How To Abandon Ship?

cthia wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Looking back I should have more clearly expressed my thought.

I don't think the pod occupants are piloting it down.

I was thinking that having counter grav makes it easier for an automated system to safely autonomously land an escape pod -- with no help from occupants or the ground.

Well, that thought concurs with my original thinking before my post, but I dismissed it after the little voice on my shoulder reminded me of the rumors of the author's decree of no automated piloting.

He said no automated warships (or really starships). Aircars have autopilot; as do pinnaces

In Enemy Hands wrote:Scotty had made one small alteration: he had physically cut the links between the pinnace's sensors and its autopilot. The flight computers could no longer "see" the boat bay about them. As far as they could tell, they could have been in deepest, darkest interstellar space, and so they felt no concern at all when they were commanded to bring the pinnace's wedge up while it still lay in its docking buffers.

There's even on explicit statement in Worlds of Honor about an aircar's autopilot self-landing. And in Service of the Sword Abigail's team use the autopilot feature on their pinnace to fly itself (empty) back up to orbit after they hid on Refuge. (Then some custom programmed fancy stuff when it was hit by radar)

So there's clearly no absolute prohibition against automated piloting. I'd expect emergency pods to be another place it would be used -- since you can't assume there will be someone capable of piloting it aboard when it abandons ship.

cthia wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Looking back I should have more clearly expressed my thought.

I don't think the pod occupants are piloting it down.

I was thinking that having counter grav makes it easier for an automated system to safely autonomously land an escape pod -- with no help from occupants or the ground.

Well, that thought concurs with my original thinking before my post, but I dismissed it after the little voice on my shoulder reminded me of the rumors of the author's decree of no automated piloting.

Jonathan_S wrote:He said no automated warships (or really starships). Aircars have autopilot; as do pinnaces

In Enemy Hands wrote:Scotty had made one small alteration: he had physically cut the links between the pinnace's sensors and its autopilot. The flight computers could no longer "see" the boat bay about them. As far as they could tell, they could have been in deepest, darkest interstellar space, and so they felt no concern at all when they were commanded to bring the pinnace's wedge up while it still lay in its docking buffers.

There's even on explicit statement in Worlds of Honor about an aircar's autopilot self-landing. And in Service of the Sword Abigail's team use the autopilot feature on their pinnace to fly itself (empty) back up to orbit after they hid on Refuge. (Then some custom programmed fancy stuff when it was hit by radar)

So there's clearly no absolute prohibition against automated piloting. I'd expect emergency pods to be another place it would be used -- since you can't assume there will be someone capable of piloting it aboard when it abandons ship.

Thanks for clarifying that. Not to mention Grosclaude's autopiloted aircar before he died. But I assumed, obviously in error, that no autopiloted warships included the ships aboard -- having something to do with autopiloting in deep space. Rather than in, or relatively close to, the planetary atmosphere/surface -- whereby they are aided by whatever system that assists atmospheric vehicles. I stand corrected, but if that is the case, I have to revisit many of the brilliant notions that I may have prematurely ejected.

Do pardon the double on Thandi err entendre. My tongue, I hate it when it does that—makes those kinds of slips. Doh! I'm just slipping in deeper. No, wait! Doh! ::facepalm::

cthia wrote:Pods? Admiral Gogunov targeted escape pods with Javelin? Talk about a ringside seat for the fireworks. Can you imagine being in a pod after realizing they'd just been targeted? IINM, their beacons is what enabled such small targets to be locked. In such an event, I wonder if deactivating the beacons -- if possible, by the occupants -- would save one or more of them? It seems deactivation would be possible in extremely hostile environments, like so. Of course, they had no idea the Sollies were murderous bastards. Wait, what? At any rate, just wondering if the capability is there, and hoping a few of them realized what was happening and shut off the beacon. But then, how'd they know when to reactivate it? Wow, what a rock-and-a-hard-place of a time to be stuck in a pod.

I doubt they would have considered the beacons a threat. Normally beacons would at worst mean POW rather than dead. It would take a war crime for them to be a problem.

At any rate, the blocking ships used to protect Ivaldi were automated, iinm. Well, remote-controlled at any rate. What gives? Has the author released the prohibition against automated ships?

cthia wrote:At any rate, the blocking ships used to protect Ivaldi were automated, iinm. Well, remote-controlled at any rate. What gives? Has the author released the prohibition against automated ships?

Drones are automated too, they follow their program without the need for human intervention

What David meant, was (forex) a drone who sees a sensor ghost at the edge of it's programmed search area WILL NOT vere off course on it's own accord and investigate, automatically turn on and off sensors and stealth systems to avoid detection AND increase range, then identify the ship and determine if it should attack using the Missiletoe system it carries, all without taking orders from a human source.

