Are lifeboats generally practical?

[Timo]

In any case, the set that Sisko and the other survivors are sitting in definitely does not match the model

Well, that big window is explicitly facing aft, and we never see the aft exterior of the pod. Not even on the model in the linked pictures, for that matter.

Apart from that, it's the runabout set shot creatively, and the dimensions of that one (including the oval portholes even though we don't really get to see those) seem like a pretty convincing match overall.

Does the pod technically have "pilots"? Or just lots of seats, with two facing the console that features the "eject" button and then some buttons for engaging (and, vitally, disengaging) the distress beacon? The overall impression certainly is one of a pilotable auxiliary craft, definitely big enough to mount a warp drive if need be.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[BK613]

The linked picture of the model looks like a navigable craft (lifeboat.)

 

[Mark_Nguyen]

I know the lifeboat was more or less the Runabout set, but I'm wondering just what made it in.

http://youtu.be/ZMa_SUDhn7E?t=3m47s

The two blueshirts seem to be sitting IN the the Runabout set's transporter alcove, with Runabout console prop (or part of one) placed before them. The hatch to the Runabout is where everyone is piling in (note: this is when the transporter alcove was still int he middle of the cockpit set, before it was moved aft and out of the way by season five). Sisko enters and the camera follows him "aft" on the Runabout set, into the main compartment of the escape pod, which does not match anything found on the Runabout cockpit. Sisko finds Jake at the back of this compartment, and joins him at the window, which would be on the opposite bulkhead from the door (i.e. if the blueshirts are facing ahead, the window would be on the port side and the door we see on the starboard). When the pod ejects, it does so such that Sisko's window is aft with respect to the direction of travel, but perpendicular to where the pilots / operators are sitting.

While this set may roughly match the proportions of the pod model, the doors and window are not places where they ought to be... While I'm happy to fudge the set and model together as the latter was not meant to be seen closely, it's also entirely possible that Sisko's pod was of a different design.

Mark

 

[T'Girl]

it's also entirely possible that Sisko's pod was of a different design.

That's a good thought.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Generally speaking, the basic tenet "X is too difficult or expensive for Trek" must be abandoned immediately in the face of the slightest evidence to X actually existing there.

In context, FTL travel has always been depicted as requiring the fixed installation of sometimes temperamental engine systems. Those engines are only ever allowed to fall into disrepair as a plot device, when hilarity ensues.

But that remains the fact that in the vastness of space, an escape pod without FTL capability is basically a coffin.

On reflection, I'm actually liking the Saratoga's pod more and more as I think about it. Seems to have a definite set of impulse engines, so at the very least is capable of some manner of interstellar travel while also being sufficiently low-maintenance that it can be stored for long periods of time without a fuss. Also not convinced the pod doesn't have some low-level warp drive installed, given its internal similarities to the runabout and the fact that it apparently takes two pilots to operate.

Please don't make things up off the top of your head and then claim they are "obvious." That's kind of irritating.

I'd really appreciate an apology for that. There's nothing made-up about the OBVIOUS fact that, like I said, a lot of Borg activity is ongoing in Starfleet's realm. We get to see a lot of it; we get to see our heroes' reactions to it

Going by canon alone, we get to see ALL of it.

That is. we get to see Hugh's crash, we get to see the renegade Borg from Descent, and... that's it (until Sisko tells us in DS9 that "The Borg threat became less urgent.").

It's PLAUSIBLE that there was other Borg activity in Federation space we didn't get to see and only halfway hear about in quotes and log entries later on. That, however, is FAR from certain, nor is it by any stretch "obvious."

 

[Unicron]

^ If you'd like, I can see what stats Jackill came up with for the Saratoga style pod. It's a non canon source, but probably one of the only such sources for that design.

 

[Timo]

Going by canon alone, we get to see ALL of it. That is. we get to see Hugh's crash, we get to see the renegade Borg from Descent, and... that's it (until Sisko tells us in DS9 that "The Borg threat became less urgent.").

Admittedly, this is tangential to the thread subject at best, but there is a lot more to the Borg threat to Alpha than that.

There's the ST:FC mention that the Borg advance and the UFP falls back; this matches nothing seen on screen, and doesn't appear to describe any single incident anyway but a series of unseen ones. This from the foremost Borg expert in the UFP.

