Any Aerospace engineers care to comment?

[Toy Killer]

I'm preparing a game of Dread, set in the future on a drone repair ship. I know the forum has it's share of arm chair astronauts (And who knows probably one or two actual astronauts) so, I figured I would run it by yall and see what constructive criticisms and advice you can give.

Thanks in advance!

Warning; Larger then it appears!

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Class XIX
Welcome aboard

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Drelliades are Celtan Class workships. Operating with a minimal crew of five or six, they tend to malfunctioning drones on work sites. While there are over two hundred of functional work sites in the galaxy, they can be watched over from just fewer than 30 Drelliade crews. The fuel and food upkeep costs alone are starting to etch into the fiscal securities of the job market.
However, they remain in place for now; relics of an easier time in resource gathering. Celtan Industries has slowly retired more and more of their revolutionary ships, leaving more and more jobs revoked in the name of profits. Now, a job on a Drelliade is synonymous with hardship and desperation. The hours are absurd, the work is drastic and chaotic and the schedules are drafted by insane expectations. The work on Drelliades requires extensive schooling and training, but the pay will hardly cover rent.

Rumors persist of people who got picked up from these **** jobs for bigger and better careers, but that’s usually discussed as half-hearted jokes. Nobody wants to work for Celtan, and if they had the skills to be hired by Altech or Christian Carbin, they wouldn’t be donning the same ****ty coveralls from a drain pod with a notorious fragile G-stabe. Even the Drelliade mechanical codex for the Gravitational Stabilizer recommends a dirty look as diagnostic repairs in some of the older prints.

But Celtan isn’t going to invest in a job market they are actively attempting to rid themselves of. Each year, more drones are replaced and updated with improved ‘Opti-safe’ protocols. These protocols allow the drones to continue working with fewer systems operable. This has two profound effects, It keeps them working even when they are ‘Broken’; and it makes the repairs required to be performed to be more taxing. These complicated repairs make the competitive job more intense and the work environment downright straining.

It’s not unusual for crew members to take up narcotics, have fits of depression and lapses in sanity. Class 19 on a droid is an Operating system’s error, causing a variety of erratic and odd behavior. The slang for these general mental issues is “Class 19”, as in, “Jacobs spent the last 7 hours bubbling his stir-ins. I think he’s going Class 19”.

In the past, Drelliades had something that passed for a medical bay. With the increased cost for updating Divinci medical bots, they were removed. In their place, each crew member is taught basic life saving techniques and use of medical supplies. An emergency medical departure from the job can be performed, but the after process is so intense and under such scrutiny that the crew is immediately landed off their ship until a proper verdict can be placed is on whether the event was truly an emergency or not.

During this time, the crew is not paid and very likely to be placed in the back of the line for reflight when a verdict does come back. If it is deemed a medical emergency, the crew goes back to work after a couple of months. If it wasn’t, in the eyes of the corporation, they are immediately fired and charged for the loss of profits evaluated due to their malingering.

Given the erratic and odd decisions made in the past, most crew’s would rather off a fellow rather than risk abandon their job. It’s not unusual to see Drelliade crews with cybernetic limbs, digits or implants due to work place injuries or the restraining there of.

The 9 to 5

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Drelliade’s primary purpose to update, repair and replace drones on off planet worksites. These worksites are usually neighboring planets and the occasional moon; but ring belt jobs scatter the roster from spin to spin.

These drones excavate, build and level the terrain, gathering resources. Commercially, the drones are a huge asset. Man labor wouldn’t be able to work on these planets until a 4 phase terraform took place. Even if the expensive process were considered, over half the planets can’t even support such an endeavor and are more valuable in their natural state.

