Stocking your Life Pod
 

This s the Life Pod on p. 232 of UT and for the sake of this discussion and preserving the utility of this fictional trope I'm going to assume that while situations where you need to eject your life pod from your spaceship do occur they do not occur in just any old random section of infinity.

Instead they are likely to occur within a useful distance of an Earth-like planet. So perhaps some sort of "misjump" scenario where misjumping severely damages your ship but at least puts you out of hyperspace relatively close to an Earth-like planet even if it's not the Earth-like planet you were originally aiming at.

The technobabble would go something like "Precursor-created network of spacegates with occaisionally eccentric navigation control" . It could also be soemthing basic in hyperphysics where the co-ordinates you use for hyperspace exit have a component that includes the age, mass and type of the local star. So if you were aiming at a star with planets you probably come out at some star that also has a good chance of having planets.

How close do you need to be? Farther away than orbit is posible. The pod has 1000 yards per second of Delta-V which you could turn into 2000 miles per hour of speed.

The pod also has 90 man-days of limited life support and a capacity of 4. So over 22.5 days at 2000 miles per hour you could travel about a million miles. Then you add in what you'd gain from gravity. If that was similar to the downhill run from the Moon to the Earth taken by an Apollo capsule add in another c. 250,000 miles.

If you're wondering about re-entry speeds that TL7 Apollo capsule did it at 25,000 mies per hour. So 27,000 is probably not a problem for a TL9 life pod.

Distance possible only goes up a little if there are less than 4 people in the pod. UT says that there's only 30 days of stored power to run all the onboard systems. Both Delta-V and stored power probably go up at hgiher tLs but that's a complication I'll avoid for a while.

So the pod provides air and water but everything else has to come out of the 200 lbs of storage space in the pod.

Even before landing we need to keep people fed but looking at the food on p.73 we see that 90 man-days of Meal Packs is 270 lbs. Survival Rations are still 135 lbs so it's probably Food Pills at 67.5 lbs. The lack of dietary fiber in those might be easier on the life support anyway. :)

So 67.5 lbs and $900.

An option that could save those food pills for after landing and stretch the life support a little is the Torpine drug from Bio-tech p.157 (but not the same-named but different drug from UT). That would let the pod-people sleep away the travel time while cutitng air use by half and food and water by a factor of 32.

That would let you stretch the life support to the full 30 days of stored power so you'd need 120 does for 4 people. That comes to $2400 and some small but unspecified amount of weight. Let's call it 2.5 lbs.

Now we come to what you need after landing. We'll add the simple stuff like 4 sets of personal basics and 1 set of group basics (as from Basic). $40 and 24 lbs.

4 Large Knives of Super-fine quality. I'm springing for the Super-fine because those UT cutting edges almost certainly don't need to be (and/or can't be) resharpened by hand which our TL9+ people probably don't know how to do. 4 lbs and $960.

We could go with 4 Small backpacks but those would only carry 160 lbs. So it's going to be 3 Small and 1 Frame backpacks and we'll hope for one strong person in the pod. 19 lbs and $280.

3 First Aid Kits and 1 Crash Kit as per UT p. 198. 16lbs and $350.

4 Vapor Canteens. 16 lbs and $1800. Filtration canteens are cheaper but probably less useful.

4 Envirobags. 12 lbs and $720.

4 Pocket Packs (p.38). These include penlights, Swiss army knives and a roll of duct tape each. 3 lbs and $100.

4 Pocket Laser torches. Useful for many purposes and probably the only way our UT castawys can start a fire. 1 lbs and $200.

4 Small radios to go with the Medium Radio salvaged from the pod. 2 lbs and $800 with another 5 lbs for the salvaged medium unit (price included with the pod).

I set of Televiewers (UT p.60) 0.6 lbs and $500.

1 rechargeable E-cell to extend the lives of all their other gadgets. At TL9 there do not seem to be better options for power. 20 lbs and $2000.

We're at 193 lbs and the castaways probably had some sorts of persoanl belongings when they entered the pod.

There's also a Personal Computer built into the pod. At 5 lbs it doesn't weigh much but I'm not sure how useful it would be.

Anyway, we're about at our weight limit and I know the lsit could be upgraded by spendign more money and/or going to higher TLs (like for TL10 Survival Watches) but this might be a good start.

Feedback and improvements welcome.

Re: Stocking your Life Pod
 

I suggest an Inertial Compass or two, if only so that the survivors can find their way back to the pod. presumably this also lets the users make simple maps based on their trips. As this includes a tiny computer and a GPS system (probably useless, but it's there), these also act as accurate timepieces.

Not in UT, but a basic tent or set of shelter halfs would be useful. At 20 pounds, Group Basics won't include these.

If weight allows, add a decent machete - one that can be used as a weapon if necessary. Possibly replace one knife with it or make the knives small.

Filter masks or possibly respirator masks seem sensible if many of the likely worlds one might be stranded on have marginal atmospheres. Hopefully the castaways brought sensible clothing, as there doesn't seem to be the weight budget for a set of Protective Suits.

Re: Stocking your Life Pod
 

In my space campaigns, I had an injected version of the nanosymbiotes that caused nanostasis, so every lifepod possessed a dozen doses of the nanosymbiote. The nanosymbiotes would create the necessary preservatives and scaffolding from the materials within the body, dealing (ST) FP damage over the course of an hour, when the recipients would enter nanostasis. The passengers of the lifepod could survive for millennia until they were found, though they usually only had to spend a few months in nanostasis until they were recovered.

