Where is the "Coast Guard"

[GypsyComet]

Originally posted by Dynamo:

Space SAR would be prohibitively expensive, hell it'd be a financial nightmare for the Imperium unless some sort of Rescue "fee" was charged. Private Salvage and Tow Companies prolly keep around a few "high G" rescue boats for system use and with a deployable Mass Driver to slingshot the salvage back to a central collection point. Thier MO would be to pick up the crew and shoot the salvage back to a shipyard. The Rescue boats could also carry temporary Damage Control Equipment Box patches or plasteel plating to seal hull breaches and an ownership beacon or tag to signify right of salvage.

How expensive (to either the rescuer or the rescuee) will generally depend on how developed a system is, and how inaccurate jump drive is IYTU.
With inaccurate jump drives or well developed systems, ships can emerge *anywhere* in a system (and occasionally miss it completely, requiring a rescue run to the cometary halo. Bleah...). In such cases, SDBs and similar craft will likely be found all over the place. In well-populated systems, any gravity well large enough to "capture" incoming jumps will have several SAR-capable vessels nearby. Normally these will be SDBs or possibly jumpless variants of the Type T or that mobile customs office, the Modular Cutter.

In TUs with more accurate jump drive, SAR and customs coverage will congregate at those gravity wells that are actually ports of call within a system, with the occasional roving vessel.

Only in cases where the system is undeveloped aside from the mainworld will you get huge response times, since there is only one place to operate from. In these cases, a significant fraction of the SAR assets will be jump-capable, as normal travel times may well exceed a week.

Note that these are generalizations, and wartime, post-Virus, or balkanized mainworlds all have an effect on the type and depth of customs and SAR coverage.

 

[GypsyComet]

The viability of private salvage/SAR companies will depend on the nature of space salvage law. If it's structured like current maritime salvage law, then either there are clauses to deal with the disposition of cargo and frieght, or you *really* want to be rescued by the SPA/customs folks, since they'll merely tack the cost of rescue onto your port bill. Get a private SAR/salvage outfit, and you may forfeit the works unless you can come up with cash NOW...

This being a largely mercantile Imperium, I suspect there are clauses in salvage law that treat passengers and freight as "held harmless" and immune to salvage dues for some period of time. Cargo, on the other hand, is property like the ship itself. Thus it becomes a question of timing: can I, the ship owner/captain, sell off my cargos to pay for the salvage of the whole ship, or do I need to pay the salvagers for the whole kit-and-kaboodle first?

If the latter, expect all Megacorps to maintain their own SAR/salvage units in systems where they operate ships regularly...

 

[Uncle Bob]

Originally posted by rancke:
* Imperial Navy regular fleets
Imperial Navy reserve fleets (same organization, after all)
* Subsector navies (one per duchy)
* System navies

Hans

How about this: the Duke has his own forces, which are as large and hi-tech as he can afford. In case of war, squadrons of the subsector fleet are mobilized as part (possibly a very large part) of the reserve fleet.

I rekon many Dukes will get by on the cheap and use imperial hand-me-downs. That way all they pay for is crews and maintenence.

 

[Elliot]

The point of the Traveller game 'Snapshot' was to play either the coastguard or the pirates. In my view a small imperial marine detachment trains local coastguards in this line of work and this is enough to deter most corsairs from trying it on.

Outside the Imperium all is different, however.

 

[Dynamo]

I guess what I have a problem with is role and Response time. The distances involved in modern SAR make air rescue when possible the safest and fastest way to conduct operations. Now when you change scale from a couple of hundred miles to a couple of hundred thousand miles (or million in the case of really large systems)your talking about highly specialized rescue ships with six or 7 g acceleration and almost no jump drive capability. more to come..........

 

[Jame]

Coast Guard duties might be assigned to different people in different areas of the Imperium, i.e. in the core areas the SPA might have enough resources to do it "in house," while on the fringes the IN or even private companies might take care of it. I believe someone mentioned the possibility of megacorps doing SAR in systems their ships frequent, which seems reasonable to me.