Easier yet, use that tech that a few thousand years in advance of us to NOT fill the ship with flammable material...
o:
Where did all the air come from!
- Thread starter Gray Pennell
- Start date
Easier yet, use that tech that a few thousand years in advance of us to NOT fill the ship with flammable material...
o:Fritz_Brown
Super Moderator
Could be your ship is built like Starfleet ships where hits to any part of the ship will result in bridge consoles blowing up and catching fireWhat the heck, do they load them with little explosives rigged to detonators primed by various other areas so the crew on the bridge can "FEEL" the damage to the ship? :file_22:
I always wondered why they were running hundreds of volts of electricity to consoles that were essentially electronic controls. If they used fiber for the data, they'd only have to run a few DC volts to each station. Heck, they could run on a couple of 9-volts for backup.
Nothing because, only those with Eng. -2 would vent when they can just recompress.
But, recompressing gets rid of the O2 sloooowly, not dramatically. (It's why I mentioned that the fire was huge and rapidly expanding.)
Easier yet, use that tech that a few thousand years in advance of us to NOT fill the ship with flammable material...
Exactly. (Though... Hydrogen burns, and it's the main fuel, so..........)
If you have LHyd spraying out of the tanks and into the crew compartments, you are probably already venting into space via the weapon damage that just happened...
far-trader
SOC-14 10K
As well I think you need a pretty narrow range of gas mix for the hydrogen to burn. More likely you'll be concerned with the issues of cryogenic liquid under pressure blasting and flash freezing things than a possible fire/explosion. Though I could be wrong about the chemistry.
Gray Pennell
SOC-12
Kinda off topic but since I started this thread i can do it. What would be the danger of a BB going into battle with a hydrogen venting into space?
The same is true for most fuels.
It'll run out of fuel sooner.
Fritz_Brown
Super Moderator
It's not always happening because of something hitting the ship from outside. *Plenty* of plot points ... errrr.... reasons for it to vent inside.
Conceivably it could affect vector, though a 1g or greater acceleration would likely make that vector addition negligible. It would be the equivalent of a maneuvering thruster, imo.
It's not always happening because of something hitting the ship from outside. *Plenty* of plot points ... errrr.... reasons for it to vent inside.
Sure, someone could be firing an FGMP around inside the ship and blasting through the tough bulkheads and then, fuel tanks.
Of a BB? Not enough thrust to be noticeable for that mass.
Doyle Hunt
SOC-10
For carrying "spare" atmosphere, consider the following:
Liquid oxygen has an expansion ratio of 1:861 at 20 °C (68 °F). One liter of liquid oxygen is equivalent to 861 liters of gaseous oxygen.
Liquid nitrogen has an expansion ratio of 1:694 at 20 °C (68 °F).
So, to determine how much spare oxygen tankage you would need, take the total inhabited volume of the ship (excluding fuel tankage and any space occupied by machinery). Multiply this figure by 0.21 to reflect the partial pressure. Divide by 861. This is the volume of liquid oxygen you would need. For a typical free trader, you're only going to need a few liters, easily lost in the round-off errors in the engineering spaces.
Do the same for liquid nitrogen, except multiply the inhabited volume by 0.79 and divide by 694. You'll need more LN2 storage than LO2 storage, but even so, the total atmosphere storage will be less tha 1 ton.
For comparison purposes, the expansion ratio of liquid hydrogen is 1:851, not much different from liquid oxygen.
Liquid oxygen has an expansion ratio of 1:861 at 20 °C (68 °F). One liter of liquid oxygen is equivalent to 861 liters of gaseous oxygen.
Liquid nitrogen has an expansion ratio of 1:694 at 20 °C (68 °F).
So, to determine how much spare oxygen tankage you would need, take the total inhabited volume of the ship (excluding fuel tankage and any space occupied by machinery). Multiply this figure by 0.21 to reflect the partial pressure. Divide by 861. This is the volume of liquid oxygen you would need. For a typical free trader, you're only going to need a few liters, easily lost in the round-off errors in the engineering spaces.
Do the same for liquid nitrogen, except multiply the inhabited volume by 0.79 and divide by 694. You'll need more LN2 storage than LO2 storage, but even so, the total atmosphere storage will be less tha 1 ton.
For comparison purposes, the expansion ratio of liquid hydrogen is 1:851, not much different from liquid oxygen.
Just store PP fuel as ammonia and some as water. As you process it, take what N & O2 you need...
Personally, I thought Star Frontiers Knight Hawks made sense when they said that ships suited up and stored atmosphere before a fight. No A, B, or C fires possible, no extra damage from gasses venting after hull damage. no loss of life support - unless one of your life support tanks was hit - but that's why it's distributed.
