I'm working on the design of a small lifepod, built to sustain up to 4 people in an emergency low berth for quite a long time (years, if not decades; think of Ripley in Aliens surviving 57 years in 'hypersleep'). The problem I came to is a technical one: CT states that a power plant uses its standard fuel requirement in 4 weeks; even in Beltstrike, power generation alone uses 0.05 dtons of fuel per week, even with no thrust, so you'll need 130 dtons of fuel to generate power for 50 years. Is there a solution to keep the cryotube running for a long time on a relatively small amount of fuel?
Long-term Low Berth survival
- Thread starter Golan2072
- Start date
vermeylenhans
SOC-11
Or have a look at GURPS Vehicles for DIY tailored power plants. Be them batteries, small fusion reactors, solar cells or whatever.
far-trader
SOC-14 10K
Or ignore any contiunual requirements as most versions of the game seem to. In most cases the theory seems to be once you "invest" the cost (life support) and freeze the subjects that the onboard systems will last for decades if not centuries. There is some slow degrading over time but thems the breaks for long term survival.
I make note of the "relics" surviving through the TNE wars into the new dawn with little or no (implied anyway) maintenance, though the revival rates seem to be low.
Before that there were the "timer-clubs" where people would join and for a fee they could be put into lowberths and monitored and kept safe until the date (sometimes centuries) they wanted to be revived.
I make note of the "relics" surviving through the TNE wars into the new dawn with little or no (implied anyway) maintenance, though the revival rates seem to be low.
Before that there were the "timer-clubs" where people would join and for a fee they could be put into lowberths and monitored and kept safe until the date (sometimes centuries) they wanted to be revived.
Commander Drax
SOC-12
I recentlt designed a small 5 ton lifepod to be used with M0, the stats of which will soon be appearing on the revamped Pocket Empires website, when its up and running.
It had 1G accelleration, fuel scoops, emergency low berths and computer control basic avionics and a sensor array, a fusion reactor and 1 months fuel (a tight design)it's basic programming was to seek out the nearest place of safety in a given solar system and assist its occupants even if it had to conduct refuelling to get there (hence the scoops and hardened reactor core). If there was no suitable installations or habitable worlds in system it would simply skim fuel every month until a ship arrived in system before emitting a distress call.
About two and half pages of prose went into supporting the design in the Drax Shipyard section of Pocket Empires in which I converted every design from the T4 Starships Book into T20 stats with a decent discription (the type of thing I would have liked to have seen included in Starships which IMHO had to be the worst Traveller product ever released, opps sorry there was Emporer's Vehicles...)
It can be done, I won't publish the stats here as afterall they will be freely available when the revamped site is up and running.
It had 1G accelleration, fuel scoops, emergency low berths and computer control basic avionics and a sensor array, a fusion reactor and 1 months fuel (a tight design)it's basic programming was to seek out the nearest place of safety in a given solar system and assist its occupants even if it had to conduct refuelling to get there (hence the scoops and hardened reactor core). If there was no suitable installations or habitable worlds in system it would simply skim fuel every month until a ship arrived in system before emitting a distress call.
About two and half pages of prose went into supporting the design in the Drax Shipyard section of Pocket Empires in which I converted every design from the T4 Starships Book into T20 stats with a decent discription (the type of thing I would have liked to have seen included in Starships which IMHO had to be the worst Traveller product ever released, opps sorry there was Emporer's Vehicles...)
It can be done, I won't publish the stats here as afterall they will be freely available when the revamped site is up and running.
Commander Drax
SOC-12
Any way long term survival in a low berth is Canon as evidenced in TNE etc, and I imagine has something to do with the freezing process. Once frozen you are ok, however should something happen to cause minute fluctations in the temperature this could possibly lead to mishaps, illness or outright death. Thus being thawed out should happen slowly and under expert supervision (the qualified ship's doctor).
Personally I would never, ever want to travel in a 'cryrogenic coffin' much better are the sleeper berths in which a passenger is sealed into a berth for a week and injected with Fast drug to speed up the passage of time and slow down metabolic processes, whilst inducing a gentle sleep in the passenger. The couches in these berths would be the massaging/vibrating affair to prevent bedsores etc and muscles could be stimulated electrically through electrodes to prevent any discernable weakening over time. Whilst safer these are not so good at long term (decades) of sleep as the body would still need to ingest food and water etc although at a much reduced rate. Perhaps these nutrients could be injected into the sleeper with the fast drug. This is the approach I take in my Rebin Empire source material also up for grabs at Pocket Empires. The old site is still running but when next updated which will be quite soon, should have all of the new content on it.
Personally I would never, ever want to travel in a 'cryrogenic coffin' much better are the sleeper berths in which a passenger is sealed into a berth for a week and injected with Fast drug to speed up the passage of time and slow down metabolic processes, whilst inducing a gentle sleep in the passenger. The couches in these berths would be the massaging/vibrating affair to prevent bedsores etc and muscles could be stimulated electrically through electrodes to prevent any discernable weakening over time. Whilst safer these are not so good at long term (decades) of sleep as the body would still need to ingest food and water etc although at a much reduced rate. Perhaps these nutrients could be injected into the sleeper with the fast drug. This is the approach I take in my Rebin Empire source material also up for grabs at Pocket Empires. The old site is still running but when next updated which will be quite soon, should have all of the new content on it.
RainOfSteel
SOC-14 1K
Isn't a *fusion* power plant a bit much to power a simple high efficiency refrigerator? We do cryogenic cooling all the time without anything so severe.
The longest-term power supply I can think of would be a well-shielded fission plant, or barring that, radioisotopic thermoelectic generators.
Commander Drax
SOC-12
You could always coat it with solar cells, which apart from utilising free energy would also make it a very easy to spot radar reflector, assuming that the local sunlight is strong enough to power it. I dont like batteries as such as their power to weight/volume ratio is low. Cold fusion as in T4 was pretty good though...
Hmmm... but won't the low berth need to be continually cooled to keep it at cryonic temperatures? Ofcourse, if the entire crew is in cryo, you'd probably lower the entire ship's internal temperature to something very low, so energy usage won't be THAT high...
Care to post a URL?
far-trader
SOC-14 10K
It's .001MW in MT and double that for an emergency low berth.
far-trader
SOC-14 10K
You're welcome and yep the MT conversion is the same, 250MW per EP.
Sifu Blackirish
SOC-14 1K
IMTU I have a reptilian race that uses fast drug under pressure and low (not freezing) temperatures to stimulate hibernation. They never developed FTL (until recently) and still use this technique...
