Escape Pods and Lifeboats in Science Fiction 

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I liked the line in Mass Effect: Andromeda where you can ask if it's easy to accidentally launch an escape pod, and the response you get is, "Ryder, it's an escape pod. If it's difficult to use, you're designing it wrong."

Let's not forget one of my personal favorites: "We've equipped your escape pod with a science-fiction super fabricator so that you can build a high-tech planetary facility within which you can assemble your own escape vessel using only local minerals, flora and fauna. Welcome to survival game planet."

Personally I think that since spaceships share a lot more things with submarines than with surface vessels, the emphasis must be placed into modularity and survivability rather than immediate evacuation. When the outside environment is so hostile, the obvious answer is to stay inside as long as possible until a proper rescue can be executed.

As someone who has been on a lot of cruise ships, every so often, you will see the crew take one of the lifeboats for a spin to make sure its engine is functioning properly. I always thought that could be an interesting slice-of-life scene for a sci-fi series.

Love how space pods are frequently used in Star Wars as a badass way to open a great story. Apart from the iconic opening of A New Hope, the legendary KOTOR game begins with the protagonists Revan and Carth going to Taris in order to find the escape pod of the Jedi Bastila Shan

One topic I've been exploring in my own writing is that in most situations, staying on the ship and trying to repair it is the safer option. Most ships that are destroyed don't explode in massive fireballs, but instead lose manuvering and/or life support. They are left drifting on the vector they were travelling. If help can reach you (the setting only has sunlight speed), it is going to take days, if not weeks, and you are better off all staying in one spot, trying to make the most of the resources you have or possibly repair the ship.

Another fun fact about Star Trek escape pods, they are designed to connect to each other thus sharing resources and people can even travel between pods. The bridge of the Galaxy Class is also an escape pod (never used because of real life budget reasons). It would act as the core of the lattice, it had its own fusion generators, life support, and shields. With the Bridge in the escape pod lattice survival time went from a few weeks to several months, long enough for a emergency signal to reach someone even at low power.

Pretty curious to think that the lack of will to destroy a space pod literaly made possible the plot of the entire Star Wars OT. I wonder what the imperial who refused to destroy it said when he realized that the capsule with no sign of lifeforms had inside the droids that possessed the Death Star Plans 😅

You missed the opportunity to talk about escape pods that are able to connect to multiple other pods and form some kind of 'mini-station' until rescue.

6:32 Whoever drew the faces on that is a legend

I've wondered about settings that subvert our lifeboat expectations. The Titanic's lifeboats had a total capacity of only a fraction of the total passengers, and this was far more than what was legally required at the time. The expectation was that these lifeboats would be used to ferry passengers to a rescue ship, as previous sinkings had shown that modern ships sank very slowly and the use of radio along trade routes ensured that rescue could arrive quickly. We could extrapolate this to sci-fi: Most of the dangers of space aren't mitigated by going from a large ship to a small lifeboat. In fact, some of those dangers get worse, as you don't have the bulk of the ship and it's hull to protect you. Most things that would be fatal to a large ship would also be fatal to small lifeboats. So what if the expectation became that lifeboats would be used to ferry folks to rescue, not to have them live in them for days after abandoning ship. And then you can double subvert it by having a Titanic situation where you do need to evacuate the large ship immediately, like due to a massive radiation leak, where getting away is safer than staying.

TNG Enterprise technical manual had my favorite system. Most pods were capacity focused [8?] while others were specialist. Some were interlinking, medical suites, communication focused etc.

Trip and Malcom getting trapped on a shuttle in Enterprise was one of my favorite character moments in the whole show.

They weren't lying with 'easiest' a bin bag filled with expanding filler foam. I need to put this in my next scifi short story.

the biggest issue I keep coming to with escape pods / lifeboats is the supplies they can hold. They basically are their own ships that you have to squeeze in somewhere. If you are abandoning ship because you're under attack, what is stopping the enemy from just popping the escape pods? You already have limited space on a ship on account of it needing to be self contained, now we need to tack on hundreds of tiny things, that are only supposed to be used in an emergency that need their own life support, supply hold, propulsion etc. To have what they need to act as a lifeboat, even solo-occupant, they would be roughly the same size as space fighter craft.

