What happens to all that debris?

Loren Pechtel wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:My working assuming is that if the pod do have an force close capability on the hatch it would only come into play when they've been told "launch by time <x> to survive." and the hatch is still open at the last possible instant before <x>. So at the last possible instant, where they have to launch to survive.

So if the bad choices at that instant are are:
a) the other crew in the pod manage to escape and survive with just my severed arm for company, or
b) the pod waits for me to clear the hatch and then fails to get far enough before the reactor blow and we all die in a cloud of plasma...
Well both options suck, but I hope they live to toast me at nice wake after burying my arm.

Exactly. You would not auto-fire a pod unless survival was impossible if you didn't fire it. We have multiple examples of battle situations where the captain knew the ship was going to die at time x.

If the arm is on the outside, close the hatch and hope you can regenerate. Or that Alfred has made his Honor arm available to Bassingford?

Fox2! wrote:If the arm is on the outside, close the hatch and hope you can regenerate. Or that Alfred has made his Honor arm available to Bassingford?

He probably did, minus the top secret modifications.

Loren Pechtel wrote:

cthia wrote:First, adding just a bit more broth to the stew.

Tlb, that should certainly interest you.

Loren, are you trying to make me pass out? I'm squeamish you know. And you're pouring salt into the wound. From all of our talk in the How To Abandon Ship thread, I get the feeling that pods are quite heavy. We know they are very robust to endure what they must. Relax even thinks they have to have huge compensators.

At any rate, a tractor beam that can physically move a pod weighing at least a ton?, will pull a body apart. Remember the episode of Star Trek which locked on to the fighter jet in the atmosphere? "Captain, twentieth century planes were not built to withstand a tractor beam." Well, bodies weren't either.

Anyway, even if an occupant is dragged into the pod bay by a tractor beam alive, he still has to get himself loose before being shot out of a cannon with enough velocity to clear the wedge and the incoming missile storm and resulting debris.

Why do you assume they can't make a weaker tractor beam that is safe for people?

Before I retired I worked in a lab. I was Lab Manager in an Engineering firm. We had just purchased a new California Bearing Ratio (CBR) machine. Basically, you literally make standardized cylinders of the concrete mix used on critical job sites and then the CBR crushes them with hydraulic pressure measuring the amount of force it takes to break the cylinder. The CBR has to sit on a very stable table. The one we had weighed less than a ton, but was pretty damn close to three quarters of. Because the CBR machine is no panty waist itself. We could no longer get a forklift in the area so we had to move the table with manpower. It took seven footballers the better part of a day to move the steel table less than twenty yards. It was manhandling us. Forgive the lead in.

So, a tractor beam that can move at least a two ton pod cannot also be simultaneously kind to a body. Plus, the tractor beam cannot afford to pussyfoot around with the pod.

P.S. A force close hatch on the arm with the better half of your body inside is going to be painful enough. But we all must consider that lucky. It could be force closing on someone's head. Plus, if it is your arm or leg and you're alone, you may not be able to reach the med panel. Nor have the energy to extricate yourself. Most likely you'll be found dead.

Incidentally, the Admiral's pod was probably the last pod launched. The fact that only two occupants were aboard her supports it. Yet I get the notion she was near the front of the debris field by Paulette and John's search pattern of moving along with the debris.

cthia wrote:So, a tractor beam that can move at least a two ton pod cannot also be simultaneously kind to a body. Plus, the tractor beam cannot afford to pussyfoot around with the pod.

Why do you assume the same tractor beam moving the pod and moving people into the pod?

Loren Pechtel wrote:

cthia wrote:So, a tractor beam that can move at least a two ton pod cannot also be simultaneously kind to a body. Plus, the tractor beam cannot afford to pussyfoot around with the pod.

Why do you assume the same tractor beam moving the pod and moving people into the pod?

I certainly never assumed a tractor beam would be trying to place people in a pod. Injured people. While others are trying to board. Someone alone who has collapsed? Cool. What does the beam do for someone trapped by the auto-closing mechanism?

