Crew needs of a spacecraft Arleigh Burke

[JagerIV]

Basically, if you had a spacecraft similarly equipped as an Arleigh Burke destroyer, would you need about the same number of crew in a spacecraft similarly armed and equipped, or would it be less? Or more?

I generally think surface warships give a rough idea of how much a spacecraft would need, so a space warship with roughly the weaponry and endurance of a Burke destroyer would have about the same crew requirements. However, there is often disagreement on this, and that they would have much less need for crew, without even needing radical advancements in automation.

A useful point to start might be looking at what the 300 odd crewmembers actually do, which I haven't been able to find a good breakdown on, in order to get a good idea of how many of them may be necesary on a space Burke.

 

[Sailor.X]

Is the ship built in orbit. Because 300 crew would be a very massive spaceship.

 

[JagerIV]

Well, it's supposed to be a roughly equivalent ship: about a 100 missiles, medium gun, several point defense systems, sensor sweet, two short range light shuttles, longish endurance.

I was wondering if such a spaceship would need a similar crew, or less. Ive been looking to see if I can find a breakdown of the Burkes crew to see what all those crew actually do, but to no sucess so far.

 

[Sailor.X]

Well, it's supposed to be a roughly equivalent ship: about a 100 missiles, medium gun, several point defense systems, sensor sweet, two short range light shuttles, longish endurance.

I was wondering if such a spaceship would need a similar crew, or less. Ive been looking to see if I can find a breakdown of the Burkes crew to see what all those crew actually do, but to no sucess so far.

No you will be talking about a similar size crew as you would find of a Boomer Submarine.

 

[JagerIV]

No you will be talking about a similar size crew as you would find of a Boomer Submarine.

Could you elaborate why it would be more in line with a boomer submarine (about 150) vs a surface ship (300 odd)?

 

[Sailor.X]

Could you elaborate why it would be more in line with a boomer submarine (about 150) vs a surface ship (300 odd)?

Because Submarines are the closes Naval vessel you can get to an actual spaceship. And Boomers are actually longer than a Burke.

 

[JagerIV]

Because Submarines are the closes Naval vessel you can get to an actual spaceship. And Boomers are actually longer than a Burke.

Could you elaborate on the lower crew number? I would figure crew would more track the number of systems that need to be run, and a Burke has a larger.vateity of weapons.

But, as I said I'm fairly limited in knowledge to draw any firm conclusion.

 

[Sailor.X]

Could you elaborate on the lower crew number? I would figure crew would more track the number of systems that need to be run, and a Burke has a larger.vateity of weapons.

But, as I said I'm fairly limited in knowledge to draw any firm conclusion.

It is a more demanding type of vessel. A sealed environment. Similar to what a spaceship would be. A Burke is not a sealed environment and can afford to have a larger crew.

 

[Bear Ribs]

Well for one thing you won't need crew to clean and paint the outside of the ship...

More seriously we have no clue how many crew a ship's going to need. There's going to be an extreme amount of automation on such a ship to reduce crew requirements but how far that can go isn't clear at all. The Submarine, as Sailor.X said, is probably closer.

There's a breakdown of individual departments on a ship here. It's for a carrier so you can leave out the air wing and air maintenance section and you need to add life support, but that should get you started on what jobs need doing. A goodly portion of the crew is there to serve the rest of the crew, for instance the medical, dental, and chaplain departments.

I would start with giving the ship 1 gunner per shift per turret/weapons system. Then assign four people per other department (1 per shift with a spare because you ain't getting replacements easy in space, though you can probably get by with just one or two chaplains depending on crew size) and the consider how many assistants a single person needs to handle that many crew and that many engines. Can one engineer handle the ship's requirements? Probably not, it's too complex. At the least you're going to need one specialist in the thrust systems, one electrician, one computer specialist, a welder to patch things together, maybe a fabricator to run the 3D printer to get new parts in a pinch. So a minimum of five experts, each of whom needs at least one assistant but more likely three or four. That needs to be duped across multiple shifts so maybe sixty people in your engineering department. So assuming, say, five weapon turrets you're looking at eighty crew to keep the ship intact and fire it's weapons.

