Limited Endurance Life Support

[boilerman]

This idea is just fluff, an alternate way to look at open-circuit life support for bay personnel in Strategic Operations, p44.

First off a little background. Standard, infinite endurance life support costs 5,000 C-bills per person multiplied by the ship type multiplier: Spheroid DropShips x28, Aerodyne DropShips x36.

Infinite endurance life support can be expensive, 140,000 C-bills per person on a spheroid DropShip. Infinite endurance life support for a 3,000 people can push a DropShip's cost well over 600 million C-bills.

So enter's the limited endurance life support pod designed to be setup in a cargo bay as needed. Rather than an open circuit which dumps waste of all types overboard, it's collected and stored for disposal dirt side, either recycled or just dumped, or at a space station where if can be recycled.

Limited Endurance Life Support Pods (C/C-C-C)
Life Support Pod, LSP provide life support for a given number of passengers for limited duration. Mass of LSPs very based on number of passengers designed to support and endurance of system. Typical endurance is 30 days.

Pod provides:
Accommodations: bunk, common space, restroom facilities.Passengers typically eat field rations
Life Support Reserves and Processing:
carbon dioxide scrubbers
Supplemental oxygen
Water storage: fresh, grey and black
Filtration provides limited recycling

Pod regeneration requires additional equipment: 10% mass of pod. Full regeneration typically takes 4 or 5 days; additional equipment can reduce regeneration time accordingly, to a minimum of 24 hours. Regeneration equipment can be separate from the pod or build into it. Most spaceports and space stations provide life support regeneration and support services.

Aporian Republic Standard Squad Life Support Pod
Occupancy: 10 adults
Endurance: 300 man-days (30 days, 1.5 tons per occupant)
Accommodations: 0.5 tons per occupant
Total Pod Mass: 20 tons
Cost: 100,000 C-bills per pod (totally arbitrary but based on 10,000 C-bills per occupant per 30 man-days)

Aporian Republic uses separate regeneration equipment for its LSPs. On a typical combat mission, the Republic Guard carries enough equipment to regenerate all transported pods within 72 hours. Otherwise they rely on port facilities for regeneration.

So for every 100 tons I can transport 50 soldiers for up to 30 days. I would also provide standard infantry bays for staging personnel for rapid deployment from the ship.

YMMV

[Daryk]

Interesting idea!  When I did my Manatee, I just folded the extra life support into the "bay" tonnage temporarily installed in the cargo bay.  This makes more sense in a lot of ways.

[Orin J.]

does battletech's system dump waste? it seems like recycling it would cover like 90% of the mass at the end of the day minimum and the remainder could be dried and compressed enough that you'd run out of supplies long before you ran out of compresser room.

[Daryk]

That's a question for Cray... I don't recall reading anything that says one way or the other.

[Orin J.]

okay, just thought i'd ask.....still it would serve as a useful way to make temp rescue dropships with plentiful omnipod or bulk cargo space.

might make an interesting adventure for the right group, too!

[idea weenie]

okay, just thought i'd ask.....still it would serve as a useful way to make temp rescue dropships with plentiful omnipod or bulk cargo space.

might make an interesting adventure for the right group, too!

Not just emergency rescue Dropships, but it would also be useful for several types of Dropships, as long as they know they will be able to recharge in 30 days.  Load 1 set (at 2 tons per person), and the Dropship can last up to 30 days before needing resupply.  Compared to the 5-ton Steerage Quarters, 7-ton Second Class Quarters, or 10-ton First Class quarters, this would allow a Dropship several more tons to play around with for more cargo/armor/weapons/sensors/etc.

It would also be useful for small craft transiting from a planet to a Jump point.  Instead of needing a full 5 tons per person for life support, your design only needs 2 tons per person to provide them with 30 days of life support. 

When you say 'regeneration', does that mean the pod can restore all of its 30-day supplies as long as it has 4-5 days by itself, and external power/assistance?

But this would provide a reason for ships to have spare Steerage Quarters, as they are set up to help provide life support to docked small craft.