Can you program a ship to run a course with waypoints, yes it is done all the time under the crew's watchful eye. Can you program a ship in advance to fire weapons when a certain criteria is estabilished, sure, it is done all the time in battle. However, you cannot program a Ship to wander around a system and defend it on it's own with human intervention. It cannot make complex decisions on it's own, it just follows programming.

Smart systems, not full AI.

Theemile wrote:

cthia wrote:At any rate, the blocking ships used to protect Ivaldi were automated, iinm. Well, remote-controlled at any rate. What gives? Has the author released the prohibition against automated ships?

Drones are automated too, they follow their program without the need for human intervention

What David meant, was (forex) a drone who sees a sensor ghost at the edge of it's programmed search area WILL NOT vere off course on it's own accord and investigate, automatically turn on and off sensors and stealth systems to avoid detection AND increase range, then identify the ship and determine if it should attack using the Missiletoe system it carries, all without taking orders from a human source.

Can you program a ship to run a course with waypoints, yes it is done all the time under the crew's watchful eye. Can you program a ship in advance to fire weapons when a certain criteria is estabilished, sure, it is done all the time in battle. However, you cannot program a Ship to wander around a system and defend it on it's own with human intervention. It cannot make complex decisions on it's own, it just follows programming.

Smart systems, not full AI.

The "prohibition" was less sweeping that you seem to think.
Because there's no true AI in the Honorverse RFC said that there won't be fully automated warships - they just can't match a crewed ship in combat.

And he wasn't explicitly said that I remember, but I suspect the reason there aren't fully automated freighters is because on those long voyages you need people to notice when things start to go wrong and to fix them. The ship should be perfectly capable of flying itself on autopilot - after all the hyperlog is basically an inertial navigation system. But if anything goes wrong it can't fix itself (and depending on the issue may not even notice something going wrong)
(Not to mention the crew's role on some freighters in finding and negotiating for cargo with freight brokers)

A modern airliner or cargo ship can pretty much pilot itself; but even with drones we want people at least monitoring it in case something goes wrong. Though what they can't do is follow traffic control instructions or listen and understand other craft on the common radio frequency. But with the distances in the space it's not that practical to closely monitor ships in the same star system, and impossible to monitor them in hyper.

But for shorter periods, if you didn't mind if some broke down and weren't able to complete their task [potentially catastrophically break down], and couldn't handle anything even marginally outside their programming, there's no physical or technological barrier to automating an Honorverse ship.

I've gotten very busy since the Olympics. My apologies for those who have missed me.

Toll of Honor:

“We can probably clear the life pods within four to six hours,” the citizen colonel replied. “They’re designed to make atmospheric entry on habitable planets, so they can set down on Smaragdenio independently if they have to. The small craft can dock with the bases and off-load anyone they’ve picked up. Collecting individual spacers who got out without pods will take considerably longer, and, frankly, they’ve got less time. Their vac suits don’t have as much air as a life pod.”

I think we might have touched on this in this thread. A quick perusal only yielded Theemile mentioning getting to somewhere like an airlock. Anyway, if life boats and escape pods are ejected from the ship by force because they must clear the sidewalls, how exactly do spacers who are simply in vac suits clear the sidewalls? Are vac-suited spacers shot out of tubes like a cannon? And of course, do they have to rely on ports opening up in the sidewalls as well? Same question applies to pirates 'walking the plank' (lol) to an airlock.

If sidewalls are down it is a moot point, but sidewalls aren't always down. And I can't see how unpowered spacers in vac suits always manage to avoid errant missiles.

Also, escape pods, like debris, have to overcome the velocity of the ship. So spacers are keeping up with the debris field as well.

“So you’re saying we’ll be able to at least clear our fields of fire within, say, eight hours?” Garrido pressed.

“For certain values of ‘clear,’ at least, Citizen Major General,” Samper offered. Garrido and Teymoori looked at him, and he shrugged. “Whatever we do about the life pods and small craft, the ship wreckage will still be there whenever the Manties come back. And, frankly, if they come back with blood in their eyes, they won’t worry about not hitting ships they’ve already effectively destroyed. If they decide to treat our orbital bases to the same sort of bombardment, anything that gets in their way will be toast.”

Bold is my own and not the author's.

And some of the spacers will still be unaccounted for amongst the debris as well. Therefore, "anything that gets in their way" would seem to, unavoidably, include vac-suited spacers.