"We're coming in too fast." - Cortana "Damn! Airbrake failure! They blew too early! I'm losing her! Brace for Impact!" - Pilot, UNSC Lifeboat LFA-43 4:55-5:00

Do Warhammer 40K ships feature escape pods? - Probably not for the thousands of "thrall"-type crewmembers manning the engines and loading the guns - Probably not for the servitors hardwired into their stations - Maybe for higher-ranking crew members if they don't have a permanent plug connection to their vessel - Maybe for passengers, if they are of the nobility

The copilot's face at 6:32 is priceless

I've read military sci-fi from David Weber and others and those ships are designed with less life-pod capacity that the full crew count on the assumption that by the time "Abandon ship!" is declared, much of the crew will already be dead or stuck in sections with no access to a pod.

Unless your spaceship is made of explodium, the best lifeboat is to just not abandon ship. Even if it's got holes in it, it still gives you radiation protection, you might have some kind of emergency balloon to inflate inside a compartment to hold air, and above all -- in Newtonian physics you and the ship you're abandoning are going to the same destination whether you like it or not.

There should be an extra factor in escape pods and lifeboats: the rules and laws of war depending on the setting. Are the enemy prohibited from shooting lifeboats? Are they legally obligated to take them in as POWs?

5:07 I feel obligated to point out that this particular thing is in fact an empty torpedo that Scotty modified to be controlled via padd inside of five minutes, so the flying coffin thing is justified in this one case.

Thought for larger ships - escape pods are located ajacent to whatever peoplemover system (turbo lifts, elevators, trams, whatever). The lift tubes extend to the inner hull and a section blows out of the outer hull during abandon ship. Then the escape pods use the lift shafts to exit the ship. Advantages are that you can escape people from deeper in the shop this way. And even if one point of egress is destroyed you can ideally travel through the shafts to an undamaged ejection point. Multiperson larger escape pods can be located closer to the outer hull.

I dont think most spaceships would need a escape pod in the first place. In the ocean ships sink, so people need to get out of the sinking craft and get on a smaller, floating craft. But in space a dead ship is just a drifting hulk. The only thing that needs to escape are the explosive parts(reactor, ammo racks etc.) eject those parts and you could still inhabit the hulk and scavenge whats left.

Having the escape pod include a stasis chamber also allows for interesting "fish out of temporal water" stories, such as the Lost Fleet book series.

I may be mistaken, but I was under the impression that the life pods in Babylon five were basically just little boxes with life-support that could hold a few people in it and had a radio or something as a distressed beacon. The idea was just to cram into one of these things, and then just basically drift through space until somebody rescued you.

The moose may have been absolutely insane in its pursuit of minimalist materials for a viable system but it at least paved the way for gundam's balute system which was a far more practical use of the concept lol

It occurs to me, a former AB Lifeboatman, that massed small escape pods, like the ones in Star Trek properties, would best be designed to be docked with each other after escape, to make search and rescue easier. It's a crucial tactic in maritime abandon-ship procedure, whether swimming in immersion suits, floating in liferafts, or dubiously navigating in motorized lifeboats, to join up with your fellow survivors and become "larger, oranger, and brighter" and therefore more visible to rescuers, who will initially likely themselves be working in hazardous conditions and poor visibility. It also allows for sharing of resources, and most internationally-mandated survival equipment on the market tends to be cheaply made and overpriced, so in a survival situation, you *will* be missing important resources due to defects and failure.

The novel of Starship Troopers has the Mobile Infantry deploy from orbit in what are essentially single-use pods. They coat the trooper in an egg-shaped goo, harden it, then drop them. The shell then burns off as ablative protection on the way down, and by the time it's completely worn away, they're at the kind of altitude/speed for parachutes

In the Expanse, you never see scapepods. There's surely small ships or sciffs attached for scape, like the Tachi was in the Donnager, but no the actual scape pod. They go for the "either die or survive in a presurized room" as they find survivors in the damaged corvette further in the series.