Then there are the vessels with Borg encounters but either tenuous connection with the known ones, or then explicitly no connection. The Endeavour can go either way, but the Tombaugh of "Infinite Regress" fame was assimilated around SD 41000 rather than 44000, and the Excalibur of "Survival Instinct" hit the Borg (actually, they "came" during the "night shift", certainly not Wolf 359 circumstances!) prior to 2368 while a ship of that name but low registry was still active as of "Redemption".

Trying to cram all of this into Wolf 359 is futile. The Borg are not some sort of a personal nemesis of Picard, like Q, but a scourge of the entire UFP, and the writers make an effort to show them being everywhere. Sometimes we can fight them; generally, I feel we shouldn't.

...which would be on the opposite bulkhead from the door...

That's interesting, but like you say, it's also something we can turn a blind eye to, thanks to the deliberately chaotic photography.

it's also entirely possible that Sisko's pod was of a different design

...And that none of the craft we saw outside were escape pods from the Saratoga, but some other type of hardware altogether.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[psCargile]

According to Atomic Rockets, no, lifeboats/escape pods are not practical.

 

[T'Girl]

According to Atomic Rockets, no, lifeboats/escape pods are not practical.

Way too long to look for the paragraph/diagram you were referring to. Can you narrow it down (a lot) for us?

Comes down to a matter of your philosophy on the value of life. If your position is that life is disposable, life boats take up too much room, even with them not everyone will survive, the resources are more practically used elsewhere.

Then don't equip your ships with life boats, simply.

 

[psCargile]

It's at the bottom of the page, whole section devoted to Lifeboats. Not my website, and I have nothing to do with it--it is the best resource for hard science fiction.

And it has nothing to do with a presumption that life has no value.

 

[T'Girl]

It's at the bottom of the page, whole section devoted to Lifeboats.

The objections to lifeboats come from two posters, Jim Cambias and Rocket Cat.

Jim Cambias position is "Why abandon a spaceship, however shot up or meteor-damaged it may be, just to hang around in a flimsy balloon or cramped pod?" He has a point, there are going to be times where slugging it out in a damaged ship is the best choice, but that doesn't handle every possible situation. If the ship is completely worthless, if the ship itself is dangerous in some way, radioactive, toxic, borg, other creatures. There's a time and place to run away.

"If it's a reactor emergency you're worried about, don't eject the crew in pods, EJECT THE REACTOR!" If possible, great idea. A reactor (warp core) is a integrated component of the ship, with many supports, fuel lines, plasma extraction, and other connections, all of which (no exceptions) have to separate in order to rid the ship of it presence, which is why it's apparent difficult to eject.

A lifeboat has a (maybe) overhead hatch and a handful of clamps or explosive bolts. Easy to eject.

Rocket Cat's position (once you strip away the many insults) is "if the life boat is actually going to preserve your crew's life it'll have to have enough stuff so that it'll actually be a spacecraft." Yes, I don't think anyone is denying this, in fact how could it not be a spacecraft? I myself referred to them as small starships. Why would this be a reason not to have them?

"Why would you want to waste valuable payload mass on something so worthless?" The primary reason would be to increase the likelihood of the crews survival.

"Only with a more limited life support, much lower delta V, drastically less elbow room, and more likely to kill the crew." Yes, doesn't apply, yes and how does he figure this?

Starfleet lifeboats are unlikely to depend on large amounts of delta vee (fuel) to carry out their function. Some fuel would have to be carried yes, and I could see the small low speed warp drive being fusion powered, which would require (some) deuterium.

And how are the lifeboats, in of themselves, more likely to kill the crew?

And it has nothing to do with a presumption that life has no value.

It displays a mentality that the tiny amount of space a lifeboat would consume is more important than preserving the crew's existence.

 

[Count]

Look at it this way. The lifepod is just literally meant to keep folks alive long enough to be rescued. In DS9 during the dominion war, you had the added hope of "please don't kill me" when launching in pods in battle.

If you look at TNG and TOS, whenever a starship was out of contact too long, another ship was sent to investigate (Exeter, Brattain, Lantreee, etc...) so you wouldn't be in a pod too long and don't necessarily have to make planetfall.

In reality, the only ships with the added risk of using lifepods are those on deep space missions like the Olympia or Voyager, where there is no Fleet HQ to keep in touch with and a chance of no habitable planet nearby.

Additionally, most of the TMs say that there are subspace distress beacons on pods for attracting attention.

From a survivability point of view, hard to compare but the Klingon escape pod Worf was in kept him alive for nearly a week. The only other escape pods we've really seen were from E-E, Valiant, Saratoga and the ISS NX Enterprise. So launching a pod in the void and hoping for rescue definitely makes them worthwhile as you have a higher chance of survival than going down with your ship.

