction from your system of departure.

Which is 117.36 light years - which would be a worst-case scenario of 118.06 years (36 1 week jumps) before rescue reached you.

BTW, anyone else here (except Aramis - I'm sure he knows) know what the first rule of survival is?

Spoiler:

That's right - it's Stay Put!

 

[PFVA63]

Again - none of those things are more survivable by leaving the ship. The only possible exception is the crashing from orbit scenario - and that would necessitate the lifeboats have propulsion and adequate power systems (or really good ablative systems and shock absorbers)... which would increase their size and make them even less likely to be considered useful.

Hi,

Not at all. One big issue not being fully addressed is that on a spaceship, unless you can make it to a "safe" area such as a habitable planet, space station, or some other ship then you are pretty much trapped in a fairly limited self-contained biosphere.

If an individual onboard this vessel is suffering from "psychotic manifestations" and is a physical threat to all onboard then if you can't disable him/her the only solution may very well be to physically separate yourself from the threat.

Similarly, the presence of a highly infectious, virulent disease which may have compromised/infested the life support systems onboard the ship may also necessitate the need for separation from the threat (especially if those infected by the disease may represent a potential to infect others and spread the disease, etc).

As for boosters or ablative shielding etc, their overall impact on the design of a lifeboat/lifepod may be a lot less than you might think. Due to orbital mechanics an increase in orbital speed should boost you to a higher orbit etc. As such relatively small emergency booster rockets may be sufficient as opposed to large scale Traveller style Power Plants and Thruster plates.

Overall, in general even on modern day ocean going ships, other then for drills on many ships a lifeboat may never actually get used (similar to how on many/most cars an airbag may never get used), but that does not mean that they are a waste of space & money and should be eliminated from those designs. They still serve a purpose and can be of great value in the event of when they are actually needed.

PS.

Spoiler:

As for staying put, that works as long as staying put is not a threat to your survival. Specifically, if you are in a car crash or airplane crash with leaking fuel, getting out and away from the threat of fire may be requirement for survival rather than "staying put". Similarly, "staying put" on a flooding submarine, etc may also not be the right solution either.

 

[CosmicGamer]

This is by no means an attack on you or your ideas because people are free to have fun playing the way they want.

To me, some ideas fall under a fun scenario for a GM or sci fi writer, but I find them too improbable for consideration for realistic ship/lifeboat requirement and design.

If an individual onboard this vessel is suffering from "psychotic manifestations" and is a physical threat to all onboard then if you can't disable him/her the only solution may very well be to physically separate yourself from the threat.

Someone that is a physical threat yet has not physically incapacitated the crew yet and somehow is dangerous enough to keep the crew from getting to weapons, drugs, environmental and counter boarding controls, or barricading themselves in a safe part of the ship yet is incapable of preventing the crew from getting to and launching untampered with life boats?

Similarly, the presence of a highly infectious, virulent disease which may have compromised/infested the life support systems onboard the ship may also necessitate the need for separation from the threat (especially if those infected by the disease may represent a potential to infect others and spread the disease, etc).

Somehow the ship systems and some people are infected and it is extremely dangerous and uncontrollable such that you can't contain it or seal off a portion of the ship yet somehow the life boat and people that get on it are safe from the effects?

Overall, in general even on modern day ocean going ships, other then for drills on many ships a lifeboat may never actually get used (similar to how on many/most cars an airbag may never get used), but that does not mean that they are a waste of space & money and should be eliminated from those designs. They still serve a purpose and can be of great value in the event of when they are actually needed.

I don't think what some are suggesting is the same as saying they should be eliminated from the designs because of "XYZ". They were never in the typical Traveller ship designs to begin with as far as I know. "XYZ" are just some reasoning for why, even considering certain emergencies, they were never in the designs.

 

[whulorigan]

I don't think the ship hopes to be salvaged, unless you're playing in McCaffrey's universe. But, yeah, it would have to broadcast for at least 3.26 years + 1 week.

No, it wouldn't have to broadcast that long. It would be beneficial to broadcast as long as possible, but all that is necessary is that it send out a broadcast with all of its position/timestamp and vector information in the broadcast, hope someone hears it (after 3.26 years) and takes a bearing from the signal, and then wait for the rescue/salvage ship (if it is no more than 1pc away). There is no need for it to be continually broadcasting during this time, but obviously you would want to broadcast for as long as you can manage to do so without compromising your power/fuel rationing, so as to have a better chance of being detected.

Which is 117.36 light years - which would be a worst-case scenario of 118.06 years (36 1 week jumps) before rescue reached you.

