Trying to create the cause behind Space Force going from Air Force culture to Naval culture in the future

[Scott Kenny]

What would cause the total loss of a space mission that the Navy would say "we solved that problem 400 years ago, why didn't you learn the lesson?"

I'd originally been thinking a catastrophic failure, hole in the low-temp radiator that could have been fixed right away but wasn't, causing the computers to bake. Problem is, computers now will yell at you that they're cooking their chips long before you start to get data corruption.

Now, I'm thinking something more like a fire caused by a lack of cleaning, or maybe a crewmember going nuts.

What can the members of this forum come up with?

Edit: note that this is already assuming crewed spaceships, likely over 25 crew. (frankly, 12 is pretty close to the bare minimum crew for any 24/7 manning)

 

[VishnuOsiris]

What would cause the total loss of a space mission that the Navy would say "we solved that problem 400 years ago, why didn't you learn the lesson?"

I'd originally been thinking a catastrophic failure, hole in the low-temp radiator that could have been fixed right away but wasn't, causing the computers to bake. Problem is, computers now will yell at you that they're cooking their chips long before you start to get data corruption.

Now, I'm thinking something more like a fire caused by a lack of cleaning, or maybe a crewmember going nuts.

What can the members of this forum come up with?

An adversarial counter which made SF satellites and distributed systems nonsurvivable. SF needs to concentrate all of those capabilities into a fleet of large, self-contained and crewed recce/attack space platforms. LOS communications are off the menu.

 

[Scott Kenny]

An adversarial counter which made SF satellites and distributed systems nonsurvivable. SF needs to concentrate all of those capabilities into a fleet of large, self-contained and crewed recce/attack space platforms. LOS communications are off the menu.

I mean, this was assuming that we're already at the point of crewed spaceships.

 

[Martes]

Wasn't there some story about fungi infestation on ISS nobody really cares about?

 

[Archibald]

Orion NPP space fleet ? One nuke get astray at the pusher plate.

The Space Review: Starfleet was closer than you think

Navy says "no accident since Tresher / Scorpion. Take lessons in nuclear safety." Also works with NERVA, think of Apollo-N in Stefan Baxter "Voyage".

 

[aim9xray]

Tribbles.

(We don't talk about the tribbles.)

 

[Seragina]

Going to the moon and holding star dust (while breaking international law).

 

[Byeman]

What would cause the total loss of a space mission that the Navy would say "we solved that problem 400 years ago, why didn't you learn the lesson?"

I'd originally been thinking a catastrophic failure, hole in the low-temp radiator that could have been fixed right away but wasn't, causing the computers to bake. Problem is, computers now will yell at you that they're cooking their chips long before you start to get data corruption.

Now, I'm thinking something more like a fire caused by a lack of cleaning, or maybe a crewmember going nuts.

What can the members of this forum come up with?

Edit: note that this is already assuming crewed spaceships, likely over 25 crew. (frankly, 12 is pretty close to the bare minimum crew for any 24/7 manning)

The basic premise is false. What says the naval culture IS better?
a. The drone conop/culture is going to push crewed military spacecraft further down the timeline
b. for the future, most inhabited spacecraft are either stations or transports. Law enforcement will be needed. Transports can be treated like airliners. Transports are not going to have non rates just to have manpower for menial tasks. Spacecraft maintenance is more like aircraft than ships.
c. Naval culture is not needed for settlements.

 

[Scott Kenny]

The basic premise is false. What says the naval culture IS better?

Operation of significant crew while a long way from home and no escape from the assholes in the crew.

Let's go back into the required crew for a ship:

• Officer of the Deck/Pilot in Command - The person officially responsible for the safe operations of the ship during this watch.
• Helmsman/Pilot Flying - the person with hands on controls.
• Sensor operator(s) - the people looking for trouble, whether space dust or enemies. (correlates to lookouts)
• Gunner(s) - The people shooting said trouble.
• Aux of the Watch - roving watch, arguably replaceable by automation but may be more capable. Also gives you someone on watch able to respond to issues.
• Engineer of the watch - the person babysitting the engines. This may end up with more people if we're talking nuke-thermal or nuke-electric power.

That's at least 6 people. Times at least 4 and 5 or 6 is better to get your total crew. A number between 24 and 36. Before we get into the folks that don't stand watch, like the CO, XO, yeoman, cooks, and doc.

a. The drone conop/culture is going to push crewed military spacecraft further down the timeline

Agreed.

b. for the future, most inhabited spacecraft are either stations or transports. Law enforcement will be needed. Transports can be treated like airliners. Transports are not going to have non rates just to have manpower for menial tasks. Spacecraft maintenance is more like aircraft than ships.

Transports hauling people are going to look a lot like Cruise Ships, which do have a lot of menial task crew onboard.

c. Naval culture is not needed for settlements.

If it's inside a pressurized environment naval discipline will be required.

 

[Scott Kenny]

Here's the rough crew count I've come up with for a (scifi) space "battleship:"

Forward:

