Power failure in space

[aramis]

I seem to recall there was a further problem on Titanic because the forward half of the promenade deck (from which passengers were meant to access the lifeboats) was enclosed, which made it more difficult to get into those lifeboats than the ones further aft.

She was a stack of bad things overlapping. Not the least of which was arrogance on the part of White Star Lines' management and ownership.

No naval ship is unsinkable. At best, they can be resilient to damage.
Airships, too...
And space ships have even more to go wrong.

Classic Traveller doesn't actually model its ships on 20th C shipping, nor even 19th C, really, CT core is a very clear age of sail (16th to 18th C) model for trade and design... no armor, most guns are pretty equal, no life boats, most of the crew for the propulsion (AoS=seamen on deck and top duties; CT Engineers), and then warships' with gun crews. The carriers are an outgrowth of the rules, not an intentional modeling... but under pure bk2, 5 kTd battleships are likely to cary a few dozen fighters... otherwise they have a bunch of cargo space.

 

[TamsinP]

Here's the video where I got that fact about Titanic (it's the last 4 minutes or so):

 

[warwizard]

Now misjump J-36 in an inconvient direction, the main power plant only has a month of fuel. J-1 is a parsec, that is 3.26 light-years, so 117.36 light years for the SOS to reach where you jumped from. My proposed 10 year power supply is only good enough for a J-3 rescue distance. Perhaps an RTG is best used for the low berth and emergency low berth survival pod. Perhaps the misjump emergency equipment locker only has single use slug throwers in it.

 

[kilemall]

One thing that needs to be borne in mind with multiple power plants is that each one will need piping to carry fuel from the fuel tanks. That's a lot of liquid hydrogen being shunted throughout the ship, with lots of opportunities for massive problems if a pipe gets damaged.

Keep in mind power cables or equivalent can break too. I have this built into my combat tables, the more hull damage the more power fuel and/or control lines can break and disable systems.

 

[Commander Truestar]

In Alien, hyperspace drives conscious folk mad. As in psychotic breaks. Also, they're not cryo... they appear to be chemical hybernation. Excepting the escape pod; it appears to have been cryo.

Since having the whole crew go barmy isn't conducive to maintenance nor commerce... it becomes a needed expense.
Also, barring external interference, Alien's berths seem more reliable than CT's or MT's.

In Alien, like in CJ Cherryh's universe, Humans counldn't deal with Hyperspace without chem-sleep, which makes the comparison Apples and Warthogs

Titanic had boats aplenty... but it couldn't get them all launched. The rated capacity was not sufficient to include 3rd class. 1178 seats, for 1448 1st and 2nd class passengers. (most of the lifeboats were rated by seating; you could overload them once in water.)

I'm sorry.
It is commonly known fact, admitted by the White Star line at the time that she had lifeboats that could accommodate 1,178 people. A little over half of the 2,209 on board the night she sank. I grant you they underfilled many of the boats and could not launch many once they actually realized they "were sinking" as well.

But the lack of lifeboats changed both Maritime law and passenger ship architecture

The 874 crew, save perhaps the senior officers, were expected to hit the water in life jackets. The Third Class were generally considered more as livestock than passengers, weren't even supposed to go to the lifeboats, and didn't have enough life jackets, either.
Where the big hurt was for the lifeboats, most launched just over half full, and not all hit the water....
In theory, only the third class passengers and the black gang should have died...

Yeah, that's some pretty callous calculus. Titanic was in an era where Class Consciousness mattered, social standing was important, and money could make up for "bad breeding," at least for white folk. (The nouveau riche may not have actually been that popular overseas, but their money sure was.)

While that was the attitude of the line, the "truth was" they believed Titanic could not sink, so no one would die because it wouldn't happen.
And, despite that attitude, after Titanic sank, they redesigned Britannic(Titanic's sister ships) to save "EVERYONE" after Titanic went down. Lusitania was also modified, but she was actually owned by the Cunard Line.

That said, your comment proves my position more than anything I have said
You give evidence there would not be spare power plants "because it makes sense" and because "it would save lives"
The fact is, the architects and ship yards will only put in backups if it was mandated and paid for by the client

But there are more things that went wrong. While we start with insufficient lifeboat drills, add insufficient life jackets, crew unfamiliar with the davits, davits which wouldn't work on either side while the ship was listing (let alone pitching), evacuation plans based upon single failure point need (instead of the 3+ compartments flooded), difficulty in heading to your lifeboat station in a listing and pitching hull, and of course, the callousness of many of the class conscious 1st class and 2nd class passengers. Plus, night-time resulting in many who could have been saved by the boats being unseen by those in them..

I agree 100% that those factors played a role, however everyone admitted the main reason she was designed with half the boats she should have had was that Titanic was never believed to be able to sink

 

[Condottiere]

Detachable bridge could be considered a lifeboat.

 

[kilemall]

Eh, my take is that there exactly WOULD be Space Titanics that change space architecture and law, and that x margins are built into every ship and you literally can't be selling tickets on an inherently unsafe craft.

At least at full price.

