How To Abandon Ship?

cthia wrote:Maxx, where is the core ejection tube located on appropriate ships so I won't be like Johnny?...

"Johnny was a spacer, but Johnny was a boob. For what he thought was a boarding site was a core-ejection tube."

I'm not sure if any of the ships Maxxq has rendered support fusion reactor ejection.
Nothing with a internal armored core hull area would (so definitely Star Knight and larger wouldn't) - the fusion reactors are too deeply buried. I don't know if the RMN would have retained that capability in even the smaller ships as DDs and CLs have grown significantly from when the Courageous-class CLs like HMS Fearless were designed.


The impression I got is it's only done for small, effectively unarmored, ships; DDs and at least some CLs. Those are small enough that placing a fusion room basically against the outer hull of the ship doesn't make it noticeably more vulnerable to damage. It's that placement that lets you blow the side off the fusion room and eject the reactor.

Basically an ejectable fusion reactor is the exception; not the rule.

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote:Maxx, where is the core ejection tube located on appropriate ships so I won't be like Johnny?...

"Johnny was a spacer, but Johnny was a boob. For what he thought was a boarding site was a core-ejection tube."

I'm not sure if any of the ships Maxxq has rendered support fusion reactor ejection.
Nothing with a internal armored core hull area would (so definitely Star Knight and larger wouldn't) - the fusion reactors are too deeply buried. I don't know if the RMN would have retained that capability in even the smaller ships as DDs and CLs have grown significantly from when the Courageous-class CLs like HMS Fearless were designed.


The impression I got is it's only done for small, effectively unarmored, ships; DDs and at least some CLs. Those are small enough that placing a fusion room basically against the outer hull of the ship doesn't make it noticeably more vulnerable to damage. It's that placement that lets you blow the side off the fusion room and eject the reactor.

Basically an ejectable fusion reactor is the exception; not the rule.

At least for warships. I imagine that all merchant ships can eject their fusion reactors. Of course, merchant ships are supposed to be sensible and surrender, rather than be fired on. So the only reason for them to eject their reactors (or reactor, IIRC most merchant ships only have one) would be for accidental reasons, rather than battle damage. And I wouldn't think those sort of accidents happen very often.

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote:Maxx, where is the core ejection tube located on appropriate ships so I won't be like Johnny?...

"Johnny was a spacer, but Johnny was a boob. For what he thought was a boarding site was a core-ejection tube."

I'm not sure if any of the ships Maxxq has rendered support fusion reactor ejection.
Nothing with a internal armored core hull area would (so definitely Star Knight and larger wouldn't) - the fusion reactors are too deeply buried. I don't know if the RMN would have retained that capability in even the smaller ships as DDs and CLs have grown significantly from when the Courageous-class CLs like HMS Fearless were designed.


The impression I got is it's only done for small, effectively unarmored, ships; DDs and at least some CLs. Those are small enough that placing a fusion room basically against the outer hull of the ship doesn't make it noticeably more vulnerable to damage. It's that placement that lets you blow the side off the fusion room and eject the reactor.

Basically an ejectable fusion reactor is the exception; not the rule.

What Jonathan said. This isn't Star Trek.

Recall the book with Honor's new ship needing the reactor fixed? The one where they had to cut through the hull to R&R it? If there was a way to eject it, they could have just taken it out through that way, since, by design, there would be an unobstructed, and easy to open pathway for it.

cthia wrote:

MaxxQ wrote:There might be enough time to cut the fuel flow to the containment bottle, but if so, it's measured in at most, a few seconds. Cutting the fuel is the only sure way to "safe" a failing fusion reactor, and if the flow can't be stopped before containment failure... BOOM.

As for the question earlier about pods clearing the sidewalls, I thought I had made it clear earlier that wedge and sidewalls would be DOWN when an abandon ship order is given. Any ship commander that gave an order to abandon ship with wedge and/or sidewalls UP should be court-martialed if he survives.

Unless you can eject the core?

But that would make the reality of having to abandon ship -- for whatever reason -- a no go until you can lower the sidewalls, yet you can't lower the sidewalls because some asshole of a navy continues to shoot at you seem preposterous. No?

It's a warship. There are tradeoffs needed to make a warship viable. You can't possibly make a perfectly safe warship, and everyone who serves aboard one knows that there are risks, and during battles, those risks go up astronomically.

Sure, people can be killed while abandoning ship. They know that, they accept that. It happens.

Sometimes, it doesn't, and everyone gets off safely.

<shrug> What more do you want?

When I was growing up, I lived in an area that was a priority target for the Soviet Union's nukes. I knew that, my parents knew that, but despite the risks, we didn't move to someplace "safer". That's just how people are, they know and accept that there are risks that can't be avoided, and they get on with their lives and/or jobs.

glott wrote:At least for warships. I imagine that all merchant ships can eject their fusion reactors. Of course, merchant ships are supposed to be sensible and surrender, rather than be fired on. So the only reason for them to eject their reactors (or reactor, IIRC most merchant ships only have one) would be for accidental reasons, rather than battle damage. And I wouldn't think those sort of accidents happen very often.

Even there I bet many merchant ships don't. We're told somewhere in the Shadows books that Manticoran, and Verge freighters tend to have their engineering plants in the center of the ship (slightly further away from the fire of any nasty pirates) so it would be volume intensive to leave a clear ejection path for their fusion reactor past all their cargo holds.

League freighters, like the Dromedary we saw, do tend to put their engineering plants against the hull along the ship's spine, for easy repair and servicing access. So they might have ejection charges. OTOH they'd have to weight the cost to install and maintain them, plus the risk of accidental activation, against the risk of a runaway reactor problem -- then balance all that with the chances of actually surviving a reaction ejection[1].