• Officer of the Deck/Tactical Action Officer (Person legally in charge and responsible for the ship this watch. Captain is always in responsible, even when asleep in bed.)
• CIC Watch Officer (backup TAO, basically for training reasons not operational)
• Chief of the Watch/CIC Watch Supervisor (not sure if COW should double up with CICWS)
• Helmsman/pilot/Sailing Master (person with hands on the physical controls)
• Lee Helmsman/Messenger of the Watch (most important job is waking up the next watch, otherwise grabs beverages for the CIC and swaps with Helmsman every hour or so)
• Quartermaster (tracks ship’s position and maintains the deck log, also has burns plotted ahead of time to intercept or avoid objects of interest)
• Electronic Warfare Supervisor (EWS) (Electronics Surveillance intercepts and jamming, not operating radars)
• Sensor Operator(s) (since all sensor inputs are already mixed before displaying in CIC)
• Warfare Coordinator (WC) (collects, evaluates, and disseminates information to the force. maintains continuous liaison with MBC/EBC to ensure timely flow of mutually supporting information and avoid mutual interference. Since warfare coordinators are normally assigned authority to employ long ranged weapons, this may cause situations in which one commander has tactical control of a ship and another has control of that ship’s weapons systems. If firing the weapon does not interfere with the tasking of the ship, there is generally no problem. However, if significant maneuvering is required, coordination between the appropriate warfare commanders is vital in prosecuting the threat. Example of significant maneuvering is spinal mounts and/or torpedoes.)
• Marine/Espatier-Blackjacket Coordinator (MBC or EBC)(collects, evaluates, and disseminates information to the force. Coordinates actions with Warfare Coordinator and OOD for maneuvering. Note: probably the ship’s Marine/Espatier CO or XO, even if some of their troops include blackjacket sailors.)
• AKV Intercepts Controller (AIC) (exercise close or advisory control of intercepts AKVs assigned to own ship. Vector AKVs on intercepts recommended by the NTDS program or based on their own determination. They are directly responsible to the WC for the effective intercept of specified targets and for vectoring intercept AKVs to CAP stations.)
• Shipping Officer (Advises conn of the position, course, speed, and closest point of approach (CPA) of all close contacts in the area, with particular emphasis on small craft appearing at short range and contacts that have changed course or have erratic courses and speeds. Functionally the Lookout, and probably replaceable with a nonsentient AI.)
• Torpedoman of the Watch (in charge of the big guided weapons)
• Gunner’s Mate of the Watch (in charge of railguns and lasers, there may be multiple)
• Auxiliaryman of the Watch (split Forward/Aft on big subs)
• Auxiliary Electrician of the Watch (split Forward/Aft on big subs)
• Machinery Watch (mostly babysits atmosphere control equipment, so there may be multiples of this one depending on how many separate atmosphere control rooms there are and how much direct operation the machines need. Each major airtight compartment should have a separate atmosphere control system in it.)

Engineroom:

• Engineering Officer of the Watch – in Maneuvering
• Reactor Operator (RO, EO, and TM are all per reactor) – in Maneuvering
• Electrical Operator (RO, EO, and TM are all per reactor) – in Maneuvering
• Throttleman (RO, EO, and TM are all per reactor) – in Maneuvering. May not be required on a power-only reactor, probably will be required for a nuclear-thermal rocket since the mass flow through the rocket provides some of the cooling (and therefor determines reactor power level).
• Engine Room Supervisor – roving the engineroom
• Engine Room Upper Level – roving the engineroom on that level (mostly reactor controls)
• Engine Room Middle Level – roving the engineroom on that level (mostly generators)
• Engine Room Lower Level – roving the engineroom on that level (mostly turbines and equipment, main condensers)
• Engineering Laboratory Technician – on call, basically only does one thing per day, primary coolant sample chemistry. Also in charge of reading the dosimeters.

I suspect that a ship will have at least 2 reactors, 1 for power and one for thrust, so there's 2-3 extra dudes in Maneuvering.

So, where are we?

15 forward plus 2 officers, 10ish aft plus 1 officer. 25 with 3 officers, times 5 watch sections for best operational efficiency. 125 enlisted and 15 officers, now we add the CO, XO, Chief of the Boat, SuppO, Doc, Leading Yeoman, and ~8 cooks to get us to 136 enlisted and ~18 officers. Ideally with about 27+3 extra nonqual "new underway buddies" to get trained up this deployment on top of that, bringing our total to 163 enlisted and ~21 officers.

Yet this is for a pretty minimal warship, since the only watches are those in CIC and engineering, plus a couple of roving watches making sure the atmosphere monitoring/control systems stay working.

 

[Byeman]

Here's the rough crew count I've come up with for a (scifi) space "battleship:"

Forward:

• Officer of the Deck/Tactical Action Officer (Person legally in charge and responsible for the ship this watch. Captain is always in responsible, even when asleep in bed.)
• CIC Watch Officer (backup TAO, basically for training reasons not operational)
• Chief of the Watch/CIC Watch Supervisor (not sure if COW should double up with CICWS)
• Helmsman/pilot/Sailing Master (person with hands on the physical controls)
• Lee Helmsman/Messenger of the Watch (most important job is waking up the next watch, otherwise grabs beverages for the CIC and swaps with Helmsman every hour or so)
• Quartermaster (tracks ship’s position and maintains the deck log, also has burns plotted ahead of time to intercept or avoid objects of interest)
• Electronic Warfare Supervisor (EWS) (Electronics Surveillance intercepts and jamming, not operating radars)
• Sensor Operator(s) (since all sensor inputs are already mixed before displaying in CIC)
• Warfare Coordinator (WC) (collects, evaluates, and disseminates information to the force. maintains continuous liaison with MBC/EBC to ensure timely flow of mutually supporting information and avoid mutual interference. Since warfare coordinators are normally assigned authority to employ long ranged weapons, this may cause situations in which one commander has tactical control of a ship and another has control of that ship’s weapons systems. If firing the weapon does not interfere with the tasking of the ship, there is generally no problem. However, if significant maneuvering is required, coordination between the appropriate warfare commanders is vital in prosecuting the threat. Example of significant maneuvering is spinal mounts and/or torpedoes.)
• Marine/Espatier-Blackjacket Coordinator (MBC or EBC)(collects, evaluates, and disseminates information to the force. Coordinates actions with Warfare Coordinator and OOD for maneuvering. Note: probably the ship’s Marine/Espatier CO or XO, even if some of their troops include blackjacket sailors.)
• AKV Intercepts Controller (AIC) (exercise close or advisory control of intercepts AKVs assigned to own ship. Vector AKVs on intercepts recommended by the NTDS program or based on their own determination. They are directly responsible to the WC for the effective intercept of specified targets and for vectoring intercept AKVs to CAP stations.)
• Shipping Officer (Advises conn of the position, course, speed, and closest point of approach (CPA) of all close contacts in the area, with particular emphasis on small craft appearing at short range and contacts that have changed course or have erratic courses and speeds. Functionally the Lookout, and probably replaceable with a nonsentient AI.)
• Torpedoman of the Watch (in charge of the big guided weapons)
• Gunner’s Mate of the Watch (in charge of railguns and lasers, there may be multiple)
• Auxiliaryman of the Watch (split Forward/Aft on big subs)
• Auxiliary Electrician of the Watch (split Forward/Aft on big subs)
• Machinery Watch (mostly babysits atmosphere control equipment, so there may be multiples of this one depending on how many separate atmosphere control rooms there are and how much direct operation the machines need. Each major airtight compartment should have a separate atmosphere control system in it.)