I often think about Worf in the DS9 episode where he got lost. The man just sat inside a little pod, out in the vast nothingness and blasted klingon opera for the hole time enjoying his solitude xD

Scavengers Reign is about a bunch of people who survive of escape pods. They aren't the flying coffin kinds but are large enough to house a few people. Its mostly an early plot point, the show itself seems to be mostly about the very alien nature of the world itself.

It drives me absolutely nuts in sci fi how there's always magically some planet with a breathable atmosphere within range of your escape pod.

Thinking about this: the best solution definitely does depend on what the craft is doing. A mostly automated mining craft or station would be expected to stay relatively close to infrastructure and thus could do with simply using the shuttles it would need to transport the mined goods. A passenger transport would probably not have escape vehicles, instead focusing on minimizing and mitigating the risks involved and fixing any problems before they reach that point. That being said, they would likely design so that the "habitation module"(bit where the people sleep) is in a separate hardened bulkhead A cargo ship might use a cargo shuttle if needed, or follow those principles. For military ships it depends a lot but I could see them simply going with the small craft they already carry and instead focus on defending the bigger targets so they can do their thing. I definitely see the hardened habitation module being used here. For long term exploration I would do the approach of sending every ship at at most half capacity. Therefore, there is plenty of slack before things start going bad. I would think such ships would have plenty of shuttles to ferry people and supplies(especially after accounting for redundancy) to act as temporary escape craft.

The throwaway visual gag with the saucer and the TNG title card was great

In *Red Dwarf* a salvaged escape pod had emergency terraforming equipment that could make a planet habitable in only a few days, and a Cloning suite that could create functional fully adult Clones, either male or female - irrespective of the donor's gender. Great unless only one person is using it and they're a complete and total *smeghead.* And the last thing you want is a society solely of _them._

There in fact is a movie about a spaceship getting lost off course on what was supposed to be a three months trip and the movie follows the protagonist struggeling with the implications of their situation, personal tragedy and the increasing scarcity of resources over the years - a story of decline and loss of hope. Unfortunatly I can't remember its title..

First thing that comes on is music from Space Engineers literally as I'm playing the game too. Nice usage

A good showing of EscapePods is in the Star Wars Republic Diplomatic Shuttle. (the Red ship in Episode 1) The strange cup at the front is both a meeting room/life pod. It can be full detached. It also comes with shields and a small propulsion drive.

Star Trek actually has some lore regarding the viability of life rafts, if one follows your lead and considers escape pods something different. The Galaxy class escape pod life raft could apparently support three people up to 96 days, and they were able to dock with each other, to share vital resources and enhance survivability in deep space. They also carried subspace radios to summon help, which, given the ludicrous speeds of Star Trek vessels, should arrive within days if not hours, unless you had the bad luck of drifting through the delta quadrant. The also did a pretty good job designing them with a shape that looks at least plausible for reentry, that is, sporting a big flat featureless surface instead of the classic tin can shape known and loved from Star Wars IV.

I think escape systems without FTL have to be the scariest thing in Sci-Fi. Life boats work as well as they do because they go adrift in places like shipping lanes where help will be by soon. Who the heck is coming to help an explorer crew trapped on an unknown planet or worse: in-between stars.

One recommendation I'd follow is making boarding escape craft and their deployment as mechanically simple as possible. If your electronic instruments on-board are disabled for any reason, you wouldn't want your escape to be halted in any way. I think rescue and tug boat style craft make great assets for escape, especially from large craft with multiple decks and sections.

I heard Space Engineers music at the start and wondered if I’d clicked the wrong video 😅 (I love SE)

Wasn't there an Enterprise episode about this? Where Tucker and some other crew members were off the NX-01 in a shuttle, and they somehow assumed the Enterprise was destroyed, while they were all in interstellar space, yet at that time Starfleet shuttles were not capable of warp, so they were looking for a decades long flight to the nearest star system.