And with 14 years of sea time, I don't see that as equivalent to scuttling the ship today. Today, we set material condition zebra - close all hatches - before a fight to help ensure watertight integrity and reduce flooding if we do take damage. So in space, especially in a small ship, compressing and storing air makes sense to me.
And with 14 years of sea time, I don't see that as equivalent to scuttling the ship today. Today, we set material condition zebra - close all hatches - before a fight to help ensure watertight integrity and reduce flooding if we do take damage. So in space, especially in a small ship, compressing and storing air makes sense to me.
Yea, way back when I played CT that was a SOP for us. First sign of combat everyone got in Vacc Suits. If for some reason that we had someone without Vacc Suit skill, we put them in one and told them not to move around too much. Then we'd evacuate atmo from the entire ship, except Airlocks. The airlocks we'd over pressurize to make it harder for attackers to just walk up and open the airlock hatch. We considered the Vacc Suit skill to be the MOST important one for our crew. If you didn't have it and training was available in the game, that was the first thing someone learned if they didn't have it.
Yea, in one of the longest running games that I was in way back when, we turned a 200tn Free Trader into a Q-Ship for anti-pirate duty. We named it "Peanut Butter Twinkie" because it looked soft and easy to gobble up, like a Twinkie, but had a chewy, crunchy center. 
We hired Merc Marines, most of whom rode in Low Passage until we had a pirate hail us, and we usually had the time to unfreeze the Marines and be ready to repel boarders. That way we had a lot more shooters than pirates would normally suspect. We'd "Surrender" and allow the pirates to dock with us and send their boarding party over, and then we'd counter attack. We'd have some Marines fighting the boarding party and we'd send a unit out of a cargo door to burn their way through the pirate hull and take them on a flank. Most of the time we could pick a door or hatch to sally out of that was out of the line of sight of their weapons. We also had popup turrets that would spring into action at about the same time. Yes, we would usually take damage and casualties but we took a lot of pirates that way. Pirate ship salvage and reward money paid for our repairs, maintenance, salaries and still show a profit.
We hired Merc Marines, most of whom rode in Low Passage until we had a pirate hail us, and we usually had the time to unfreeze the Marines and be ready to repel boarders. That way we had a lot more shooters than pirates would normally suspect. We'd "Surrender" and allow the pirates to dock with us and send their boarding party over, and then we'd counter attack. We'd have some Marines fighting the boarding party and we'd send a unit out of a cargo door to burn their way through the pirate hull and take them on a flank. Most of the time we could pick a door or hatch to sally out of that was out of the line of sight of their weapons. We also had popup turrets that would spring into action at about the same time. Yes, we would usually take damage and casualties but we took a lot of pirates that way. Pirate ship salvage and reward money paid for our repairs, maintenance, salaries and still show a profit.
Fritz_Brown
Super Moderator
Unless your hatches opened inward, how did that make it harder? Any safety override you're relying on is as easily bypassed as the lock mechanism, imo.
Exactly! They did.
BraselC5048
SOC-8
IMTU, depressurization is standard. The crew goes into vacc suits. Mechanical counter pressure vacc suits are a lot better then today's spacesuits, and don't impair movement or dexterity to a significant degree. Large vacuum pumps (yes, vacuum pumps exist today) remove the atmosphere from the ship, and put it into storage tanks as compressed air at several hundred PSI. I did the math (I did the math for a lot of things, for that matter), and the tanks don't take up excessive volume. The tanks have room for twice the normal amount of atmosphere used to pressurize the hull, so half of them leave port with spare atmosphere in them, for a 100% reserve. The tanks could get hit, but there are a dozen or two of them (or more).
The real benefit is that operations in a compartment aren't impaired due to decompression, only by the actual damage of important components in that compartment. (And that's a big difference - a hit usually only damages part of the equipment in a compartment, but depressurizes it, and likely the compartment behind it as well).
Drives will be built to run in a vacuum, and there are already electronics that operate in a vacuum in space today.
After a battle, the crew will patch up a few compartments (namely the heads), so that the crew can eat, drink, and contribute to water recycling. Depending on the damage, only enough compartments to get by until the ship gets back to port for repairs will be patched. If the ship isn't heavily damaged, the crew may patch up all compartments instead and continue on with it's mission.
On warships, spare parts, and metal plates and beams, are lashed to the overhead (ceiling) wherever there's space. In my warships designs IMTU, at least, the 10ft deck spacing in crew areas is composed of a 2ft deep underfloor area for life support, and all the other ship functions that don't get their own space on the deckplan. The 8ft above that is crew spaces, but the last foot or so below the overhead is filled with spare parts and the like ties to the ceiling, so the crew only gets about 7ft of height to live in. Of course, engineering area, holds, boat decks and the like don't have any of this.
