It's the life-support version of having a teleporter instead of shuttlecraft: simpler to set up and film.
Shipboard life support and food per person per day?
- Thread starter agorski
- Start date
I would think in the real world the closest we could get to a starship as far as food and galley go is an SSN or SSBN.
Submarine menus are adapted to the ship's climate, the crew's preferences, dietary requirements, and the availability of food. They also include fresh fruit and salad sidebars. Submarines typically have two to four cooks on board to prepare meals.
Submarines carry a lot of food, typically around 15,000 pounds, or about 110 pounds per sailor per patrol. They have two cold storage rooms for perishable foods, the cool room and the refrigeration room. Both rooms have insulated walls, floors, and ceilings.
Submariners eat in the crew's mess, and the menu is the same for officers and enlisted men.
This is a link about Sub meals.
Submarine menus are adapted to the ship's climate, the crew's preferences, dietary requirements, and the availability of food. They also include fresh fruit and salad sidebars. Submarines typically have two to four cooks on board to prepare meals.
Submarines carry a lot of food, typically around 15,000 pounds, or about 110 pounds per sailor per patrol. They have two cold storage rooms for perishable foods, the cool room and the refrigeration room. Both rooms have insulated walls, floors, and ceilings.
Submariners eat in the crew's mess, and the menu is the same for officers and enlisted men.
This is a link about Sub meals.
These subs go on cruises where they don't go into port for months. That's quite different to most Traveller spaceships which visit a port every 7-10 days, and can restock, let the crew off for a bit of leave and so on.
Note that Book 2 ships do not require a steward unless they carry high passengers, no matter the size of the crew. Even a 5,000 DTon warship with hundreds of gunners and small-craft pilots, and a dozen other crew only needs one medic and doesn't need any stewards. That means cooking meals isn't a full-time position - at most some guys have it as their share of 'general ship-board duties', presumably instead of cleaning the toilets, etc., or it's rostered as part of those general duties.
High Guard adds 'service crew' that include cooks, quartermasters, security, general maintenance, and so on, at 2-3 per 1,000 DTons, so most of them will have at least a part-time cook.
MegaTraveller requires a steward if there are any high passengers, and one per eight command crew and high passengers plus one per fifty other crew and middle passengers (rounded down), so small non-passenger ships will probably do without.
TNE is similar to MT, except that computerisation reduces the number of stewards required to look after crew and middle passengers, but command crew and high passengers still require that personal touch.
They do some cooking per se, but it ends up looking largely printed.
Never again worrying that the soufflé will collapse in the oven!
It's not the energy to do it that is the problem... it's the radiative capacity of the ship. In other words, cooling.
If we have a relatively realistic cooling, much of the hull is covered in radiators. Larger ships can't run as fast because they can't cool enough to run a plant that high.
If we have magical heat sinks which are implied by the lack of mention of cooling in CT/MT/MgT1... well... sure. But then the question is, how the hell are they dumping that heat?
Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
Realistically, so to say, you transfer it to substances that you plasmasize and eject.
That's why hydrogen ejected from rockets was so attractive.
Ironically, starships might be the most efficient at this - you accumulate the heat, transfer it to the jump fuel, and dump it when you transition.
That's why hydrogen ejected from rockets was so attractive.
Ironically, starships might be the most efficient at this - you accumulate the heat, transfer it to the jump fuel, and dump it when you transition.
Enoki
SOC-14 1K
Now, my personal ruling on this is that if you are running a ship with more than 6 passengers and in the business of carrying passengers as a routine thing on a merchant ship, at least within the 3I and most similar polities--it's going to vary some--you must have onboard:
A steward or crewmember that can act as a steward. That is, somebody has to have steward 1 as a skill
There must be a crewmember that has medic 1 aboard. That is, somebody knows a bit about what to do if there's a medical emergency aboard.
Ships less than 1000 tons don't have to have continuous watches outside somebody on the bridge, anybody will do. So, there's one crew on duty at all times.
How much interaction there is with passengers varies with whether they are high, middle, or low passage and how you've arranged things. Players are allowed to charge what they feel is a 'fair' price for those passage levels rather than something that's fixed. The rules numbers are a "suggestion" based on the average charged.
Crew interactions and such are usually based on a more Victorian / age of sail / formal arrangement and this goes for much of society too. Things aren't so casual. This goes with the concept of social status and why you have to roll that up. You have to present yourself as that level or things go south for you and it gets reduced. If you try and fake your way up, that too can result in bad things happening if or when you get caught.
While egalitarian societies do exist, most aren't and you are expected to know your place in the order of things.
So, if you are carrying high passengers, you need a steward not just to cook proper meals, but to lay out proper table settings, mix passengers fancy drinks, wash and iron their laundry, ensure their cabins are kept clean and orderly, that sort of thing. The middies get decent treatment too but aren't going to be fawned over like the high passengers get.
Enoki
SOC-14 1K
One of the jobs I got at one point while in the Navy was looking into manufacturing new dry food service lockers for submarines. Think one of those aluminum airline boxes with shelves for the food items. The only difference was these had to be quiet. That is, they were soundproofed to prevent the cans and such from making noise if they rattled around inside it. Obviously, not a requirement for a starship, but there might be other things required.
Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
aerospacebnb
Badenov
SOC-12
I guess in space, no one can hear your refrigerator kick on.
IMTU acoustic sensors are a thing- in gas giant atmosphere especially.
Badenov
SOC-12
Well, yes, that's not space, no sound works in space so no sonar, that's atmosphere. Even then, acoustic doesn't generally have the range in something like a gas (compared to a fluid), but at close range in a gas giant, you can definitely hear things. I do not know if you can get out of the way of any rocks or other refluelling ships in time, I'd generally rely on radar in any atmo before sonar. Now under the surface in a water world would be a place sonar was needed as water tends to attentuate radar pretty severely and propagates sound pretty well.
I imagine an acoustic sensor can tell the difference between a ship sucking up gas for fuel and the roar of the winds, I'm sure someone here can confirm, and there's a thread at https://www.travellerrpg.com/threads/lack-of-sonar-in-the-rules.34522/ that mentions an article from Challenge Magazine #54.
I imagine in gas giants, there are scooping protocols (for civilians, and military not in wartime) that reduces the risk of ships colliding. Active radar/transponders, a beacon, maybe, things to make it abundanty clear someone is using this piece of atmosphere. Pirates and enemy spaceships of course will forgo this.
That all said, I'll bet a sufficiently sensitive magnetometer can detect the compressor kicking on.
One thing that often gets overlooked,
Traveller ships have a ridiculous amount of surplus energy.
casquilho
SOC-13
One of the forever discussion/arguments/debates, I wonder if anyone has ever counted the threads, posts and hours dedicated to this one subject?
I assure you based on the number of times I have seen it discussed it is not overlooked.
Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
Percentage of resources utilized to output.
It's linear, but if it's economies of scale, that increases output even more.
It's linear, but if it's economies of scale, that increases output even more.
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