With the droids being such an important investment to the company, their upkeep is just as vital. With two hundred people, they can keep a thousand drones up and active. In the early day of droid labor harvesting, they had over a thousand crews, or six thousand people, keeping up with just over thirty thousand drones. As resources and sites were established, the drone technology surpassed their need for workers. More efficient, faster and self reliant with only more critical and complicated repairs needed in return.
The need for a Drelliade crew is still required, at least for now, but the work load slowly increased while the work force slowly drifted down. The state of the art Drelliade ships are slowly getting taxed out of commission.

When Celtan commissioned its first Drelliade, it was the crown jewel in travel efficiency. The crew pods, later known as drain pods, allow the ship to secure the G-stabe of the ship while the crew sleeps. The repair bay doubles as the kitchen and dining hall. The Drain pods were able to play S-Mail messages and videos, allowing the crew to strike the drains when they weren’t ready to sleep and still turn off the ships exhaustive G-stab.

The piloting system is nearly automatic, as the ship itself is practically a drone. It had pre-programmed personality for interaction with the crew, but that feature was eventually disabled in later years as it bore some unsettling results if left operating for too long. The S-Mail systems were disabled as well, as it was rare for the Drelliade to be within range of communication with anyone beside the ship itself.

The crew dock at a local station, where they have a few days to spend of their own time. The ship is refueled, stocked and loaded with a schedule, including coordinates, dates and services required. The crew members return and travel for a day or so between work sites. At the work site, they rush to get everything done, while the ship recharges and updates the schedule based on the crew’s progress. Once all the work sites on the roster are completed, they have a few days return back to dock.

A typical cycle has about ten to sixteen jobs on it, but it’s not drastically uncommon to have thirty sites on the to-do list. So a crew member with a family doesn’t usually keep it shortly after joining a crew, as he is rarely home a third of the time he is home.

As a ship arrives at the planet, the Drelliade emits a signal to the droids of its presence, usually called “whistling for the dogs” or “dinner bell” as the drones tend to drop what they are doing to meet the ship. Once landed, the Security Officer brings which ever droids on board one by one in planet specific suits. The Wetware Officer repairs the hardware of the drones, and the Mechanical Officer tends to the physical damage and joints. Then the Programming officer tends to the software and updates the drone, and the process is repeated until all the drones are back to work and functional.

The Captain checks off the progress signs off the work as complete. He coordinates the crew and makes sure those safety regulations for the planet and drones being worked on are complied with. When the crew feels they are done, they double check their work with a service indate. When cleared, they move on to the next site.

Of course, with a job as this, a typical work day isn’t typical. Drones run away instead of approach the ship. Parts are missing for repairs. The last crew did a **** Jury-rig to keep the drone running. Drones get stuck in the weirdest places. The planet is experiencing catastrophic weather. Such is a day in the life of a Drelliade crew member.

The Job Description

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Each crew member has a specific role to play onboard, but no one is the only qualified member. Even the captain is defined by being the most qualified. One could argue the Security Officer as being fairly easily replaced, but no one would want his position in the first place.

The security officer is usually a freshly discharged military member. The use of foot soldiers has become one of presence in the current forces, as drones are hardly reliable to rationalize something like dangerous intent, after the 4tb processing ban on AI. However, in warfare itself, foot soldiers and drones fight side by side, each covering the other’s weaknesses. This experience in working with the drones lends itself naturally to going into dangerous places to retrieve the drones from rockside.

Security Officers tend to get rotated out frequently. Occasionally the find a ship they particularly work well with, but lacking the engineering and knowledge on how drones work, the frequently feel left out of the clique. Occasions of battle fatigue can on top of being disrespected as dumb muscle on a ship for a month or so while being the only one expected to carry a weapon doesn’t lend itself well. Giving the prior GI the thought they are transferring out soon helps keep them from doing anything violent, however.

Wetware Officers tend to have burnt finger tips and an overly critical lack of humor. Their job requires a sense of precision to do right, and it only attracts a specific kind of person to pursue much longer then a single course or too in college. So much, to a point, that being hired as a Wetware Officer, by company regulations, prevents you from being placed on board a ship as captain. It’s not uncommon for Wetware officers to be fired before reaching a point in their career for being in the company for too long and out ranking their fellow crew members.

