[Spaceships] What EXACTLY Are The Guys In Workspaces Doing?

[Humabout]

Originally Posted by scc

It might like something of a weird question but I've got some designs where the Lacks Automation design feature would work out really well, apart from the fact that the results are weird.

For example my SM +7 SSTO shuttlecraft now needs one guy performing preventative maintenance or manually adjusting fuel mixtures or something and another guy going something similar to the Control Room to make the craft fly.

Something similar arises on the merchantmen, Control Room, Habitat, and Magsail all require personal to man them. This gets really weird on the SM +10 versions as what are these 10 guys doing? It can't take all of them to balance the Magsail (Live wire, do not touch kind of rules out maintenance).

Please note that this just apply to ships with Lacks Automation, it just becomes a lot more obvious.

People maybhe monitoring system diagnostics like you see in NASA control rooms during launches. No one there is twsting knobs on the rocket five miles away. They are looking for signs of problems and then trying to find solutions to said problems. That sort of thing is probably more similar to spaceships crew stations.

There is also the never-ending need for inspection and maintenance. This is a full time job in itself. I'd also look at what naval personnel do on naval vessels. Do one is manually adjusting valves in a working nuclear pile in an aircraft carrier, but they have hundreds upon hundreds of crew. They must do something. My guess is maintenance.

[scc]

Let me rephrase that, my handle on the situation suggests that the physical structure of a magsail doesn't extend beyond the hull, even if the magnetic field that is the actual sail does.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by scc

Let me rephrase that, my handle on the situation suggests that the physical structure of a magsail doesn't extend beyond the hull, even if the magnetic field that is the actual sail does.

The magnetic field follows that enormous loop of cable and that extends for hundreds of yards or even miles beyond the hull proper. The magsail mus tbe reeled out before it can be made ready andreeled back in whgen you want to stop thrusting. It is very much a physical object. Magnetic sails are not at all like Star Trek force fields.

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

The magnetic field follows that enormous loop of cable and that extends for hundreds of yards or even miles beyond the hull proper. The magsail mus tbe reeled out before it can be made ready andreeled back in whgen you want to stop thrusting. It is very much a physical object. Magnetic sails are not at all like Star Trek force fields.

If it's an electromagnet, can't it be turned off? That's what Spaceships seems to assume, realistically or not.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

If it's an electromagnet, can't it be turned off? That's what Spaceships seems to assume, realistically or not.

Yes it can. Powering it up again is a significant drain though.

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by scc

Per page 66, SM +3, so SM +11 to SM +13, but given their gas giant specials they could be smaller.

That's a lot smaller than current engineering speculates- they give the size as 10-50km in diameter.

Magsails aren't physical structures, or at least that's my reading of the situation

As mentioned, they're long loops of superconducting wire. Unfortunately, I always forget that and envision them as large umbrella like webs. However, this might be justifiable.

First, 50km long loops of high temperature superconducting wire creating a plasma field to interact with the solar wind doesn't seem that steampunk to me, especially the superconducting bit.

Second, the designs mentioned seem to be focused on interplanetary transport using solar wind, so a single, large sail that gets as much thrust as possible from the diffuse stream of particles is the preferred design that's always discussed, and use inside a planet's magnetosphere is tacked on as a secondary, "by the way", consideration.

However, for a magno-clipper of a gas giant's moons, there'd be a number of different design priorities. The magnetic flux is much denser, so you wouldn't need such a large sail. You're thrusting against the magnetic fields, not against a diffuse solar wind, so I think that would mean different sail geometries. You want high maneuverability and reaction speed, so I'd say many smaller sails deployed along different of the ship's axes.

There's this issue mentioned on the Wikipedia page-
"A magnetic sail oriented in the same direction as the magnetosphere is not stable, and will have to prevent itself from being flipped over to the opposite orientation by some other means."

This could also be addressed by having sails deployed at opposite ends of the ship, and charge is switched between them depending on orientation to the magnetic field.