The statement, “For certain values of clear,” seem to answer a question/concern I had some time ago about missiles having to be navigate debris. Whether incoming or outgoing. Thank you, David.

penny wrote:
I think we might have touched on this in this thread. A quick perusal only yielded Theemile mentioning getting to somewhere like an airlock. Anyway, if life boats and escape pods are ejected from the ship by force because they must clear the sidewalls, how exactly do spacers who are simply in vac suits clear the sidewalls? Are vac-suited spacers shot out of tubes like a cannon? And of course, do they have to rely on ports opening up in the sidewalls as well? Same question applies to pirates 'walking the plank' (lol) to an airlock.

If sidewalls are down it is a moot point, but sidewalls aren't always down. And I can't see how unpowered spacers in vac suits always manage to avoid errant missiles.

We don't know for sure, but if someone did bail out in just their suit I suspect they'd try to push off to go out the open end of the sidewalls; when you bail out the sidewall is ~10 km away from you and at either end of the ship has an opening at least 1,800 km^2 wide -- so you don't need to be that precise to aim for that opening. (If the ship is accelerating I'd suggest pushing off opposite to its acceleration. It won't mater while you're still in its compensation field; but once you clear that field you want to ship to move away from you, not scoop you back up)

But normally I don't think people bail out from an airlock - if the ship isn't about to explode you're safer staying on the wreck if you can't get to an escape pod or small craft. (And if it is about to explode you're probably screwed even if you do bail out in a spacesuit). I suspect that normally you'd only find people floating around in their suits if they got blown clear of the ship by explosive decompression from a hit. In which case they just have to hope they don't hit the sidewall because they'd have no effective control over their trajectory

I have been though lifeboat drills -for passengers- on a cruise ship. Those are essentially to give you at least one walk-thought of how and where to get to your lifeboat station. Messy part comes later.
On cruse ships there are 3 types of "lifeboats". 1st is the tenders that the ship uses to move passengers in to and out of ports where they can dock. You will note that the tenders will have signs for maximum capacity of something along the order of 150 passengers. Along with the two crew normally assigned (commander and deputy) they don't put 100 people on a tender going into port. There is little more inside than bench seating and closed compartments for rations and water. Another passenger once asked where the bathroom wash.......of course there isn't one but you are going to get real acquainted with your fellow boat members if you have to spend a few days waiting to be picked up. What privacy- for anything including bodily functions. Life boats have the same capacity but not much more. Then there are what most of the crew is going to be using.....the canisters containing inflating covers life rafts. Take fewer people. On a longer cruise you may get to see a demonstration - in a swimming pool on an deck area open to the sky- when they run officer cadets though the drill of inflating a life raft and then get inside it (after 1st getting it right-side-up) and doing that in exposure suites.

Yeah, the tenders and lifeboats have engines ( for the tender, one for a life boat) but everything is designed to keep everybody on-board the lifeboat alive for a period of time in which rescue is expected to happen. Yeah, they can travel but initially it is going to be AWAY from the ship and then mostly wait. Oh, they do have a bit if "fishing gear" but it has been hinted that it is mostly to try and keep people busy while waiting for help to come- I never heard there was any way to cook fish you caught in a lifeboat.

Jonathan_S wrote:

penny wrote:
I think we might have touched on this in this thread. A quick perusal only yielded Theemile mentioning getting to somewhere like an airlock. Anyway, if life boats and escape pods are ejected from the ship by force because they must clear the sidewalls, how exactly do spacers who are simply in vac suits clear the sidewalls? Are vac-suited spacers shot out of tubes like a cannon? And of course, do they have to rely on ports opening up in the sidewalls as well? Same question applies to pirates 'walking the plank' (lol) to an airlock.

If sidewalls are down it is a moot point, but sidewalls aren't always down. And I can't see how unpowered spacers in vac suits always manage to avoid errant missiles.

We don't know for sure, but if someone did bail out in just their suit I suspect they'd try to push off to go out the open end of the sidewalls; when you bail out the sidewall is ~10 km away from you and at either end of the ship has an opening at least 1,800 km^2 wide -- so you don't need to be that precise to aim for that opening. (If the ship is accelerating I'd suggest pushing off opposite to its acceleration. It won't mater while you're still in its compensation field; but once you clear that field you want to ship to move away from you, not scoop you back up)

But normally I don't think people bail out from an airlock - if the ship isn't about to explode you're safer staying on the wreck if you can't get to an escape pod or small craft. (And if it is about to explode you're probably screwed even if you do bail out in a spacesuit). I suspect that normally you'd only find people floating around in their suits if they got blown clear of the ship by explosive decompression from a hit. In which case they just have to hope they don't hit the sidewall because they'd have no effective control over their trajectory

But the ships are accelerating and maneuvering. Oops. If there is that much of an opening for spacers to get through, then what about laser heads? Lest you meant that that vast chasm is kept open only while evacuating; then closed. If that is the case, then a stealthy attack from a g-torp at just the right moment is going to blow the ass end out of a GA ship.