Programming Officers are odd, they tend to overcomplicate simple problems before solving them. Some say it’s a simple fascination with problem solving, while others say it’s just useful in programming. Whatever the case may be, they are frequently looking to improve, fix and upgrade things around them. While they have solid job security (it’s difficult to match Celtan’s pace of leading programming design, and they tend to enjoy the actual work side of the job), it can be tough keeping them entertained with drones. Most of what they do is simple updates and reboots, and personal tampering with the systems is forbidden by company law. They do tend to gravitate to each other and make some startling innovations in the company technology though, usually looking for the big break out of crew member and into R&D.

Mechanical Officers are known for their creativity and improvisation. Often times, a job will be sent out for and prepped for, only for the actuality of the situation to be much more dire then originally assessed. A dragon in a pinch, they have saved a number of crews from critical, unprepared situations with ingenuity and luck alone. While they may not have great people skills, and sometimes can get a bit full of themselves, they are more than willing to teach a fellow engineer the ins and outs of their work.

Captains are the centered around teamwork. Having been on a number of ships themselves, they know the value of a well oiled machine. Their job involves accounting for the actions of their crew members and answering to the company when they call. They know the routine, the drill, and have it marked on the calendar. They say that before someone is really a captain, they have to ‘hear’ the ship’s song. The thousands of drones humming slightly out of sync with one another create a harmonious week long buzz. That’s how they know everything is alright.

The grand tour

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The ship is cramped, tight and never goes too long after leaving port before it starts smelling of body odor again. The engine is uncomfortably close to the ‘Sound Proof’ drain pods to get a good night’s sleep and the ship board copy of “The Drelliade Mechanical Codex” is almost always out of date with the technology on board, making out of port repairs dangerous at best. The ship board computer beeps and whistles a hundred different ways to communicate. Sure, you get use to the regular notices, but every once in a while, it makes a bizarre noise that no one seems to know what it means.

The ship is broken into 5 crew spaces. There is the hanger, where the drone is brought on board and decontaminated with the security officer. The prot suits are varied by planet atmosphere and dangers, with a selection of masks for further customization. A shard bike is available for wrangling loose drones, when they are too close to be flown after. It also has the only private bathroom.

The work room has 5 of the drain pods on the sides with a variety of fold out tool selves installed on the deck, keeping the tools from flying through the shaky walls when the G-stabe is turned off ship wide. A few lockers are hidden along the ship, each ship is different, but usually one is in the work room. The work room also doubles as a kitchen (as much as you need for stir-ins at least) and dining room. You could call it a living room as well, if you call ship life living…

The drain pods are small pods that allow you to roll over, stretch (as long as your shorter then 5’8”) and sleep. It also hooks up to the sezilier suit and can microbathe. People frequently comment that a microbathe never seems to actually get one clean, but it does the best it can. This microbath is why it’s called the drain pod, as it’s obvious when someone is inside, due to the constant draining.

The third room is the Bridge, more for show then anything. It has useful information and the only really functional computer on the ship. It can receive and send S-mails to the company and is the only way an emergency override of the schedule can be accomplished. The ship has manual steering abilities, but no one has ever really used them. The steering is controlled by the drone, and without the drone it would take 4 people to make any kind of difference at the speeds the ship travels at. Besides, if the drone went out, the steering is the last of your worries.

The engine room is only a room if you are an engine. Most of the space inside is filled with spinning parts and electronics, but the occasional fix has to be made on the fly if the engineer can fit in the wedges of openness.

Finally there is the medical “Bay” or as most call it “The Boo-boo closet”. The sixth drain pod is available in here, and also has a lock feature enabled. So if a crew member goes class 19, he can be safely held until they get back to port. It has a variety of antibiotics, an AED, wound dressings, tourniquets, liquid stitching and a few medicinal narcotics. Little known fact, most people who are fired from the company are caught stealing from the boo-boo closet. It also has an eye flushing sink, which doesn’t take an engineer to figure out how to use it as an impromptu shower. It’s also a reliable place to have private conversations.

