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Post by EshaNas on Jun 20, 2017 20:37:32 GMT
At that point you don't need escape pods. Any small SSTO VTVL shuttle will do, like the Phoenix-S design which could already be shoved into inflatable modules. (Speaking off, where are the aux craft in COADE?) And in all cases, you'll be at the mercy of the enemy. If you land, it's probably because they wanted you to land.
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Post by Enderminion on Jun 20, 2017 21:56:11 GMT
Escape pods that are designed for prompt re-entry into a habitable planet's atmosphere seem plausible, if a bit specialized. I can imagine lifeboats with a couple Km/s deltaV and a couple weeks life support making sense for certain damage scenarios (loss of atmosphere/life-support in main pressurized compartment, or maybe radiation shield compromise if their reactors look anything like the CDE ones , especially for, say space stations in a friendly area with other significant assets of some kind nearby. (In respose to bolded text) at that point you might as well install some more life support, propellant, and a secondary rad shield onto the main ship (In Respose to blue text) orbit to surface craft are only useful around titan, mars, and earth (In respose to red text) then the station can send a rescue craft you're way
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Post by srbrant on Jun 21, 2017 4:37:25 GMT
Escape pods that are designed for prompt re-entry into a habitable planet's atmosphere seem plausible, if a bit specialized. I can imagine lifeboats with a couple Km/s deltaV and a couple weeks life support making sense for certain damage scenarios (loss of atmosphere/life-support in main pressurized compartment, or maybe radiation shield compromise if their reactors look anything like the CDE ones , especially for, say space stations in a friendly area with other significant assets of some kind nearby. (In respose to bolded text) at that point you might as well install some more life support, propellant, and a secondary rad shield onto the main ship (In Respose to blue text) orbit to surface craft are only useful around titan, mars, and earth (In respose to red text) then the station can send a rescue craft you're way Also, escape pods may be hard to hit when the enemy ship flies by the orange-hot remains of its foe. One idea is that the pod is lined with cryo-capsules. Important if you end up a long way from home. Lie back, close the lid, push the big red button and pray that you aren't thawed out by pirates looking for slaves.
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Post by Enderminion on Jun 21, 2017 12:07:13 GMT
(In respose to bolded text) at that point you might as well install some more life support, propellant, and a secondary rad shield onto the main ship (In Respose to blue text) orbit to surface craft are only useful around titan, mars, and earth (In respose to red text) then the station can send a rescue craft you're way Also, escape pods may be hard to hit when the enemy ship flies by the orange-hot remains of its foe. One idea is that the pod is lined with cryo-capsules. Important if you end up a long way from home. Lie back, close the lid, push the big red button and pray that you aren't thawed out by pirates looking for slaves. still need radiators, still producing waste heat, still being shined on by the sun, still targetable
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Post by ross128 on Jun 21, 2017 16:33:25 GMT
Well, the main ship may not necessarily be designed for re-entry (although you could design the crew module for re-entry and eject it, like we do now).
Of course, a crew module large enough to hold 80 people might be difficult to land without some absolutely massive retro-rockets. Though maybe we can make parachutes that big, I don't know.
It still is pretty much only useful if you're in orbit of a habitable (or inhabited) planet of course.
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Post by EshaNas on Jun 21, 2017 19:35:32 GMT
Well, the main ship may not necessarily be designed for re-entry (although you could design the crew module for re-entry and eject it, like we do now). Of course, a crew module large enough to hold 80 people might be difficult to land without some absolutely massive retro-rockets. Though maybe we can make parachutes that big, I don't know. It still is pretty much only useful if you're in orbit of a habitable (or inhabited) planet of course. There have been designs for 100-strong SSTO VTVLs (the Kankoh-Maru) and even for Marine units (USMC, the RHOMBUS), but again, those are shuttles in our parlance, not really detachable modules, which would be more akin to the fictional command/primary hull separation stuff of Star-Trek, such as the Wasp class or more famously the Galaxy class's capability. Then again you can just give everyone an inflatable heat shield and hope you're close enough to re-enter, ala MOOSE. But in all probability in a battle 1) your crew won't survive as the crew capsule might be hit during the battle, 2) can't be rescued because enemy units are still in the area and will shoot anything down, 3) or can't be rescued because the battle was a joust in deep space next to nothing and the crew is whizzing away at solar escape velocity anyway.
