What would space equivalent of trucks look like? [closed]

Question

I'm writing a story and the peoples' given profession is basically "space truckers": delivering small-to-medium containers of cargo across long distances in the galaxy. Because the journeys are longer and spaceships are more complicated, I'm envisioning a crew of at least 2 members (a pilot and an engineer), rather than just one trucker.

My questions are: 

• What might the layout of an actual "trucking ship" look like? Am I correct in saying that because you won't want to waste fuel making lots of rest stops, a ship might have very small quarters for sleeping, a very sparse kitchenette with a fridge/freezer and microwave, and maybe a space to chill while the autopilot worked?
• What kind of "lifeboat" or "escape pod" might there be in case of emergencies?

Editing to say thank you to responses thus far, and to answer questions:

• Regarding the FTL systems (how it works, how much it costs): I hadn't considered, and I'm grateful lots of folks are telling me I need to do a little more work there! I don't know enough about it yet, so I will do some digging. In the meantime, I'm trying to just write the kind of sci-fi that holds up under scrutiny of the average fan, not the kind that will satisfy the local rocket science professor.
• Re: why use people on a cargo ship when realistically, cargo might be autopiloted drones? Because I need to put people in the situation. The story would be very short and boring if I write about an empty cargo ship and the terrible characters on-planet who have lots of space to get away from each other. I'm willing to offend the professor on this one.
• Story will take place over a matter of weeks. The company they work for is already well-established in larger markets, and they're trying to dominate smaller markets by creating shipping routes to planets as quickly and cheaply as possible. There are humans onboard to navigate obstacles/weather, but the culture of the company is such that there will not be a lot of safety precautions given to those humans.

Answer 1

Space Logistics

This is a bit trickier to answer without considering what the overall logistics between the stars will be.

In our earth-based transportation logistics, items are packed into boxes and those boxes are loaded into standard-sized shipping containers. Where I work, that is either a 28' trailer, a 53' trailer, a rail car to be loaded onto a train, or a special air can that fits into a plane.

I see no reason why space logistics would be too different. If there is shipping and trade across the stars, then it will benefit the various planets to have a standard for shipping containers so that people only need a limited number of machines to handle the containers.

Odds are that your truckers will be running in either well-used shipping lanes to supplement capacity or act as private discreet couriers. These routes should be known and defended so if there is trouble, Space CAA is probably able to assist.

Alternatively your truckers will be running known, but less frequented lanes because they are more direct between known locations. A bit more dangerous, but assistance should still be available if needed.

Only the bravest (or less than legal) trucker ships will be running in barely used routes to distant locations in the middle of nowhere.

Trucking Ships

Given that the question references trucking ships, the presumption is on the smallest of these cargo ships -- ones that are only hauling up to a handful of standard containers around the galaxy.

My feeling is that the designs would vary in a spectrum. The core design would likely be a life-supporting living area and a cargo hold that may not may not be life supported, but it will be shielded from the radiations of space to keep the cargo safe. There will likely be a few standard designs for the ships, with an ability to customize and/or interchange parts to keep repair costs low.

The ship will have a basic autopilot and FTL systems should the technology be available enough, as well as whatever appropriate self-defence systems your world would require for the truckers to defend themselves. These systems will unlikely be the best available, but the focus will be on dependability and ease of maintenance/repairs over performance unless there's money to throw around.

In terms of a crew, as they will not likely be loading or emptying their own cargo holds, the presumption of a crew of 2 would work I'd think. So long as they have the skills to both pilot their craft and run routine maintenance on it, two people are sufficient. Some crafts might have a couple more crew members, but they still will be small crews most likely. This also has an economic reason -- they aren't necessarily making a lot of money shipping small volumes.

Living spaces will depend on both the lifestyle of the space trucker as well as the average flight time of their runs. People that effectively live in their truck ships for whatever reason will have a living quarters that they can live in full time and thus have full facilities. People that are merely trucking cargo and aim to stay in a space hotel in between runs will have a smaller living quarters as they aren't living in their ship full time.

Any escape pods that are present will likely be based on keeping the limited crew safe and sending out a distress beacon to be saved. There might be small engines that could limp an escape pod into a spaceport if it is close enough, or maybe the escape pod doubles as a landing pod, serving double duty like the crew does. This thought is based on our terrestrial trucking where a truck driver wouldn't have an escape vehicle, but could call for help on a cell phone.