In sum, a steampunk approach could very well look like a brass ball with opposing axial umbrella webs, but really you could handwave any reasonable and cool looking design- I don't think anyone has actually worked out what a realistic ship would look like for these circumstances.

[cptbutton]

Originally Posted by Humabout

People maybhe monitoring system diagnostics like you see in NASA control rooms during launches. No one there is twsting knobs on the rocket five miles away. They are looking for signs of problems and then trying to find solutions to said problems. That sort of thing is probably more similar to spaceships crew stations.

Yes, people who strictly speaking aren't doing anything, and you only actually need them to actually do something once a week. But that need could come at any moment, so they have to be constantly alert for it, and constantly familiar with all the relevant conditions so they can act intelligently at once.

But being constantly alert like that is a great strain, so you want several people on it so they can switch off periodically.

[mlangsdorf]

Originally Posted by scc

It might like something of a weird question but I've got some designs where the Lacks Automation design feature would work out really well, apart from the fact that the results are weird.

For example my SM +7 SSTO shuttlecraft now needs one guy performing preventative maintenance or manually adjusting fuel mixtures or something and another guy going something similar to the Control Room to make the craft fly.

The US Navy published a book containing the descriptions of every enlisted billet on a WWII navy destroyer, including standard watch bills for 3 different sizes of destroyer (http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USN/...ets/index.html). Each engine required, under routine conditions:
* 1 engine room supervisor
* 1 throttleman controlling the flow of steam to the turbine
* 4 guys monitoring the steam lines
* 2 guys adjusting the pumps for the steam lines
* 1 guy monitoring the main electrical generator switchboard
* 3 guys adjusting the pumps and flow of water to the boiler
* 3 guys adjusting the flow of oil to the boiler
* 2 boiler room supervisors who also monitor air flow into the boilers
All those guys would also do maintenance.

So that's 17 guys per engine room just to run things, exclusive of any officers.

It's a little dry, but it's an excellent resource for understanding what it took to run ships when most things had to be done by hand. It should be a good inspiration for understanding what all those guys are doing in the workspaces.

[mr beer]

Originally Posted by Humabout

There is also the never-ending need for inspection and maintenance. This is a full time job in itself. I'd also look at what naval personnel do on naval vessels. Do one is manually adjusting valves in a working nuclear pile in an aircraft carrier, but they have hundreds upon hundreds of crew. They must do something. My guess is maintenance.

They surely have more people than they need at any one time because when SHTF on a war-vessel you presumably have various intensely important tasks occurring that require expert attention and some personnel redundancy in case some unkind person, for example, drops a few hundred pounds of high explosive directly onto the deck.

I imagine a lot of daily work involves ensuring that every inch of the aircraft carrier is clean enough for the captain to eat his dinner off it, if he so chose. That requires people to paint, wash, scrub, dry etc. the deck and clean the cleaning equipment and manage the paint store and swabbing supervisors and then supervisors to check on the supervisors etc.

[Black Leviathan]

Your ship is constantly navigating gravitational fields, even when you're outside of a solar system. Noticing that you're slightly off course at the beginning of a journey could save you days of extra flight. I expect most ships have a navigator on duty at all hours running routine telemetry checks.

Just as important spotting a condition in the engines could save days of repairs so there's likely at least an engineering assistant checking the engines at all times.

There's a lot of routine maintenance that can be done in space because doing it on the ground is time your ship isn't earning. Everything that pumps fluid has seals or gaskets that need to be replaced on the regular, as well as any opening on the exterior of the ship.

Each system likely has an independent alarm and likely has test points throughout it's system. So crew also probably just makes the round to the hundred-odd check systems in their ship, doing daily diagnostic checks on a maintenance schedule.

And then also stuff needs to be cleaned up. Ships are tight spaces with a lot of heat and moisture. Dirty, biomass, even water could be a hazard if not kept clean. At any given time someone is doing a detailed cleaning of an area of the ship while someone else is running around emptying dust bins or washing dishes in the mess hall, etc.