Re: Stocking your Life Pod
 

Unless the pod is in a severely sub-optimal location staying with the pod increases chances of survival and being found.

So, while being able to carry everything is nice it may not be the most important thing.

That assumes best case scenarios.

Galaxies move. Star systems move. Planets move. They all have vectors. If your starship (and thus the pod) retains the vector it had pre-jump that may align with the system it's jumping into or it may not. If you jump in with an objective vector of zero that may be better or worse.

Earth orbits the Sun at about 67,000 mph, the system is moving thru the galaxy at about 448,000 mph and the galaxy itself is moving towards the Andromeda galaxy at 252,000 mph.

So, even if you ignore that galaxy's sped and even the system speed, if you're stationary relative to the rest of the system or worse going the opposite direction, you'd have a lot of ground to make up. 2000 mph wouldn't do it... and if you used all your acceleration accelerating, how do you brake or maneuver to land?

Re: Stocking your Life Pod
 

I'd take 4 LB Vests from High-Tech pg 54. $60, 1 lb each, can carry up to 30 pounds. Then take your 4 small packs and call them LBE packs. This allows them to carry up to another 30 pounds.

Sure, you don't have the 100 pound frame pack, but you can redistribute weight more efficiently this way.

Just presume that most of the rest of your gear will also come in it's own pouches. This will add negligible weight and cost to the pen lasers, Televiewers, and e-cells. Nothing to the radios (they just clip on). The First Aid and Crash kits have their own containers (which at this TL are probably LBE complaint), as are the Vapor Canteens, and Pocket Packs.

At TL 9 Personal Basics would be an LBE Fanny pack, which would be belted into the bottom of the LBE Vest. Weight would remain unchanged, but cost would increase by $20, this pouch would have room for up to 5 more pounds worth of stuff packed into it.

The Group Basics would either be in a single duffel (1 pound, $20), or split between four 5 pound LBE pouches (same cost as the duffel) that are designed to hang from the bottom of a small LBE pack, or be stowed inside it.

All Pouches available from High-Tech may be LBE complaint at no extra cost, it's half a pound and $20 for a pouch that holds up to 10lbs (double for up to 20lbs). Pouches will be custom sized to whatever they are carrying (or you can just have a few extra 'generic' sized pouches).

I always recommend a few extra pouches or bags.

Halve those weights and double those costs. You can thank TL 8 for this.

Solar Powered-Battery Recharger, $100, 2 lbs. This is at TL 8, by 9 I expect it's half weight and works faster.


I don't see any rope or tool kits (your Group Basics only go so far for this). Does that 5 lb computer just pop-out*? What about fire suppression? What about camp lights? Flashlights are all and good, but a nice lantern really improves the mood when your trying to survive.

Now, on to improving the mood. I presume every Character will be including one or two things for psychological health?




* I'd include a Portable Toolkit on the pod, one designed to allow the pod to be stripped for materials in a survival situation. So you could pop out the computer. Remove seats, paneling, wiring, etc if the group really found it necessary to build shelter or repair another ship with scrap from their pod or whatever.

I'd also throw a hovercart or two on the pod. Make them 'wheeled' hovercarts and I'm sold.

Nix that. A Robot Mule/Hovercart with a Portable toolkit in it.



Pressure tents are on page UT 76.

Everyone is probably wearing Skinsuits, but I'd definitely add some Vacc suits.

Re: Stocking your Life Pod
 

Way too heavy, and outside of the parameters Fred was looking at.
]quote]
Everyone is probably wearing Skinsuits, but I'd definitely add some Vacc suits.[/QUOTE]Too heavy, and pointless, when it comes down to it.

As for the LBE idea - it sounds great, and for an group of professional explorers or military, it would be great. For a bunch of people from who-knows-what background in a lifeboat, it's terrible. They'd have no idea where anything is stowed in the vests, would probably lose half the pouches in a couple of days, and wouldn't have a clue how to split loads effectively. Also, vests that are one-size-fits-all will be one-size-fits-nobody. Better to have some belts with a canteen, a pouch, and a knife on them, and packs for the rest of the stuff.

Re: Stocking your Life Pod
 

I don't think that would work. In the habitable zone, the sun's gravity has too much influence to allow point and shoot to be as effective as this. After all, the Earth is moving at 67 thousand miles an hour. The 2000 miles an hour isn't going to really work for you. What you would aim to do is to change orbits so you intercept with the planets orbit, but given the delta-V budget you have, it's probably going to take longer than the 22.5 days (unless your in some kind of orbit of the planet) you have...

Re: Stocking your Life Pod
 

I see it now. i missed his 200 pounnd limit the first time through.

So this is a "Pray we land on an earth habitable planet life-pod" then Fred?


By TL 9 I expect the 'one size fits no one' to be solved... also aren't the Characters outfitting this pod? I expect they know their own sizes.

And I see millennials clipping stuff onto their backpacks all the time. It's a pretty ubiquitous idea these days.

Re: Stocking your Life Pod
 

In case you land in water a raft would be handy.

Re: Stocking your Life Pod
 

Responsive Fabric (UT39) says otherwise - it's TL10 and isn't one-size-fits all, though it is better than normal clothing.

Re: Stocking your Life Pod
 

One hopes that the pod floats. As long as most of its volume is inside the pressurised volume it should. Something that can function as a paddle would be handy, as would some way of rigging a sail. Bits of pod no longer needed are probably the best source of paddles and masts.