So overall, a smaller, serviceable vessel with a focus on being able to do their own repair work where able. It won't likely have the best things, but they will work and be reliable.

Answer 2

The economics of size

Long distances come with costs, especially with complicated space ships. To reduce cost, they are more likely to go big in size.

Let's get ships as an example. Sure we can have ships that fit a single container. The problem is that it is incredibly costly. You need to build a fleet of tiny ships, navigate each individually and have people for each boat. If you compare that with current seafaring mega cargo ships, you can see the appeal. One big very expensive ship, a relatively small crew, a huge amount cargo. We can add advantages on advantages. Larger ships have relatively smaller outside hulls compared to their insides. A different part of the square qube law in effect. Hulls need maintenance, and for shipping it even introduces drag, increasing gas cost. If you go big in the right way, you need less gas, maintenance, people and materials per container.

On the road we only use trucks if absolutely necessary. They are incredibly costly compared to ships or rail. The roads limit our trucks in capacity, but if we could, we would have some monstrosities roaming our roads.

In space there seem to be no restrictions to size like for a truck. That is why I would propose a change to the story. They are more like seafaring cargo ships.

Now you can go into two directions. One is that most of the ship concerns important machinery that they might service. This makes most of it maintenance spaces, unsuitable for living. So they have cramped spaces that you like. However, you can go with route two. They have huge quarters, but are with so few people it emphasises their lonely situation. Seas of bare metal space that hides the important machinery. The spaces are large so they can move large vehicles or cranes. These can lift covers and vitak machinery for servicing. The space is then meaningless to them, making their actual living area tiny.

Answer 3

Why would cargo needs ships? Give the container some basic brain, some thrusters and a way to pay for movement. The rest is boxes, moving along storage orbits on system, getting speed ups on demand, by the equivalent of forklifts, then cruising alone through the dark until they are slowed down by a forklift needing a slowdown. Cargo gets yeeted, even outside of systems, protected against thieves, by bundling it into huge clouds.

Finally delivery, via slowdown, to space stations or planet surfaces. Pod return depends on the economics. If there is stuff outbound the container does a return trip. Else it's disassembly or reusage as living quarters. Sometimes it's also not the delivery expected. Instead of cold storaged space Ikea furniture, you get dry frozen blind passengers or squatter mummies.

In space once something is pushed it stays in motion, so with good calculations you can even ship today and see it sling by by Christmas.

Answer 4

Frame Challenge

Because the journeys are longer and spaceships are more complicated, I'm envisioning a crew of at least 2 members (a pilot and an engineer), rather than just one trucker.

There's our first problem.

Long journeys and complexities tend to rule out Trucking. Now, there's some differences in Space that further compounds this, but I'll get there in a Min.

Let's talk complexities for a moment - consider these to be a fixed cost - the more complex a machine is, over the lifetime of it's operation, the more things there are to go wrong. Doesn't mean that we can't have smart maintenance, nano-bots and other Sci-fi things to try and mitigate it - but ultimately The more things there are, the more things to go wrong.

And so, for each journey, these fixed costs eat into your bottom line - the greater the fixed costs, the less economical small loads become.

There are multiple real-world applications of this - my favourite being that as the Costs of Compliance increase for houses, you tend to see less small/starter houses built - not many 1-2 bedroom builds and a lot more 3-4 bedroom builds as they have a higher profit margin, to offset those fixed costs.

(note - they aren't actually fixed - as there is a degree of variability that has a relationship with complexity/compliance - but it's not a 1:1 relationship e.g. for a small increase in compliance costs, you get a significant increase in profit)

Secondly is Long Journeys - whilst Long haul trucking is a thing and there are some long routes - 65% of trucked goods occur within a 50 mile radius. For longer journeys, you tend to use a Bulk transfer system (Rail or Boat) as these tend to be cheaper for the distance.

And therein lies the rub.

The biggest reason why you wouldn't use Rail or a Boat is (this is going to be extremely ironic) - Infrastructure (yes, trucks need roads - Shush!) - In Space - Planet-to-Planet, there's lots of space for big vessels with no real reason for going smaller - again, see the fixed costs comment, this also applies to equipment - things like a Life Support system - it's more efficient if it takes up 1% of your total internal volume than 25%.

