How To Abandon Ship?

First step,

Unplug the waste line of your skinsuit from the ship's waste system. You dont want anything pulling loose.

Daryl wrote:Current fusion bombs have high explosive around a fissionable core that sets off an A bomb, that then sets off the fusion material. My memory says that Honorverse bombs use a gravity field pinch to do that, this sounds reasonable. If so they would be quite difficult to set off by battle damage. You might have an accidental HE explosion, but not an accidental concentric gravity field.
As some say here, in space there is no medium to propagate blast effects, so my understanding is that within a relatively short distance from an exploding ship, radiation would be the main danger, and fusion gives off much less of that.

Although, blast fronts in the Honorverse are a combination of radiation, spewed debris and extremely blinding light. I'll just assume pods and boats have filters which activate to block the blinding light.

Several other questions and concerns. In case of a runaway fusion bottle and the core has to be ejected, as I understand that will not completely destroy the ship? Only the section of the ship where located if ejection fails. So what would be the SOP as far as the personnel located in that section? Abandon to be recollected or run like hell for other parts of the ship? Seems like abandoning would be quicker and safer. However, any pods/boats fleeing the ship and caught in the vicinity of an exploding core is cooked goose.

Is there even time to alert anyone to RLH -- run like hell! If so, I can imagine the excrement that runs down one's leg knowing she's about to blow! Is the CO ever in danger of dying if on the bridge from an exploding core? IOW, how safe is Honor and Nimitz?

The wail of the klaxon has to fill one's undies with sludge.

Daryl wrote:Current fusion bombs have high explosive around a fissionable core that sets off an A bomb, that then sets off the fusion material. My memory says that Honorverse bombs use a gravity field pinch to do that, this sounds reasonable. If so they would be quite difficult to set off by battle damage. You might have an accidental HE explosion, but not an accidental concentric gravity field.
As some say here, in space there is no medium to propagate blast effects, so my understanding is that within a relatively short distance from an exploding ship, radiation would be the main danger, and fusion gives off much less of that.

Fusion normally creates a lot less fallout, but it releases more neutron radiation than a fission blast (Which is why I say normally. If what is around your bomb is going to get radioactive from those neutrons it can be bad. Set off a bomb in the ocean and that sodium transmutes to Na-24, half life 15 hours.) Since we are in space nothing is going to stop those neutrons, nor can they be stopped by electromagnetic shielding.

I do agree the threat is reasonably short ranged, though. I'm looking at the canon that missile detonations are a serious threat to pods. I doubt they can protect escape pods better than missile pods, (it's pretty obvious an escape pod is a lot smaller) thus I think the missile storm coming down on them was unsurvivable to escape pods.

TFLYTSNBN wrote:First step,

Unplug the waste line of your skinsuit from the ship's waste system. You dont want anything pulling loose.

I don't think that's a practical answer in a combat situation.

For Fly's benefit. Apparently in the early days of supersonic jet fighters they did trial a urine disposal system, where you inserted your member into a soft rubber funnel that led to a tube that led outside. Unfortunately it was in a position where the airflow caused a vacuum. There was an injury, but I don't think it was permanent.

Loren Pechtel wrote:

TFLYTSNBN wrote:First step,

Unplug the waste line of your skinsuit from the ship's waste system. You dont want anything pulling loose.

I don't think that's a practical answer in a combat situation.

cthia wrote:Several other questions and concerns. In case of a runaway fusion bottle and the core has to be ejected, as I understand that will not completely destroy the ship? Only the section of the ship where located if ejection fails. So what would be the SOP as far as the personnel located in that section? Abandon to be recollected or run like hell for other parts of the ship? Seems like abandoning would be quicker and safer. However, any pods/boats fleeing the ship and caught in the vicinity of an exploding core is cooked goose.

Probably depends on the situation where the reactor failure is happening.

In the case of HMS Fearless they were in the middle of a battle. If they'd evacuated the area around Fusion One in the minutes they were fighting to safely shut down the failing reactor it would have drastically reduced her combat abilities just when she needed everything she had to survive. But once they realized they were unsuccessful and the emergency jettisoning charges were triggered there was no time for anybody to evacuate.

If the charges hadn't even partially done their job the whole ship would have been lost - so to be sure people survived they'd have had to bail out into lifepods during the 5 or 6 minutes the remaining engineering staff was wrestling with the reactor. But then they're totally out of the fight and even if the reactor gets safely shut down Fearless's combat ability is still hamstrung until the end of combat where (if she survives) she might be able to go back and pick up the pods.

If the charges had fully done their job then probably only the handful of people in Fusion One would have died (and they had to be their till the last second fighting to keep the reactor from failing sooner). The chargers could get a reactor far enough the plasma doesn't vent back into the ship - but I suspect even being in a sealed up skinsuit isn't survivable in a compartment that just explosively blew the hull off and then blew the fusion reactor out that hole hard enough to hopefully get it clear before it failed. And the people in Fusion One couldn't evacuate because they were the ones fighting to control and shut down the reactor - right up until the last moment.

Now if you were in a non-combat situation where a reactor was starting to fail like that I suspect evacuating much of the crew temporarily to lifepods while engineering / damage control fought to shut it down might be a more reasonable approach. Certainly you could order those not involved in dealing with the reactor to get far away within the ship. In that scenario it doesn't mater so much that you're crippling the ship's combat capabilities temporarily.

However a run away reactor is very unlikely except due to combat damage -- though I guess you could have just killed the last enemy ship and his final salvo started the reactor failure. So you probably don't have the luxury of getting crew out of the way.