[Yora]

Do you have a specific question?

[Sir_Mopalot]

Looks good if what you're aiming for is a Battlestar Galactica level of hardness, but I'm a little confused, your intro and title imply that you're looking for critique on the engineering of the ship, and then you spend the whole write-up talking about the people on board. That's great for a horror game, but, like Yora, I dunno exactly what you're looking to hear. I guess one thing, either you're using some sort of non-propellant based engine (and thus no fuel), or the engines are not going to interfere with people's sleep. Rocket engines are fired very rarely, you don't have the fuel (or need) to be thrusting all the time (although if you can, it's one way to do gravity). With a non-propellant engine, you could thrust to accelerate towards your destination, then half-way there turn around and thrust to slow down, and get there faster than if you just did one burn and then "coasted" to your destination, but the latter is the way that every engine that's been seriously discussed does it, and so you're going to have true engine noise maybe 10 minutes out of every trip.

[GungHo]

I can't tell if you're looking for science advice, business process advice, or what. You don't seem to have any actual questions about aeronautics or aerospace embedded anywhere, nor any real aerospace challenges presented.

[Geordnet]

Add me to the list of confused engineers. The only thing I'm really qualified to give is hard science advice, but I'm sorry to say that there really isn't anything right about the ship from that perspective: it just plain wouldn't work in real life. But as others have pointed out, it's perfectly fine in only moderately-hard sci-fi. (I would personally put it at Firefly-level hardness.)

The best advice I can give you is to look up the sandbox rocketry simulator game "Kerbal Space Program" if you want to get an idea how space really works.


If you actually want my destructive criticism, though, here it is:

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For starters, space travel is so expensive that "mobile repair ships" don't make economic sense. Either establish a permanent base in the area, or send a replacement.

Secondly, the #1 hardest thing to transport in space is people. Literally tons of life support systems and radiation shielding is needed for just a handfull of crewmen, not to mention the engineering challanges of fending off muscle/bone atrophy and ordinary cabin fever during the multi-year voyages.
The point is: everything should be controlled remotely. The only reason for humans to ever be aboard a ship is if moving humans is part of that ship's mission.

Even if there were humans aboard, they wouldn't have to worry about the noise of the engine interrupting their sleep. The most efficient (fuel-wise) method of space travel involves short, minutes-long "burns" separated by months-long cruises. Besides, any thruster with a low enough fuel (propellant) consumption to be able to run constantly would necessarily be too low-power to wake disturb sleep.

Oh, and you didn't mention any propellant tanks. Propellant/fuel should make up ~80% of the ship's mass.

[Trekkin]

KSP might work; I'd be remiss if I didn't also bring up Orbiter, though, if you want more numbers.

That aside, I'm not quite sure on what basis we're supposed to be looking at the viability of the design. The only thing that really jumps out at me is the conflation of the engine with the ship's power supply -- at least, that's why I'm assuming the engine is on constantly. Usually, the part of the spacecraft responsible for moving it around is separate from the part keeping the lights and air on; here it sounds like they're the same system, which is fine but messes with the hardness a bit.

The problems inherent to moving humans have already been pointed out; I'd just add that the crew complement seems a bit redundant.

Really, we need to know how the ship is supposed to work in order to comment on how realistic it is. What does the engine run on? How does the G-Stabe work?

[Toy Killer]

If you actually want my destructive criticism, though, here it is:

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For starters, space travel is so expensive that "mobile repair ships" don't make economic sense. Either establish a permanent base in the area, or send a replacement.