So that's what I have.

Now then since I believe in Campbell's dictum that you provide a rule of the story then run an 'experiment' breaking the rule, I have ships that don't have all the inspection and working systems.

IMTU the Cloud otherwise traditionally the Oort Cloud has a dirty outlaw system throughout, including starship jump with none of that safety/inspection nonsense. Not least of which is the ships have likely been pirated two owners ago.

The tickets can be a lot cheaper, or the same/higher but get you to places no legal/moneymaking ship will go, but safety and space mints on your High Passage pillow won't be happening. The choice of the desperate and poor, but it's there.

That's where I would be putting small craft staterooms on starships. With some debilitating and dangerous consequences.

 

[Rupert]

Now misjump J-36 in an inconvient direction, the main power plant only has a month of fuel. J-1 is a parsec, that is 3.26 light-years, so 117.36 light years for the SOS to reach where you jumped from. My proposed 10 year power supply is only good enough for a J-3 rescue distance. Perhaps an RTG is best used for the low berth and emergency low berth survival pod. Perhaps the misjump emergency equipment locker only has single use slug throwers in it.

IMTU cold sleep can last indefinitely if the ship is cold enough - there's no need for power if the environment is cyrogenic. So if you misjump like that and there's nobody nearby, move the ship into an orbit that's nice and far out from any nearby star, set up a nice big radar reflector and a simple radio beacon (an RTG to power this would be great), and hop into cold sleep. Hopefully someone finds you before too long.

 

[Condottiere]

 

[Commander Truestar]

IMTU, I did "make the rules do what I wanted" where a Wind-class Strike carrier, "INS Regina's Storms, had misjumped over a year before.
A character who was one of the ship's frozen watch Marines was still in a working low berth, which was still active thanks to the on-unit battery.

The rest of the berths were either damaged or....gone.

She was rescued and joined the player's crew.

So, that is the epitome of, "You are the GM and can do what you want."

 

[Carlobrand]

Exactly...
"Put them in if you want them"

That does not mean "assume they are there because it would make sense."

It would have made sense to have lifeboats for everyone on the Titanic.
But it took "actual laws" to force ship builders to have those life boats because Titanic wasn't the only one.....just the most famous

And, BTW, the second most famous was the White Star Lines "SS Atlantic" (you would have thought they'd have learned)
The SS Atlantic was part of the White Star Line and one of the most modern steamships afloat.
Running short of coal, Captain Williams diverted to Halifax to refuel. At 3:15 A.M. on the 1st of April, 1873, while the captain slept, the Atlantic smashed at full speed into the rocky shores and was wrecked, killing ~550 people

So, I don't count on logic
I count on people who want profits and will use that tonnage to make money instead of save lives

The examples march through history and show us no one builds for safety unless the laws make them

In the logic of the time, it did not in fact make sense to have lifeboats for everyone on the Titanic, at least not to the people who regulated such things. It was constructed to be difficult to sink, they had radio, there were other ships on the route, and it was believed they needed only enough lifeboats to execute a reasonably prompt transition from one ship to the other that arrived in response to the distress call - and the other would have its own boats to help out. The "actual laws" in place at the time, Board of Trade regulations, required lifeboats for 1060, and Titanic had lifeboats for 1178 so it was in compliance. Such was the logic at the time - like figuring they could get away with doing a plugout test on Apollo 1 with pure O2 at 16+ psi. That logic turned out to be flawed. In the aftermath of the accident, the logic changed. Ships were later required to have lifeboats for everyone and to have regular lifeboat drills. Of the two requirements, the obvious easy one to check was implemented consistently, while the one that was less easy to check - not so much.

As to the Atlantic, its lifeboats were either smashed against the same rocks that held it as they launched them or were washed away by the waves. Many of those that survived were saved because one of the crewmen swam to shore with a rope and rigged ropelines for people to cross from the grounded ship to the shore. Only real lesson there is try not to hit the rocks.

I personally count on balance. A 10,000 year star-faring civilization with nobles and elites who pay premium rates to get from point A to point B is not going to be governed solely by people who want to put profit ahead of saving lives. Wrong people die at some point, and then the rulemakers and regulators step in. It's not very likely to be governed entirely by people who want to put lives ahead of profits either; people don't stop being people, and regulators can be bribed. Best in-game example of that is CT Double Adventure "Marooned/Marooned Alone". The liner has lifeboats. One presumes regulations require something that costs so much or the buyer would not have had them included, especially since there's general agreement among us at least that lifeboats on a commercial spaceliner are unnecessary, but it makes for a useful plot device so there it is - likely a relic of a time when some important people died in one of those very rare times when a lifeboat would have come in handy, so now everyone is stuck with them. Regulations also require survival packs for everyone (again, not clear why but it's a useful plot device). What we REALLY have, though, is a lifeboat with barely enough fuel to land and only a few of the required survival packs.

That tends to be the more common scenario: not a universe ruled by people who put profits ahead of lives so much as a universe with useful (and occasionally pointless) regulations that are sometimes negligently applied - sometimes because of people who put profits ahead of lives, sometimes just because of people who are lazy or shortsighted.