It's not like on Earth where some cities aren't accessible by a navigable waterway or say in Canada where you can't build a Rail Track to service a region (Ice Road truckers was awesome back in the day) - All Planets are in space, and accessible from Space.

This alone means that you would likely see something much more like the SuperMax container ships that we see now (and remember that Shipping sizes are limited by the ability to traverse places like the Panama canal etc.) than smaller trucking units.

Answer 5

If you want space trucks (small scale cargo transport over long distances), you need space roads: an established transportation infrastructure that makes it possible for the trucks to go where the big vessels can't, as roads do for trucks and rivers do for small cargo boats. No legal deep water shipping is done by small craft.

How you envision space roads will dictate the structure of your space trucks. Form follows function, and narratively implies capabilities and constraints important to the plot.

Answer 6

I would propose the Buzz Aldrin cycler. It is a really large ship commuting between say Earth and Mars without any major usage of the fuel, save maybe minor orbit adjustments. Such a complex orbit is possible to set up once, then the ship can fly in it forever (E - Earth orbit, M - Mars orbit):

The ship is loaded and unloaded by smaller ships that arrive and dock to it at the destinations (M1, M2, E1, E2). As such a large ship would be a very expensive asset to launch, many things may happen for it on the way, it would not be unreasonable to equip it with the crew of two.

Answer 7

Best option is to have a generic spaceship, basically just living quarters and an engine which containers can be attached to. That way the total is always specific to the amount of cargo being carried.

Containers would be all the same in terms of size and fittings as we have here on earth. So your cargo spaceship just offloads one set of containers and attaches another. There isn't a limit to how many you could take except power. So the same spaceship can take 2 containers or two hundred.

A couple of crew would be plenty to take care of engineering and piloting. They're only working the spaceship, the containers don't need anything beyond power, they would all be self-contained units with inbuilt heating/freezing/pressure or whatever else they require.

Answer 8

You say that you want "smaller containers" because you want smaller crews; but the two are probably quite independent of each other.

There are two basic ideas for the design of the cargo ships.

• The first one is the "native space design": The ship is actually an asteroid with some living quarters carved out. That would apply if the asteroid's material (ores, water) is the actual payload. Recommendation: Read Neil Stephenson's SevenEves for ideas about long-haul space habitats. But actually, because this is galactic shipping, raw materials are less likely because they would be mined closer to the destination. Perhaps your galactic delivery service is rather transporting industry products or cultural artifacts. Then the second option applies:
• The blueprint for a cargo spaceship is the contemporary oceangoing cargo ship. Those tend to be huge, are highly utilitarian, often shabby, don't have any decorations, are equipped with sturdy engines and controls whose emphasis is on low maintenance and high reliability rather than efficiency. Space for living quarters is actually not too limited because there is no connection between crew size and ship size — there is no lack of space (pun intended). Also, there is plenty of food and magic energy since you have FTL.

If you envision a crew of two they should be a romantic couple, with all the spiciness and drama that comes with it. (I remember a Peter F. Hamilton story, I think, where a couple on a multi-year journey split up and subsequently lived on opposite ends of a huge space ship, communicating only occasionally... "Hell is other people" (Camus).)

Answer 9

1. Use existing trucks as a reference

While real-life trucks look more or less identical to the casual observer, there are quite a few differences between your average short-range truck and a long-hauler used for transporting goods over long distances.

Short-range trucks rarely contain any amenities, while long-haulers may contain a bed, power outlets (for shavers, laptops etc.), microwave oven and sometimes a dry toilet and even a small sink and table.

Try looking up trucks with "sleeper cabs" for some ideas on their configuration - They range from rather basic (just a bed) to full-on luxury caravan configurations.

2. The economics of size, speed and regulations

Much of this depends on what constitutes a "short" or "long" haul in your universe. Since you do mention FTL, I also assume that your company will handle at least some interstellar haulage.

Let's take a real-life example first - let's say a fairly long trip like Copenhagen, Denmark to Milan, Italy:

The trip by normal car takes 17-18 hours, however regulations state that not only are trucks limited in speed (max 80km/h), but also that the trucker has to take regular rests (regular breaks at least every 4½ hours lasting 45 minutes and an at least 11-hour "daily rest" period)

Considering a round trip of this magnitude will take ~4 whole days in and of itself (and that only if road conditions are perfect), at least some basic amenities are needed either in the truck or rest stops along the way - some things are considered basic or essential, such as a bed in the truck.