I still wouldn't be surprised if they decided that freighters were, on balance, safer without ejection charges.

[1] Since freighters lack sidewalls or the more powerful rad shielding of warships they might be destroyed by the type of ejecting reactor explosion that nearly killed Fearless

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote:Maxx, where is the core ejection tube located on appropriate ships so I won't be like Johnny?...

"Johnny was a spacer, but Johnny was a boob. For what he thought was a boarding site was a core-ejection tube."

I'm not sure if any of the ships Maxxq has rendered support fusion reactor ejection.
Nothing with a internal armored core hull area would (so definitely Star Knight and larger wouldn't) - the fusion reactors are too deeply buried. I don't know if the RMN would have retained that capability in even the smaller ships as DDs and CLs have grown significantly from when the Courageous-class CLs like HMS Fearless were designed.


The impression I got is it's only done for small, effectively unarmored, ships; DDs and at least some CLs. Those are small enough that placing a fusion room basically against the outer hull of the ship doesn't make it noticeably more vulnerable to damage. It's that placement that lets you blow the side off the fusion room and eject the reactor.

Basically an ejectable fusion reactor is the exception; not the rule.

glott wrote:At least for warships. I imagine that all merchant ships can eject their fusion reactors. Of course, merchant ships are supposed to be sensible and surrender, rather than be fired on. So the only reason for them to eject their reactors (or reactor, IIRC most merchant ships only have one) would be for accidental reasons, rather than battle damage. And I wouldn't think those sort of accidents happen very often.

I'm amending my post a little. I've been re-reading tSoS and have just gotten to the part where Abigail is trying to disable the merchantship prize of the pirates in Nuncio.

She muses a bit on the differences between Solarian and Manticoran merchantship design philosophies. The ship she was trying to disable was a Solarian-built Dromedary-class, according to the text, a "spinal design", with basically all its essential systems—hyper generator, life support, fusion reactor, etc.—next to the spine (which I assume is the area next to the dorsal hull) except for those systems that have to be in the impeller ends. So that ship could've ejected its reactor—assuming the cost-counting Solarian builders of said ship bothered to install an ejection system.

Manticoran designers according to her where more likely to place those critical systems closer to the center of the ship, where they're not as exposed.

But, I don't know if that includes the reactor, or even if it does if it still wouldn't be possible to eject it. Even if the reactor was not directly adjacent to the hull on a merchantship there wouldn't be an armored core to get through. If you were willing to sacrifice the space for a BIG and relatively LONG ejector tube, like an dedicated lift-tube shaft, you could still eject it. Of course, it would take longer to clear the ship.

pappilon wrote:

cthia wrote:I can't remember the particulars of Steilman and crews' incarceration. But during any unfortunate stay in the brig, is their fate left up to someone running to free them? Or is the brig too deep in the bowels of the ship that they enjoy that SOL status as well? Fate sealed, along with them?


IIRC It was noted as an aside that what with all the stuff going on, Stiehlman et cie crossed no one's mind. No one even remembered they were in the brig.

Charges: conspiracy in the attempted murder of one Ginger Lewis, theft of classified documents, falsifying maintenance records, desertion. I think there were others.

I believe that the Master at Arms was dead when the Abandon call went out and at that point there was nobody left of people who had responsibility for the brig who might had known that the prisoners might still be alive. If the compartment wasn't reporting (showing up on anybody's boards or responding to calls-automated or otherwise) and they are in process of abandoning, there probably isn't time to make a last second check of all non-responsive areas, particularly if the bridge or damage control already know the area took significant damage.

For the most part, in 1922 PD, Fusion reactors are very mature technologies. Most of the time (except the early Mars class ships) the only times there is a reactor issue is due to battle damage. There comes a point where technology gets so mature, that basic safety and maintenance features are no longer included because they are simply irrelevant 99.999% of the time.

For example, the automatic transmissions on my last 3 cars do not have the ability to check the transmission fluid. The oldest of the 3 had a check tube, but no dip stick. The 2nd, and a capped check tube. The latest has no check tube at all. It's the same reasons that jet liners don't carry parachutes - certain safety features are unnecessary, or cause problems of their own.

So, core ejection or scramming may only be available is some models, because it is seen as an archaic safety mechanism the normal user will never use.

Loren Pechtel wrote:Magnetic field?? My understanding of EMP is that it's due to the energy of the bomb ionizing the atmosphere. At low altitude the effect is fairly even but at high altitude the density is low and thus it spreads much farther--and the density is variable (a lot higher at the lowest point than the highest.) Nuclear-pumped charge difference with an ionization path between them--you get the mother of all lightning bolts.

There are a variety of mechanisms (at least 4) by which the various components of EMP are generated. All of them, other then direct irradiation of the spacecraft (which means the weapon detonates is VERY close), will only impact electronics in the immediate vicinity of a planet. Some work by impacting the planets magnetic field, some the planets atmosphere.

Loren Pechtel wrote:1) At Hell we saw that when a ship goes up in a big boom the flash is hot enough to severely damage nearby ships. That means it's utterly unsurvivable to a mere pod.

It's utterly unsurvivable if you are on a planet the ship is orbiting. I did a back of the envelope calculation once and it was a totally absurd amount of energy. It was about 25,000 gigatons, which is the ballpark of the amount of energy from the sun that strikes the Earth over a YEAR. So the atmosphere boils away and the orbit is significantly imapcted by the jet of super-heated rock and atmosphere. This is why Manticore and Sphinx were depopulated when dozens of running fusion reactors detonated during the destruction of the main RMN bases by the MA, right?

Since that didn't happen I'm going to ignore the insanity of the Hades battle example and just pretend it didn't happen.