On Writing: Ship Problems

~ crossovercreativechaos

No, not of a romance or fanfic nature; though those can have plenty of problems of their own. I’m thinking of the common SF trope of the colony or generation ship, getting a bunch of settlers from planet to (hopefully) habitable planet. Meaning you’ve got a bunch of human beings living in an enclosed environment for who knows how long; months, years, even generations.

So. Humans being humans – how do you paint a wall in space?

Yes, I’m serious. There’s a huge difference between living and simply not dying. If people are living on these ships, going about a certain amount of day-to-day life, working, doing social activities, and raising families, then they’re going to want to make their environment more homey. Someone is going to paint a wall. At the very least, someone is going to want to.

This is not a simple undertaking, as anyone who’s done a little bit of room touch-up can attest. Most paints, you want very thorough ventilation for, or it’s Not Of The Good. If you’re in the enclosed environment of a ship, where all the air is effectively shared air – ouch.

Watercolor paints might be a solution, if you can make them stick. Or wallpaper – but that would also require either bringing a store of it along, or making it on-ship. You’d still have to deal with the fallout of any pigments or other materials used to make it. And inevitably somebody wouldn’t be happy and would want to redo it, touch it up, or splash a horrendous pink over it in a teenage prank. And then you have to deal with all the chemicals you have to use to clean it up.

Frankly I think the best solution would be technological. Make sure whatever you’ve got for atmospheric scrubbers can handle not just carbon dioxide and oxygen balances, but also take all kinds of toxins out of the air. This would be a good idea just on general principles; there are so many of our manufactured materials that outgas over time. And if you designed well you might be able to take those scrubbed chemicals and make something useful, or at least harmless, out of them.

Then you have to maintain the scrubbers. And the tools, parts, and skills to maintain the scrubbers. This is not a given.

(And now I’m seeing a race-the-clock murder mystery onboard ship, where the local law enforcement is desperately trying to catch a sociopath targeting the maintenance crews….)

It’s even less a given when you talk about generation ships. How do you make sure that the next person taking a job actually has the skills and temperament for that job, instead of inheriting it? And don’t try to wriggle out of it with “they’ll have computerized tests”. One, computer tests are no way to measure if someone can actually physically wrestle with blocked plumbing. Two, humans may be equal in the eyes of the law but everyone’s got different abilities and interests. It’s entirely possible you could get a generation that simply doesn’t have anybody with an aptitude for certain work. Or whoever has the aptitude, doesn’t want to do it. Three, if humans made the tests, humans can hack the tests. And if they can, someone will. For spite, for family loyalty, for the best of intentions because surely this is the best person for the job no matter what the computer says-!

I’m not ragging on colony ship and generation ship SF. I love the idea of colonizing other worlds, however we end up getting there. But… sometimes I’d like to see someone think this through. Just look at the history of the Mayflower to get an idea of what happens when you’ve got people jammed into one small ship for months, and they didn’t have to worry about oxygen.

So how would you paint a wall on a colony ship?

31 thoughts on “On Writing: Ship Problems”

    2. That’s what I’d expect, probably complete with luminous and reflective (think monitor vs e-ink) and smart textures as well. So you wouldn’t just paint your bedroom in rolling waves, you’d actually have them going and hear them in the background.

      And an easy ‘switch to white semi-gloss’ mode for cleaning. Or even a self cleaning mode that rolled the smart textures to eject everything currently stuck to the walls.

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    1. Pranksters paint with a thin layer of colorless paint that will prevent a new coating from adhering. Then you get to see their graffiti after a gap, when someone has to repaint it.

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  3. There’s also the distinction between maintenance and personalization.

    Presumably the maintenance crew will have some method of applying coatings, since those do a lot of things.

    So you might end up with a situation where people are trying to paint, but it either doesn’t stick or has weird shades, or creates problems with the existing coatings and systems and it turns into an argument with the maintenance crew.

    Then people decide that the solution is to have additional colors in the fabrication bay, so panels get ordered with colors or murals already applied…

    ***

    Plenty of authors make the mistake of assuming people would be in some sterile, perfectly engineered environment, but I think it would be equally mistaken to assume they would end up with total freedom and people tagging walls on a whim.

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      1. “We have some concerns about the anarchist graffiti sprayed around on the bulkheads…”

        “We’re sticking it to the man!”

        “The spray pain used corroded the bulkheads and caused multiple hull breaches. Please use the Government Approved Paints for future efforts. We have a new color, Anarchist Red!”

        “…”

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  4. Thinking about this, I was reminded of those laser light projectors that project patterns on to houses every Christmas. And if the people in question are like me, and find that disorienting or even blinding, then posters would be an option. Or stick on stickers. Acrylic paint, perhaps? Done in small enough touches over time, maybe in various patterns or “small” pictures, so the whole wall isn’t painted but it’s still *pretty* and not monotonous….

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  5. That’s one of the things that got me to go „Wait, what?“ on the Fallout TV series.
    The first time you see it, Vault 32 is a wreck. Dead bodies everywhere, messages on the wall, everything has gone to heck, two guys are stumbling through the mess.
    A few days later, the Overseer of 33 decides to „resettle“ 32, the entire population of Vault 33 troops over – and the damn crazy can is pristine. The bodies are gone, the lights are fixed, the walls freshly painted… they even fixed the foosball table.

    …who the heck did this?!?
    Norm MacLean has every reason to be spooked as all hell.

    Double whodunit if you know what’s in Vault 31 – and what is not.
    I‘m still not sure if it breaks my suspension of disbelief or not, but it’s definitely pushing the envelope.