Re: Stocking your Life Pod
 

Is there an inventory for the Soyuz re-entry vehicles anywhere out there? IIRC the Soviets loaded them down with all sorts of stores as they lacked the ability to work out where they would land or how long it would take to retrieve them.

Re: Stocking your Life Pod
 

It is a fundamnetal assumption of the setting that life pods will end up on Earth-like planets a significant percentage of the time. If this were not true there would be no life pods.

Nitpicking about retained/intrinsic velocity and the difficulties of matching orbits is off-topic. These problems are also assumed to be solved or again, there would be no life pods.

It is easy to create situations where life pods make no sense but that wipes out the basic "castaway" fictional trope.

If the pod lands in water it floats. UT is clear on this and it would be another "everyone dies" scenario if it didn't float.

The pod is assumed to be stocked by the ship-owners and probably to a legal standard. Passengers would be advised to keepa "go-bag" containing "sturdy clothing and footwear" that they can grab when the misjump alarm goes off.

I'd have milspec Assautl Boots (UT p. 173). Those add TL/2 to Hiking skill in addition to be indestrutible in normal use. The basic Protective Coverall (UT p. 178) is a very reasonable choice for "sturdy clothing". Together that's another 6 lbs per passenger but we can probably put that on the individual passengers' weight allowance.

A machete would be nice but there's a hatchet in the group basics. Swap out one for the other if prefer.

At TL 10 you can throw in a Morph Axe (UT p. 83) and replace a lot of basic tools.

If you start worrying about gear for serious arctic or desert or bad atmosphere situations it eats up that 200 lb weight allowance quite quickly.

If you need to take your pod apart you can do that with the Mini-Laser Torches (UT p.80). They give you 3 minutes of cutting power off a B-cell but the E-cell can recharge a B-cell 1000 times.

I knew there was better gear in HT than in Basic but there are only so amny books i can go through at one time. Thanks for anything you spot from HT.

Replacing the backpacks for the ones from HT frees up another 9.5 lbs so we're at maybe another 16 lbs of possible stuff.

Re: Stocking your Life Pod
 

So how fragile are these ships if the ship will soon become uninhabitable (blow up, irreparable life support failure) after a misjump? Or does it just appear more likely given that's what we're focusing on?

Re: Stocking your Life Pod
 

That life-pods are useful is a setting conceit, sort of "science-fantasy". In a very rigorous setting, yes, you are always better off staying with your spaceship and trying to repair it. Even if you have some sort of problem with the reactor the solution is not to leave your highly capable life support system, it is to eject the core and trigger the distress beacon.

But given that it's a conceit of the setting:

I suspect that the designers' assumption would be that in most situations in which a life-pod gets used that the crew would already be in pressure suits of some sort. So that is worn already, and probably doesn't count towards the weight allotment. Likewise, footgear would likely be assumed already, unless the setting has "ship slippers" as standard or something.

Your lists look pretty good.

Stocking Torpine is a neat idea.

Having seen a lot of survival equipment, I suspect that a solar recharger is more likely than a E cell.

A shelter of some sort is pretty key. In any halfway realistic setting one might claim that they are better off staying/living at the pod, but forcing use of the pod seems like a GM's mechanism to encourage exploration. So, encourage exploration. Give them a tent. Or at least a tarp.

Agree, a compass is pretty key. There is one in every survival kit I've ever seen. As is cord of some type.

Agree a raft is unlikely. If they land in an ocean the pod should float, and in that situation one would not want to leave the pod, anyway. A raft is of no real benefit. However, including fishing tackle and some sort of purification/desalinization rig might be handy. But I guess the vapor canteens cover water, huh? And ne would never be sure of what the fishing would be like on alien worlds. Here on Earth, castaways with access to food and water have drifted around for over a year and survived. Usually they collect rainwater, granted. And the ones with the longest records generally ate their fellow castaways. But still...

For something just "stocked to a legal standard" don't for get to make everything of cheap quality. :) And a simple, cheap backpack is much more likely than an LBV or such.

Some sort of cold-weather parka or the UT equivalent seems like a pretty obvious need for people who might get stranded on an unknown world.

I could argue that a stranded group is expected to stay together, so they wouldn't need the four radios. I'd make it two radios, assumed to be one for the exploring pair and one for the basecamp pair. You want to be in at least pairs, not alone, and the radio in the pod provides the needed redundancy. Likewise, the "legal standard" might be one first aid kit instead of three (plus the crash kit, that is).

Re: Stocking your Life Pod
 

It sounds like they'll be engaged in firefights over mostly deserted but habitable planets.

Re: Stocking your Life Pod
 

True. But I was mostly meaning 'straps, easements, and such' to allow or greater range of sizing rather than responsive Fabric.



Then aside from rope and a pair of climbing gear, it looks like what I'd have packed out (at a strict 200 pound limit).

There isn't much else in HT that's of use or 'better' than UT.

Re: Stocking your Life Pod
 

<shrug> The solar gear in UT is much too heavy. So are the tents and the cold weather stuff. Except for the envirobag which is an insulated and heated sleeping bag good to -50 F even without power.

There are practical limits to how bad an environment you can expect untrained persons to survive in and you'd be lucky to cover even one of them within the weight limit.

An item I forgot to mention is the Holdout Gyroc. It's .25 lbs and $50 and if you load it with Flare rounds it becomes a flare gun. Only these flare rounds will fly to more than a mile overhead and illuminate like starshell. I'd think it'd be visible from orbit.

