Real Space Crew Dynamics Versus Scifi

[Spacescifi]

Scifi is largely inspired by the navy tradition, with large crew sizes supporting various roles with 24/7 shifts for combat readiness.

Merchant ships can get by with far fewer crew as all they have to worry about is gettimg from point A to point B.

The environment of space though changes both of these, at least if using real rocket science.

Either small multi-skilled crew or large crews of specialists is optimal I believe.

In other words, you launch up a shuttle of engineers, a shuttle of cooks, a shuttle of station operators, a shuttle of medical staff etc,  then dock them and unload them on the orbiting mothership.

Why? Getting to orbit is expensive. It is never a resource cheap thing to do. So if and when a launch occurs, efficiency is key.

 

Long story short, the only ships that should fit scifi tropes are either military or city ships.

Merchant ships won't fit the trope.

Also given how harsh space actually is, I tend to think that crews won't serve for long.

In other words, 6 months in space seems harsh, especially if they have FTL.

If using limited acceleration rocketry and scifi FTL, I think reasonably short tours of service would be appropriate.

It is spaceflight after all.

I would give a crew 2 months tops before swapping them out with a new crew.

For health reasons. And also food supply reasons too. The less food carried the more propellant instead, which means ship can travel farther.

Anything I missed or you wish to clarify?

You may discuss.

Edited April 14, 2020 by Spacescifi

[sevenperforce]

I knew a guy in college who had been stationed on both nuclear subs and on aircraft carriers. His descriptions of both made me think crewed long-term spaceflight will be much more like a sub than a carrier or other surface ship.

[RoninFrog]

Here's a good wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effect_of_spaceflight_on_the_human_body

[Spacescifi]

2 hours ago, RoninFrog said:

Here's a good wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effect_of_spaceflight_on_the_human_body

 

Really enlightening.

Know what this tells me?

That I really have to think outside the box writing scifi, or just accept the problems inherent to our newness to spaceflight.

You wanna know the ironic thing?

Even if we had a scifi constant acceleration drive that needed no refueling whatoever and also had an FTL warp drive that warped space at a LY per hour.... that does not mean you SHOULD reach Proxima Centauri in about 4 hours.

Know why?

Health. 

See... given how detrimental prolonged weightlessness is, I am estimating that for every hour of weightless spaceflight at warp, the ship would have to drop out of warp and accelerate at 1g for 2 hours and exercise hard to combat the body not having gravity for the previous hour.

By the time they reach proxima centauri about 16 hours will have passed, adding the 4 weightless warp hours to the time spent accelerating at 1g for crew health dropped out of warp.

Once they reach the solar system they will have to spend about 16 hours decelerating or maybe less... it all depends on what trajectory is needed to reach the destination.

See... adding any reality to scifi space travel makes it complicated, even when we add scifi tech that is like god-mode cheating in a videogame.

Of course... if crew health matters not, you can get anywhere faster, shaving days off your travel time. And crewless cargo frieghters would have the fastest travel times ever.

 

EDIT: In addition to all that, crew will need eye protection, since flakes of metal, paint etc float around in the ship... even with fans sucking it up, it won't get it all.

Somebody needs to make spacecrew PPE gear!

Edited April 15, 2020 by Spacescifi

[kerbiloid]

10 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

I knew a guy in college who had been stationed on both nuclear subs and on aircraft carriers. His descriptions of both made me think crewed long-term spaceflight will be much more like a sub than a carrier or other surface ship.

A space ship is as relevant to the ship as a submarine.
One is a bubble of air inside the vacuum, another one inside the water, and both hate the medium outdoors and try to never see it or touch.

Only an anti-nuclear vault is same shippy as both.

***

(Back to the topic.)

A cap - to sign docs.

A hostess - to keep his lair clean and fill the spacebar.
(I mean, the space mini-bar.)

Everything other should be fully automated and require a teenager to give commands like "Get to the Proxima B !", just because AI itself needs no getting to anywhere.

(See Avenue 5 for details)

Edited April 15, 2020 by kerbiloid

[DDE]

Quote

Real Space Crew Dynamics Versus Scifi

All sci-fi spacecraft crews are composed of the people least suited to being a part of a spacecraft crew in order to generate drama.