Engineroom:

• Engineering Officer of the Watch – in Maneuvering
• Reactor Operator (RO, EO, and TM are all per reactor) – in Maneuvering
• Electrical Operator (RO, EO, and TM are all per reactor) – in Maneuvering
• Throttleman (RO, EO, and TM are all per reactor) – in Maneuvering. May not be required on a power-only reactor, probably will be required for a nuclear-thermal rocket since the mass flow through the rocket provides some of the cooling (and therefor determines reactor power level).
• Engine Room Supervisor – roving the engineroom
• Engine Room Upper Level – roving the engineroom on that level (mostly reactor controls)
• Engine Room Middle Level – roving the engineroom on that level (mostly generators)
• Engine Room Lower Level – roving the engineroom on that level (mostly turbines and equipment, main condensers)
• Engineering Laboratory Technician – on call, basically only does one thing per day, primary coolant sample chemistry. Also in charge of reading the dosimeters.

I suspect that a ship will have at least 2 reactors, 1 for power and one for thrust, so there's 2-3 extra dudes in Maneuvering.

So, where are we?

15 forward plus 2 officers, 10ish aft plus 1 officer. 25 with 3 officers, times 5 watch sections for best operational efficiency. 125 enlisted and 15 officers, now we add the CO, XO, Chief of the Boat, SuppO, Doc, Leading Yeoman, and ~8 cooks to get us to 136 enlisted and ~18 officers. Ideally with about 27+3 extra nonqual "new underway buddies" to get trained up this deployment on top of that, bringing our total to 163 enlisted and ~21 officers.

Yet this is for a pretty minimal warship, since the only watches are those in CIC and engineering, plus a couple of roving watches making sure the atmosphere monitoring/control systems stay working.

Way too many people. Just like how subs are over manned. There isn't going be volume for "Roving". Spacecraft are not going be like the space station depicted here:

Collier's March 22, 1952 "Man Will Conquer Space Soon"

A 5 year old post and one of my most popular so I chose to bring it forward . 65 years ago today appeared an issue of Collier's that ch...

dreamsofspace.blogspot.com

Don't need helmsman, planesman and diving officer, one person can do that. Just as airliners got rid of radioman, navigators, engineers, etc, the vehicles don't need as crew. See B-2 vs B-1/B-52.

Large cruise ships have just one person standing engineering watch. And it is more than just propulsion, in addition to electrical power generation, it is also monitoring fresh water production, sewage treatment, trash incineration, etc.

Use the NR-1 manning and start subtracting from there.

 

[TwoTribes]

Why is the Space Force culture more likely to resemble the Navy's than the Air Force's? I think it's about time — the time people spend inside their machines, or, containers.

The longest time humans have stayed on an airplane is 64 days. In contrast, the longest time humans have stayed on a ship is 1,152 days.

The most common vehicle in the Air Force is the fighter jet, whose crew compartment is extremely cramped. No one would spend a week inside it.

The most common vehicles in the Navy are destroyers or frigates, where the crew can easily work and live aboard for over a week, or even a month.

 

[Scott Kenny]

Way too many people. Just like how subs are over manned.

Subs operate at really minimal manning, if you look at size. A Burke has 300something crew, while an Ohio only has ~150.

As I understand it, the Virginia-class still has a Chief of the Watch (as the person in charge of the watch section) and a single Helmsman, no Dive.

Subs are built around "One person per job to be done per watch." Which gives you something like 30-37 people on watch times 4 watches, plus 10-15 people outside the watchbill. (CO, XO, COB, yeoman, doc, Supply Officer, and cooks)

There's a few jobs that could be combined, sure. There's 4 people in Sonar, each one individually watching a different system plus a supervisor. And like you said, you don't need Dive, Helm, Planes, Messenger.

But you're still going to have both the sensor and shooter watches. In sub terms, both Sonar, Firecontrol Tech, and Torpedoman.

Even a tiny ship like the Rocinante or NR1 is going to have a person manning the sensors and the point defenses are going to be on "full auto" as long as they're away from a space station.

There isn't going be volume for "Roving". Spacecraft are not going be like the space station depicted here:

Roving watches give you bodies to respond to sudden holes in the ship. Not from battle damage, from debris and meteoroids.

But yes, it's probable that we could reduce some of the engineering watches by virtue of being able to put remote displays on those systems.

But spaceships will be big when we get to nuclear-powered spacecraft that can handle continuous burns.

Even a minimal spaceship will need berthing, crews mess, and the actual work areas where the sensor consoles are and where the atmosphere control systems are. Which means there will be space to wander.

Don't need helmsman, planesman and diving officer, one person can do that. Just as airliners got rid of radioman, navigators, engineers, etc, the vehicles don't need as crew. See B-2 vs B-1/B-52.

One person is doing all that. The Helmsman/Pilot/Sailing Master is ONE position. The Lee Helm/Messenger is a second position, and they trade who is driving every hour or so. Lets the current driver get up and "dispose of used caffeine".

There's a whole lot of stuff in a ship, and the person keeping track of that stuff needs to spend no more than 5-7 hours doing that. What I have read about the better operational cycle was 12 hour days, but each set of 12s was split into a 5hr and a 7hr watch, with everyone in that 12 awake all 12 and running drills etc. Only rarely would they run a drill that would require waking up the other 12s. So that's 4 watch sections. Plus a 5th watch section that's kinda screwed since they're the drill monitors and are doing drills for 14 hours, and in addition they're taking a kickout watch.

Large cruise ships have just one person standing engineering watch. And it is more than just propulsion, in addition to electrical power generation, it is also monitoring fresh water production, sewage treatment, trash incineration, etc.