I hate to put an ammo using weapon in a UT survival kit but Gyrocs are very very versatile. You could carry several diffeeent kinds of gyroc ammo with the remaing .75 lbs (7 rounds)

Re: Stocking your Life Pod
 

No, nobody has said anything about combat and it is not assumed as a basic part of the life pod scenario.

Combat pilots ejecting over hostile territory would be a different scenario with a smaller amount of gear but involving trained personel.

Re: Stocking your Life Pod
 

That's why I posted the Solar Recharger from HT. $100, 2 lbs at TL 8. By TL 9 I expect it's half the weight and charges faster.

Re: Stocking your Life Pod
 

Without going into too much detail (for reasons) food production is also an option depending on a couple of design switches to do with the pod.
Time, energy and space would be issues however.
But fiber and energy rich food could be available within 60 days of landing with other crops sooner. (Faster at higher TLs)

Re: Stocking your Life Pod
 

Yeah, if the UT solar power sources are "too heavy" then that's an indicator that UT is dated and Real Life (TM) has surpassed it. (Sort of like with 3D printers.)

I sometimes carry an 3.5oz flexible solar cell when hiking.

I'd say that when we start bringing up mountaineering gear or crops that we're beyond the realm of "legally sufficient" life-pods and well into the realm of mini-colonization ships. :) Or, at least mini-exploration ships.

Re: Stocking your Life Pod
 

A large database full of reading material. Not just survival guides and local intelligence, but entertainment. One of the chief hazards seems to be boredom.

Which reminds me of something I read once of a Russian story about someone who endured voluntary solitary confinement for twenty years on a bet. And then came out the day before he won the bet to prove he had read so much that he was a true philosopher and scorned money.

A cyanide capsule. Who says you are going to land on a habitable planet or land at all? It might be a handy thing to have. It wouldn't be "kosher" for me but if one is being realistic one must think about it.

Tea leaves. Plus enough seeds to plant. You may have to subsist on boiled water for a long time.

If I am likely to land on a habited planet I would like proof of citizenship in The Federation. As well as money. Definitely proof of citizenship. The possibility of a visit by the Space Marines may be all that prevents being enslaved.

Re: Stocking your Life Pod
 

Surely a few seeds do not take up space. Nor does an ax or entrenching tool.

Re: Stocking your Life Pod
 

It's been 38 years since I bought a solar-powered calculator at Sears. So that proves that portable solar power is sufficient to all purposes? No, it mostly demonstrates how some devices (like LCD calculators) use very, very low amounts of electric power.

Re: Stocking your Life Pod
 

I might be happier with a hand crank now. But by UT times they should have solar power banks carry quite a load.

Re: Stocking your Life Pod
 

The Sun does not become stronger at higher TLs. The possible gains in solar cell efficiency are limited. Current research is mostly aimed (rightly IMHO) at making lighter and cheaper cells.

UT does have a hundred lbs of paint-on solar cells that would cover 800 square feet and provide full "external" power. It's the lightest and cheapest option at TL9 for such a level of power. It's just not that good an investment in a life pod.

Re: Stocking your Life Pod
 

How much do you need? If you can get enough out of the sun to power a handcomp or multiscanner or flashlight, or any of the few other devices you want to be powered then you are all right.

A blaster probably takes quite a bit of power. On the other hand you don't really need a blaster unless you expect sophants or really large animals. A bow will do just as well for hunting.

Re: Stocking your Life Pod
 

A number of gadgets already in use have multiple uses. I have a power bank that has an incorporated compass and flashlight. It can power both by the sun and by cord but I found the cord unreliable.

Rescue tools also often have incorporated power banks.

Re: Stocking your Life Pod
 

There's a movie about passengers from a starliner marooned in a lifeboat.

A lifeboat system has a problem, and one of the passengers asks a crewmember why there isn't a backup.

The crewmember replies that they're in a lifeboat. It IS the backup.

At some point lifeboat gear has to reach a cutoff, or you eventually put lifeboats on the lifeboats.

Things on a lifeboat will be useful under as many circumstances as possible. They will be small, light, inexpensively made and minimalist. Keep in mind they will probably NEVER be used and are just there to check a box on an inspection.

A tarp can become a tent, a tend can't really become a tarp very well. What if you need a tarp? The lifeboat would have a tarp and some cordage rather than purpose made tents.... ect, etc, etc.

Knives are useful under almost any circumstance, but keep in mind there may be security concerns about hijacers breaking into lifeboats to obtain weapons. Knives, axes and so on may not be present. There is a fire ax on each US flagged airliner... locked in the cockpit.

Seeds are useful only on worlds with appropriate conditions AND a rescue time that extends into months. Unless those are both highly likely there won't be seeds on a lifeboat.

Re: Stocking your Life Pod
 

The UT version counts as 'external power' though, like the TL10+ portable generators do. What you're looking to compare with is the 'Solar Paint (TL9), UT21.

The UT full-sized version probably is over weight at 500 pounds for 400 square feet, but not by that much when you consider it's portable, and thus that weight includes a protective box, and a bunch of collapsible supports and such that an 'install once, never move' model doesn't need.

What UT is missing is a small 1-2 m^2 portable solar array for such things as life pods. One of these with a built-in D cell would make a fine charging station and power supply for a small base camp, such as that which the survivors in a life pod might set up.

Re: Stocking your Life Pod
 

If in fact there are no worlds with appropriate conditions you might as well not get into a life pod. And the rescue time will naturally extend to months unless the world is inhabited and you land near friendly neighbors. Or you are picked up by a friendly ship or at least by enemies willing to follow the rules.

