Search and Rescue.

Space is big, it is really mind blowing big.

A space ship is rather small, even one of 10,000 tons is nothing much in the vastness of space.

If we have a missing ship in our solar system, there is a good chance it can be found. There are over 12,000 active sensor satellites and monitoring stations, as well as a few dozen patrol craft always looking around. But even with all that, finding a ship, especially one drifting without a beacon is not easy. Normally all ships have a radio ID signal that broadcasts continually and an emergency signal that sounds loud and long. But we must consider failure of these systems is possible. 

 

The big question in terms of search and rescue is; Can we find them while anyone is still alive?

While the odds are good in our home solar system, they drop of significantly in the less developed areas, as there are simply less eyes to do the searching. At the far end of the spectrum are the uninhabited systems, where the searching ship(s) only have the resources they bring with them.

You will notice the working assumption thus far, is that we know what star system the missing ship is in. This is often but not always the case. For example a Ranger scout ship sent to explore system WX-433, will be declared missing 7 days after the expected return date. Naturally the search will begin at WX-433, and odds are high that the ship will be some place in that system. But what if it is not?

Hyper space travel does have the possibility that a ship may be lost anyplace between its point of origin and its destination. In the worst case scenario the ship is lost in H-Space, unable to return to normal space. Here it is very much beyond any likely help. Only slightly better is a situation in which the ship makes a crash dive out of H-Space back into reality. Here it is likely in deep space, randomly located between the stars.

A more probable and hopeful place to be lost is at the rest stop points along a flight path. As the medical rules for H-Space travel insist; “You should only travel in hyper space for 2 days then drop out for 1 day of recovery time, before continuing.” This rule does apply more to civilian ships than to military ones, because civilian ships follow a predictable flight plan, with regular rest spots. These are not pin point accurate, but do give a search ship an area of a few AU to cover.

The key question for anyone on a missing ship is; How long can we survive?

Space being very very big, the odds of your ship being in trouble close to a habitable planet are low. Escape pods are great, but they are not built for long duration or fast flight. So if you have to abandon ship several AU away from a habitable world, you are still in trouble because making that voyage to safety will not be easy.

A typical escape pod is capable of holding 10 people, in cramped conditions. It has air for 5 days, food water and power for 15 days. Less people in the pod allows these numbers to stretch. It has very basic engines and navigation systems, being able to make a few short 1G burns, but needing to coast most of the way. It is very good at reentry and landing on a wide variety of worlds, even if all the occupants are unconscious. It has a radio and a position beacon, but very little in the way of sensors.

Ideally if you abandon ship, a rescue team will find you and pick you up in a few hours. A full space suit has 8 hours of air, and a reasonably good emergency beacon, so if you must step out, you are not doomed. An emergency suit, has a much smaller air tank at 1 hour, but can hook to a full sized unit. The problem with these suits is that they do not have powered temperature control, only a passive system, so in open space you start to freeze in about 3 hours. 

 

Your Air supply is the top concern on a damaged space ship.

Air tanks on a ship are usually 15x5ft cylinders (same size as the water tanks), holding 8,330 litters each. The average person consumes 1.5 litters of oxygen / minute. Thus one tank would give one person about 92.5 hours or 3.8 days of breathable air, assuming the filtration system was not working. Now consider how fast this number changes if the entire crew of 10 is present. They have only about 9 hours.

As an emergency device all ships carry Chlorate Candles, which are cylindrical chemical oxygen generator, that produce about 6 man-hours of oxygen per kilogram of the candle. Keeping in mind a crew of 10, Candles are usually made in 10 kg sized, thus giving thus giving about 6 hours for the entire crew.

As part of the main life support system there is a conversion unit that can extract oxygen from water. If this is stiff functioning you can greatly extend your air supply at the cost of your water reserves.

However, the problem of accumulated carbon dioxide still is a serious one, if the air scrubbers are down. Generating new oxygen helps keep you alive but does not solve the problem.

What about Water?

Water tanks on ships are usually 15x5ft = 2,200 gallons (8,330 litters). A person needs about 2 litters (0.5 gallons) per day, although they can survive on less, it is not healthy. Even if the recycling system is down, there is no short term worry about the water supply.

How Hot is it?

Running out of air and water are not your only problem, if the temperature regulation system is down, it will start to get cold. The time it takes to bleed off heat depends on several factors, including your distance from the sun, but as a general rule you have 3 days until it gets uncomfortably cold and 3 more days till it is deadly cold.