 

[T'Girl]

Just wanted to add, the International Space Station does have a "lifeboat" attached to one of it's docking ports.

 

[fonzob1]

The International Space Station is not in "deep space." It is very close to a habitable planet. Put that escape pod out near Venus and it becomes basically worthless. You will starve to death in it.

 

[PCz911]

Question for some of our more nautically/historically minded folks: what's the history of lifeboats?

When did they become common? If star trek (initially) was a wagon train to the stars (or horstio hornblower) then did ships of that era carry life boats... Or just a launch or two?

The titanic is infamous for a lack of lifeboats ....

And More modern military vessels I assume have a greater number of lifeboats...

Given how star trek evolved with the writers, I assume that the attitude towards lifeboats may follow the same historical course (?)

 

[T'Girl]

Put that escape pod out near Venus and it becomes basically worthless.

Put the same lifeboat near Venus? Of course not, you would have a appropriate escape vehicle for the location.

Not just the ISS but all US and Russia space stations had a return vehicle present while there was a crew aboard, they were never left cut off.

 

[fonzob1]

Put that escape pod out near Venus and it becomes basically worthless.

Put the same lifeboat near Venus? Of course not, you would have a appropriate escape vehicle for the location.

Not just the ISS but all US and Russia space stations had a return vehicle present while there was a crew aboard, they were never left cut off.

The point was, whatever the standard would be for a "lifeboat" in space that you would attach to a ship, there would be times when those "lifeboats" would not really be useful because they would take you to nowhere.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Question for some of our more nautically/historically minded folks: what's the history of lifeboats?

When did they become common? If star trek (initially) was a wagon train to the stars (or horstio hornblower) then did ships of that era carry life boats... Or just a launch or two?

The titanic is infamous for a lack of lifeboats ....

And More modern military vessels I assume have a greater number of lifeboats...

Given how star trek evolved with the writers, I assume that the attitude towards lifeboats may follow the same historical course (?)

My understanding that military naval vessels do not have "boats" as such, just a huge amount of inflatable liferafts that can be quickly deployed when the crew abandons ship. The rafts have no propulsion, they're really just floatation devices intended to keep the crew from drowning after the ship sinks.

 

[Ithekro]

For the Venus example, you would either have a craft to make the voyage back to Earth, or failing that, you would have something designed to last long enough for another vessel to make it from Earth to pick you up.

This just means that the farther out you go with rocket and other very slow sublight propulsion engines, the longer your lifeboats are going to have to last before rescue can happen. Or your vessel will have a redundancy built into it so that if half of it fails the other half can sustain the crew to either make it back to Earth (mission abort) or survive long enough for a rescue mission to make it out to them...wherever they might end up by the time that mission can reach them.

For FTL driven ships, depending on just how fast, fast is, it could be much less time for a rescue operation, but not practical to make a lifeboat that can reach back to Earth, unless that lifeboat is essentially half the ship (saucer section/engineering hull sort of setup). It might be practical to make a lifeboat if it can manage FTL speeds with reasonable provisions to make it to the average distance between stars with M-class worlds, or starbases (if there is an average to that sort of thing).

In a universe were we don't have contact with aliens and FTL is new-ish? Ten times the speed of light is the current projected limit of the Warp Drive. So Warp 2-ish. While that puts nearby stars within six months travel, the closest suspected habitable worlds are still at least two years away at those speeds. What sort of lifeboats could be used here? Assuming there is no form of subspace communication (unless quantum pairing leads to FTL radio). Any radio signal back to Earth will take many years to get there. It may not be practical to fit a ship with two warp drives, or two section that have seperate warp drives, depending on the technology (bulky rings). What then?

 

[B.J.]

In a universe were we don't have contact with aliens and FTL is new-ish? Ten times the speed of light is the current projected limit of the Warp Drive. So Warp 2-ish. While that puts nearby stars within six months travel, the closest suspected habitable worlds are still at least two years away at those speeds. What sort of lifeboats could be used here? Assuming there is no form of subspace communication (unless quantum pairing leads to FTL radio). Any radio signal back to Earth will take many years to get there. It may not be practical to fit a ship with two warp drives, or two section that have seperate warp drives, depending on the technology (bulky rings). What then?

Then, you don't go out on deep space missions alone. At least two or three ships all going together, so that you always have someone nearby that can help. I've sometimes thought that a more realistic take on Trek would have the Enterprise have companion ships. Even Columbus took three ships.