Re: Stocking your Life Pod
 

Right... it's in High-Tech, costs $100 and weighs 2 pounds at TL 8....

Re: Stocking your Life Pod
 

And is somewhat lower in output than I was suggesting, but it is roughly what you'd want.

BTW, the 'external power' version given in HT is TL7 and weighs 1,200 lbs. UT's version at 500 lbs doesn't seem so bad in comparison.

Re: Stocking your Life Pod
 

Just for the record that's the fold-up Solar Array which is reusable and portable. The actual "Solar Paint" is 1/5th that weight and cost but meant to be painted onto your roof or soemthing like that.

Re: Stocking your Life Pod
 

Looking over a GURPS 3e lifeboat loadout I made for a Star Frontiers game, I see a few items that don't appear to have straightforward 4e versions: the Biosampler and the Orbital Beacon. The Biosampler would seem useful if regulations mandated it, but it is expensive ($500). The beacon is arguably best built into the lifeboat, but detachability doesn't seem out of the question.

Re: Stocking your Life Pod
 

What kind of ship are you building these pods for? I assume most ships near an Earth-like planet would be near one that was already inhabited. After all those are the places there are good reasons to take ships to and from. If you bail out in orbit, never mind anywhere further out than that, there's no good reason to land in the wilderness. You might as well touch down at the capital city airport.

The gear you are likely to want for the boat isn't groundside survival gear, it's stuff you might need immediately while on the boat - first aid kits for people wounded before boarding, hull patches and maybe some basic repair tools in case the boat got holed by whatever disabled the ship, a spare radio capable of enough range to talk to other lifeboats, rescue vessels or air traffic control once you get close to the capital, maybe the orbital equivalent of a GPS or small telescope and sextant in case you need to navigate manually, or a fire extinguisher in case you're a little hot when you touch down and set fire to the field. Camping supplies are not worth the weight.

Re: Stocking your Life Pod
 

Let's see if what has been percolating in my brain for a few days moves this closer to a mature concept.

Interstellar travel in this setting is via a network of spacegates built by unknown aliens at least 100,000 years ago. These tend to be in far orbit of any Earth-like planets. Earth's would be out at L4. This plus its' alien (TL12^) construction help explain why it had not been discovered by the early 21st century.

Ships designed to use this system need only 1 Spaceships Strardrive module and 1 Power pt to run it. Travel to and from the locations of the spacegates is by conventional/hard science drive This is the main thing that makes interstellar travel possible at TL9.

No advanced forms of stardrive are known to the PC's race(s) but appear to have been known to the builders. Contemporary users are limited to what are called "sideroads" which are relatively short-ranged paths through hyperspace. Trips to relativley distant worlds have to make multiple jumps. The Builders seem to have had access to so-called "hyperbahns" which covered much greater distances.

Perhaps due to the age of the system the hyperbahns are no longer accessible in any controlled manner though the primitive nature of Terran hyperdrives may be a factor as well.

The Terrans also do not have a truly good map of hyperspace though every new exit discovered improves the map a little. Finding a viable "side-road" that leads to a proviously unknown destination is difficult and is nomrally limited the SpaceForce's elite Exploration Command.

Whiel you cann not access the hyperbahns deliberately chnce and a not-always reliable gate system can put you onto one accidentally. This is a Bad Thing because it not only takes you a long way from home but it invariably burns out your stardrive system and usually kills your reactor too.

So where are you? Usually somewhere near an Earth-like planet becuase that's where the Builders put most of their spacegates.

How wil you ever get home? Not by repairing your ship unless you have a SOTA research vessel and a highly talented crew. Most ships and crews need to send an expensive message drone back to SpaceForce HQ who will come and get you.

Note that though you got to wherever you are via a hyperbahn you can't send the drone back that way even if it's system were being considered expendable by you. Your trip has put another data point on the hyperspace map and for the drone to find its' way back to known space by previosuly unknown side-roads is difficult but not impossible.

How long will this take? You'd be extremely lucky if SpaceForce could get to you in less than 30 days. Planning on a year or two is more prudent.

Even if your main ship is dead with no power can't you take a landing craft to the nearby planet? Yes, if you have one. SpaceForce explorer ships and Colonial transports generally do but most commercial ships travel space station to space station and have no landing capability but for their life pods.

Can't you just stay with your dead ship? Not if you don't want to run out of air and everything else. Commercial ships normally need only short-term occupancy. A few days at most.

Okay so you land on the near-by planet in your life pod. Why don't you just stay with that pod? If you're goign to be rescued you need to eb near soem place a landing craft can land. This needs to be some place where the ground is firm, level, clear of obstacles and within (pick a number) meters of a hydrogen source so the landing craft can fuel its' HEDM enginses for an ascent.

If it's not clear yet normal spaceships in this setting are industrial looking masses of pods and boxes and cylinders held together by scaffolding and controlled by Pilot(Low Performace Spacecraft). I do not reccommend modeling your character on Han Solo. :)

Re: Stocking your Life Pod
 

Don't discount the "personal effects" the characters bring with them. Some sort of "Survivor Operating System" - naturally called SOS - you can load onto your smartphone to reduce battery drain and change it to work with lower bandwidth, combined with a miniature cell tower attached to the pod, can allow for longer range communications between survivors. Load the phone up with basic - but potentially interactive - how-to guides for survival in the wilderness, as well as possibly some sort of app that can identify dangerous vs safe plants and animals from pictures (if life on undiscovered planets tends to be highly similar to Terran). You could also have a variety of peripherals that could use the smartphone as the processor, like probes to determine water potability (based on things like pH, contaminants, etc). Plus, they already can function as flashlights and compasses, and if recent trends continue are likely to be functionally waterproof and highly resilient by TL 9 (and if not, you can always stock some ruggedized cases on the ship, and require people to switch to those before taking the lifepods down). If the risk of marooning is considered common enough, the ship may also carry GPS-style satellites for deploying in orbit, which would allow for the phones' GPS to function at least part of the day (so you can check your location relative to base camp, and possibly other survivors).

