« Reply #84 on: March 10, 2010, 05:06:08 pm »
Mining scout:
The concept of mining scouts seems to be very common, but it is also widely misunderstood. A ship of that size and crew complement could serve either as a small economic geological survey vessel, or as a small prospector's ship. To do both, or to do either in more than basic detail, it is too small. If the ship is supposed to do basic economic geology survey, landing is neither required, nor useful. The most important thing to get that job done is detailed orbital multi-spectral imagery. The job of such a team would be to determine the geological structure of a planet, it's approximated age, map basic surface resources and so on. As a result, the sponsoring company would then know if the planet is useless, not interesting, interesting, or very interesting. It does not really get much more detailed than that. Even landing and taking diminutive samples would change much about that. To do more, a second team would have to be sent to worlds that were determined as interesting or better. This would be a prospector ship. The prospector ship would not really need any special onboard systems, except for cargo space and the data already collected by the geological survey team. The cargo space is needed for at least one all terrain vehicle, for light mobile drilling equipment and mobile sensor units and for loading samples. Analysing them on site would be possible for larger vessels, but it would not be practical nor useful for ships of this size.
Archaeology:
Most of what applies to economic geology applies to archaeology as well. The question whether or not there could be something worth looking at is determined from orbit. For more detail, atmospheric flights are useful. Actual landing only makes sense if the ship is equipped to do anything more useful than stepping outside and looking around on foot equipped with a shovel and a machete, which rarely does any good in a scientific sense. Archaeological robbery does work that way, but it will either have to rely on someone else's previous survey, or it will not be lucrative. Finding anything AND finding something valuable that is both easily recovered and easily moved is nearing impossible odds. So as for geological survey, it is either more useful to bring a bigger ship to begin with, or to specialize on a job that can actually be achieved. A ship that does lousy in everything it can do is not worth the fuel it uses.
You can use real-world historical and contemporary exploration and survey for inspiration. Keep in mind that even the explorers of the new world had much more knowledge of what they would find than anyone who flies to an uncharted planet. They may often not have realized it, but they were already aware of the general information. The Americas were still planet earth, after all. Plants were green and grew upwards, mountains were made of similar rock than they already knew and formed by the same forces. Still, even dedicated expeditions brought a lot of multi-functional equipment and manpower. Much much more than such a small starship could field. Even dedicated modern geological survey teams work with more personnel and equipment. Most of what I know about that, I know because my mother is working for the economic geology department of the Berlin Free University. Only the most tiny areas of research can be conducted by teams smaller than a dozen and without complex equipment. Things like collecting data on a specific volcano, for example. Nothing like that would justify sending a starship anywhere, though.
I hope you don't take any of this for negative feedback, because it is most definitely not meant to be.
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