Fully Automated Ships, are they practical, or even possible?

[mike wightman]

Most of these already exist somewhere in Traveller canon
HAL - the Kinunir's computer;
R2D2 - the janitor robots from Adventure 2 Research Station Gamma.

The K'kree use master/slave engineering robots to save having to crawl around in the cramped engineering sections of their ships.

What's a SHODAN?

Oh, and Ash would cost about 12MCr according to LBB8

 

[Golan2072]

Originally posted by Sigg Oddra:

What's a SHODAN?

S.H.O.D.A.N = Sentient, Hyper-Optimized, Data Access Network; the Goddess-like AI villian from the System Shock computer game series. Think of VIKI from "I, Robot" mixed with HAL2001 and given total, unrestricted control of a bio/robotics reseach space station. Use these links to see Her face, learn about the game, or about Her realm.

 

[aramis]

There are several reasons why there are 1-2 scouts aboard the X-Boats.
1) someone to blame when things go wrong.
2) someone to be the legal claim that it's not abandoned.
3) someone to wield the shotgun if the ship gets hijacked.
4) someone to keep the occasional passenger out of the computers.

I think it is clearly doable to automate all the crew positions. Remember, a crewman's work week is defined (in TNE, at least) as 40 hours... a single "Always up" robot can replace 3.9-4 crewmen AT A SINGLE STATION... But it requires a mobile maintenance program, too...

I think, due to various bits of Library data, that such automation is NOT considered reliable, even if it is, for societal reasons.

Likewise, I would NOT want to trust a fully automated ship with my life, no matter HOW much I was assured it was safer. Put a pilot with manual override capability, and I'll fell a lot safer. (Odds are, i'm no safer... unless there is a maintenance issue.)

 

[BetterThanLife]

I like the implication about astrogation in Jump Space that, for best results requires a Human. (Like Slip Streaming on the TV show Andromeda requires an organic brain and intuition. (Amazing the amount of Traveller parallels in that show. Almost like it was inspired by TNE.

)

 

[jatay3]

A. maned ships are necessary to the story. What kind of story would their be if the characters don't do anything?

B. All that really needs to be done is to blame it on some phenomenon(real,fictional, or undetermined) we don't understand. That way no one can say the explanation is improbable. For instance just say that the strains of jump space make it impossible to depend completly on computers. As no one knows how jump works anyway no one can argue against it.