Ideas for a Self Sealing Landing Pad

[Gadrin]

I've got a somewhat primitive planet, using Drellesarr from the Reaver's Deep supplement.

Drellsarr System Information - B310550A
---------------------------------------
Starport         B    B - Good Quality Installation. Refined fuel is available,
      as is annual maintenance overhaul. A shipyard capable of building 
      non-starships is present.
Size             3    3000 miles (4800 km). 
Atmosphere       1    Trace. 
Hydrographics    0    No free standing water. 
Population       5    Hundreds of thousands. 
Government       5    Feudal Technocracy. 
Law Level        0    No laws affecting weapons possession or ownership. 
Tech Level       A    Average Imperial.

Copyright Cargonaut Press

Essentially its an airless/waterless rock with a small pop (about 800,000
according to the books). This means you can't go outside without a vacc-suit
and that most meetings will take place aboard starships or indoors inside a
habitat.

I wanted to do a couple of deals where the two groups meet at a landing
pad/pen. Of course this means inside behind closed doors, which is great for
real-life and privacy but lousy for RPing, unless the PCs are James Bond or
teleporters/clairvoyance etc. The landing pads I have follow the picture on
the MegaTraveller Imperial Encyclopedia with them carved out of the side of a
large mountain/hill (ignore the water just an empty desolate and dangerous
valley there). The original idea was that this was founded by Reavers ages
ago and they of course built places that blended into the surroundings.
However I want the PCs to be able to observe the proceedings, so I thought
back to Niven's RELIC OF THE EMPIRE where Rich Mann has a starship with a
habitat bubble, essentially a transparent nose bloom that will let in
sunlight and allow normal conditions inside. Essentially a tech-analog for
the Star Trek cargo bay deflector screen. Invisible, yet protective, allows
people happening by to see in. In this case since they're on the side of a
hill/mountain, it'll be done via a sensor turret and a powerful zoom.

Do you think it's possible to construct something similar, that's tech-based? (at the above TL)
I'm thinking of having pads that are simply exposed rock, fusion-tunnelled
and encased with walls on 3 sides, a roof and that the "bubble" portion
simply deploys and can be expanded by automation over the exposed portion,
and it seals itself via electromagnets and/or some sort of zipper. T4 offers
plasticrete, essentially a foam that when electric current is passed,
hardens. Naturally it has to be able to unseal. Pressurizing a bubble to
accomodate a 400-ton starship might take a while, unless you have dedicated
machinery. A laser-listening device can get the audio once the bubble
pressurizes.



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[far-trader]

I was actually thinking on this problem a couple weeks back. I can't recall the "eureka" moment or it's inspiration but it suddenly occurred to me that maybe it could be done with Traveller tech.

I had long thought it well beyond Imperial tech levels (when I didn't think it simply outright silly ) but then it hit me. IF you accept that grav tech is really magical (allowing such things as escher homes*) then it seems you should be able to simply allow that properly set up grav modules can simulate a 1G field on the atmospheric elements to keep them from diffusing. Voila, presssurized area without a physical barrier between it and the vacuum outside.

* rooms where people can walk on the walls and cieling as if they are the floor with no balance or disorientation issues from interferrence patterns of the different pseudo gravity point sources... in other words "super freaking magic that has no place in sci-fi" in my opinion, so yes I don't allow such an interpretation of it

And even if you did allow it I'd still think you'd have radiation and radiative effects to deal with. Radiation coming in or going out is not going to be reduced by a few meters of atmo the same way it is by a few hundred km of atmo. So you'll get a full dose of whatever particles are streaming in. And your heating bill will probably be significant as it bleeds into vacuum without any insulation. At the very least you'd want to take a page from Star Trek and have an actual door in place most of the time and use the "field" only to allow you to get away with not having to lose or take the time to deal with the atmo each time someone comes or goes.

And anyone or anything transitioning from near zero kelvin to room temperature, or vice versa, as they cross the knife edge had better be ready to deal with the thermal shock. And the ref should make sure the effect is described. I'd imagine all kinds of sounds and frost and fog from and on anything coming in. Less noticeable effects on anything going out.

And those are problems just off the top of my head.

 

[Gadrin]

Aw, c'mon, Han and the others only had to wear those flimsy masks on that asteroid, killing off those Mynocks

Hmmm, tables for atmosphere in a giant, space-worm...

 

[Gadrin]

Seriously, I originally have them land on a terraced hillside. The "pads" had walls and roofs which folded over to give some privacy. Then the people exit in vacc-suits and enter an airlock and usually do their business in a special set of floors near the top of the hill. Basically the place is a starship, built (or re-built)
underground.

I was just hoping for some sort of quick-seal, bubble that would allow the transaction to take place "out in the open".

It seems like every other world I've wanted has either no-atmo or trace-atmo.

Damn canon!


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[far-trader]

Well, you could scale up the rescue ball for a temporary shirtsleeve environment to work in A nice small package (dependent on the size of dome you want) that you drop on any hostile bit of real estate that grabs your interest. Systems anchor it in place, foam a plascrete floor, deploy the hemispherical bubble and fill it with a standard atmo. Then just make use of the built in airlock bubbles and go to work. Artificial grav floor plating extra. Built in solar panels and smart plastic regulate temperature and solar exposure and provide power in direct sunlight.

 

[far-trader]

Oh, and there's a Japanese(?) developed door I saw on the web a while back that might apply or help inspire. It was (as I recall) a series of slats that retracted into each side of the door frame based on camera input of the approaching user. So the door automatically opened, just enough to accommodate the user (adult to child, portly to thin, or even a small pet).