I think I wish I'd listened to my niece this time.

"Do you always have to open those cans of worms? Can't you just let them squirm sometimes? LOL

tlb wrote:

cthia wrote:There's another worry about every occupant in the pod being reliant upon the same oxygen. If you happen to be a frail woman or severely injured crewman aboard a pod with a Randy Steilman, what do you think he and his crew will do to you to increase life support?

The skin suit has its own supply; so if the crew were all expecting action, then they would have that additional amount each. Plus it can dispense medications.

Textev says the pod augments the suits life support. I think it operates on pod power until the pod goes dead then it switches over to suit power.

Loren Pechtel wrote:

cthia wrote:So, a tractor beam that can move at least a two ton pod cannot also be simultaneously kind to a body. Plus, the tractor beam cannot afford to pussyfoot around with the pod.

Why do you assume the same tractor beam moving the pod and moving people into the pod?

It could be powered by handwavium unobtainate crystals.

So, life pods which are being talked about from sizes of one person to 10 or perhaps more.

It depends if you think of them more like "lifeboats" which are set up to handle X number of people and have both some sort of range and ability to land that would let them get to a habitable planet in a system and then land on autopilot. And there would be food, water, various medicine and such items.

And when you are in a ship that going FFFFKPS and it is essentialy launched (fired) out from the skin of the ship at probably a right angle to the ships direction, and it is designed to get the hell away from a ship which might blow up or be incenterated though a fusion reactor loosing containment and/or somebody is shooting at the ship with lightspeed energy weapons or missles? So how do you survive the "ejection". Whaterver speed the ship has at the time (accelerating, decelerating or coasting) HOW FAST do you go from your "relative" Zero speed of the pod to the ship to the speed the pod is supposed to get to in Y time (wether or not it will then fire up an engine and add that to the exit or change direction).
Are there compensators in the pods that protect the the occupants and do they come on just as the pod is launched? What happens to the people in the pod when it exists the compensator field of the ship's effect?

Using a shuttle to escape a merchant ship does make sence. It's a sublight veheicle able to navigate in n-space and, depending on type may be able to make a planitary landing.

Pods (military at least) are likely to be set up such that people can plug into an enviornmental system to support them in a skin suit (if they are wearing one) and conserve resources. Also for power to the suit's systems including communications.

These things are supposed to be being built with rescue beacons to assist in location. Pods are also seemingly described as very tough survival systems to both protest the occupants from whatever destruction overtakes thier ship and continue to function dispite signicant physical exterior damage.

Brigade XO wrote:And when you are in a ship that going FFFFKPS and it is essentialy launched (fired) out from the skin of the ship at probably a right angle to the ships direction, and it is designed to get the hell away from a ship which might blow up or be incenterated though a fusion reactor loosing containment and/or somebody is shooting at the ship with lightspeed energy weapons or missles? So how do you survive the "ejection". Whaterver speed the ship has at the time (accelerating, decelerating or coasting) HOW FAST do you go from your "relative" Zero speed of the pod to the ship to the speed the pod is supposed to get to in Y time (wether or not it will then fire up an engine and add that to the exit or change direction).
Are there compensators in the pods that protect the the occupants and do they come on just as the pod is launched? What happens to the people in the pod when it exists the compensator field of the ship's effect?

As someone mentioned upthread pods can't have compensators when they're launched because those require an active wedge (or sail) and even if a pod has impeller nodes they can't be active while it's being launched out of a ship. It could have grav plates to cut down the acceleration the occupants experience.

I don't think much of anything happens when the pod exits the warships compenator field though. The field keeps the pod from feeling the acceleration of the ship (but doesn't protect the po from its own acceleration relative to the ship. And once the pod launches it's not subject to the ship's acceleration anymore. So if the ship is still accelerating it quickly leaves the pod behind. (OTOH a ship at the point of launching pods may well have struck it wedge as a sign of surrender (or lost its wedge due to battle damage) so it may not be accelerating anyway.