Also keep in mind that longer hauls also often are driven with double trailers This allows the trucker to pass multiple waypoints or transport larger amounts of goods at once

Moving this to your "space trucker" scenario, you need to consider how long it takes to get to specific places. Truckers do want to get home after a while, so also consider round trips. How long does it take to the Alpha Centauri system? Barnard's Star? Vega? The longer a haul is, the more you have to think about amenities for your space truckers. If the trip to at least the nearest rest station lasts for more than a few hours, that crew will at the very least need a toilet!

Depending on how you plan your FTL works, it may provide benefits or caveats in how much haulage a space truck can carry. A jump-gate system may offer a better option for large hauls, while Alcubierre/warp travel may be affected negatively by a large amount of mass on board.

3. The economy of rest stops

On Earth, rest stops are usually placed within maybe an hour's truck drive from each other, but they are also within range of electricity, water supply etc.

It would be vastly impractical (and expensive) to erect space stations in the void between stars for a multitude of reasons. At least inside a star system, you will have at least a few planets in range for mining ice (for water) and materials, as well as a star to harvest energy from.

Then again, there's no reason these stations would function solely as rest stops and laybys for space truckers - that again would be impractical due to the potential resources in a given star system.

4. Life boats This depends entirely on how well-formed the infrastructure is. If the spacelanes in the area are well-trafficked, then a simple pod with a distress beacon and enough food, water and oxygen for 2 for ~48 or 72 hours should suffice.

Though if the trucker operates in less well-developed areas of space, there should be some more precautions taken for the pod - eg. the ability to seek out nearest station or planet, at least to a degree.

All in all life boats (and their condition) would depend on regulations and/or how "shady" your interstellar shipping company is.

The layout

Real life trucks come in a multitude of configurations for different situations, and most truck dealerships allow you to build your own truck to a certain degree with a given engine, cab, tank size etc.. They all usually base on the same platform, though.

This would likely be the same for "space trucks". You have a base model where buyers can configure them for different workloads - a "long hauler" will be able to carry more fuel and have a more powerful STL/FTL engine setup, as well as a larger and more "comfortable" or practical cabin for the crew.

For cargo, I'd imagine the "space trucks" can use something akin to a standard shipping container with protection (eg. air or heat) etc. implemented as needed for the cargo inside. These should be accessible directly or even detachable.

The cargo medium (containers) is adaptable to a large set of vehicles - usable on the space truck, transferable via shuttle or space drones and usable on the ground aboard ships and "normal" trucks. All without using precious time to unload and reload cargo.

Much like a normal truck, the cockpit and engine assembly would preferably be concentrated to one spot so the crew can perform some degree of repairs from the inside of the ship.

The cabin does not need to be clad in wood and leather, but it would need at least:

• a toilet (bath is optional)
• a pair of (bunk) beds
• small microwave cubby (see images of truck sleeper cabs how that would work)
• If cabin is zero-G, some exercise equipment to prevent your truckers from atrophy.
• probably some seating and a table
• storage options for food, spare parts and their own amenities.

The Crew

It's a pretty sound idea that "space truckers" would operate in pairs - though, I'd suggest that both are trained in some degree in engineering. That way, they can both operate in shifts, or in tandem if the situation demands it.

The crew will likely have to be able to work with each other for days or even a few weeks, so there may likely be a shift rotation regulation in place, so that one of them can remain awake should there be any problems on the route.

Answer 10

First the why

Several other answers have already pointed out that all planets are connected by space; so, bulk shipping makes the most since, but what they have not considered is that not all planets will have massive space ports to accommodate giant cargo ships. Just like many small, waterfront towns bring in all of thier supplies by truck because they don't have proper docks, many smaller colonies will rely on direct, low-volume shipping. While it is cheaper to send a 500,000 ton bulk freighter to a planet that needs 500,000 tons of supplies, many fronteer worlds may only have a couple of small towns, and not be able to justify bulk shipments.

If you look at the demographic distribution of any country where people have the space to spread out, you will find that about 90% of towns are very small (less than 10,000 people), with less than 1% of all settlements being major cities of over 1 million people. You will likely see a similar distribution in space. There may only be a few hundred worlds in your galaxy with massive Earth like populations worth sending super freighters between, but millions of frontier worlds that only need/want to purchase foreign goods by the truck load... thus: space trucks.