EDIT: Found a YouTube video of it. Looks like it's not quite perfected yet (at the time of the demo anyway)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pt3k0dhhImo

(some of the related videos on that page might be better, or in English )

Add a couple TLs and stack something like that up in series, with much finer sensors and controls and tight fittings and you could have a "solid" wall that you could walk through from vacuum to atmo without delay or losing any atmo. Easy to build in temperature controls too so you don't have the thermal shock issues. Make it big enough and you could drive a vehicle through, bigger still and you can fly a space craft through it.

Of course there's lots to go wrong with it being a complex system. And it'd make a great anti-hijacker "airlock" if you wanted. Oh my, the system detects a weapon. Lock it down. Demand the person drop the weapon or they will be crushed or simply held in place. Even allow the control to allow penetration of your own weapon, aimed at the perps head, while not allowing them to move. Or just use the temperature controls to make them miserable. Or...

...you get the idea :devil:

 

[Gadrin]

interesting.

my idea was that each pad was like a shoebox laying on it's side. The top of the box, was stacked on the side facing up.

however instead of being solid/opaque it's a clear material that drops and seals. once a seal is acheived then the pad is pumped/pressurized for humans.

then the reverse to launch a ship into orbit.

the idea is to allow some space to conduct a more or less private transaction or meeting without having to use a separate room, since in this place rooms are precious. and I still get to have the deal be seen by someone out of the way a bit.

it's just as easy to board another starship, but then one of the parties has an advantage, especially in the lawless port of Drellesarr; basically a pirate hangout. or to do it in orbit.

well, maybe I'll just eliminate that idea and move on to another type of scenario.

I think the Pilots Guide to the Drexilthar Subsector mentions that it's a binary system.

"Drellesarr is a small tidal-locked world occupying an unusual orbit btween two dim red suns"





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[far-trader]

Ah, ok, I think I see what you're after now.

There is a graphic or two of Traveller spaceships linked by a docking tube that extends from each airlock. Maybe that would work for your scenario. The two ships land, extend the clear boarding tubes towards each other and achieve a seal. The deal goes down in the middle of the linked tubes, in view of the ships (and unknown to them, your interested observer) but on neutral ground and in shirtsleeves to allow observation that weapons aren't present (or whatever reasons).

 

[Gadrin]

Yes pretty close.

The dealers are a ship captain who's an unscrupulous merchant, who's dealing in stolen goods and slaves.

and

The buyer who's the Owner Aboard of the Broadsword-class ship parked on the top of the landing mountain. He's actually the owner-commander of the mercenary unit that runs security at this 'port.

Since he's got the homefield advantage, he's travelling to the landing bay of the merchant to inspect the goods and the slaves.

The merchant doesn't quite trust these guys enough to walk into their own killzone, and the ship can land, check out the area with scanners and visually, before deplaning and bringing out the goods. This can take place while the bay is sealed and prepped for lifeforms to exist in temporarily.

So it's a we really don't trust each other completely setup, that still requires some risk.

For 99% of the time, no one would bother watching, but the plan is that the PCs will have an idea of some big meeting when they spot the Owner's Bodyguard detail massing outside his Broadsword, before leading him into the complex. That coupled with some radio traffic holding all air-traffic and the arrival of a sleek-looking, Lightning-class gunned merchant (from GURPS Interstellar Wars) to one of the large docking pens.


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[boomslang]

The two ships land, extend the clear boarding tubes towards each other and achieve a seal. The deal goes down in the middle of the linked tubes, in view of the ships (and unknown to them, your interested observer) but on neutral ground and in shirtsleeves to allow observation that weapons aren't present (or whatever reasons).

You might want to add an engineering rationale that the boarding tubes are coupled to the hull so that they may gain the benefits of micrometeroid and radiation shielding extended from the ship's operating m-drive (as per Beltstrike).

Likewise, a standalone bubble on the planetary surface will need an attached power supply (and m-drive surrogate) to generate the shielding necessary to bounce most incoming micrometeroids and all the cosmic rays, solar winds, et cetera. Upside: requires TL9, tops.

Downside: as written, gravitics are technically thrusters, not tractors. (I've been quietly pestering MWM for years that spacecraft need ceiling grav plates, not deck grav plates.) Tractor-beam tech to hold a local atmo bubble (& presumed accompanying garden) is TL16, minimum... plus you still need to provide the rad/micrometeroid shielding somehow...

 

[Gadrin]

plus you still need to provide the rad/micrometeroid shielding somehow...

Well the idea is not to remain in the (mostly shielded) bay for too long; no longer than say any of the astronauts who walked on the moon.


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[boomslang]

Well the idea is not to remain in the (mostly shielded) bay for too long; no longer than say any of the astronauts who walked on the moon.

On a tiny little barren world where everybody lives in caves and tunnels and tubes?

I'm thinking the "party dome" is going to be the closest thing to a public park/arena on the whole dustball -- it can be many hectares in size, accommodate a few low-G sports fields, maybe an amphitheater, and so on... just keep that atmo/shielding generator (and its backups) in good operating condition...

 

[Gadrin]

On a tiny little barren world where everybody lives in caves and tunnels and tubes?

I'm thinking the "party dome" is going to be the closest thing to a public park/arena on the whole dustball -- it can be many hectares in size, accommodate a few low-G sports fields, maybe an amphitheater, and so on... just keep that atmo/shielding generator (and its backups) in good operating condition...

Oh, yes there are others, but the players won't be seeing those. There's a few places that offer things like a retractable roof, ala some modern day sporting arenas.

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