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    2. As someone who knows just enough about Fallout to know they have maintenance robots that would be my assumption. That the overseer is at least competent enough to get some over there to clean the place up.

      …of course I also know about VaulTec being The Absolute Worst so it might be that they’d set 32 up with an automated cleaning setup that only kicks in once everyone’s dead/the Vault’s been abandoned.

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      1. Vault 31, 32 and 33 are interconnected.

        For most of the series, you only see 33 (Norm‘s home Vault), you know 32 is where the Raiders in the pilot ep came from, and that nobody’s alive over there (post first episode).

        33 does not have domestic robots. Neither does 32, given it’s set up as pretty similar to 33. And Norm states while checking the Pip-Boys of dead 32 folks that they’ve been dead for two years.
        So cleaning robots are very unlikely.

        Hint: they‘re Control Vaults, and yes, Vault-Tec does live up to its in-game reputation.

        …if you feel the ice forming on your spine now, you have very good instincts.

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  6. Yeah, sometimes I find myself pretty fussy over something that didn’t bother me when I was younger, because I have now skilled up a little more, and also have different habits of mind.

    Ten years ago, I would have just thought it cool to suppose that space people are just living in a single space suit, for days on end. The ‘it is high tech’, and ‘it has plumbing’ hand waves just worked for me.

    See also, stillsuits in the Dune books. I read those when I did not have the background to appreciate what was being claimed about those, nor to cry ‘bullshit!’.

    Now? Some of the hygeine stuff bothers me more.

    (Though, of course, a bit related to adventurers in chainmail coats, versus adventurers dressed like prostitutes in a bra and micro skirt.)

    Anyway, living in space suits is a wee bit related to living in space environments with ventilation requirements.

    There is also the joke of ‘When I was a kid, we were promised that we would live in environmental domes, completely isolated from the outdoors, and protected from all the gunk. Where are my envirodomes?’ I like the idea of isolation from pollen, but it seems there is a trade off of risks wrt dust, mold, etc.

    Story worlds are taste, but verisimilitude is part of taste, and that can get trickier the more you think.

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    1. I was reading a book which I had enjoyed in my 20s. Now — a masquerade ball in the equivalent of the Dark Ages? No one, not even the king, is going to have a single use garment made.

      Cross-dressing was a popular form of wearing costumes — probably because you could do without sacrificing the cloth to make a costume. The next day it went back to the owner of the appropriate sex.

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  7. Also, visual perception is partly the surface of the illuminated bodies, and partly the light. (Okay, also the transmission medium, the eyes, and the nerves and brain.)

    Lighting is part of how you perceive an environment.

    And, environmental perceptions can tie into sanity.

    This is not an ‘anything will work’ situation, and lighting also needs maintenance.

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      3. It’s done under the authority of the EPA/power saving regulations.

        Make it a certification program, rather than a regulatory program, and that’d work. See if people actually want the “more efficient” stuff.

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      5. I have seven kids.

        Needless to say, I so so so so SO do not care for vehicle safety and design being sacrificed for theoretical fuel efficiency, especially since we can’t afford to visit family unless we’re towing our camper.
        (figuring once-a-year, and doubling of gas use, we afford the camper off of the savings of “drive to one or the other coast to see grandparents.”)

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      7. And they did it at the time when the replacement was fluorescents, with all their mercury issues.

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      8. The EPA-type stuff is even worse because it’s been captured by the Green Death Cult. Which is what I call the Green Movement because it’s based on Malthusian ideas (which have been disproven multiple times) and is so anti-human it’s a wonder anyone goes along with it.

        …never mind that it’s been predicting the end of the world in by 20XX since the 1990s and it’s already 2024 a dozen years past the last deadline I paid any attention to.

        There’s a YouTube video that’s pretty fun to watch. I think it’s one of Reason TV’s “Good Intentions” videos that talks about why there are so many SUVs and full sized trucks and vans on the road in the US. It boils down to “fuel efficiency” specifically that mini-vans and small trucks were deemed to be less efficient than cars and sedans so they got banned. Cue the flood of gas guzzlers because people actually needed more room than was available in cars and sedans.

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  8. Well, obviously the answer is “Holodecks!”

    😛

    And as an added bonus benefit, they come complete with all sorts of Plotbunny Fodder flaws for the author to (ab)use!

    Writer’s block? Plot logjammed? Just drop a Holodeck into the story and watch the dumpsterfires ensue! If it doesn’t gain sentience and try to take over the ship, it’s guaranteed to suffer some sort of Mad Science malfunction that’s good for many pages, if not entire chapters, of drama!

    In fact, the biggest problem may be preventing the ‘deck from hijacking and taking over the entire story. But don’t worry, they can’t breach the 4th wall.

    (yet)

    (it’s probably time to post this one again: https://theeternalnewb.tumblr.com/post/151270151072)

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    1. I’m also fond of the one (which I can’t find right now) that proposes the holodeck functions much like a GPU, in the sense that the reason what <i>seems</i> like it must be a recreational energy/computation hog almost never gets shut down even in emergencies is because a lot of essential functions are actually run through it.

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  9. I wonder if there’s some way to do something like a giant Etch-a-Sketch to make patterns (obviously different conditions to erase) or maybe heat sensitive paint where people can ‘draw’ on the walls.

    Actually, I could see heat sensitive paint being a big hit with people with kids if they could get to last a while. Fingerpainting without the mess! Take a picture if you want it to last. Honestly, not just kids. If I could guilt-free draw on the walls or furniture, I’d probably do it and I doubt I’m the only one.

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