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Post by gedzilla on Jan 11, 2017 6:23:47 GMT
Where are the escape pods designed to save your (valuable and trained) crew ?
Btw, the escape pods I envision are nothing more than a engine, propellant tank and crew module (maybe a bit of anti nuke armor)
Yes, in a 1v1 in deep space, escape pods are'nt ganna help if the enemy decides to kill you all (which is unlikely), but in a larger scale battle, especially if your side wins, escape pods will be essential to saving personnel that are VERY valuable (they have to be smart, highly motivated, loyal, calm in the face of danger, near suicidal devotion (those ships are basically death traps), trained)
THe escape pods might only have a week of food in them, which wont help if you lose a battle in deep space, but around a friendly moon, and you then win the battle, those escape pods have now saved valuable crew
So where are they ?!?
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Post by dragonkid11 on Jan 11, 2017 6:26:55 GMT
There aren't any escape pod.
THERE'S NO ESCAPE, ONLY DEATH.
But really though, we kinda need some form of escape pods.
Like even just a very cheap version to make sure the crews get away with maybe 1 or 2 kilometer delta-v.
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Post by caiaphas on Jan 11, 2017 6:30:14 GMT
DEATH OR GLORY.
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Post by someusername6 on Jan 11, 2017 6:34:18 GMT
The game seems to think that a single person escape pod comes at almost 3t each, and almost 5 cubic meters of volume. Cost is less important at 16.9 kc. Storing those is probably not feasible except for larger ships. Life support takes a lot of aluminum, it looks like?
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Post by newageofpower on Jan 11, 2017 6:43:04 GMT
IN THE NAME OF THE EMPER- Oh. Wrong universe. Whoops.
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Post by coaxjack on Jan 11, 2017 6:44:49 GMT
Come back with your Whipple shield, or on it.
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Post by apophys on Jan 11, 2017 7:53:52 GMT
Crewed ships should stay out of harm, and send drones. No need for escape pods if the entire carrier is the escape pod, after having dumped its parasites.
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Post by thorneel on Jan 11, 2017 10:20:40 GMT
General wisdom is that escape pods are inefficient: they are basically a new spaceship. www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/emergency.phpYou have more chances staying on the (adequately redundant) ship and its (adequately redundant) life support system. However, the arts of emergency sealant, pressure bulkheads, emergency airlocks and pressure suits having been lost by the Children, this translates here in launching drones and keeping your crew as much out of harm's way as possible. Or filing crew as expendable. After all, human life is cheap (in fact it is pretty much free, the cost comes from life support and the boron shell). I tried using sectioning nukes to use serial staging, but it doesn't quite work... The one exception is for reentry pods: if your chances are better on the surface of the world you are currently orbiting (say, if the ship is going to crash in its atmosphere), then reentry pods will assure the transition from space to surface, something the spaceship is incapable of. Note, however, that reentry pods have to be adapted to the world you are currently orbiting, so varied models for Earth, Mars or the Jovian moons would be fitted on the ship before departure, depending on the mission.
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Post by midnightdreary on Jan 11, 2017 11:59:58 GMT
Come back with your Whipple shield, or on it.
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Post by ross128 on Jan 11, 2017 15:37:17 GMT
Due to how small our ships are relative to the size of their crew, they don't have escape pods for the same reason submarines don't have lifeboats. There's just not enough room (or mass budget) to spare for them. At most, if we had staging we could maybe squeeze in some propellant and an engine to jettison the crew module.
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Post by amimai on Jan 11, 2017 20:06:31 GMT
In space no one can hear you scream... which is convenient for our life boat engineers. Ever since they discovered graphogel they have been using it every! They have been quoted saying "it's safe, trust us, we have doctorates!"
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Post by bdcarrillo on Jan 11, 2017 20:13:01 GMT
Why bother having discrete pods? Just eject the crew compartment itself. Surely we can believe it has an emergency power system onboard. Factor in a very small mass fraction of propellant and compact engine and it's feasible that the crew compartment could maintain station keeping.
Edit: apparently Ross128 and I had the same thought
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Post by ross128 on Jan 11, 2017 22:01:09 GMT
An interesting exception would be a ship specifically designed for planetary assault. It technically wouldn't carry escape pods per se, but the drop pods or shuttles that it would use for planetary assault could double as escape pods in a pinch if you stick some extra survival gear in there. Due to the ship's mission profile, a planetary assault ship is more likely to be crippled near a habitable (or at least inhabited, seeing as you were planning to drop troops on it) planet than not, and since it has to carry the drop pods anyway to perform its mission, so using them as an escape mechanism too also means you don't have to set mass aside to make the crew compartment jettisonable.
Of course, if such a situation is likely to occur, it may be prudent to negotiate a treaty (reciprocally of course) whereby troops dropped from a downed assault ship may surrender in exchange for medical care and expedient repatriation, similar to how the Geneva Convention obligates both sides of a conflict to treat and return each others' wounded (at least in theory). Because troops that barely escaped a shot-up ship, dropped onto a hostile planet, and are now lacking the support of their home ship are unlikely to be in much of a condition to continue hostilities, and the enemy will be in a much better position to rescue them (or "rescue" them) than you.
But yeah, most other ships' disaster response procedures will probably look more like this: 1: Seal off any compartments that have lost atmosphere containment and hunker down inside the crew compartment. 2: If necessary, jettison any modules that contain threats to the integrity of the crew compartment. 3: If #2 fails or is not possible, jettison the crew compartment (with its life support attached, of course). 4: If you are able to stay inside the ship, attempt to re-gain propulsion if possible.
If your crew compartment has a re-entry shield, parachutes, and enough propulsion to de-orbit itself, you could even drop the crew compartment onto a planet if the planet happens to be habitable. If the planet is not habitable or lacks an atmosphere, you'll probably want to stay in orbit instead so a potential rescue doesn't have to go down the gravity well after you (hence why parachutes will suffice instead of a landing rocket).
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Post by David367th on Jan 12, 2017 3:00:36 GMT
IN THE NAME OF THE EMPER- Oh. Wrong universe. Whoops. It could be the right universe when we get to edit the ensigns for ships.
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Post by n2maniac on Jan 12, 2017 5:30:20 GMT
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