The real fun comes if you try to mix these 30-day life support pods with regular 'infinite' life support Quarters, and run the math.  I.e. if you have 10 people, one of the pods above (i.e. providing 30 man-days of supply for each of the 10 people) and a single Steerage Quarters, would that mean the LELS would support those 10 people for 33.33 days (10 people capacity / 9 people actually using * 30 days/person)?  Adding a second Steerage would increase that to 37.5 days (10 / 8).  The fun question is after those days is asking who the survivor(s) will be since there is only 1-2 people worth of life support that will last.

[boilerman]

Interesting idea!  When I did my Manatee, I just folded the extra life support into the "bay" tonnage temporarily installed in the cargo bay.  This makes more sense in a lot of ways.

It's just fluff but I do like describing some of the things that are not explained in detail.

I've always wondered about the logistics of IS expedition to the Clan home worlds. I see DropShips outfitted with life support regenerating equipment making the rounds among the fleet recycling waste from all those soldiers carried in cargo bays.

does battletech's system dump waste? it seems like recycling it would cover like 90% of the mass at the end of the day minimum and the remainder could be dried and compressed enough that you'd run out of supplies long before you ran out of compresser room.

Battlespace had the first DropShip and JumpShip constructions rules. Back then you needed to provide generic supplies to sustain crew and passengers: 200 man-days per ton, i.e. 5 kg per person per day. That covers most everything: oxygen, food and water, if some amount of water is recycled. I believe that requirement was abandoned for Aerotech 2, but may have been abandoned for TechManual. I don't think TechManual life support dumps much, if anything at all overboard; perhaps some amount of fecal matter. Strategic Operations cargo bay life support is called an "open-circuit" system so they are dumping at least some of it over board.

Recycling is going to cover most of your needs true, but my original point is that high efficiency recycling systems, i.e. infinite life support equipment on BT aerospace craft, is very expensive. I am proposing a system that is much cheaper but the trade off is limited endurance before its resources need to be replenished.

When you say 'regeneration', does that mean the pod can restore all of its 30-day supplies as long as it has 4-5 days by itself, and external power/assistance?

Correct.

The real fun comes if you try to mix these 30-day life support pods with regular 'infinite' life support Quarters, and run the math.  I.e. if you have 10 people, one of the pods above (i.e. providing 30 man-days of supply for each of the 10 people) and a single Steerage Quarters, would that mean the LELS would support those 10 people for 33.33 days (10 people capacity / 9 people actually using * 30 days/person)?  Adding a second Steerage would increase that to 37.5 days (10 / 8).  The fun question is after those days is asking who the survivor(s) will be since there is only 1-2 people worth of life support that will last.

I wouldn't bother with that, too many variables and almost nothing to base it on.

[idea weenie]

Battlespace had the first DropShip and JumpShip constructions rules. Back then you needed to provide generic supplies to sustain crew and passengers: 200 man-days per ton, i.e. 5 kg per person per day. That covers most everything: oxygen, food and water, if some amount of water is recycled. I believe that requirement was abandoned for Aerotech 2, but may have been abandoned for TechManual. I don't think TechManual life support dumps much, if anything at all overboard; perhaps some amount of fecal matter. Strategic Operations cargo bay life support is called an "open-circuit" system so they are dumping at least some of it over board.

I wouldn't bother with that, too many variables and almost nothing to base it on.

Too late.   ;)


Assuming that this Limited Endurance Life Support (LELS) uses up material at the same rate as Quarters, that means it uses 30 days of supply per person.  Since a ton of supply provides 200 days, that means it uses 30/200 * 1000 kilos/ton = 150 kilos of material for a full 30-day stay.  If it is using Life Support at Bay rates (20 days per ton IIRC), that means it uses 1.5 tons of material per person (so the LELS is half a ton of structure/bedding/filtration per person)

So using Steerage Quarters to recharge it in 4-5 days would not be possible.  The Steerage Quarters could only recycle the Supply at the same rate as if they were supporting someone, meaning that it would take 30 days for a single Steerage Quarters to recycle the life support for a single LELS.  I wonder if the 4-5 days would be from using planet-side assistance, dumping CO2 into the atmosphere, purchasing O2 tanks, pumping out sewage and replacing it with rations and water?  Perhaps the 4-5 days would be the minimum it takes to cycle a LELS to be ready for the next guest?

[boilerman]

With port side recharging I'd cut it down to as little as 12 hours.