The second reason for space trucks will be atmospheric re-entry. The Square-Cube Law favors smaller ships for landing on a planet where it must survive the hazards of descending through an atmosphere at supersonic speeds. Massive space freighters can get between two planets way cheaper than 1000 smaller space trucks, but if the destination planet is not rich and affluent enough to afford a proper space port, then they have no good way of loading and unloading all of thier goods; so, in most cases, direct surface to surface, or spaceport to surface, transport by space trucks is required. So, if you're just trying to get a few tons from the spaceport orbiting an Earth like world to a small colony on some random planetoid 3 star systems over, then sending a direct truckload could be better than trying to a fly a giant super freighter all the way out there just to offload one container.

What they should look like:

The most important characteristic is that it must be designed for atmospheric entry/exit. This will be the defining characteristic that makes it able to serve worlds that the big transports can not. Secondary to this, but also important is that is should be able to carry one (or a small number of) standard sized shipping containers. These 2 goals together means that the ship should have an aerodynamic design with a large central cargo bay very similar to a space shuttle. The big difference between a space shuttle and your cargo ship is that you will want a more rectangular, body to accommodate cuboid shaped cargo loads instead of the cylindrical cargo loads that the space shuttle was designed around.

It will also be important that the cargo container, through removable as a whole unit, be stored internally because you don't want to have to heat and radiation shield every single cargo container if you expect them to be interchangeable with the rest of your logistics network. That would be a lot of added weight and cost.

As for internal living space, such smaller ships should not be designed for long term living. Instead you should consider that your galaxy DOES have millions of smaller worlds and space stations. The interesting thing about driving a truck across country is not the 100s of km you spend sitting around in your truck, it is all of stop-overs to re-fuel, eat, meet new people, etc. Perhaps your ship is only meant to travel a few light years at a time; so, getting its cargo to its destination could be a story of all of the layovers and stops along the way. At the very most, your cabin should be two chairs that can recline for resting in, a large ice-box full of ready-to-eat snacks/meals and maybe a tiny bathroom. If your ship has stand up and move around space in it, it is probably over-built for the amount of cargo you are trying to move.

This also leads into the argument (why a human crew?). A simple point to point flight interacting with standardized, well maintained space ports is pretty easy for drone work, but if your trip means jumping between 10 poorly maintained, poorly funded, fueling stations, there may be too many variables for AI to manage well. One landing strip might be 10% shorter than regulation. One might have a transponder that likes to suddenly go out. One might still transmit its landing instructions in old imperial units instead of metric units, etc. So, having a person on board who can clearly communicate with and understand instructions from ground control and maybe know when to go a bit outside of standard safety thresholds, could make a huge difference when navigating the frontier.

Answer 11

I recommend looking at how other works of fiction have answered the same question. One that comes to mind for me is the game Starfield. Players can choose to engage in the activities you describe, building or buying ships suited for the purpose and piloting them alone or with hired crew. There are also various storylines in the game where the player will interact with people in the space shipping industry, including those specifically involved in the manufacture of this type of craft. You can peruse the wiki page for the manufacturer HopeTech to see schematics for these ships, which generally increase in size, capacity, and crew accommodation as you scroll down the page. I chose this one at random, called the "Highlander III", but there are also three models of "Spacetruk" and one known as "Star Semi".

"They're trucks! In space!" ― HopeTech slogan

One thing I think you'll notice, especially if you look at the ships from other manufacturers, is which attributes are maximized. The ship I've shown here has a lot of cargo capacity (the boxy containers attached on either side of its aft portion) and a lot of fuel capacity (the rounded containers along the front) increasing its range. It has large engines valued for their ability to get a lot of mass moving. It is, as a trade-off, NOT maneuverable, NOT well equipped for combat, NOT sleek or made to look good.

An element to consider, which might bolster your reasoning to have human crew, is the tendency of space's incomprehensible vastness to fracture civilization into factions. Each will exert control to varying degrees over some portion of your universe, and the most profitable trade routes will always be those that cross those lines. Additionally, each faction may have its own idea of what constitutes contraband, and what constitutes piracy. This can create additional sources of conflict or motivation for your characters, as it could be seen to require human interactions such as diplomacy, intimidation, or haggling.