Secondly, the #1 hardest thing to transport in space is people. Literally tons of life support systems and radiation shielding is needed for just a handfull of crewmen, not to mention the engineering challanges of fending off muscle/bone atrophy and ordinary cabin fever during the multi-year voyages.
The point is: everything should be controlled remotely. The only reason for humans to ever be aboard a ship is if moving humans is part of that ship's mission.

Even if there were humans aboard, they wouldn't have to worry about the noise of the engine interrupting their sleep. The most efficient (fuel-wise) method of space travel involves short, minutes-long "burns" separated by months-long cruises. Besides, any thruster with a low enough fuel (propellant) consumption to be able to run constantly would necessarily be too low-power to wake disturb sleep.

Oh, and you didn't mention any propellant tanks. Propellant/fuel should make up ~80% of the ship's mass.

This is what I was looking for. I plan on advertising this game out around my college campus and didn't want it to devolve into an hour long aerospace lecture dissecting the 'realism' of the game. I'm looking for a 'baby's first project' for my first graphic novel and figured this would be a good way to A)Get a story that people will, at least immediately, understand with only criticisms of fridge logic, and B) Get me use to working with people on a story, rather then ignoring peoples advice on how the story should go.

Problem is, for all my love of drawing gunk ridden matrix/Geiger-esque techonology and gore, I don't really know much about actual space travel. I avoided trying to discuss the ship's mechanics, since i use to work with an a gentleman who dropped out of his aeronautical engineering degree and learned quickly I don't know jack about how space 'Works'. Further more, the point of the labor being economically unfeasible is partially the point. I mentioned that their is a ban on AI surpassing a certain point of processing power (For the record, I'm also technologically challenged, I don't know if 4 terrabytes is any kind of limitation), which was supposed to imply that they needed men on the ground.

I also recalled communication in space being remarkably difficult to maintain when you start dealing with cosmic numbers, so I figured they would approach it the easiest method available by having underpaid, overworked crews go site to site and manually work on the drones.

Sorry for not being clear, I guess, I didn't know what I wanted to ask for?

[Mando Knight]

Problem is, for all my love of drawing gunk ridden matrix/Geiger-esque techonology and gore, I don't really know much about actual space travel. I avoided trying to discuss the ship's mechanics, since i use to work with an a gentleman who dropped out of his aeronautical engineering degree and learned quickly I don't know jack about how space 'Works'.

Space works by doing nothing. All you really have out there are gravity and your rocket. And horrible death rays coming off of those hyper-gigantic balls of fire that everything happens to be flying around.

I also recalled communication in space being remarkably difficult to maintain when you start dealing with cosmic numbers, so I figured they would approach it the easiest method available by having underpaid, overworked crews go site to site and manually work on the drones.

That's like saying "you only have dial-up, so the easiest way to contact someone on the other side of the continent is to ride a horse out there yourself."

[Trekkin]

That's like saying "you only have dial-up, so the easiest way to contact someone on the other side of the continent is to ride a horse out there yourself."

This. If you have FTL travel -- and it sounds like you do -- you also have FTL communications without manned ships. Just load the data and a transmitter onto a robot. Depending on the design of your FTL drive, it may even be most efficient to make it a series of one-way robots.

If you want a concise explanation of space as it relates to the design of spacecraft, look at the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation. The smaller you can get your payload (like a radio and a flash drive versus six people), the less fuel you need to carry, and everything lightens and cheapens up exponentially.

Oh! I thought of something else, if we can still offer criticism: It sounds like the whole ship lands on the planet to deal with the drones. Conventional wisdom would dictate at least two ships: an interstellar/interplanetary one moving a separatable lander around. Otherwise you're dragging your stardrive around to places where you presumably don't want to turn it on, and that's a bit of a waste. Really, there could be a series of landers, or at least a reconfigurable one, depending on the planet in question.

[Telok]

I've got to plug Atomic Rockets at Project Rho. It's a technical assistance guide for SF writers. Scroll down to the bottom of the page for the topic list.