How much escape pods make sense likely depends on how the main vessel is used. I.e. an orbital factory / raffinery will have a higher risk of an accident warranting a plant evacuation, while also not being too far away from other infrastructure where to escape to. Similarly Cargo Ships might already carry a crew shuttle which can double as an escape pod. and it makes sense for a small crew shuttle to be significantly faster than a huge cargo vessel, and having about the same range. Speaking of Shuttles: for vessels exclusively carrying crew / passengers* escape pods don't make any sense since in total they wold have to be the same size as the whole ship. In this case it is far more sensible to focus on insuring that accidents don't happen in the first place and any consequences are mitigated as far as possible. (wich is the strategy used in the air travel industry) An alternative to escape pods would be reinforced emergency shelters EDIT: *: l'm specially thinking about vessels which are similar to an airliner, which takes relatively short trips for space travel (maximum maybe 20 h) and the hole cabin being filled with seats.

There was a good not-quite-escape-pod story in the Star Trek novel "The Kobayashi Maru" about 30 years ago. Several Enterprise crew are stuck in a damaged shuttle drifting between planets. They all tell stories about Academy experiences while waiting to die. Although since one of them is Scotty, you know a half-destroyed shuttle is only an opportunity for wild MacGyver solutions. (There's a reason MacGyver had a Scottish name, I think...)

On your last comment regarding a setting involving survivors in pods: I remember an episode from Andromeda (I believe) where the pods of a destroyed ship had been connected together to combine energy and resources. Found it pretty interesting at the time.

I would say EVE online has one of the best escape pods in my option. First off, you are in your escape pod at all time. You control your ship inside your pod. If your ship is destroyed your pod automatically ejects and if your pod is destroyed your consciousness is automatically uploaded into a fresh clone inside a station.

"It's fairly unlike that the Earth will be out of range of the ISS." I like that Spacedock hasn't ruled out the possibility that Rick Sanchez provokes an AI to heist the entire planet.

The supersonic ejection problem really depends on altitude. For example, at the altitude Maverick was flying many have calculated that regular ejection would've been totally safe due to air density. This is also why high speed planes fly so high usually, it's just easier to go fast in thinner air. Many planes also tell the pilot outright, with a separate speed dial that tells you how much air resistance there is in terms of how fast you'd need to be going at sea level for the same resistance.

I love the Space Engineers OST in the background.

"I know I know...destroyed in the explosion." :D One of my fav DS9 episodes.

Something similar to the M.O.O.S.E. is seen in Halo Reach, with the Emergency Re-entry Kit that Noble Six wears like a parachute bag while piloting a Sabre fighter. It's only shown fully inflated in some concept art rather than in the game itself, but it's what allows Noble Six to survive the space jump from the Covenant corvette at the end of the level The Long Night of Solace.

In my sci-fi world, warships launch large autonomous life boats before a battle. These boats pick up life rafts and loan survivors after a battle, and carry enough supplies to sustain occupants for weeks.

In my setting lifeboats are essentially glorified Apollo return modules for up to 5 persons. And they're required by the safety standards but are considered useless by the actual ship crews because they can only help if you're in orbit around a planet with breathable atmosphere to land on, or there's other ship in range that can pick up your pod within a week. Which is "almost never" in an emergency situation, so your best chance of survival is staying _on_ the ship and praying it won't explode, and getting in the "life" boat actually _decreases_ the survival chances.

Seven Eves is interesting because it's like sending escape rafts out from a planet instead of to one. It's also as you described, a long story of people forced to survive and make decisions trapped floating in space with limited options.

Don't forget about when the shuttle-craft has it's own escape pods (Voyager's Delta flyer).

I'm really glad you mentioned long-term survival pods in this video, because I'm of the opinion that in anything short of Star Wars, with cross-galactic travel times measured in hours, you're just not gonna be able to stuff all the supplies you need for multiple weeks of waiting for rescue into one little craft. Another really good example of this is in The Lost Fleet, where in the first book, our hero Admiral Geary is rescued from such a survival pod after having drifted for about a century. I'd be really surprised if you folks weren't familiar with The Lost Fleet, but if you aren't, please for the love of Christ go read them. You could get at least a dozen videos out of the series. Maybe two, if you tried hard!