Re: Stocking your Life Pod
 

Fire your lifepod designer. Often enough to bother to prepare for (i.e. you have life pods at all, instead of just accepting these ships as lost) your ships risk being stranded somewhere you don't know enough about to optimize the equipment list for between months and *forever*. You don't prepare for this with a couple hundred pounds of gear. Expeditions of a few tens of people, or similar size homesteader groups, can manage multiple years with a few pack animals or a wagon, so you probably should look in the same range - that's a few tons, a lot of it of the tools to make tools sort. At absolute minimum you need enough gear that you can have everybody doing something long term survival useful - or you're going to start suffering psychological casualties quite quickly.

Re: Stocking your Life Pod
 

<shrug>It's a design adapted from one optimized to evacuate space stations in Earth orbit and after that L4 and 5. It's not so common an event that there is a bespoke design. The survival gear is also not unique tot eh mission but adapted from other sources.

It's also only 1 ton of mass/SM+2/$100,000 for the whole life pod and 50% of that is payload (80% people/20% gear) which I think is pretty good. To go up to your tons of gear would probably require an increase to 10 tons/SM+4/1 M.

Looking through Spaceships it appears that you actually do have to include a Hangar Bay for the pods and the message drone, though you might be able to get by with a smaller system. Increasing the size of that Hangar Bay greatly increases cost.

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The commnuicators built in to most TL9 consumer electronics are probaly Tiny or Micro. The Small-size hand units included out-range the Tiny units by a factor of 10. Using the Medium radio in the pod as a base station triples that.

Passenger personal eectronics probably fill the "Entertainment" role suggested earlier. A wristwatch (Timy) computer stores 1 TB and every 1/4 inch square Datachip adds another TB.. It would be entirely possible for a regular guy to walk around with his personal library of books, music and video entertainment in just one of his pockets.

Useful software could be loaded into the pod's Personal-sized computer and downloaded from that as needed.

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The problem here is that any one stranded on an unfamiliar planet will not survive more than a month once the packed in food runs out unless they have very good Survival skills.

So knowing that, either everyone who gets on one of these ships is either a stalwart survivor type, or has excepted that every trip may bring death.

I suspect that the premise of the game will involve having to survive on some alien rock at some point?

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The "rock" does not necessarily have to be that "alien". There is an unknown Elder Race involved. They may have been terraforming for a very long time. The critical PC activity could end up being "dodge dinosaurs" rather than "find edible insects".

As for that month and Survival skills Basic p.293 suggests that up to 16 hours a day in a strange environment could count as training in Survival (Local Environment). You'd have your 2nd pt at the end of Day 25.

For the moment though this mostly a thought exercise in whether or not the life pod from UT is a usable tool for storytelling and how to use it if so.

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Oh it can be. I was just reinforcing that without proper skills or a better prepared life pod, most travelers aren't going to make it if they run into this scenario. However if the odds of this happening are about the odds of getting into a fatal car accident, then most people likely won't mind.


Also, I need to revise my above "one month past when food runs out". One survivor could survive up to 4 months past the food running out, if they had the gristly will...


Going back to this line:

Then you need to carry 2 years worth of food pills.


Or just hand wave it and accept that the journeys the PCs take are the exceptions that keep people stranded for more than one month. Or talk the GM into easing up on that 1 ton hard limit for more food pills.

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Some kind of heating device. You need it to warm yourself and cook, and might latter want to build a forge. Presumably by this time they can be built as small as a blaster. Might even be an alternative use of a blaster.

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It is possible for the life support system to produce a portion of the inhabitants diet. The costs would probably be higher power consumption, space and maintenance. The benefits may include improved reliability, reduced price and reduced weight.

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No blasters at TL9. Those are TL11.

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On the one hand that's not possible. On the other the world isn't some random piece of rock. It's a place where a Precursor race put a spacegate. Earth is such a place too. Biological compatibility may be assumed and this would have been the case with every other world previously discovered in the network.

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One thing I have seen is some science fiction is the assumption that there will be a beacon on uninhabited but somewhat habitable planets, with more emergency supplies and a means of calling for help (ansible or message drone). So you pilot your lifepod to land by the beacon and Bob's your uncle. Of course, for story reasons you always crash a few dozen or hundred miles away and must trek through alien terrain.

What this correlates to historically, if anything, I don't know. Maybe the habit of loosing pigs and goats on remote isles, though that was more for future provisioning i think.

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The Sahara desert is so amazingly earth-like you'd think it actually was on the earth!

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If every planet has earth-like flora and fauna, some carefully chosen tech will make getting food a lot easier.

A chemical analyzer that tests organic matter for nutrition and toxins will be nice.

A scanner that can locate large animals and a long range gun to shoot them will provide food the urbanites will actually eat.

We've mentioned a cook stove, right?

The pod itself is steerable, so while you can't go home, you can at the very least choose the biome you crash in. Different pods may be optimized for different biomes. I'm not 100% sure what the best biome to land in is. tropical simplifies food and shelter, but exposes you to disease. Forests will have more edible vegetation (fruit), but plains make hunting easier.