[Sir_Mopalot]

I've got to plug Atomic Rockets at Project Rho. It's a technical assistance guide for SF writers. Scroll down to the bottom of the page for the topic list.

I love that website, just keep in mind that there's a perfectly good reason that most sci-fi stories are softer sci-fi than what he's talking about. Space combat will simply not be as interesting as we'd like it to be, so to make it interesting, you're stepping away from rock-hard sci-fi.

[Adoendithas]

I love that website, just keep in mind that there's a perfectly good reason that most sci-fi stories are softer sci-fi than what he's talking about. Space combat will simply not be as interesting as we'd like it to be, so to make it interesting, you're stepping away from rock-hard sci-fi.

As an example, try looking at the end of Protector by Larry Niven. That describes a battle in space without FTL travel, and is so incredibly tedious the book doesn't lose much if you skip to the end.

[Toy Killer]

So, For the setting i have in place, I probably should just go with a softer sf? Its ultimately nonsense in a hard scifi for a crew based ship to travel to these work sites?

[Deophaun]

This. If you have FTL travel -- and it sounds like you do -- you also have FTL communications without manned ships. Just load the data and a transmitter onto a robot. Depending on the design of your FTL drive, it may even be most efficient to make it a series of one-way robots.

That's assuming FTL doesn't do something wonky to mess up robots yet leaves carbon-based life alone.

[Mando Knight]

That's assuming FTL doesn't do something wonky to mess up robots yet leaves carbon-based life alone.

Then the carbon-based life wouldn't be safe running FTL either, unless their engineer is used to rebuilding the system after every jump.

[The Glyphstone]

Biotech/organic ships? Soft sci-fi, indeed.

[Adoendithas]

You could use a handwave like Niven did in his later works: the "mass pointer" device is the only way to navigate in hyperspace, but it's inherently psionic and can't be read by a machine.

[Mastikator]

That's assuming FTL doesn't do something wonky to mess up robots yet leaves carbon-based life alone.

Wouldn't that also mess up the ship and life support, which messes up the carbon based life.

I agree with the "put a few petabytes of data on a flash drive and put that on the lightest fastest probe and charge by the space, send every day/week/month/hour/whatever". (Assuming FTL civilization and not just one ship trekking through the stars).

[Toy Killer]

If you have FTL travel -- and it sounds like you do -- you also have FTL communications without manned ships. Just load the data and a transmitter onto a robot. Depending on the design of your FTL drive, it may even be most efficient to make it a series of one-way robots.

Well, no, because they have limited information on the drones. While the drones can report something is wrong, and maybe what the general of what they need, they aren't able to fix it themselves with the current limitations of their AI. The big point of sending out people is that they are drastically more capable of analyzing a situation and taking care of the situation regardless with what the problems present themselves with, especially with people educated on the manufacturing, programing and wetware development of drones.

A big part of the challenge of the job is the unexpected nature of things. Even if you were to deploy droids to fix other droids, they would have to be tailor made to the situations they have to address. Even if you did, it's not certain that they would still be relevant to fix the issues by the time they arrived.

If you want a concise explanation of space as it relates to the design of spacecraft, look at the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation. The smaller you can get your payload (like a radio and a flash drive versus six people), the less fuel you need to carry, and everything lightens and cheapens up exponentially.

Oh! I thought of something else, if we can still offer criticism: It sounds like the whole ship lands on the planet to deal with the drones. Conventional wisdom would dictate at least two ships: an interstellar/interplanetary one moving a separatable lander around. Otherwise you're dragging your stardrive around to places where you presumably don't want to turn it on, and that's a bit of a waste. Really, there could be a series of landers, or at least a reconfigurable one, depending on the planet in question.

Understood, but I'd like the players to not have access to a second space capable ship. Its for the game dread, and I want to limit there options available.

[Rakaydos]

As far as landers vs intersteller ships, you out to check out the Airship to Orbit concept.

