From: Doug Evans <devans@n...>
Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2003 10:52:40 -0600
Subject: Re: FT â Fleet Replenishment tenders (hospital)
*** Hospital ships? They were converted/used by surface navys, but would they be justified in the space..? If you get in an accident up there, not much chance to survive, yet far from the safety of planetside hospital complexes or the huge space stations they might boost the morale *** Didn't these tended to be fielded only in cases of large conflicts? Remember, these were usually for Gropos on front lines far from 'civ'. I think naval units tended to pick up survivors, then high-tail it for base and med facilities there. Natch, you have the rebel hospital frigate in Star Wars, which suggests an almost nomadic existence. On the other scale, a conflict as you see in Legends of Galactic Heroes, with tens of thousands of ships and millions of combatants, I think hospital ships would be necessary for sheer volume. Grimly, I imagine dual purpose ships, replacement personel carries going out, hospital ships on return. Sci-fi lit has a fair number of cases with mission-killed ships with large numbers of non-killed casualties. Would a warship have temporary stasis or automated med units of limited duration that a hospital ship could 'download' to longer term reconstruction units? You end up making some specialized assumptions of future trauma treatment as well as assumptions about the number and severity of casualties that trauma creates. My, how I do go on. The_Beast