Light bulb Captured Solly fleet

Rakhmamort wrote:With all these things that need to be done before you can have your floating hospitals, it would be much faster to strip the SDs of the equipment and ship them to the planets.

Why is finding salvage crews easier than finding ferry crews? Especially since you have to find/hire a cargo ship to transport the equipment.

Rakhmamort wrote: KISS principle, strip, transport, install. Rather than, get volunteers, filter by cats, parole, get guards, crew, resupply, move SD, set in orbit, get medical personnel, set up ambulance schedule availability.

Even simpler, don't waste time and money finding salvage workers and a ship to transport them. Just transport them in the ship they are installed in and start using them as soon as you you and/or a medical staff arrive.

Rakhmamort wrote:And we are forgetting that before they use the said SDs, regulations will require that the escape pods be re-installed ...

Regulations? Whose regulations?

I'd bet regulations only require emergency evacuation for the crew aboard. Since everyone is assuming the small craft will go along instead of being sold at auction in the Spindle system, there is enough emergency evacuation capacity for a ferry crew.

Load the pods back aboard and let locals train on refurbishment when you arrive.

Spacekiwi wrote:Yes the equipment may work, but you are putting in at a distance from where its needed, aka the surface, and you are leaving it in a ship designed for war, not as a hospital, ...

Which will save more lives? A highly technical facility that is current Solarian standard intended to care for six dozen admirals and a crew of 6,000+...

OR

The same equipment sitting in a warehouse or civilian transport waiting for ground-side accommodations to get ready?

Whether used as a trauma center or just an advanced diagnostics and treatment center, being temporarily in orbit isn't going to make much difference.

Spacekiwi wrote:Thats ship personnel wasted keeping the hospital orbiting, as opposed to running your fleet.

PS: I've never advocated using RMN or other fleet personnel except as ferry crew. They aren't being tied up keeping anything in orbit, they're gone back to running the fleet.

Whitecold wrote:...you can't efficiently cannibalize a ship while still partially using it ...

Four SDs drop into orbit, named SLNS A, B, C and D. All four open for business as medical augmentation and/or fast-track education sources.

One or all transmit plans and requirements to make salvaged equipment operational ground-side.

Ground-side reports the first facility is ready and salvage of SD SLNS D. SLNS A thru C remain in operation.

Repeat one ship at a time until an orderly transfer of capability is finished.

Weird Harold wrote:

Spacekiwi wrote:Thats ship personnel wasted keeping the hospital orbiting, as opposed to running your fleet.

PS: I've never advocated using RMN or other fleet personnel except as ferry crew. They aren't being tied up keeping anything in orbit, they're gone back to running the fleet.

Whitecold wrote:...you can't efficiently cannibalize a ship while still partially using it ...

Four SDs drop into orbit, named SLNS A, B, C and D. All four open for business as medical augmentation and/or fast-track education sources.

One or all transmit plans and requirements to make salvaged equipment operational ground-side.

Ground-side reports the first facility is ready and salvage of SD SLNS D. SLNS A thru C remain in operation.

Repeat one ship at a time until an orderly transfer of capability is finished.

So, Harold, you are just suggesting that these ships be used in orbit for a few weeks, then? I suppose we can live with that. I'm not sure what use they will be in orbit for those few weeks, but whatever. After that, the stuff will be groundside and the ships will go to the breakers.

Weird Harold wrote:

Rakhmamort wrote:With all these things that need to be done before you can have your floating hospitals, it would be much faster to strip the SDs of the equipment and ship them to the planets.

Why is finding salvage crews easier than finding ferry crews? Especially since you have to find/hire a cargo ship to transport the equipment.

Because most of the task of removing the equipment from a ship's med bay is basically removing power couplings and loosening attachment points. You can have a dozen people working on it for a couple of days including packing them into a cargo container.

Remember, these equipment are on a warship. Designers know that there are chances that these equipment will receive damage so it is only logical that the design would incorporate some sort of easy replacement procedures if such an event transpires.

And we are not talking about huge machinery. The team that went back to Mesa had a portable regen pod with them. And only one person handled it with proper equipment.

Ergo, it is magnitudes easier to remove the equipment using a dozen, hell 2 or 3 dozen men than find hundreds of people to fill in as skeleton crew to operate the SD so it can move to another star system.

Rakhmamort wrote: KISS principle, strip, transport, install. Rather than, get volunteers, filter by cats, parole, get guards, crew, resupply, move SD, set in orbit, get medical personnel, set up ambulance schedule availability.

Even simpler, don't waste time and money finding salvage workers and a ship to transport them. Just transport them in the ship they are installed in and start using them as soon as you you and/or a medical staff arrive.

There is a reason why a ship needs to pass acceptance trials when the yard releases it. The people that are going to use the ship has to know how the ship behaves. Even if they are trained in simulators to handle the exact same controls, ship crews still need shakedown cruises and lots and lots of exercises just to become proficient with working with each other. Granted it is only just one trip, you will need people who know the equipment, know the programs running in the system before you can make a ship go to another star. How long to get your skeleton crews from the Solarian POWs? You really think it's that easy to get thousands of people from POWs and making sure you have the right minded ones with the right skills and being able to put them in the right positions?

Face it. IT IS NOT THAT EASY. Even if you do get those skeleton crews from POWs, what will you do with them after the ship arrived in system? Transport them back to their prisons? Keep them in the ships which would require you to keep guards in the ships? The reason they put the prisoners in an island is to minimize the amount of people they will need to guard them. Now you are proposing to send dozens of detachments to ride herd on thousands of prisoners in floating warships? Can you not see how stupid that is? If Harkness acting alone in a foreign ship managed to do destroy the ship he was in, what are the chances that there would be a POW who can do something similar?
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As for wasting time and money to find merchant ships, lol! The TQ has merchant traffic. An SDs medical equipment wouldn't even go past a couple thousand tons worth. Transporting the equipment is easy.

