Re: Imperial Warship Crew
Posted: 2013-09-29 09:49am
Just a followup to this one- there's a relatively recent update to Atomic Rockets that makes an interesting point. The crew of a modern spaceship is not best described by the number of people you can cram into an unstable, noisy, smelly tin can in the void; the number of people it needs to make it work is the number of people you need monitoring telemetry in Mission Control.
In other words, far more people than you could actually physically fit on the thing. The people who are there, their job is largely preventative maintenance- making sure that nothing very exciting happens, because it gets far too exiting (and probably nonsurvivable) when it does.
Actually, to take the turret example; HTL-A turret, eight 32's- standard for an Imperial II, main crew of fifteen; gunlayer/ turret commander, local fire control/ battery comms, weapon power and configuration;
each of the two four- gun subassemblies, six men- chief gun maintenancebeing, power feed maintain and control, one gun pointer and mechanical systems, one recoil control, one turret training systems- training in this case being the military term for pointing the damn' thing at the target- one data and local tracking systems op and maint.
Systemology- I actually prefer the older term that a sci fi writer, Kornbluth?, tried to hang on it- Ariadnology. The study of webs. Almost everything is going to be composed of webs, of systems of systems, and the level at which you need a human head- a mind, anyway- in the loop is not going to be at base.
Watchman, you misunderstood; probably closer to six figures than three. All of which have enough power running through them and are under enough strain controlling and directing it that failures and malfunctions are a matter of hopefully, predictable time- that's what maintenance schedules are about. Certainly not each individual system- there are far too many, you wouldn't be able to fit enough bodies on board. That's a cartoonish exaggeration you came out with there.
An interesting thing happens when you look at real world barrel lives, too; guns are stressed machines, they do suffer fatigue and failure. Rifles have lifespans of absurd length, hundreds of thousands of rounds and rust and bad maintenance is likely to get them first, light cannon almost the same, heavy artillery in the thousdands of rounds, and the real monsters- 15" mk 1 could be expected to have an effective full charge lifespan of 270- 330 rounds, USN 16"50 mk 8- longer chromed barrels and less erosive propellant chemistry (the devil is always, always in the details) making 400-420.
About the lifespan and wear patterns of research particle accelerators, I am relatively poorly informed.
There are two interesting catches; one being that if this is the imperial fleet we're talking about, training is likely to be very much by the manual. (I don't know if you've noticed, but given the politics of it, I reckon the bulk of the Imperial Starfleet is in the same league of competence as the Soviet Navy was.) This would be the same manual that expert systems- like droids- would be working from anyway, and the penalties for living crew deviating from the manual are likely to be real and severe, the Imperial Starfleet probably is overmanned, or at least has creative and troubleshooting talent sitting around that it is actively working to suppress.
In other words, far more people than you could actually physically fit on the thing. The people who are there, their job is largely preventative maintenance- making sure that nothing very exciting happens, because it gets far too exiting (and probably nonsurvivable) when it does.
Actually, to take the turret example; HTL-A turret, eight 32's- standard for an Imperial II, main crew of fifteen; gunlayer/ turret commander, local fire control/ battery comms, weapon power and configuration;
each of the two four- gun subassemblies, six men- chief gun maintenancebeing, power feed maintain and control, one gun pointer and mechanical systems, one recoil control, one turret training systems- training in this case being the military term for pointing the damn' thing at the target- one data and local tracking systems op and maint.
Systemology- I actually prefer the older term that a sci fi writer, Kornbluth?, tried to hang on it- Ariadnology. The study of webs. Almost everything is going to be composed of webs, of systems of systems, and the level at which you need a human head- a mind, anyway- in the loop is not going to be at base.
Watchman, you misunderstood; probably closer to six figures than three. All of which have enough power running through them and are under enough strain controlling and directing it that failures and malfunctions are a matter of hopefully, predictable time- that's what maintenance schedules are about. Certainly not each individual system- there are far too many, you wouldn't be able to fit enough bodies on board. That's a cartoonish exaggeration you came out with there.
An interesting thing happens when you look at real world barrel lives, too; guns are stressed machines, they do suffer fatigue and failure. Rifles have lifespans of absurd length, hundreds of thousands of rounds and rust and bad maintenance is likely to get them first, light cannon almost the same, heavy artillery in the thousdands of rounds, and the real monsters- 15" mk 1 could be expected to have an effective full charge lifespan of 270- 330 rounds, USN 16"50 mk 8- longer chromed barrels and less erosive propellant chemistry (the devil is always, always in the details) making 400-420.
About the lifespan and wear patterns of research particle accelerators, I am relatively poorly informed.
There are two interesting catches; one being that if this is the imperial fleet we're talking about, training is likely to be very much by the manual. (I don't know if you've noticed, but given the politics of it, I reckon the bulk of the Imperial Starfleet is in the same league of competence as the Soviet Navy was.) This would be the same manual that expert systems- like droids- would be working from anyway, and the penalties for living crew deviating from the manual are likely to be real and severe, the Imperial Starfleet probably is overmanned, or at least has creative and troubleshooting talent sitting around that it is actively working to suppress.