The concept, if it works (and there are technical specialists who have said that the concept is so close to the edge that arnt sure which side it's on) works HUGE- lifting payloads of hundreds of tons to orbit for a price comparable to a space elevator, without the engineering infrastructure.

Reversing the concept, you have an intersteller starship deploy one for atmospheric work, with lower altitude designs deployed from the "upper atmo mothership."

[Trekkin]

If you wanted something a little less extreme (and as technically fascinating as ATO is, it's a lot to explain) you could always just leave just the stardrive parts in orbit as an unmanned chunk of electronics. Then they still only have one ship, in that they only have one set of life-support and maneuvering systems. It's much less safe, but not quite impossible, and you could just say the attitude control system on the stardrive is so dodgy it's effectively dead in space.

Or you could simply have a very lightweight, non-propellant-using stardrive. Very soft science fiction, but doable.

[Deophaun]

Then the carbon-based life wouldn't be safe running FTL either, unless their engineer is used to rebuilding the system after every jump.

Wouldn't that also mess up the ship and life support, which messes up the carbon based life.

You are making heavy assumptions here; namely that the systems necessary to guide a ship and automate its FTL run require the same technology as the engines, power generation, and life support. Vernor Vinge would politely disagree.

FTL is basically magic dressed up in the clothes of a scientist. That gives you a lot of freedom as to whatever effects it will have.

[Mando Knight]

You are making heavy assumptions here; namely that the systems necessary to guide a ship and automate its FTL run require the same technology as the engines, power generation, and life support. Vernor Vinge would politely disagree.

If the FTL drive messes up robots, then it messes up sufficiently similar systems, i.e. computer-controlled mechanical devices. Unless all of the ship's systems are made of something that is fundamentally more like the organics than like the drones (or possibly too simple to be messed up by the FTL drive instead), the ship's systems are messed up just as much by the FTL as any drone.

[Deophaun]

If the FTL drive messes up robots, then it messes up sufficiently similar systems, i.e. computer-controlled mechanical devices.

I am well aware that you are making assumptions consistent with how technology is today, and not how technology could/would develop if the problem I indicated were true.

I await your response where you explain how something like dumb mechanical controls for these systems are more preposterous and push the boundaries of suspension of disbelief more than the physical impossibility that is the FTL drive.

[Rakaydos]

For reference, in one of David Drake's Scifi series (the Daniel Leary books) a single leaked EM signal, however tiny, will cause a ship to be lost in FTL forever. Therefor, managing the external FTL rigging is done by hydraulics and comm-less spacesuits. All the computers are inside faraday cages.

[Mastikator]

You are making heavy assumptions here; namely that the systems necessary to guide a ship and automate its FTL run require the same technology as the engines, power generation, and life support. Vernor Vinge would politely disagree.

FTL is basically magic dressed up in the clothes of a scientist. That gives you a lot of freedom as to whatever effects it will have.

Yeah I'm assuming there are things you can't protect robots from that humans are not subject to. At first I though heavy magnetic fields, but even a Faraday Cage could solve that problem. To be honest I can't think of anything. Compared to robots in space, humans are very squishy.

The only thing that wouldn't be hurt by something that would mess with electronics would be a chemical rocket. Which is extremely inefficient for interstellar travel, you're much better off with an electrostatic ion propulsion drive (which does use electricity). If anything's gonna mess with a robot it's also gonna mess with the engines.

Edit-
I've spent a lot of time doing two things, thinking about this sort of stuff and playing Kerbal Space Program. And there's two things I've discovered:
If you're going further than the moon, don't use chemical rockets. You use chemical rockets to get into orbit, they're awesome for getting you off the planet, they're bad for getting you to the next planet.
A space elevator would be a game-changer. A civilization is NEVER going to be a space civilization without a space elevator. With a space elevator you can transport things into space without transporting the fuel into space that it costs to transport into space. Currently ~99% of the mass of any ship going into space is the fuel that it takes to get the payload into orbit. If you can get into orbit without having to take the fuel with you then you can save 80% of the energy and mass. This would make things like asteroid mining economical.