How fast a crew can depressurize their hull is a mark of their skill. It takes about 5-7 minutes for the pumps to work in any case, the real difference being how long it takes for the crew to be ready to use them.
The hull is normally maintained at .7 atmospheres (on Imperial ships, anyway), and everyone needs to be in a vacc suit before the pressure drops below about .4 atmospheres.
Every crewman has a vacc suit at both his quarters, and his duty station. The crew on watch (there are 2 watches, port and starboard) begins preparing the ship for battle. The crew off watch either gets into their vacc suit at their quarters, the goes to their duty station, or goes to their duty station without putting on a vacc suit. Once a crewman off watch arrives at his station, the crewman on watch already there then puts on his vacc suit. The crewman arriving takes over while he does so. If the crewman arriving doesn't have a vacc suit on, then he puts his on after the crewman already there has his on. (But he would have arrived a minute or two sooner then if he put his vacc suit on at his quarters).
This ensures that the process of preparing the ship for battle isn't interrupted, and all stations are manned the entire time.
A crack ship starts depressurization as they call general quarters, with the entire crew in vacc suits by the time the pumps bring the pressure down to .4 atmospheres. Less skilled crews, they take longer. . .
Sorry if I've rambled. i ought to write an article or book on all this.
The real benefit is that operations in a compartment aren't impaired due to decompression, only by the actual damage of important components in that compartment. (And that's a big difference - a hit usually only damages part of the equipment in a compartment, but depressurizes it, and likely the compartment behind it as well).
Drives will be built to run in a vacuum, and there are already electronics that operate in a vacuum in space today.
After a battle, the crew will patch up a few compartments (namely the heads), so that the crew can eat, drink, and contribute to water recycling. Depending on the damage, only enough compartments to get by until the ship gets back to port for repairs will be patched. If the ship isn't heavily damaged, the crew may patch up all compartments instead and continue on with it's mission.
On warships, spare parts, and metal plates and beams, are lashed to the overhead (ceiling) wherever there's space. In my warships designs IMTU, at least, the 10ft deck spacing in crew areas is composed of a 2ft deep underfloor area for life support, and all the other ship functions that don't get their own space on the deckplan. The 8ft above that is crew spaces, but the last foot or so below the overhead is filled with spare parts and the like ties to the ceiling, so the crew only gets about 7ft of height to live in. Of course, engineering area, holds, boat decks and the like don't have any of this.
How fast a crew can depressurize their hull is a mark of their skill. It takes about 5-7 minutes for the pumps to work in any case, the real difference being how long it takes for the crew to be ready to use them.
The hull is normally maintained at .7 atmospheres (on Imperial ships, anyway), and everyone needs to be in a vacc suit before the pressure drops below about .4 atmospheres.
Every crewman has a vacc suit at both his quarters, and his duty station. The crew on watch (there are 2 watches, port and starboard) begins preparing the ship for battle. The crew off watch either gets into their vacc suit at their quarters, the goes to their duty station, or goes to their duty station without putting on a vacc suit. Once a crewman off watch arrives at his station, the crewman on watch already there then puts on his vacc suit. The crewman arriving takes over while he does so. If the crewman arriving doesn't have a vacc suit on, then he puts his on after the crewman already there has his on. (But he would have arrived a minute or two sooner then if he put his vacc suit on at his quarters).
This ensures that the process of preparing the ship for battle isn't interrupted, and all stations are manned the entire time.
A crack ship starts depressurization as they call general quarters, with the entire crew in vacc suits by the time the pumps bring the pressure down to .4 atmospheres. Less skilled crews, they take longer. . .
Sorry if I've rambled. i ought to write an article or book on all this.
Nice post. That's kinda how we always assumed it would work when I played many years ago and how I'll likely run it IMTU.
As a side note, a couple of years ago I surprised a new Traveller GM, who is a friend of mine, by saying in character, "Where's my Vacc Suit?!" as soon as my character stepped on deck of a ship that was new to him.
IMO, the first thing that a veteran/able spacehand is going to do on boarding a new ship is securing a Vacc Suit and running standard preventive maintenance checkout on it.
As a side note, a couple of years ago I surprised a new Traveller GM, who is a friend of mine, by saying in character, "Where's my Vacc Suit?!" as soon as my character stepped on deck of a ship that was new to him.
IMO, the first thing that a veteran/able spacehand is going to do on boarding a new ship is securing a Vacc Suit and running standard preventive maintenance checkout on it.
Bah, you kids.
Puh-lease! Any serious and experienced Traveller brings their own VaccSuit. You know it will function properly and is of course tailored to you. Check for a VaccSuit, geez, what nugget thing to say.
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