Spaceships: Escape to the asteroids

[DataPacRat]

Originally Posted by johndallman

How long will it take for a resupply mission to be set up and dispatched? How solid are their consumables and recycling for waiting rather longer than that? How confident are they that this will happen?

Your plans for colonising the asteroids, in recent threads, seem to rather under-estimate the deadliness of a space environment. Recall that getting stuck in the asteroids is rather worse, for example, than being marooned in the Antarctic circa 1900. In the Antarctic, there's unlimited free air and water, food to be hunted for on the coast, and boats that can be sailed without needing external fuel resources. In the asteroid belt, you have none of these things.

One of the techs available has the same stats is a gizmo from 3e Vehicles, the TL11 'total life support'. For about $1k, taking up 4cf and 40 lbs, and using 100 watts, the gizmo will recycle food, air, and water indefinitely for one person. A 14-year RTG to power it only adds 2 lbs, $2k, and .02 cf. Basically, getting marooned would be inconvenient, but not life-threatening.

Maybe the 'rescue mission' involves plans to send them a solar- or mag-sail instead of fuel - there's a variety of options here to consider.