[Deophaun]

Yeah I'm assuming there are things you can't protect robots from that humans are not subject to.

Which, considering the premise is that there is something about FTL travel that messes up electronics, but not biologicals, is an assumption that was already stated to be wrong.

At first I though heavy magnetic fields, but even a Faraday Cage could solve that problem. To be honest I can't think of anything.

Because the idea that someone would use a fictitious force to introduce a new complication is unknown in the field of science fiction.

Compared to robots in space, humans are very squishy.

Is that why human brains function just fine in environments that would wreck the computer you posted this statement from? There's a reason you don't have spacecraft running on an Intel Core i7. Throw in research on things like tardigrades paying off by giving us heightened resistance to ionizing radiation, and yeah, I can see plenty of environments where humans would work but advanced electronics would not.

[GM.Casper]

Um, there is a very good reason to send humans to other stars- because, barring strong AI, they are needed to solve complex problems. Dumb robots have limits, and without FTL-comms, remote control is out too. Assuming FTL travel is cheap (and since its powered by magic anyway, might as well make it cheap), there is no reason you would not be sending human crews out.

In fact, if your FTL drive goes directly from a planets orbit to another planet, you don't need any advanced thrusters either. If some genius invented a light and low energy FTL drive tomorrow, you could add it to a spaceplane and go explore.

[Mando Knight]

I am well aware that you are making assumptions consistent with how technology is today,

There is no other starting point except for pure fantasy, which would allow for any number of otherwise unreasonable assumptions.

I await your response where you explain how something like dumb mechanical controls for these systems are more preposterous and push the boundaries of suspension of disbelief more than the physical impossibility that is the FTL drive.

Simple life support may allow for non-computerized control, but to fully automate a spacecraft, including navigation, without computers? Preposterous, unless you allow for technology that could be applied to the robots equally to the starship, if in lesser scale.

FTL is a magical plot device, yes, but if you turn the automation systems into another magical plot device that is fully compatible with your FTL drive, but have robots (which are simply self-contained automated systems) not using the magical automation system as well without some valid reason (old robots dispersed in sleeper ships without recently-developed tech that is installed in the FTL ships, or something) is absurd.

One is an impossibility made possible and a general convention for the genre, the other is a correction for an impossibility that is then applied inconsistently. Inconsistency in technological ability is more nagging to me at least than mere impossibility.

There's a reason you don't have spacecraft running on an Intel Core i7.

And it's probably not what you're thinking. Rad-hardening is possible for computer systems, though it lags behind unhardened systems.

Throw in research on things like tardigrades paying off by giving us heightened resistance to ionizing radiation, and yeah, I can see plenty of environments where humans would work but advanced electronics would not.

That kind of organic self-engineering is further beyond our capabilities than making a highly resistant computer system, and I highly suspect that the reasons why tardigrades are capable extremophiles are not something you can "port over" to humans.

[Mastikator]

Which, considering the premise is that there is something about FTL travel that messes up electronics, but not biologicals, is an assumption that was already stated to be wrong.

What something?

Because the idea that someone would use a fictitious force to introduce a new complication is unknown in the field of science fiction.

Fictitious force? Here I was on the assumption that FTL doesn't involve "magic" but rather something like an Alcubierre drive.

Is that why human brains function just fine in environments that would wreck the computer you posted this statement from? There's a reason you don't have spacecraft running on an Intel Core i7. Throw in research on things like tardigrades paying off by giving us heightened resistance to ionizing radiation, and yeah, I can see plenty of environments where humans would work but advanced electronics would not.

I'm not saying that there aren't environments that electronics can't handle but human brains can. I'm saying that there aren't spaceships that can have their electronics out of function but still perform interstellar travel while maintaining life support. Fictitious magic forces or no.