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You can try but the rules in UT are not all that friendly.

The pod's AI is given Navigation (Space)-12. Simple successs drops you (safely) 5Dx100 miles from your intended target. Subtract 200 miles per margin of success with a minimum of 1 mile (also the result on a Crit Success). Failure drops you somewhere on the planet with a Crit Fail being a potentially fatal disaster.

Being even 200 miles off target in California could land you either on the beach, in the desert, in woodlands or the mountains. The whole 1700 miles would just barely put you on the right continent.

If I were the pilot with abetter score in Navigation thna 12 I'd mostly concentrate on avoiding big deserts or really large bodies of water. If the continent was like an uninhabited North America I'd aim for somewhere in the Great Plains.

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Does the pod have any sort of sensors? Ultra-tech seems to make it sound like it relies on library computer data though, which might be better than sensors for a known world, but useless if you're heading towards an unexplored planet. It would be hard to determine a good landing site just from looking at a planet as you hurtle towards it.

Even with a simple camera, photographs from orbit/as you come in to land might be useful for getting the general lay of the land. More detailed sensor analysis would probably be a bit harder but still useful - for example, working out the axial tilt of the planet and which season your proposed landing site it in - plenty of places are perfectly pleasant in the summer, but if you're still there in winter it'll be covered in two metres of snow!

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As the concept has evolved I beleive that the urgency to board the pods has diminished. You'll come out of the spacegate roughly around the local equivalent of the L4 pt with hyperdrive and main power dead. The ship's passive sensors would probably still work though and you'd have until the life support or other critical system on the main ship failed to use those.

The main ship is stil not meant to support life for an extended period of time even with the power on. Normal trips are measured in days. With it off evacuation is an inevitable need. You'll probably have some time to take pictures but I still wouldn't count on a precision landing.

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My example shows that a very lightweight flexible solar cell is enough to keep at least three modern power-hungry electronic devices charged: my iPhone, Kindle, and a Garmin InReach. Such, that, y'know, one might posit that future solar cells would be similarly light and maybe sufficient to keep a few B cells topped off. :) Hell, UT has the Partisan Needler, which will smelt a 1"x2"x3"block of iron into 140 rounds of 3mm ammunition (it's described as a "foundry") and then fire it all, on a 10-hour solar charge! (Granted, it's TL10...)

I love widgets like that.

This is helpful. There is a gap there, though. As mentioned, the solar cell in UT is described as providing essentially unlimited wall power. There really should be some sort of smaller survival solar cell, like my modern one, or maybe something more expedition-worthy like that Goal Zero stuff that you see everywhere. I think someone mentioned the one in High-Tech, which is TL8 so maybe half the weight at TL9?

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I assume it machines them out of the block, though at TL10 it could just have nanites strip iron from the block and build the darts like a 3D printer. Whatever the actual mechanism it's obviously a very small and extremely specialised robofac coupled with a very optimistic effective solar power system. That gun must be absolutely black when charging.

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I chased down the HT reference but it's not all that helpful. It recharges "a battery" in " couple of hours". It's pretty much as rules-light as UT about numbers.

I am also leery about the difference between HT and UT batteries. That's at least 4x power-wise by the Laser and Blaster Design article in Pyramid 3/37 but UT power cells also do much more than some HT batteries. A UT B cell would not only run your Small Computer for 20 hours. It would run your Mini Laser Torch for 3 minutes. You could burn through a lot of stuff with one of those in 3 minutes.

Were I actually at the point of running this I might wave my hands and say something like "Your solar recharger will recharge 1 B cell per day" even though I have no idea if that would be right.

However at this point my certainty that an E cell will recharge 1000 B cells counts for a good bit.

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There is a wide range of what is potentially habitable for human beings, so being dropped on a habitable planet does not mean that your pod will have the supplies that you need for that particular world. For example, a planet with a 720 hour day could be perfectly habitable for human beings (such as a planet in a resonance orbit around a MV star), it would just be a horrible idea to depend on solar power because you are only going to have 450 hours without usable sunlight (90 hours of evening, 270 hours of night, and 90 hours of morning). Now, you could just make every world like Europe, but that gets really boring after a while.

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I've enjoyed this discussion, and I don't want to derail it from Fred's specifications, but I do want to add comment for those not following his provisions.

A UT solar charger is mentioned in Pyramid 12 (which also has the TL10 shelterpack): "Adding small solar panels to gadgets lets them trickle-charge in daylight. It costs 20% of the cost of the power cells. Recharging could take a few days to weeks, depending on the device’s surface area relative to power capacity."

There's also some figures in GURPS Vehicles 2e, which I'd say you could use as a ballpark at least. That would put a UT solar charger at twice today's (TL8) output, per weight. If we assume a x4 battery capacity, you need a double-sized solar panel to keep up. So, a couple of Goal Zero Nomad types at TL9 will do for most applications. Call it, $125, 3 lbs. each.

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I think it's fine as-is. It's a conceit anyway that a spaceship escape pod will have aviation type survival equipment for its occupants. It's assumed the pod is close to some place to land and survive or otherwise, yep, you all die. Make new characters.

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I think it would be a hoot to have it and a special suitcase mini-fac in the escape pod which can produce the partisan needlers, knives, steel ingots, arrowheads, etc. You'd get a lot of use of that and a solar array to power it in a "boot strap explorers" type game.

