Re: PA availability, was: [semi OT] Women wargamers

tom.anderson@altavista.net spake thusly upon matters weighty: 

> this has ramifications for the use of PA in ship-ship boarding, 
where corridors will be quite small. in fact, 
a minimum-size corrdor (think submarines) is quite an effective 
passive anti-PA defence .

Except, on anything other than scouts, it is unlikely. 

It has been found that depriving humans of 'personal space' (amount 
varies with culture - north americans need a lot) has all sorts of 
stress and morale and discipline effects. On destroyers and 
attack subs, you can get away with it for brief periods (weeks? a 
month or two?) because the troops are select (submariners) (and its 
still a high stress job) or because they can always go up on deck, 
get away from the others, get some air, feel the wind, etc. Can't do 
that on a space ship. The analogy would be more like US boomers than 
attack subs - and they have whole jogging tracks around their vast 
missile bays!. Deep space ships may need even more interior space. In 
Traveller, I think they assumed 14m^3 per stateroom (you could do 
double occupancy) plus other living spaces such as corridors, etc. 

I don't think this would be the answer, although putting in 'choke 
points' near the bridge, engineering, and the like seem like a 
possible defensive option. But remember, PA (at least the 
muscle/strength part - maybe with limited armour) (on any large 
vessel) would be used by the damage control guys, engineers, med 
teams trying to get to people, etc. It seems like corridors around 
key combat systems would therefore have to accomodate PA so that 
*your* guys could get their PA their. The benefits in search and 
rescue, damage repair, etc. are probably significant, not to mention 
fire fighting. 

Tom. 
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