Citation needed, please.

Because the USN would absolutely have one person on propulsion, one on power generation, one doing fresh water, one doing sewage treatment, etc ad nauseam.

And frankly I'm having a hard time seeing how they can keep all the stuff going with only one person.

Use the NR-1 manning and start subtracting from there.

400 ton vessel with a crew of 13.

That's probably broken down as 4 people per watch section times 3 watch sections, plus the actual Officer In Charge. Reactor Operator, Helmsman, Sonar, "Officer of the Deck" or maybe "Scientist". Nothing to take away.

 

[Scott Kenny]

Why is the Space Force culture more likely to resemble the Navy's than the Air Force's? I think it's about time — the time people spend inside their machines, or, containers.

That's part of it.

Another part is that the Navy ship Captain is personally responsible for the readiness of his ship, while the Air Force pilot signs out a plane from someone else.

A third part is maintaining the craft while you're on mission.

 

[Seragina]

First, this is space the most important system is the navigation system (and navigator). It might be fine inside the solar system but it can't be allowed to be offline even for a second. It could mean going off course by a 1000 km or so. The ship could coast but it still costs fuel, time and provision!!!
Automation should be considered but more importantly, the ship must be able to do repairs on its own. At the very least all the most important parts including structures and hull. Some more specialized technical & engineering jobs needs to be covered by the engine crew.
The main reasons to reduce crew are

• payload, space, provision cost
• reducing psychological problems due to overcrowding impression

The ship will have tens if not hundreds of billions of parts, hence, there's tons to do to maintain it 24/7. This means the technollogy has to be far more reliable than today in order to reduce workload. At least few milllions of times more reliable. Preferabe 100 millions of times. That would still keep the crew taxed, though.
That all I think of from the top of my head for now.

 

[Yellow Palace]

A lot of the differences between 'Navy' practice and 'Air Force' practice come from the period a vehicle is expected to stay away from base exceeding the time between maintenance. That drives you to have maintainers aboard, who then need to be commanded, fed, and all that other good stuff. You can send an Air Force crew out for quite a long time if you pack enough sandwiches, providing that nothing breaks.

And it needs to break in a way that merely improving reliability won't help - it needs a change to operating practices. What you need is a THRESHER situation. There's a happy little operating model along Air Force lines, and those proposed by Byeman, where everything works fine. Then, there's a change in context. Maybe it's a new form of propulsion. Maybe it's something else. Things go wrong in a way that the old way of doing things can't cope with.

Depending on the details of your sci-fi setting, the obvious one for me is interstellar travel. The Space Force has gotten accustomed to doing maintenance at its Spacedocks, or whatever. Sign a ship out, go do 'stuff' for a couple of days to a week, come home again and give it back to the maintainers.

Then someone comes up with a magical hyperdrive. 'Great,' say the Star Marshals, now confident in their force's abilities. 'Let's strap one to a ship and head to the Gamma Quadrant.' With the inevitability of plot, when they try to come home a widget fails in a part of the hyperdrive that (a) wasn't designed to be maintained away from base, (b) they don't have the tools to fix it anyway, and (c) nobody's invented ansible yet, so they can't call for help.

The above also works perfectly well with an uncrewed spacecraft, by the way. It's just that now your maintainers are robotic. Who do need their own maintenance - when they're wet and organic, we call the crew maintainers things like 'cook', 'doctor', and 'chaplain'.

That's probably broken down as 4 people per watch section times 3 watch sections, plus the actual Officer In Charge. Reactor Operator, Helmsman, Sonar, "Officer of the Deck" or maybe "Scientist". Nothing to take away.

NR-1 ran two-section watches, and the minimum operating crew on that thing was just seven - two officers, five ratings. Possibly as few as three ratings early on, I think perhaps that was cutting it a little too fine.

I can't find the reference, but it was basically one person driving the boat, one person driving the reactor, and one person looking outside.

And frankly I'm having a hard time seeing how they can keep all the stuff going with only one person.

They don't. They have one officer overseeing the whole lot, and a number of ratings doing whatever jobs are needed. They're not overcrewed to the extent the USN is, and they might not be adequately crewed for all eventualities depending on how the ship management company feels about their profit margins.

What they don't have - and AFAIK nobody other than the USN really has - is unrated enlisted personnel. You don't set foot on a deck until you've got trade training.

 

[Byeman]

Citation needed, please.

Because the USN would absolutely have one person on propulsion, one on power generation, one doing fresh water, one doing sewage treatment, etc ad nauseam.

And frankly I'm having a hard time seeing how they can keep all the stuff going with only one person.

Me.

Personally visited the engineering control room of an Oasis class cruise ship.

The number of people increase for docking and other events but the watch is one person.

 

[Byeman]

Roving watches give you bodies to respond to sudden holes in the ship. Not from battle damage, from debris and meteoroids.

But yes, it's probable that we could reduce some of the engineering watches by virtue of being able to put remote displays on those systems.

But spaceships will be big when we get to nuclear-powered spacecraft that can handle continuous burns.

Even a minimal spaceship will need berthing, crews mess, and the actual work areas where the sensor consoles are and where the atmosphere control systems are. Which means there will be space to wander.

Roving where? There will be no "engineering" spaces. Most of the vehicle will be unpressurized.

 

[Scott Kenny]

First, this is space the most important system is the navigation system (and navigator). It might be fine inside the solar system but it can't be allowed to be offline even for a second. It could mean going off course by a 1000 km or so. The ship could coast but it still costs fuel, time and provision!!!
Automation should be considered but more importantly, the ship must be able to do repairs on its own. At the very least all the most important parts including structures and hull. Some more specialized technical & engineering jobs needs to be covered by the engine crew.

Yes, the navigation systems (plural) need to be 9 9s reliable and boot back up really quickly when they do go down.

But when you're still doing Hohmann Transfer Orbits, the minimal energy options with boost and coast for months/years, you only need the navigation systems operating for maybe an hour before and a few minutes after a burn.