 

[kilemall]

In the logic of the time, it did not in fact make sense to have lifeboats for everyone on the Titanic, at least not to the people who regulated such things. It was constructed to be difficult to sink, they had radio, there were other ships on the route, and it was believed they needed only enough lifeboats to execute a reasonably prompt transition from one ship to the other that arrived in response to the distress call - and the other would have its own boats to help out. The "actual laws" in place at the time, Board of Trade regulations, required lifeboats for 1060, and Titanic had lifeboats for 1178 so it was in compliance. Such was the logic at the time - like figuring they could get away with doing a plugout test on Apollo 1 with pure O2 at 16+ psi. That logic turned out to be flawed. In the aftermath of the accident, the logic changed. Ships were later required to have lifeboats for everyone and to have regular lifeboat drills. Of the two requirements, the obvious easy one to check was implemented consistently, while the one that was less easy to check - not so much.

As to the Atlantic, its lifeboats were either smashed against the same rocks that held it as they launched them or were washed away by the waves. Many of those that survived were saved because one of the crewmen swam to shore with a rope and rigged ropelines for people to cross from the grounded ship to the shore. Only real lesson there is try not to hit the rocks.

I personally count on balance. A 10,000 year star-faring civilization with nobles and elites who pay premium rates to get from point A to point B is not going to be governed solely by people who want to put profit ahead of saving lives. Wrong people die at some point, and then the rulemakers and regulators step in. It's not very likely to be governed entirely by people who want to put lives ahead of profits either; people don't stop being people, and regulators can be bribed. Best in-game example of that is CT Double Adventure "Marooned/Marooned Alone". The liner has lifeboats. One presumes regulations require something that costs so much or the buyer would not have had them included, especially since there's general agreement among us at least that lifeboats on a commercial spaceliner are unnecessary, but it makes for a useful plot device so there it is - likely a relic of a time when some important people died in one of those very rare times when a lifeboat would have come in handy, so now everyone is stuck with them. Regulations also require survival packs for everyone (again, not clear why but it's a useful plot device). What we REALLY have, though, is a lifeboat with barely enough fuel to land and only a few of the required survival packs.

That tends to be the more common scenario: not a universe ruled by people who put profits ahead of lives so much as a universe with useful (and occasionally pointless) regulations that are sometimes negligently applied - sometimes because of people who put profits ahead of lives, sometimes just because of people who are lazy or shortsighted.

Crew surreptitiously selling 'extra' vacc/pressure suits and truing up the safety count during annual maintenance/inspection probably happens constantly.

 

[Condottiere]

This would be where the mess in the ship's locker would cover up shrinkage.

I suppose you could rent spacesuits, for inspections.

 

[casquilho]

So, I don't count on logic
I count on people who want profits and will use that tonnage to make money instead of save lives

The examples march through history and show us no one builds for safety unless the laws make them

As much as I hate this thought, I know it is true and I agree with the Commander 100%.

 

[kilemall]

As much as I hate this thought, I know it is true and I agree with the Commander 100%.

I agree. I’m saying they will force some safety measures. Effective enough t grt people flying.

 

[Rupert]

I expect that the safety regs will be enforced with rigour directly proportional to the chances of someone important being onboard. So Imperial Navy ships in fleets, major starlines, etc., yeah they'll be up to spec. A small IN ship on patrol out of a backwater base in the Marches? Not so much, at least those the crew thinks don't matter. A free trader in the same space? Maybe not at all, though if they carry many high passengers the carpet's probably clean and the fire extinguishers look nice (until you check closely and realise they've just been painted and kept well dusted).

The adventure Carlobrand mentions above, Marooned/Marooned Alone, certainly supports this - the lifeboat malfunctions and has far fewer survival kits than it's supposed to have (and the number of kits, suggests a pre-'81 lifeboat/launch).

Incidentally, 'lifeboat' is another name for a Launch in the 1981 edition, but in the '77 edition is an actual lifeboat. The '77 edition is much stricter about being able to add passenger capacity, too - you can't. On the other hand, small craft have 30 days' life support for their rated capacity with no mention of any need for power for the life support in the '77 edition.

 

[Condottiere]

There are liftboats.

Which could be a twenty five tonne compromise between a thirty tonne ship's boat, and a twenty tonne launch.

 

[McPerth]

Remember also any subcraft with a power planet could probably give minimal power to any such ship. Probably not enough to maneuver, but it will probably be enough for life support (albeit maybe without artificial gravity taht, at least in MT, takes the lion share of LS power).

 

[Condottiere]

 

[Rupert]

There are liftboats.

Which could be a twenty five tonne compromise between a thirty tonne ship's boat, and a twenty tonne launch.

There are also 3-DTon and 6-DTon 'liferafts', and a 10-DTon lifeboat in TNE (a modified launch, because they are also 10-DTons in TNE). They still seem very rare outside of ships carrying launches (that have 'lifeboat' as an alternate name) once you get the 1891 LBBs.