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Post by srbrant on Jun 22, 2017 5:42:32 GMT
An escape shuttle attached to the main ship would make for a durable escape craft.
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Post by Easy on Jun 24, 2017 3:52:47 GMT
An escape shuttle attached to the main ship would make for a durable escape craft. I recommend having a high dV craft in your logistical support fleet for recovery of personnel and strategic equipment. A rescue craft that evades the actual combat doesn't need much armor. Possible synergy would be a final escape burn by the doomed craft or use of an escape rocket to put the entire craft or only crew to an intermediate point further from the enemy and closer to the rescue craft. If you can scuttle the craft and evacuate the crew before enemy exploitation,that's a good deal. Personally I recommend winning the battle.
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Post by cuddlefish on Jun 24, 2017 5:47:43 GMT
There's a fairly simple solution to the boarding problem, I think.
You have power of life or death over them already, if you're even at a tenth of the level of control you need to send a troop shuttle to their ship, get inside the exterior armor, and dock up with their crew module(s) in a way that doesn't just decompress things so badly as to make the exercise pointless. You can manage that same journey with a few kilotons of nuke if you can get troops there, and it's a lot easier to replace a nuke than to write those "We must regretfully inform you that..." letters to next of kin for a dozen young men and women of the Marine detachment.
So - shoot off their life support radiators and wait. If they would rather die than let you have your prize, they'd probably manage that whether you tried to board or not (they may even have a suicide nuke for the purpose), so no sense risking your crew. Make it clear that providing the desired information (and full compliance with the interview teams that follow) is a necessary precondition for them not getting left to cook in their bunks as the heat exchange systems fail to keep it livable in there, or else try to walk home via the airlock. If they intend to live, they'll provide the stuff, in advance, because otherwise you'll have to either let them waste away, or decompress the module with weapons fire, and then sort through the detritus afterwards (forensic data recovery techs can do a lot with media that hasn't actually been melted) to see what you can find.
You don't need to point a gun at someone, or trade rounds with them, when everyone knows you can blow them away without any hope of defense from a safe position.
I recall reading of an SF universe where ships didn't take much damage in battle short of destruction, so if a ship was fought to the brink of destruction, before long it will be as dangerous as ever. So it was standard practice, when a ship requested to surrender, for the victor to canvas their own crew for a volunteer. If one is found, they go aboard the defeated vessel with a literal suitcase nuke on a dead-man switch. They have discretion to loose that trigger for any disobedience, and everyone knows they literally volunteered for exactly that role, so it's not a hard ask to believe they'll do it. So, the crew of the prize remains on the best behavior they can, while they are given their new navigation orders to surrender themselves and their ship to the victor navy.
And if they didn't find a volunteer, well, that's too bad, can't accept the surrender without undue risk to your ship, mission, and crew. Military necessity, they burn.
If the enemy is determined to die, you can't stop them, all you can do is make sure they don't take any of your people with them. If they aren't? They'll work with you.
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Post by Rocket Witch on Jun 24, 2017 18:17:35 GMT
How do you go about docking with a ship that was put into a spin without any engines left, by the way?
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Post by jonen on Jun 24, 2017 18:51:32 GMT
How do you go about docking with a ship that was put into a spin without any engines left, by the way? The serious answer is hope their reaction wheels are still intact and give them a while to kill the spin. Or maybe fire specialized missiles/harpoons into their hull/structure with vernier thrusters to kill the rotation. The less than serious answer, when there's not time for caution... [ link]
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Post by princesskibble on Jun 25, 2017 23:55:48 GMT
So - shoot off their life support radiators and wait. If they would rather die than let you have your prize ... If the enemy is determined to die, you can't stop them, all you can do is make sure they don't take any of your people with them. If they aren't? They'll work with you. That doesn't hold up when you realize that all the people on board are individuals, and human beings! It's not a switch, either "willing to burn to death" or "willing to work with you", and not everybody on board is omniscient and knows exactly what is going on, and even if everyone did, they most likely don't all agree. And even if they all were 100% stubborn, completely omniscient, and of a single mind, it's still wrong to just let them die over attempting to arrest them. Police don't do that in real life.