A military spacecraft will need a large number of telescopes, that ideally have been laid out to act as a synthetic aperture the size of the habitable portion of the ship.

The main reasons to reduce crew are

• payload, space, provision cost
• reducing psychological problems due to overcrowding impression

However, we've also found that humans don't do well with too small a group. Well, humans in general. There are outliers, and most of them are in submarines.

Scientists in general don't do well in small groups, it seems. See also that jackass spoiling book endings in Antarctica that got stabbed for being a jackass. IIRC we need 15-50 for best stability, up to ~150.

A lot of the differences between 'Navy' practice and 'Air Force' practice come from the period a vehicle is expected to stay away from base exceeding the time between maintenance. That drives you to have maintainers aboard, who then need to be commanded, fed, and all that other good stuff. You can send an Air Force crew out for quite a long time if you pack enough sandwiches, providing that nothing breaks.

And it needs to break in a way that merely improving reliability won't help - it needs a change to operating practices. What you need is a THRESHER situation. There's a happy little operating model along Air Force lines, and those proposed by Byeman, where everything works fine. Then, there's a change in context. Maybe it's a new form of propulsion. Maybe it's something else. Things go wrong in a way that the old way of doing things can't cope with.

Depending on the details of your sci-fi setting, the obvious one for me is interstellar travel. The Space Force has gotten accustomed to doing maintenance at its Spacedocks, or whatever. Sign a ship out, go do 'stuff' for a couple of days to a week, come home again and give it back to the maintainers.

Then someone comes up with a magical hyperdrive. 'Great,' say the Star Marshals, now confident in their force's abilities. 'Let's strap one to a ship and head to the Gamma Quadrant.' With the inevitability of plot, when they try to come home a widget fails in a part of the hyperdrive that (a) wasn't designed to be maintained away from base, (b) they don't have the tools to fix it anyway, and (c) nobody's invented ansible yet, so they can't call for help.

The above also works perfectly well with an uncrewed spacecraft, by the way. It's just that now your maintainers are robotic. Who do need their own maintenance - when they're wet and organic, we call the crew maintainers things like 'cook', 'doctor', and 'chaplain'.

Exactly! And pardon me while I swipe this into my setting notes.

NR-1 ran two-section watches, and the minimum operating crew on that thing was just seven - two officers, five ratings. Possibly as few as three ratings early on, I think perhaps that was cutting it a little too fine.

I can't find the reference, but it was basically one person driving the boat, one person driving the reactor, and one person looking outside.

Yes, that's about what I'd assumed for the bare minimum.

They don't. They have one officer overseeing the whole lot, and a number of ratings doing whatever jobs are needed. They're not overcrewed to the extent the USN is, and they might not be adequately crewed for all eventualities depending on how the ship management company feels about their profit margins.

What they don't have - and AFAIK nobody other than the USN really has - is unrated enlisted personnel. You don't set foot on a deck until you've got trade training.

And UNDES are not common in Submarines. I think we had 3 between Kentucky and Georgia, and I'm only remembering 1 by name.

Too much technical work, not enough random scutwork.

I expect spaceships to be much the same as subs. Lots of technical work, and those techs get to do the random scutwork as a bonus.

Roving where? There will be no "engineering" spaces. Most of the vehicle will be unpressurized.

The reactors will of course be unpressurized, but the places the humans eat, sleep, work, operate the ship, and handle the atmosphere and water will all be pressurized. Which needs to be a fairly large volume.

And that's without my assumption that the gravity centrifuges** would be inside the pressurized volume because trying to keep a rotating seal airtight versus vacuum is a nightmare. Much better to put the centrifuges inside a larger pressurized volume and subdivide them, plus make the entire chamber a

** yes plural. Pairs of counter-rotating centrifuges so the ship doesn't rotate.

 

[Byeman]

The reactors will of course be unpressurized, but the places the humans eat, sleep, work, operate the ship, and handle the atmosphere and water will all be pressurized. Which needs to be a fairly large volume.

Not really, see ISS

 

[GeorgeA]

Me.

Personally visited the engineering control room of an Oasis class cruise ship.

The number of people increase for docking and other events but the watch is one person.

Me too. Hell of a tour, best $150 you can spend while in a large moving container with 6000 other people.

 

[Seragina]

But when you're still doing Hohmann Transfer Orbits, the minimal energy options with boost and coast for months/years, you only need the navigation systems operating for maybe an hour before and a few minutes after a burn.

A military spacecraft will need a large number of telescopes, that ideally have been laid out to act as a synthetic aperture the size of the habitable portion of the ship.

So we are still "near future" tech. I'm asking because many scifi tend to have some supertech mixed in. And what ship size?
I assume habitable + some payload = total payload being 10% of mass.

We have photonic "quantum" camera technology which will greatly extend range and can even look around the corner to peak inside a room. Also known as laser comm. lol since they can work for all optical cases ofc. As usual aperture size matters but with them it's reduced compared to normal optics.

 

[Scott Kenny]

Not really, see ISS

That's for 3-4 people in regular operations, and has a pressurize volume of ~1000m^3.

250-325m^3 per person in pressurized volume. Side note, a 95% male (aka typical astronaut) in zero gee takes pretty close to 2m^3 in volume.

So we are still "near future" tech. I'm asking because many scifi tend to have some supertech mixed in. And what ship size?
I assume habitable + some payload = total payload being 10% of mass.

My only supertech assumption thus far has been working fusion reactors. Gas Core nuclear thermal rockets.

Oh, and I guess Zubrin nuclear saltwater rockets to use in the "missiles". ("Torpedoes" are roughly as fast as the ships, "missiles" are a lot faster)

 

[Byeman]

That's for 3-4 people in regular operations, and has a pressurize volume of ~1000m^3.

250-325m^3 per person in pressurized volume. Side note, a 95% male (aka typical astronaut) in zero gee takes pretty close to 2m^3 in volume.

It has been 4 and more for quite some time. About 400m^3 is habitable.

34 to 76 cubic meters for typical homes

 

[Seragina]

That's for 3-4 people in regular operations, and has a pressurize volume of ~1000m^3.