Rakhmamort wrote:And we are forgetting that before they use the said SDs, regulations will require that the escape pods be re-installed ...

Regulations? Whose regulations?

I'd bet regulations only require emergency evacuation for the crew aboard. Since everyone is assuming the small craft will go along instead of being sold at auction in the Spindle system, there is enough emergency evacuation capacity for a ferry crew.

Load the pods back aboard and let locals train on refurbishment when you arrive.

You cannot just brush away the need for escape pods to be installed and usable before these SDs are allowed to be used. Especially if you are putting a lot of people in them.

Nevertheless, lets just say they will accept that the pods can be loaded in the SD and the crew will refurbish and install them. How long do you think will such an activity take? How many pods are there per SD? Every one of them were used and they were sent groundside. How will you get them up in space? How long does it take to make the trip from the ground to the SD carrying a minuscule number of pods? How many trips will it take? How much fuel will be used? How many man hours will be eaten up maintaining the ships hauling the escape pods back up?

You want to waste manpower and resources? That's one way of doing it. You want to make the most of what manpower you have? Strip the medical gear out of the SDs and put them in merchant hulls for transport. Hell, you can even park them in a corner of a warship's small craft bay, one who would be travelling to your recipient planet.

Strip, transport, install. Simplest. Least Effort. Best course of action because even if you do move those SDs, you are still going to do the STRIP and INSTALL part when it is time to take the obsolete ships to the breakers.

MaxxQ wrote:I doubt very much it would take more than a week to move the equipment and create "power converters" (a simple transformer along the lines of those I used when stationed in England to allow my U.S. made electrical products to wotk with Brit power outlets) to allow the Sollie equipment to work with Dresden voltages. Move the medical computers with it, have some software genious write up a conversion program, and transfer the files from Sollie comps to Dresden comps.

2000 years in the future, you probably wouldn't even need to spend time designing the converters. We can make switching converter power supplies that can already automatically detect and adjust between ac50hz/ac60hz/dc->dc conversion today. But this capability is too expensive compared to just building different models for different countries. With nanotech manufacturing in the honorverse, the costs shouldn't be any more expensive than the traditional options, and might be less since you don't have to spend time changing your design, manufacturing, logistics processes for the different worlds. Considering how many worlds the honorverse has and that large scale interstellar trade exists, I wouldn't be surprised to find these as the standard power supply design everywhere.

Rakhmamort wrote:There is a reason why a ship needs to pass acceptance trials when the yard releases it. The people that are going to use the ship has to know how the ship behaves. Even if they are trained in simulators to handle the exact same controls, ship crews still need shakedown cruises and lots and lots of exercises just to become proficient with working with each other.

It must be hell on prize crews taking captured pirate ships back to base for condemnation then. Especially if the original crew bailed out or the pirates bailed rather than face capture -- after all, if a ship doesn't have its escape pods it can't fly.

Since the TQ doesn't have, and isn't going to get, shipyards capable of disassembling most of those ships, they're going to need ferry crews eventually.

Weird Harold wrote:It must be hell on prize crews taking captured pirate ships back to base for condemnation then. Especially if the original crew bailed out or the pirates bailed rather than face capture -- after all, if a ship doesn't have its escape pods it can't fly.

Since the TQ doesn't have, and isn't going to get, shipyards capable of disassembling most of those ships, they're going to need ferry crews eventually.

There are times where you forego proper regs for the sake of expediency. Using ships as hospitals is not one of those.

Weird Harold wrote:

Rakhmamort wrote:There is a reason why a ship needs to pass acceptance trials when the yard releases it. The people that are going to use the ship has to know how the ship behaves. Even if they are trained in simulators to handle the exact same controls, ship crews still need shakedown cruises and lots and lots of exercises just to become proficient with working with each other.

It must be hell on prize crews taking captured pirate ships back to base for condemnation then. Especially if the original crew bailed out or the pirates bailed rather than face capture -- after all, if a ship doesn't have its escape pods it can't fly.

Most captured ships usually have their escape pods. The reason why Admiral Gold Peak wanted the SLN fleet to use their pods was to minimize the number of crewmen in them BECAUSE she had very few marines to handle them.

Since the TQ doesn't have, and isn't going to get, shipyards capable of disassembling most of those ships, they're going to need ferry crews eventually.

And they are not doing that because it is not a priority to get them ships into the breakers. The mining and processing part of Manticore's industry was not hit. They don't have the shipyards to use up the huge output of those asteroid mines. Ergo, no great demand for the Solly SDs to get recycled.

The E wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:It must be hell on prize crews taking captured pirate ships back to base for condemnation then. Especially if the original crew bailed out or the pirates bailed rather than face capture -- after all, if a ship doesn't have its escape pods it can't fly.

Since the TQ doesn't have, and isn't going to get, shipyards capable of disassembling most of those ships, they're going to need ferry crews eventually.

There are times where you forego proper regs for the sake of expediency. Using ships as hospitals is not one of those.

Ferry Crews aren't for using them, ferry crews are for ferrying them -- just as prize crews have to ferry prizes in any condition they capture them in.

Put the lifepods back aboard and concentrate the certifiable ones on the hospital ships and let the locals learn how to refurbish them for the lesser ships.