Stocking your Life Pod

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by evileeyore

You want to move in the early morning and evening. Only over night with a full moon. Otherwise you risk too many injuries and losing your way in the dark.

Just a quick PSA.

There are ways at TL9 to make light and/or see in the dark. Night Vision Glassess would only be $250 a piece and give Night Vision 8 letting humns operate at night with small or usually no penalties. They were only left out of the original load-out because a more usual day/night pattern was assumed.

As to what "kind" of life pod should be built that's off-topic and not really helpful. I was trying to take the Life Pod in UT as it was printed and see what I could do with that especially in terms of GM'ing an adventure. "Go into cryogenic suspension and wait to be rescued" is itself not much of an adventure at all.

It's also not technologically viable at TL9 at anything like the scale of the UT Life Pod. Using the systems in UT the TL 9 Hibernation Chamber requires external power and only reduces life support by a factor of 10. The TL9 Fission Generator you'd need to power it is 1000 lbs and $100,000. That would double the cost of the pod and occupy the entire pod by itself.

Hibernation is also the last really (maybe) hard science solution. Freezing people would just kill them and "nanostasis" is ^.

Accelerating gently but steadily towards the nearest planet would also take Superscience and probably TL11^.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by tanksoldier

I think the point earlier in the thread about exactly where ships with lifepods would be used is well taken.

Another campaign-dependent assumption is effectiveness of anti-radiation shielding and radiation treatment medicine. If shielding vs. high energy radiation and cosmic rays isn't effective it doesn't matter what survival equipment you have.

Originally Posted by tanksoldier

So that’s my suggestion: civilian pods should have cryotubes, minimal survival gear and should rely on either almost immediate rescue or cryotubes to minimize resource expenditure and risk.

Cryotubes or equivalent make a lot of sense for injured people as well. Assuming that medical aid isn't likely to be immediately available, and assuming that most people won't have medical training, it makes sense to just jump the seriously wounded into an emergency cryotube which has been modified so that it can be operated - or at least started - by an ordinary person.

Of course, that makes a crummy adventure. Get into the life pods, hit the button, wake up X days/weeks/years later after you get rescued. It's a good start to an adventure, but not a good adventure!

Beyond that, take a look at the sort of survival equipment given to aircrew or which is standard in lifeboats.

[acrosome]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Hibernation is also the last really (maybe) hard science solution. Freezing people would just kill them and "nanostasis" is ^.

I wouldn't totally rule out freezing. There are a number of critters (frogs, crickets, etc.) that survive freezing every winter. Or more accurately they don't freeze when they should. Some system could plausibly be worked out using antifreeze molecules such as they do. It might require genetic engineering of the subject, granted...

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

Another campaign-dependent assumption is effectiveness of anti-radiation shielding and radiation treatment medicine. If shielding vs. high energy radiation and cosmic rays isn't effective it doesn't matter what survival equipment you have.

.

Specifically it would be a decision about realism and grittiness v. TL.

Besides the assumptions about the realism of cryosuspension itself you're going to need superscience radiation shielding or a _lot_ of material to keep humans viable after years in space in cryo. Hard science O'Neill-type space colonies are usually designed with about 3 meters of moon rock to reach that level.

At a standard Bio-tech TL of 11 you can get DNA Repair nano-symbionts that will usually repair radiation damage (even from cosmic rays) faster than the radiation can do it but if you freeze the host you probably freeze the nano too. The freezing would only slightly limit the radiation damage by preventing spread of free radicals and that's only the tertiary damage from cosmic rays.

Then there's nanostasis but I can't explain how that works in any realistic terms.

So even if you have the cinematic TL10 cryosuspension tubes from UT which use 5 E-cells to keep runnign for 10 years when you're thawed out you've picked up over 500 rads from cosmic rays unls you had a _very_ thick-hulled life pod. That'd be a condition of "very sick" in technical terms but TL10 medicine could probably reverse that.

Add enough power cells or a long term generator to stick it out 100 years and you'd get 10x that does and die in about an hour after being thawed. Very cinematic medical technology could produce a new copy of you some time later.

So non-survivable space disasters are very easy to create and those will make survival gear and life pods in the traditional sense irrelevant.

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

"Go into cryogenic suspension and wait to be rescued" is itself not much of an adventure at all.

Ellen Ripley wants a word with you.

But I see no problem with this game-wise- going into cryo would probably be SOP, and the adventure happens when the cryo fails, the pod crash lands, or the survivors are wakened by their new alien captors.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Daigoro

Ellen Ripley wants a word with you.

But I see no problem with this game-wise- going into cryo would probably be SOP, and the adventure happens when the cryo fails, the pod crash lands, or the survivors are wakened by their new alien captors.

Going into cryo was generally how Ripley's adventures ended rather than being the bulk of them or even how they began.

It's all not relevant to this thread anyway. Cryo from TL10 is not an option for the builders of the TL9 Life Pod from UT. As I've expalined in other posts it's probably not a vibale option at TL10.

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Going into cryo was generally how Ripley's adventures ended rather than being the bulk of them or even how they began.

I would beg to differ.

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

It's all not relevant to this thread anyway. Cryo from TL10 is not an option for the builders of the TL9 Life Pod from UT. As I've expalined in other posts it's probably not a vibale option at TL10.

The TL9 hibernation chamber just says that it needs external power, and the life pod only says that it can power its onboard systems such as life support, computers, navigation and emergency beacon, so I'd say there's a little wiggle room there to allow the life pod be able to power the hibernation chamber.

The 200lbs weight though would mean filling up the cargo and ditching one or two of the passengers, so a hibernation-enabled life pod would be a different design to the given standard life pod.

Does Spaceships detail any alternatives?

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Daigoro

Does Spaceships detail any alternatives?

The Life Pod from UT is SM+2 (i.e. only 1 Ton) and rather smaller than anything from Spaceships.

Spaceships focusses on SM+5 (30 tons) and up. The fighter book extends that down to SM+4 but that's still 10 tons (and probably 10x as expensive).

Also, anything using Spaceships would have to have a Hanger Bay or an External Clamp.

I wouldn't consider them as alternatives. They're aimed at different markets at best.

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

The Life Pod from UT is SM+2 (i.e. only 1 Ton) and rather smaller than anything from Spaceships.

Spaceships focusses on SM+5 (30 tons) and up. The fighter book extends that down to SM+4 but that's still 10 tons (and probably 10x as expensive).

The spreadsheet gets down to SM+3, 3 tons and 7 yds long. But I think the UT life pod might be a bit optimistic at TL 9 to be built using Spaceships assumptions. It's 0.5 ton of cargo, so 0.5 ton of spaceship, which includes hull, 90 days of life support, multiple parachutes and maneuvering rockets, all in less mass than the Roadster currently flying toward Mars. I think that's slightly optimistic even using real-life assumptions, so it'd be fair to have a closer look at what a Spaceships design would look like.

Also, anything using Spaceships would have to have a Hanger Bay or an External Clamp.

Sorry, do you mean the life pod would need a Hangar Bay system?