250-325m^3 per person in pressurized volume. Side note, a 95% male (aka typical astronaut) in zero gee takes pretty close to 2m^3 in volume.

From my universal colony(ship) rule of thumb: 457.2 m^3 182.88 m^2 per PAX
I recommend halving for military and then add any military specific (weapons) spaces

My only supertech assumption thus far has been working fusion reactors. Gas Core nuclear thermal rockets.

Oh, and I guess Zubrin nuclear saltwater rockets to use in the "missiles". ("Torpedoes" are roughly as fast as the ships, "missiles" are a lot faster)

Good choice.
So I read the paper
and found two errors
1. he mixed up thrust and kinetic energy calculation in the example where 28,000 MW was given when it should have been 136.319 TW
2. he applied nozzlle efficiency two time over 427 GW where it should have been 533.12 GW
I won't bother with the more complicated rest but doesn't give a lot of confidence.

300 t ship (payload) with 33 t NSWR engine and one-way-2-Titan fuel of 7.6 t + propellant 41.8 t + 1.7 t tank for a total of 384.1 t (given 384.0 t)
=> 0.21895 engine+fuel fraction
=> 0.1286 fuel fraction
very good numbers. It rivals much higher tech levels at least in terms of mass.

 

[Scott Kenny]

It has been 4 and more for quite some time.

And I bet the crew will admit that tensions were higher than normal during that time because "strangers" were in their space.

About 400m^3 is habitable.

The other 600m^3 is operational stuff, which still needs to be included into the total "occupied volume" calculations.

34 to 76 cubic meters for typical homes

Uhm, a 10sqm room is ~30m^3 ish (depending on ceiling height).

From my universal colony(ship) rule of thumb: 457.2 m^3 182.88 m^2 per PAX
I recommend halving for military and then add any military specific (weapons) spaces

Oh, thank you for that!

Good choice.
So I read the paper
and found two errors
1. he mixed up thrust and kinetic energy calculation in the example where 28,000 MW was given when it should have been 136.319 TW
2. he applied nozzlle efficiency two time over 427 GW where it should have been 533.12 GW
I won't bother with the more complicated rest but doesn't give a lot of confidence.

I was honestly running off the Atomic Rockets analysis, because a lot of that math is way above my paygrade.

300 t ship (payload) with 33 t NSWR engine and one-way-2-Titan fuel of 7.6 t + propellant 41.8 t + 1.7 t tank for a total of 384.1 t (given 384.0 t)
=> 0.21895 engine+fuel fraction
=> 0.1286 fuel fraction
very good numbers. It rivals much higher tech levels at least in terms of mass.

Missile of about 50tons loaded mass, with 9 tons of saltwater fuel onboard. (33 tons of engine, 9 tons of uranium saltwater, 8 tons of guidance hardware and spaceframe)

With the old (and heavily questioned) HEU predictions, that gives 3000sec of burn time. And 28gees of acceleration at launch, increasing to 42gees at burnout(!)
LEU, only 50 seconds burn time. Same acceleration.

 

[Byeman]

And I bet the crew will admit that tensions were higher than normal during that time because "strangers" were in their spac

Nope, not at alll

The other 600m^3 is operational stuff, which still needs to be included into the total "occupied volume" calculations.

Most is experiment hardware which is not necessary for the operation of the ISS

 

[tychosis]

As I understand it, the Virginia-class still has a Chief of the Watch (as the person in charge of the watch section) and a single Helmsman, no Dive.

Yeah...no COW, no helmsman--just a pilot and copilot. Generally the copilot is handling all the COW and dive duties while the pilot drives but in practice they can pretty much divide the duties however they see fit.

I do feel like some division manning could use a bit of rebalancing. We're still manning sonar like we're running around with 70s/80s antiques when you could probably trim the size of the sonar watchsection by half and still be effective--but it also helps to have a pool of aware/alert operators to rotate out.

(And let's be honest, you're gonna get a bunch of people who are dumb as a box of rocks. You probably want to maintain a bigger pool just so that you can trust you have at least a handful of competent and capable people around.)

 

[Scott Kenny]

Yeah...no COW, no helmsman--just a pilot and copilot. Generally the copilot is handling all the COW and dive duties while the pilot drives but in practice they can pretty much divide the duties however they see fit.

Interesting.

I still think there should be a formal CoW, though, as the "Duty Section Leader" for that watch section.

(I think I was out of the Navy before the first Virginia did a deployment)​

But if the Virginias aren't doing the old school 4-man Ship Control Party and Helms/Planes as "nub's first watch qual", where do they send the nubs? Straight to their divisional watches?

I do feel like some division manning could use a bit of rebalancing. We're still manning sonar like we're running around with 70s/80s antiques when you could probably trim the size of the sonar watchsection by half and still be effective--but it also helps to have a pool of aware/alert operators to rotate out.

(And let's be honest, you're gonna get a bunch of people who are dumb as a box of rocks. You probably want to maintain a bigger pool just so that you can trust you have at least a handful of competent and capable people around.)

Eh, I think 3 bodies and a Sonar Sup is probably right, even with newer/better sensors. Mostly for alertness. I know I got really fried after about an hour on the sticks.

Still regret not doing the "Radio/Nav/Sonar Soup" cans prank, making a Campbell's Soup label saying [whatever] soup and rolling that into control when ordered.

 

[tychosis]

I still think there should be a formal CoW, though, as the "Duty Section Leader" for that watch section.

Well, that's most of what the copilot is doing, really. It honestly doesn't take two people to drive the boat.

But if the Virginias aren't doing the old school 4-man Ship Control Party and Helms/Planes as "nub's first watch qual", where do they send the nubs? Straight to their divisional watches?

Mostly. The Messenger is still a nub, and we're always willing to let a nub qualify broadband.

Eh, I think 3 bodies and a Sonar Sup is probably right, even with newer/better sensors. Mostly for alertness. I know I got really fried after about an hour on the sticks.

Yeah, 3+sup would be fine--most watchsections are fatter than that (as they're often augmented by nub FTs/YNs etc as mentioned above.) Maybe we just gave them too many stacks so they think they need to populate all of them.