I have either missed the point here, or this doesn't make sense at all. Presuming you have a transmitter that can produce an S.O.S. signal that can be picked up (however faintly) from several LY distance, you would broadcast to the nearest system, not the originating or the originally intended destination system. The fact that the ship made a 36pc misjump is irrelevant.

I think it has been fairly well established in this discussion thread that once the jump has occurred from Alpha Century (the originating system), all "serach and rescue" efforts due to a misjump are moot from either Alpha Century or [FONT=arial,helvetica]Neocourageous World (the intended destination system). At that point, all hope of being found depends upon the ability of the ship to make its whereabouts and situation known to the nearest outside agency.


[/FONT]

 

[Carlobrand]

...Personally, I think purpose specific lifeboats take up volume and mass which could be better used for other things. Any 'lifeboat' would simply be a general purpose carried craft with a decent life support system for a full load of people. ...

Yes! I'll not go so far as saying lifeboats are always useless. Military craft that might find themselves on a mission alone where help can't be expected may find a lifeboat useful. Merchants popping from inhabited world to inhabited world - not so much. However, my favored lifeboat for a warship is something jump-capable, which basically means the warship carries a scout/courier.

(Actually, I have an IMTU cutter module that uses something like the jump field cables from a Supplement 9 jump ship to fill a cutter out to 100dTon volume, allowing the cutter to be carried by any warship capable of carrying 50 dtonners and providing that warship a way of sending someone off for help.)

Agreed for CT, but if you can run the ship at Long-Term 1% fuel consumption (w/o Life Support, but possibly with enough power to maintain ELBs) using the T5 rule, then you have a little under 100 months (~ 7-8 years) to work with. ...

I have no idea how T5 works. However, here's an interesting thought. At TL15, MegaTrav allows the construction of fusion reactors as small as 90 liters (that's about half the size of your water heater). Cost is Cr18,000, output is 0.135Mw on 0.81 liters per hour. In other words, this puppy can run almost 100 weeks on a dTon of fuel. There are microreactors available from TL12 forward, they're just a bit bigger and not quite as efficient.

An ELB in MegaTrav draws 0.002 Mw. One MegaTrav TL15 micro, serving as emergency power, can serve up to 60 ELBs and a 1000-AU range radio beacon for almost 2 years (well, 23 months) on 1 dTon of fuel. So long as the machinery doesn't break down (which is an entirely new question), you can hunker down in your ELB once you're down to a couple or three dTons of fuel and wait a very long time. Doesn't get you out of the frying pan - 1000-AUs amounts to only about 5.8 light days. However, at that point there's at least hope some world with an interstellar-range passive array could detect your signal and vector help your way. It'd still be 3 or more years before you got rescued, might be hefty penalties on the survival roll, but at least it's a chance. Assuming nothing breaks.

...As for weight, volume and costs, similar arguments could potentially be made against modern car features like airbags, seatbelts, 5mph bumpers and padded dashboards, and in many cases those features may not provide any benefit to those in the car, but in same cases they will and as such to me they still kind of make sense to have onboard.

5 mph bumpers and padded dashboards don't cost a merchant several thousand credits every trip in space that could otherwise be designed to hold passengers or cargo. Think more along the lines of semi trucks being required to carry a Mini-Cooper in the trailer in case the truck breaks down somewhere.

 

[Fritz_Brown]

No, it wouldn't have to broadcast that long. It would be beneficial to broadcast as long as possible, but all that is necessary is that it send out a broadcast with all of its position/timestamp and vector information in the broadcast, hope someone hears it (after 3.26 years) and takes a bearing from the signal, and then wait for the rescue/salvage ship (if it is no more than 1pc away).

Except, if you aren't radiating when you're rescuer arrives, you're a black body in a really big empty bit of space (unless you were lucky enough to achieve orbit somewhere)

you would broadcast to the nearest system, not the originating or the originally intended destination system. The fact that the ship made a 36pc misjump is irrelevant.

Remember I said "worst case scenario" - if you had jumped 36 hexes away from *anywhere*.

At that point, all hope of being found depends upon the ability of the ship to make its whereabouts and situation known to the nearest outside agency.

And it will take years, unless the S&R folks know which system to look in and you have a beacon going off when they arrive (and they arrive at a point inside the outer edge of where the beacon has reached in the time they took to reach you - otherwise they have to wait for your signal to reach them).

All in all, if your ship goes missing in the dark, you're done for unless you can get to a habitable place. You *might* survive if you're in a populated system and not too far out from civilization, or if they know right where to come looking for you. Even then (or especially then), you better still be with the ship, or you become even harder to find and rescue.