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Post by cuddlefish on Jun 26, 2017 1:11:55 GMT
So - shoot off their life support radiators and wait. If they would rather die than let you have your prize ... If the enemy is determined to die, you can't stop them, all you can do is make sure they don't take any of your people with them. If they aren't? They'll work with you. That doesn't hold up when you realize that all the people on board are individuals, and human beings! It's not a switch, either "willing to burn to death" or "willing to work with you", and not everybody on board is omniscient and knows exactly what is going on, and even if everyone did, they most likely don't all agree. And even if they all were 100% stubborn, completely omniscient, and of a single mind, it's still wrong to just let them die over attempting to arrest them. Police don't do that in real life. Genuine question: Who said anything about police? I'd understood this discussion to be in the context of military vessels, of the sort where people are apt to be destroying resources, fighting counter-boarding actions, and so on. Policing is a different kettle of wax, though I question the extent to which it's even a viable paradigm in a space-borne context. Either way, the same rule of demanding full compliance to be safe to board still applies - see below for the expansion of that argument. --- I agree that not every group is going to be unanimous. The thing is, that's not a problem potential boarders can diagnose or fix. If you have half of a vehicle trying to surrender, and the other half still shooting, it's going to receive return fire. It's not great, but there's no viable alternative. The people outside can't force those inside to choose surrender, that has to be the job of those on the inside in favor. There's plenty of cultural precedent for hardliners being forced to submit by their friends to avoid getting everyone killed, or mutinies against officers intent on continuing the fight when their crew has had more than enough of it. Aside from which, if the vessel is in any state to actually win rather than make capturing them a bloody affair, boarding is an entirely moot question until they're rendered safe, as there's no reasonable prospect of success and a grave danger to your own ship. So if enough of the crew who hold positions of power are in favor of continued resistance despite being in a position where they have long since lost any reasonable hope of victory or escape? If they do that, they'll get themselves and those on ship with them killed. That's not a thing with a feasible means of prevention. It really isn't fair, that they are in a position to murder-by-proxy their coworkers and shipmates, but from outside the ship, the only input you get is whether you put your people on the chopping block as well. It's just as irresponsible for you to put your troops through that as it is them to put their shipmates through that. And when you're outside, you have absolutely no way of knowing how that debate is going on internally. You have, what, IR and optical cameras, laser-microphones on the remote possibility that there's appreciable noise conducting in the outer wall of the crew compartment, maybe some imaging RADAR if they have compatible hull materials? That can't tell you much about the mood and actions of the crew aboard. Certainly not enough to send your people into a potential trap. The point of the surrender demands, and requiring compliance to them, is to give you a way of gauging whether the subject vessel is willing to cooperate rather than trying to kill your people. If you can't get them to make symbolic and material concessions as a way to communicate their intent to cooperate, you can't rightly order your own people to stake their lives on full compliance. Is there still technically a risk if they do make all the right moves? Sure. But we have laws of war for that, and have had in one way or another since laws of war were a thing. False surrender and related perfidy is a grave crime, and imperils the entire project of civilized behavior by mutual agreement. If the enemy makes a pattern of violating those laws, then yeah, you likely will have to stop accepting surrenders entirely. That's again, pretty terrible, but also the exact reason why such conduct is illegal. It's like storing weapons caches in hospitals - willfully perverting the protections of law is sufficient to make those protections contextually void, and the crime is on those who knowingly made it so, not the actors who must set aside the protections in response.
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Post by princesskibble on Jun 26, 2017 2:24:11 GMT
I guess in a purely military war scenario to only board once they have surrendered, and vaporize the spacecraft otherwise is what makes the most sense (unless there are hostages aboard, or you are trying to optimize for obtaining prisoners either to use as your own hostages, or to gain information thru interrogation)...however I don't think stopping accepting surrender after a certain number of false ones will save lives - don't most battles of all kinds end in surrender, rather than fighting to the death? That could lead to a lot of very bloody battles. Anyway you are right!
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Post by bigbombr on Jun 26, 2017 13:10:37 GMT
I guess in a purely military war scenario to only board once they have surrendered, and vaporize the spacecraft otherwise is what makes the most sense (unless there are hostages aboard, or you are trying to optimize for obtaining prisoners either to use as your own hostages, or to gain information thru interrogation)...however I don't think stopping accepting surrender after a certain number of false ones will save lives - don't most battles of all kinds end in surrender, rather than fighting to the death? That could lead to a lot of very bloody battles. Anyway you are right! You could also destroy the life support radiators and board when the crew is knocked out to detain them if you're feeling humane.
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