[mrfox]

http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/crew.php

[Nuke]

some guy in engineering is going to convert tokamak parts into a still, and theres going to be that gal in astrophysics that gives half the crew the clap, and gambling will be against the rules yet everyone including the captain does it. i actually think of it sort of like m*a*s*h, but in space. 

[TheSaint]

5 minutes ago, Nuke said:

some guy in engineering is going to convert tokamak parts into a still, and theres going to be that gal in astrophysics that gives half the crew the clap, and gambling will be against the rules yet everyone including the captain does it. i actually think of it sort of like m*a*s*h, but in space. 

Oh, the stories I could tell you....

[magnemoe]

On 4/17/2020 at 5:05 PM, TheSaint said:

Oh, the stories I could tell you....

Who branch? And yes deep space would be more like the navy than air force as ships and spaceship has long duration missions while planes flying longer than an day is news, it was some bombing runs during the war on terror lasting more than an day, think it was mostly B2 as they are hard to base forward. 
And yes MASH is not an bad description on how some of the ships would run, probably more on civilian ships. 
A lot like an sub but you have more room at least in an civilian ship as volume don't mass much. On an warship, it might not matter much either, you might treat the crew quarters as stand off armor so it has some value. On battleships most of the crew quarters was not inside the armored parts. 
It made sense during an fight the crew would be at their battle stations not in their bed. 

[TheSaint]

2 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Who branch? And yes deep space would be more like the navy than air force as ships and spaceship has long duration missions while planes flying longer than an day is news, it was some bombing runs during the war on terror lasting more than an day, think it was mostly B2 as they are hard to base forward. 
And yes MASH is not an bad description on how some of the ships would run, probably more on civilian ships. 
A lot like an sub but you have more room at least in an civilian ship as volume don't mass much. On an warship, it might not matter much either, you might treat the crew quarters as stand off armor so it has some value. On battleships most of the crew quarters was not inside the armored parts. 
It made sense during an fight the crew would be at their battle stations not in their bed. 

I spent six years running nuclear power plants on subs for the U.S. Navy. Amusingly, the shenanigans were probably in some ways not as crazy, and in other ways crazier, than most people would imagine. Because (almost) everyone on board realized that they were there to do a job, a very important job, one on which their lives and the lives of their shipmates depended. So, nobody was really up to anything that was going to damage anything, impair their judgement, etc. But, you stuff 150 sailors in a glorified sewer pipe for weeks on end and, yeah, they get bored. 

Personally I think that spacecraft crews will be "As few crew as possible." Life support is extremely mass intensive, so everything that can be automated will be automated. Specialists will be a luxury that cannot be afforded. Everyone will be at least a backup for someone else. So, for example, the Engineering Department will be, the Engineer, a whole bunch of expert systems, and whoever is on duty when the Engineer is asleep.

[mrfox]

What would be the realistic minimum crew complement for a long duration, self sufficient deep space mission? I envision a 6 crew ship - 3 rotating shifts of an engineer and a doctor on duty - providing backup to cover for contingencies where some crew are knocked out of commision. Also spare crew to provide support for EVA, complex repairs or surguries. Could everything else be entrusted to automation or remote command?

[Spacescifi]

19 minutes ago, mrfox said:

What would be the realistic minimum crew complement for a long duration, self sufficient deep space mission? I envision a 6 crew ship - 3 rotating shifts of an engineer and a doctor on duty - providing backup to cover for contingencies where some crew are knocked out of commision. Also spare crew to provide support for EVA, complex repairs or surguries. Could everything else be entrusted to automation or remote command?

 

Let's be realistic.

Gravity is not an option.

It is a necesscity for crew health on any long duration mission.

6 crew is fine, but more than likely tethered ship spun pods away from the ship will be rhe only gravity they have.

If anything dangerous occurs they would need notice ahead of time since they have to reel the tether and pod back into the spaceship to work things out in weightless on the main ship.

 

Space travel is hard. For quick well known routes you could have crowds on passenger orbiter liners.

Dumping off passengers in volleys of drop pods to deorbit. Picked up later by quad or helicopter fleets.

Orbiter spacecraft are fundamentally different than reentry, or even launch craft.

They usually trade high thrust for efficiency, knowing full well they need it since propellant is limited.

Better that than high thrust and running out of propellant in 60 seconds.

 

Edited April 20, 2020 by Spacescifi

[kerbiloid]

No crew. Only pax.