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That sounds like a TL10-11 survival kit - some crappy food and dodgy space blankets to get you through the first couple of days, a solar array, a robofac/nanofac with a whole bunch of blueprints, and a foodfac.

You land, you spend a few miserable days stuffing the 'facs with raw materials, and then you live an increasingly comfortable existence as long as the sunlight and the 'facs last.

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It'd be mostly TL11. That's where the Foodfac is. 25lbs to turn anbny organic amtter into food or 10lbs for the stripped down Survival model which turns organic matter into what looks and (probably) tastes like pet food.

This was on my list for a higher TL version of the pod. The tL 10 highlights included things like a Bioplastic Backpack from Pyramid 3/12. It changes shape as necessary and can go from a backpack to a tent to a stretcher to a kayak and so on. It'a little heavy at 12 lbs though.

The real proze requires TL10^. With that you can have a 40lb portable fusion Generator (20 lbs at TL11^). Of course at TL11^ you've probably got unlimited air and water and your pod uses Reactionless Thrusters. Mix that with the 20 lb fusion gnerator and you've got a (really rather small) life boat that could take you anywhere in a solar ssytem as long as the Torpine holds out.

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Yep. And in Pyramid 96 we get the building seed, a specialized fac that can produce housing. So, it's possible that at TL10 you could simply unpack the facs and they would do the rest: food, shelter, and equipment all produced for you.

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I found the solar cell numbers that could provide soem answers and enhance the life pod stuff.

They were in Infinite worlds along with soem numbers on power cell capcity (sort of). The IW power cells are caled c and d cells but are different weights than the UT types. If you adjust for that weight difference a UT TL9 rechargeable B cell ought to hold 25 watt hours. 10x as much for each class of cell higher and 4x as much per TL higher.

The IW solar cells at maximum collect 17 watts per hour per square foot with negligable weight but the practical average is stated to be more like 72 watt-hours per day.

Then we get some TL8 backpacks from HT which hold 50 lbs at a weight of 1.5 lbs and now we can get by with 4 identical packs. The question is how many sq. ft. we can cover the outsides of those packs with. Using the backs, sides and top we might be able to get the slightly less than 3 and 1/2 sq. ft we need to average 250 watt-hours per day. It'd make a nice round number anyway and let you recharge 1 C cell or 10 B cells per day. You'll need to add at least 1 C cell at 0.5 lbs to the pack to collect those watt-hours and transfer that to recharge your B cells when you camp.

So at least at TL9 this is looking fairly practical for a B cell based equipment list. For TL10+ weapons using C cells not so much. You might think the solar cells might become more efficinent at higher TLs but it won't be anything like the 4x performance you get from the power cells.

If you knew you were looking at an extreme desert survival situation you'd put the solar cells on the outsides of your tents and sleep all day and move at night. You'd get your tents from the TL8 ones in HT. There's a 1 lb, 1 man tent there that's the optimum solution in most cases. Yes four 1 man tents are lighter than 1 4 man tent cube/square law or not.

I may try for a fully revised list of all the gear in a day or two.

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The basic list seems pretty good, but I'm surprised that the life pod doesn't come equipped with basic survival equipment in addition to the 200 pounds of cargo space.

That's a requirement for modern lifeboats, so it makes sense that a similar regulation would/could apply to space vessels.

With the assumption that things like transponder beacons, radios, signal lights, first aid kits, basic rations, water purification, etc. are standard features you get a lot more room to customize loadouts.

Logically, given the distances involved and the likelihood that people in lifepods aren't going to be healthy, fully-trained space pilots and navigators, a lifepod should just put everyone into stasis or hibernation and start pumping out all sorts of SOS messages.

Most of the energy is used to keep life support going, possibly with limited recharge capacity from ambient external energy sources - if they're available.

Navigation consists of a slow, steady acceleration towards the nearest known safe planet or spacelane. SAI navigates the ship and handles "routine" hazard identification and communication until it decides that rescue is imminent - or it can no longer cope with the situation. At that point, it wakes the passengers.

A slightly more "deluxe" life pod should have the capacity to perform automated reentry into a planetary atmosphere, recycle air and water, possibly recycle wastes, provide entertainment and survival info, and serve as a habitat module once it's on the ground.

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The 200 lbs is where the survival equipment goes. It is not supposed to be "general" cargo space.

What real equipment to help the passengers survive looks like would vary greatly depending on setting.

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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.

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

If they are civilian liners and freighters they are almost certainly plying the space between at least minimally developed worlds. If your lifepods can land on the world at all, land at the spaceport. Problem solved. Pods would have minimal survival supplies to get passengers thru the few days they might have to survive in the event of a malfunction that does put them down in wilderness but rescue would already be enroute. If civilian ships pass thru uninhabited, uninhabitable or lightly populated but still travelled systems they would have cryotubes or the equivalent. Even if you could land on an inhabitable but undeveloped planets the chance of injury or death trying to survival on the surface is far greater than simply sleeping in orbit until rescue. Put everyone to sleep, broadcast distress signals, shape an orbit towards the most travelled part of the system and wait for pickup.

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.

For military or exploratory service lifepods the chance of being in an inhabitable system is much lower. They might use off the shelf pods to save money, but the chances are they would use the cryotubes rather than landing on an inhabited world. You aren’t going to spend money on minifacs and generators when everyone can just sleep until rescue.

Exploratory service pods should focus on cryotubes and sustaining extended operation of the tubes.

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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^.

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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.

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.

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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...

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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.

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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.

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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.

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I would beg to differ.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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