Hard sci-fi space crew sourcebook

[cosmicfish]

Originally Posted by z0boson

I was wondering in which book I could find some information about space crews. Like, what equipment to use, more details about different spacesuits, day to day life, what to do in case of a leak, etc. I was thinking of a T9 to T10 hard sci-fi scenario.

This is an extremely broad request - going backwards instead of forwards, this is like asking for a book that would tell you everything about sailing from the stone age through today, with details on managing propulsion, day-to-day life, what to do if you get a hole in your sealhide/wood/metal/fiberglass hull. There is no one book that would or could have everything in it. You need to narrow it down in some way to get real answers.

"what equipment to use, more details about different spacesuits" - for what? This is mostly divided up by TL already, so look for the latest-TL item in any given category, and that is what will be used!

"day to day life" - again, look at the technologies at that TL and make some assumptions.

"what to do in case of a leak" - the usual reaction is to first seal off the area (i.e. save everyone ELSE on the ship), then get into spacesuits (i.e. save those in the area whom you still CAN), and then patch the hull in 2-3 stages (Quick/Save Lives, Portable/Get To Port, Permanent/Good As New). The details will depend on the ship.

As far as crew requirements, the easy way is to divide the work into two categories: Operations and Maintenance.

For Operations, simply figure out what systems you have and how many people it takes to run them according to your work schedule - for a civilian ship this might mean a single "day" shift and a lighter "night" shift, for a military ship it might mean 2-4 more-or-less equivalent shifts.

For Maintenance, estimate how many people are needed to keep everything running, then guess how much of this can be done by the Operational crew, and then add however much manpower you still need. Perhaps the Ops crew can do everything (common in a smaller ship), perhaps you need a lot of dedicated support crew (common in a larger ship). Regardless, you are going to have repair issues that will require more maintenance crew than you can carry! And much of this is subsumed at higher TL's by automation.