 

[Scott Kenny]

Well, that's most of what the copilot is doing, really. It honestly doesn't take two people to drive the boat.

I figured as much.

Mostly. The Messenger is still a nub, and we're always willing to let a nub qualify broadband.


Yeah, 3+sup would be fine--most watchsections are fatter than that (as they're often augmented by nub FTs/YNs etc as mentioned above.) Maybe we just gave them too many stacks so they think they need to populate all of them.

Thanks for that, I'd been struggling to figure out where to assign the nub narrator for other stories.

 

[Byeman]

Here's the rough crew count I've come up with for a (scifi) space "battleship:"

• Quartermaster (tracks ship’s position and maintains the deck log, also has burns plotted ahead of time to intercept or avoid objects of interest)
• Shipping Officer (Advises conn of the position, course, speed, and closest point of approach (CPA) of all close contacts in the area, with particular emphasis on small craft appearing at short range and contacts that have changed course or have erratic courses and speeds. Functionally the Lookout, and probably replaceable with a nonsentient AI.)

duplicate roles

 

[Seragina]

I was honestly running off the Atomic Rockets analysis, because a lot of that math is way above my paygrade.

Atomic Rocket is good for intro but when it comes down to it it comes short especially with real world engineering among others.

Missile of about 50tons loaded mass, with 9 tons of saltwater fuel onboard. (33 tons of engine, 9 tons of uranium saltwater, 8 tons of guidance hardware and spaceframe)

Sounds about right.

With the old (and heavily questioned) HEU predictions, that gives 3000sec of burn time. And 28gees of acceleration at launch, increasing to 42gees at burnout(!)
LEU, only 50 seconds burn time. Same acceleration.

I assume the rampup is linear so I can average it to 35 gees for 3000 s; the final v is 1029.69825 km/s =~0.0034 c and burn distance 1544547.375 km = 1.5 million km. Good range for direct shot.
At that distance the target might see it ~5.15 s after launch and would have 2995 s time to evade.
Hidding the exhaust is a must but since orbital mechanics doesn't produce linear flight paths this is impossible.
Since this engine isn't truely an ionic or plasma drive, well, the hot gas is technicaly, but you don't have the means to focus the exhaust into a beam. Even so it would diverge anyway due to charge repulsion.
There's no pressure in space allowing the typical exhaust plum to expands a lot. All right, skipping the long discussion on guidance and missile warfare etc.
How many missile would there be? (see below)

edit: Warning long post incoming!
Let me run down the ship calculations real quick.

complement: 163 enlisted, ~21 officers
contingency: 12
total of 196 PAX

Using my colony/ship rule of thumb design 457.2 m^3 182.88 m^2 per PAX at half value, less is possible but absolute minimum is 1 medieval bed-room=2.5 tatami without room for anything else.
=> 44805.6 m^3 17922.24 m^2

Rule of thumb for space flight the spaceship mass (payload) per human is 100 t (using ISS woud halve this)
=> 19600 t

as per research paper the base line design has ~3.425 gee
given a 3 gee requirement that would leave 0.425 gee free to add more mass
or can scale up easier
if goal is 6 gee => 2x engines => 180x upscaling
=> 5940 t drive section and 2.322e9 N thrust and max. 35.280 t fuel/s
=> 25540 t total ; at 6 gee 1502771046 N required so 819228954 N or 13923.017 t left for fuel and missile.

Range is measured by burn time and related with delta_v to actual location, hence, "range".
I'm using the delta_v Solar system map:
Earth-Mars (from LEO to Mars' LEO): 5702 m/s (one-way; multiply for x-way)
Earth-Jupiter: 23770 m/s
Earth-Pluto: 11407 m/s
Range for roaming freely is a problem since we have to come up with some random course within the system.
Simplified
E-M: 1x
E-P: 2x
E-J: 4x
So Jupiter requires the most fuel. Taking that as the standard range and having it two way plus contingency 9x would be required.
=> 51318 m/s => at 6 gee ~872.2 seconds of burn => 30764.16 t of fuel
oops we are -16841.143 t short in mass allocation.

 

[tychosis]

duplicate roles

Well--not really. (At least, not in the USN.) The QMOW is only concerned with plotting ownship position. They don't really have any responsibilities regarding gaining or tracking contacts.

Thanks for that, I'd been struggling to figure out where to assign the nub narrator for other stories.

I do think your watchbill might be a little heavy for normal operations but probably fitting for something like battlestations.

 

[apparition13]

What would cause the total loss of a space mission that the Navy would say "we solved that problem 400 years ago, why didn't you learn the lesson?"

I'd originally been thinking a catastrophic failure, hole in the low-temp radiator that could have been fixed right away but wasn't, causing the computers to bake. Problem is, computers now will yell at you that they're cooking their chips long before you start to get data corruption.

Now, I'm thinking something more like a fire caused by a lack of cleaning, or maybe a crewmember going nuts.

What can the members of this forum come up with?

Edit: note that this is already assuming crewed spaceships, likely over 25 crew. (frankly, 12 is pretty close to the bare minimum crew for any 24/7 manning)

I'm ignoring this to focus on the question in the thread title: "Trying to create the cause behind Space Force going from Air Force culture to Naval culture in the future."

The key difference is that in a ship, everyone goes where the captain says. In a fighter squadron, every pilot can go in a different direction. That's the cultural problem, and to "solve" it you just need large enough spacecraft. If I had to guess it would be somewhere in the 15-50 crew zone, but I don't know where. So if you're assuming 25+ crew to begin with, you're probably already there.

​

 

[Scott Kenny]

I'm ignoring this to focus on the question in the thread title: "Trying to create the cause behind Space Force going from Air Force culture to Naval culture in the future."

The key difference is that in a ship, everyone goes where the captain says. In a fighter squadron, every pilot can go in a different direction. That's the cultural problem, and to "solve" it you just need large enough spacecraft. If I had to guess it would be somewhere in the 15-50 crew zone, but I don't know where. So if you're assuming 25+ crew to begin with, you're probably already there.