Continue this line of thought across all departments since the ship also needs pilots to move, command to tell them where to move, and MPs to tell the sixty engineers to quit building a still in the engine room. And make your own assumptions 'cause I could be way off, I'm just spitballing here.

 

[Sailor.X]

Well for one thing you won't need crew to clean and paint the outside of the ship...

More seriously we have no clue how many crew a ship's going to need. There's going to be an extreme amount of automation on such a ship to reduce crew requirements but how far that can go isn't clear at all. The Submarine, as Sailor.X said, is probably closer.

There's a breakdown of individual departments on a ship here. It's for a carrier so you can leave out the air wing and air maintenance section and you need to add life support, but that should get you started on what jobs need doing. A goodly portion of the crew is there to serve the rest of the crew, for instance the medical, dental, and chaplain departments.

I would start with giving the ship 1 gunner per shift per turret/weapons system. Then assign four people per other department (1 per shift with a spare because you ain't getting replacements easy in space, though you can probably get by with just one or two chaplains depending on crew size) and the consider how many assistants a single person needs to handle that many crew and that many engines. Can one engineer handle the ship's requirements? Probably not, it's too complex. At the least you're going to need one specialist in the thrust systems, one electrician, one computer specialist, a welder to patch things together, maybe a fabricator to run the 3D printer to get new parts in a pinch. So a minimum of five experts, each of whom needs at least one assistant but more likely three or four. That needs to be duped across multiple shifts so maybe sixty people in your engineering department. So assuming, say, five weapon turrets you're looking at eighty crew to keep the ship intact and fire it's weapons.

Continue this line of thought across all departments since the ship also needs pilots to move, command to tell them where to move, and MPs to tell the sixty engineers to quit building a still in the engine room. And make your own assumptions 'cause I could be way off, I'm just spitballing here.

Hate to break it to ya. But the MPs are on the take and get their pints of Space Shine to keep it on the down low.

 

[JagerIV]

This is one reason I was looking for some info on how the actual burkes crew is laid out.

For example, running the missiles on a Burke is probably more complicated than runnimg the missiles on a nuclear submarine: you have a much more complicated targetting situation to work off of.

So, while launching an ICBM and launching an Anti air missile might take one person to push the launch button, the AA missile will require more on the fly inputs before and after launch in order to hit, suggesting more people needed.

I only have the faintest idea how many more though: my attempts to issolate that part by looking at surface missle batteries like the Patriot suggests a missile battery might take 50 to 100 people to man!

Plus you have the two shuttles. Assuming their about as manpower intensive as the helicopters on the burke, how much crew is that?

 

[Aaron Fox]

It heavily depends on the most important aspect of the ship: the engines. Are they Solid-Core NTRs (aka the shittiest nuclear engines that need methane or decane to really work) or Nuclear Lightbulbs (basically a gas nuclear engine with quartz bulbs as the interaction point between the fission and the propellant, water is quite useful as a propellant here as it gets hot enough to be viable)? What is the delta-V of the missiles and the ship? What is the armor composition (because you're going to need lots of Whipple Shields and silica aerogel filler alongside ceramics, gold plating, and polyethylene foam to keep the crew from getting too many rads)? What are the shuttles like?

Those are questions that you'll need to ask and ask a lot when doing stuff like this.

 

[JagerIV]

I'm not sure the engines are all that relavent as a driver of crew: the engines don't generally seem to require all that much. Engines in general seem to be pretty low manpower these days, since we left coal and you no longer needed people to manually shovel stuff into the engine. Likewise, armor doesn't seem like it would drive all that much crew.

 

[Aaron Fox]

I'm not sure the engines are all that relavent as a driver of crew: the engines don't generally seem to require all that much. Engines in general seem to be pretty low manpower these days, since we left coal and you no longer needed people to manually shovel stuff into the engine. Likewise, armor doesn't seem like it would drive all that much crew.

No, they mean everything in a spaceship. If you have to use a solid core NTR, you'll have literally half (or more) of your spaceship being made up of propellant tanks. If you use a gas-core (likely a nuclear lightbulb since you can use it in orbit), then you have fewer problems for getting acceleration and getting a usable payload.