A sleeper ship (ideas?)

[Tellon]

I was thinking of a real sleeper ship ...

Robotic crew -- Remote controlled -- Robot brain -- you name it

And the rest of the ship are slow berths -- filled by the hundreds -- taken care of by medical bots --

-- And since the ship is robotic -- there is no concern of G speed -- so thus, we can use a Fusion rocket going full blast to get the G speed nice and high -- or we can go for the well known way of using Daedulus Drives .. but we want a high speed burn to cut down length of trip -- 142 min/LS for 1G -- if we would be going say .. 1 Parsec .. is around 94.6 M LS's .. as 1 LY = 31, 557, 600 LS

so we can multiply that times 142 to get a disgustingly high amount of time if we travelled at a simple 1G .. in other words --a True Generational Ship. Say something like a hollowed out Planetoid ....[Hmm, wasn't that a Star Trek episode] ..

-- but my idea is for more of a DY-100 style sleeper ship (yes, the type that Khan came from). So something decently small, and a true sleeper ship, vs the slow-speed gen-ship above.

So -- what do you guys think ---??

say USL Cylinder or even an USL Open (for cheap modular choices)
a High Thrust Rocket booster for that Initial high G thrust/burn -- say to .13c
Good sized Fusion engine to keep everything running
Loads of fuel for the fusion engine
Lots of berths
bots to keep the ship going
RC so the ship can be watched by folks back home

So since robotic measures would need fairly intelligent bots -- what would we aim for -- say TL 12+ ???

 

[aramis]

Genships should have (IIRC) 25Td per adult capacity above and beyond staterooms; there are Long-term life support units in FF&S2 (T4), but my copy isn't to hand to check. I know that I'l be using 25 Td per adult for my generation ship designs (and they will be relevant, I think, in my new ATU). Of that, I'm assuming 7Td of hydrocycle tankage, 7Td of aeroponics, 1Td of machinery, and 10Td of living space.

A singlewide 60' mobile home is about 10 Td; using 1.5m grids, about 2x10 squares, and is doable for long term confinement for two people.

 

[Vargr]

What is a Daedulus drive?

.13c is pityful.

I remember reading something in GT: Interstellar Wars that the max safe speed to travel between systems when J-Drives were not an option was .8c.

At this speed each starmap hexagon takes little over 4 years to cross. That seems fine for a sleeper ship. You can cross a whole sector in about a century and a half.

As for the time it takes to get (and decelerate) from .8c, well there's nothing limiting you to 1G acceleration, or even 6G for that matter; go crazy!

Edit: Actually, even at 1G accel the ship could reach near-c speeds in about a year; inconsequential for a trip of decades or centuries.

 

[Shonner]

Ever watch the TV show called The Starlost?

 

[mike wightman]

In OTU canon the ESA launched many sleeper ships prior to the discovery of jump drive.

That puts the TL at 8/9.

 

[Tellon]

Ever watch the TV show called The Starlost?

never heard of it .. I'll see if I can dig up some info

 

[Whipsnade]

never heard of it .. I'll see if I can dig up some info

Tellon,

The Starlost is more famous, or infamous, for Harlan Ellison's involvement with it. The whole story is rather sordid, as are most of Ellison's hissy fits, but it involves producers on a very tight budget using money concerns to rightly or wrongly fiddle with Ellison's scripts.

The show was produced in Canada and depicted the bog-standard-since-Heinlein idea about a generation ship adrift whose crew and passengers have forgotten they're aboard a ship. The ship consists of various habitats in which whose occupants have "devolved" into various cultures/societies, and idea which was later repeated in the final section of the Sky Raider trilogy.

I don't remember anything technical that would be of use for your sleeper ship. The ship in The Starlost didn't carry her passengers in cold berths, producing and maintaining artificial gravity was a trivial concern, and, aside from the need to make a "correction burn" of some sort, the method of propulsion was never quite discussed.

As for your ship, you may want to look at a light sail and launching lasers as ways to boost or assist the onboard engines.


Regards,
Bill

 

[Shonner]

The first three episodes were ok. Then the series turned into episodes of Barney where bad guys became nice guys by each episode's end.

Only the crew of the ship is in stasis (either to contain their virus or slowdown radiation sickness until someone in the future can cure them). The "passengers" thrive in their domes and managed not to break anything on the ship outside of them in over 700 years.

 

[Tellon]

"As for your ship, you may want to look at a light sail and launching lasers as ways to boost or assist the onboard engines."

Yeah -- using TNE -- using solar sails with photons to keep the sail going -- yeah -- there are already several variations of that technoilogy I have seen thru various space-tech companies I peeked at

Thx