Yes, but the problem is that the USAF/USSF hasn't had to deal with more than 6 crew in decades. They don't have any of the systems or training in keeping people where they are in a fight.

Any part of the organization that is used to working with more than 6 crew is on the ground where the personnel have alternative positions to move to.

 

[tychosis]

Yes, but the problem is that the USAF/USSF hasn't had to deal with more than 6 crew in decades. They don't have any of the systems or training in keeping people where they are in a fight.

Yeah, this is the biggest difference. I don't think it has anything to do with which direction the unit goes but the fact that everything you need has to come with you.

Food and water to keep the crew alive? Gotta take it or make it. The guy who actually knows how to fix the thing? He has to come with you too.

This is stuff that the Air Force has simply never had to worry about.

 

[Seragina]

Alright, continuing.
Let's set a more practical range first.
From past discussion on naval escort range vs. route distance we got a 1.444x modifier. And since this is space 1x is required for contingency reserve fuel.
=> 2*23770*1.444+5702=74349.76 m/s delta_v needed for "range"

After running the rocket equation on it. It appears this design doesn't have sufficient headroom for higher gee than 3 gee.
Too bad.

With otherwise same settings and say 128 missiles:
habitat: 19600 t
drive section: 12870 t 5.031e9 N max. 76.440 t fuel/s
weapons: 6400 t
propellant: 105808.0576 t
tanks: 4303.2 t
total: 148981.2576 t
at 3 gee payload overhead: 22025.151 t
not bad.
I'm uncertain about the engine size because it's basically a bundle of pipes (D <1 m), that's why we only need to scale the plenum area (D ~1.2 m).
The bell shaped nozzle is the unknown. Since there's no technical drawing in the paper I have to assume a regular nozzle.
D ~12m L ~15 m

Food and water to keep the crew alive? Gotta take it or make it. The guy who actually knows how to fix the thing? He has to come with you too.

Provision becomes a problem the longer they are deployed. Inside the solar system you are a few months to at most 2 years away from a planet. It's not too bad to worry about.

Now maintening is the true nightmare. More on that in another post later. gotta go.

 

[Seragina]

Now about maintenance. The stuff no scifi novel dares talk about or simply ignores it because they consider it not important.

Frankly, there aren't a lot of real world documentations or publicly available for reference. For obviously business secrecy and the like. The ones that are are mostly related to critical components and not representative of systems as a whole. That said they all look in line with typical emperic data and theory.

And the one space related is similarly incomplete as well as provided false numbers for the equation used. The fact that maintenance schedule design for the ISS failed and caused astronauts to spend more time on it than expected. Well, you get the idea of the state of manned space technology planning...
I'm just applying a bit more irl data onto this.

continueing from example calculation above ofc.

19600 t "habitat" section: 299764706 components
=> 6887451 components subject to repair or replacement of which 688745 are spareable items of which 114791 are repairable items

12870 t drive section: 14300000 components ; might be less since it looks "simple" so the rules of thumb may not fully apply
=> 328560 components subject to repair or replacement of which 32856 are spareable items of which 5476 are repairable items
This one will probably require a lot more EVA excursions.

total 314,064,706 components
7216011 components subject to repair or replacement of which 721601 are spareable items of which 120267 are repairable items

After the first 50 hours in order to maintain 99.99% reliability : (the paper says in the first 50 hours but irl it's said on the first 51 hour)
3558 components have to be replaced or 1.186 components per minute
=> 59.3 are rapairable: if say it takes 3 hours to repair a component then 177.9 man hours have to be assigned to this work
If it takes 10 min to find/reach each one then 593 man hours have to be assigned for this phase
If it takes 30 min to remove or re-attach then 1779 man hours have to be assigned for this phase
If 1% require EVA and each walk require 1 hour then 35.58 man hours have to be assigned for this task
then a total of 2585.48 man hours are required for maintenance or 51.71 man hours of maintenance have to be completed per hour or 52 crewmen have to be assigned at any time to maintenance.

After 100000 hours ~11 years reliability will reach a threshold of 85%;
In theory replacement will slowdown by 6.35x as the components proof themselves reliable
but the number of components needing replacement due to age increases to 47109706.
This is the point in the lifecycle where a corrective repair aka overhaul has to take place in order to bring the ship back to operational standard. It's also in accordance with typical aircraft, cars, ships etc. lifecycle. (All designed based on human life expectancy and will not apply to any other alien civilisation. This is an identification mark unique to humans.)

Based on ISS maintenance requirement for Environmental Control and Life Support System (ECLSS)
=> 196 h/day

In the paper these components are all "sizeable" smaller components like light bulbs are not included.
I've adjust to include all components but statistics tells me the small components are only about
956327 components
With a typical 5% FIT => 47816 require replacement at any time.

 

[Scott Kenny]

Now about maintenance. The stuff no scifi novel dares talk about or simply ignores it because they consider it not important.

No, it's generally just not interesting. And not interesting = not worth writing about.

The JAG-in-Space series basically opens with a fatality due to a maintenance accident. Somehow a danger-tagged system was still energized, killing the spacer working on it. And some brand-new Ensign gets stuck with the investigation since he was routed through a JAG class while the Navy tried to catch him up to his ship. (Pretty good series, BTW)

But in general the constant ongoing maintenance is simply mentioned as "[name] and [name] working on [system]" as the MC walks past.

Frankly, there aren't a lot of real world documentations or publicly available for reference.

No, there's not.

I've been splitting ideas between all the joys of Navy Life(tm) and aircraft repairs, with the note that aircraft repairs are effectively shipyard work.

Well--not really. (At least, not in the USN.) The QMOW is only concerned with plotting ownship position. They don't really have any responsibilities regarding gaining or tracking contacts.

And I'm adding the responsibility to have evasion burns pre-plotted for Space work.

I do think your watchbill might be a little heavy for normal operations but probably fitting for something like battlestations.

I think it's right for what's there in the CIC during normal operations. Need to pester some of the skimmers here to run a sanity check, though.