In any case you'd have to make that decision long before someone in engineering hit the emergency jettison switch because once it reaches that point you've got fractions of a second left; no time for anybody to do anything.

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote:Several other questions and concerns. In case of a runaway fusion bottle and the core has to be ejected, as I understand that will not completely destroy the ship? Only the section of the ship where located if ejection fails. So what would be the SOP as far as the personnel located in that section? Abandon to be recollected or run like hell for other parts of the ship? Seems like abandoning would be quicker and safer. However, any pods/boats fleeing the ship and caught in the vicinity of an exploding core is cooked goose.

Probably depends on the situation where the reactor failure is happening.

In the case of HMS Fearless they were in the middle of a battle. If they'd evacuated the area around Fusion One in the minutes they were fighting to safely shut down the failing reactor it would have drastically reduced her combat abilities just when she needed everything she had to survive. But once they realized they were unsuccessful and the emergency jettisoning charges were triggered there was no time for anybody to evacuate.

If the charges hadn't even partially done their job the whole ship would have been lost - so to be sure people survived they'd have had to bail out into lifepods during the 5 or 6 minutes the remaining engineering staff was wrestling with the reactor. But then they're totally out of the fight and even if the reactor gets safely shut down Fearless's combat ability is still hamstrung until the end of combat where (if she survives) she might be able to go back and pick up the pods.

If the charges had fully done their job then probably only the handful of people in Fusion One would have died (and they had to be their till the last second fighting to keep the reactor from failing sooner). The chargers could get a reactor far enough the plasma doesn't vent back into the ship - but I suspect even being in a sealed up skinsuit isn't survivable in a compartment that just explosively blew the hull off and then blew the fusion reactor out that hole hard enough to hopefully get it clear before it failed. And the people in Fusion One couldn't evacuate because they were the ones fighting to control and shut down the reactor - right up until the last moment.

Now if you were in a non-combat situation where a reactor was starting to fail like that I suspect evacuating much of the crew temporarily to lifepods while engineering / damage control fought to shut it down might be a more reasonable approach. Certainly you could order those not involved in dealing with the reactor to get far away within the ship. In that scenario it doesn't mater so much that you're crippling the ship's combat capabilities temporarily.

However a run away reactor is very unlikely except due to combat damage -- though I guess you could have just killed the last enemy ship and his final salvo started the reactor failure. So you probably don't have the luxury of getting crew out of the way.


In any case you'd have to make that decision long before someone in engineering hit the emergency jettison switch because once it reaches that point you've got fractions of a second left; no time for anybody to do anything.

Interesting points Jonathan. I can only imagine the innocent crew member who simply finds himself there for reasons.

At any rate, a freighter full of crew has the same concerns, as well as a civilian liner, poor darlings. I'm not certain I wouldn't want to evacuate a freighter or a civilian vessel if it is about to be boarded by pirates and I'm a drop dead gorgeous woman. Pods/Boats should have a beacon that can be launched towards the inner system at last resort if within range.

cthia wrote:Interesting points Jonathan. I can only imagine the innocent crew member who simply finds himself there for reasons.

At any rate, a freighter full of crew has the same concerns, as well as a civilian liner, poor darlings. I'm not certain I wouldn't want to evacuate a freighter or a civilian vessel if it is about to be boarded by pirates and I'm a drop dead gorgeous woman. Pods/Boats should have a beacon that can be launched towards the inner system at last resort if within range.

I think the robustness and stability of Grav pinched fusion devices can be found in the knowledge that virtually all freighters only carry 1 reactor. How far they need to travel is not in the calculations, nor is their size - it's usually just 1 reactor per ship.

In OTL, countries and airlines required that 4 engine jet make an ocean crossing for commercial passenger trips. In the 90s that changed to 2 engines. Why? The Mean times per failure and the power output per engine were to the point that powerful enough engines could power a large plane by themselves, and (more importantly) the chances of 2 engines failing due to mechanical failures is extremely small.

One can imagine the same is for Honorverse Freighters - the chances of reactor failure is so low, cruising for decades on 1 reactor light years from anybody else can be a common occurrence with little fear. If it was not a safe technology, a 2nd reactor would be carried by every freighter in event the likelihood of failure occurred.

Theemile wrote:

cthia wrote:Interesting points Jonathan. I can only imagine the innocent crew member who simply finds himself there for reasons.

At any rate, a freighter full of crew has the same concerns, as well as a civilian liner, poor darlings. I'm not certain I wouldn't want to evacuate a freighter or a civilian vessel if it is about to be boarded by pirates and I'm a drop dead gorgeous woman. Pods/Boats should have a beacon that can be launched towards the inner system at last resort if within range.

I think the robustness and stability of Grav pinched fusion devices can be found in the knowledge that virtually all freighters only carry 1 reactor. How far they need to travel is not in the calculations, nor is their size - it's usually just 1 reactor per ship.

In OTL, countries and airlines required that 4 engine jet make an ocean crossing for commercial passenger trips. In the 90s that changed to 2 engines. Why? The Mean times per failure and the power output per engine were to the point that powerful enough engines could power a large plane by themselves, and (more importantly) the chances of 2 engines failing due to mechanical failures is extremely small.

One can imagine the same is for Honorverse Freighters - the chances of reactor failure is so low, cruising for decades on 1 reactor light years from anybody else can be a common occurrence with little fear. If it was not a safe technology, a 2nd reactor would be carried by every freighter in event the likelihood of failure occurred.

Understood, though I was imagining the cause of a failure due to the MTBP - mean time between pirates. A pirate attack meant to incapacitate a ship can cause a failure instead.