But before you abandon ship, there are many factors to be considered.

A space craft is made to keep its crew alive, with several backup systems for life support and power. Assuming you have lost main power, things are serious but not grave. Energy cells can keep a ship going for 2 weeks if it operates at minimum power usage. This means no gravity field, as that pulls a large steady amount of power. Ion thrusters can be used but should be used sparingly. Fusion thrusters can not, as they need the main reactor to function. The small manoeuvring thrusters, take almost no power at all so they are great, but dont provide much momentum.

In addition to the bank of E-Cells, all ships have solar panels witch can be deployed to generate some power. This can extend the endurance of the basic ships systems indefinitely, depending on how much power is being used and how close you are to the star. In deep space, the panels are useless.

Perhaps the best emergency item on a ship is the shuttle craft itself.

Aside from the obvious use, it can fly to any nearby safe place at a reasonably good speed, it can serve as a power source for the damaged mother ship. Most shuttle have an ISO-Sterling mini-reactor, which by the nature of its design always produces a small amount of power. Usually this is channelled to replenish the shuttle's own E-Cells, but a outlet cable port is part of the engine. It can run a star ship's essential services at minimum power indefinitely. 

 

Civilian vs Military

Safety standards are high for both. But in simple terms, they must be higher for the military ship, because it is expected to be in dangerous situations. Damage from battle or from unexpected events, will happen to a military craft, and very likely in a place far from any immediate help. To this end the ships must be extra tough and have several back up systems, including isolated mini-computers and E-cells to operate specific items, even when most of the ship is literally ripped apart.

The Ranger class scout ships are a masterpiece of redundant safety systems. Because they explore star systems well out of the reach of any quick rescue, their crew survival has always been built on the idea of help arriving in weeks not hours or days. 

 

The flight suit.

For the military it is required that all persons wear a QCVS “quick convert to vac-suit” uniform. This is a form of soft emergency space suit, that can in a few seconds be sealed and save your life. It comes with a 1 hour mini air tank and a plug in hose to connect to regular air tanks. For combat situations the crew puts on full space suits, if time permits.

Civilian rules require on duty persons to wear similar suits. However inspections have shown that many suits are not properly ready for action and personnel not well trained in quickly buttoning up. The rules also say there must be enough emergency suits for everyone aboard, and that passengers should be given a instructional tutorial on how to put the suits on.

Rescue Ships.

The Saber class of star ship provides the hull type.

There is only one major difference between a science ship ALREX (Armed Long Range Exploration)

and a rescue ship FRASR (Fast Response And Search Rescue), that is the specific big gun part of the armed exploration part of the name.

The “Fraser” as it is generally called, is a hyper capable ship built to military standards, 300ft long with a main body width of 45ft and 3 decks in height. It has a crew of 8 plus 6 specialists, 2 of those being med-techs. The Mission areas on the second deck being set up for medical and survivor accommodations, it can deal with 10 comfortable and 20 in tight quarters.

To compensate for this limited capacity, the ship has 2 inflatable habitat modules, in place of the big side guns. Each of these can hold 30 people. However it is unsafe for the ship to enter H-Space with the habitats deployed, or to make any combat manoeuvres. They do have their own life support and power units and may be detached from the ship if necessary. However they only have supplies for a few days at max capacity.

Although it has only one shuttle craft, the Fraser converts a cargo pod bay to hold 2 Worker Bee craft. These short range industrial work units can be valuable in dealing with the wreckage of a ship, being much more efficient than a few men in space suits.

To aid in the primary mission of searching, most of its missile load is replaced with recon drones. Also one of the top cargo pods is replaced with a SeeAll xc33, tethered sensor array. The same kind used by exploration ships. Although on board scanners can look through the distortion field created by the gravity control system, a sensor array outside of it does function slightly better.

Not just for long range rescues.

Although it is built for hyper space travel, expecting to find ships in distant systems, the ability to make short light speed trips with in a solar system makes it ideal for fast response at the local scale. For example if a ship signals disaster distress 10 AU away (Distance from Earth to Saturn) the radio massage would take about 80 minutes to reach the system control centre. A rescue ship making a 5G trip (military speed) would take 4days to reach it. One may kick that up 10G to cut the time in half, but that is still 2 days. A ship making a small hyper space transit would take about 80 minutes. Thus all colony systems, will be provided a Fraser class ship at the earliest possible date.