That Space Engineer-music is so relaxing;)

That idea for the escape pods drifting is amazing

MOOSE! I thought I was the only guy in the world who had ever heard of MOOSE!

Loving the space engineers music in the background

There is an interesting life raft type episode in the sci-if anime Knights of Sidonia. Basically 2 mecha pilots are stuck surviving together in an out of fuel mecha’s cockpit. It was a really good episode for both characters development.

I can't remember the title, but I did read a novel in which an generation-type starship wreck was explored - FTL having been discovered since it was launched and archaeologists caught up with it. One character did ask about escape pods, but another points out that the ship doesn't have any. Because as a starship traveling into the uninhabited void, there's no point.

There was this Andromeda Episode in which the Crimson sunrise exploded and all those tiny octagonal escape pods clustered together to share resources and space. Kind of StarTreks Suliban Helix. I found that was a nice idea. Especially since i believe it was implied that even unmanned or partially damaged pods could be docked to utilize their resources to maximize the survival chance of the manned ones.

Random idea hit me with the last shot of the video: Depending on the setting, it could be mandated that escape pods are like parachuting pilots from a legal perspective- no longer combatants, and allowed to be taken as POWs (Which is probably preferable to staying on an exploding ship, but that depends on who you're up against).

Don't forget that Starfleet escape pods were made to dock together. Yep, from the Next Generation Enterprise manual.

4:20 from what I remember, and it's common enough to just use Starfleet terminology but, nearly every solar system from what we can tell has "m" class or near enough to sustain human life for a period of time for a proper rescue, though if one isnt in range, there is the clump method where they just ball up and transmit emergency beacons

The most accessible escape capsule is a spacesuit. At least long enough to get to something more reliable

I would love to see intergalatic vessels having stealth coated escape pods that in an emergency (or one the threat has passed) could then dock together to make a larger co-habitable space, considering most sea going vessels have 200% life raft capacity, adding hive mind like autopilot into the pods for navigation and then pooling life support functions together to enhance the survivability.

8:36 that was actually the plot of a Star Wars: The Clone Wars episode, where a republic ship was destroyed and the survivors hunted down by droids

Two of my favourite nonfiction books are The Wager and Endurance, both of which involve making long trips across stormy seas in small boats. Really is a lot of untapped potential for story telling here. Space could even have its own version of the custom of the sea, where you realise you only have enough oxygen if someone is killed.

What I have seen in my science fiction reading is escape pods will scream for help and then land on a habitable that is near but if no habitable planet is not at hand the pod enters orbit of any near by planet and then screams for help

Always liked the idea of a hexagon patterne escape pod. They could then gather up after lunch and share oxygen if some were damage during the fight.

So glad the B-58 was mentioned here, it was such a neat solution for ejection at high altitudes and supersonic speed. That plane is mostly forgotten these days, but it was a technical marvel.

"Good news sailors! Our escape pods have been upgraded to seek out the nearest planet and land there!" "What happens if the nearest planet is a gas giant?" "Ah. Um... Science I guess?"

Escape pods are interesting, and one thing I've thought about is what about armed escape pods? In Star Wars, the Tantive IV is equipped with larger escape pods that double as gun turrets. Now, this brings up a dilemma. I would think that it would be a war crime to shoot at escape pods, as like an ejecting pilot from an aircraft, they would be considered non combatants. But, what happens if the escape pod is armed? And what about using armed shuttles as escape craft? It could make laws and customs of war in this situation complex and messy. It could be interesting to have this as world building, to show the protocols of that nature, and possibly as moral dilemmas for characters to face. My take is that armed escape pods are fair game, but only if they actually engage in combat. But, armed escape pods are uncommon, simply for the reason that it opens up the possibility of them being shot at. One exception to this is cases where a navy is facing an enemy that does not respect the laws and customs of war, and will shoot at escape pods regardless. In that case, armed escape pods would be more common, to give the occupants at least a fighting chance. Another thing that I have considered for my own world building is ships having multiple options for escape pods, including ones that are rigid, and ones that are inflatable. Especially if you have access to materials that are sci fi tech, these inflatable pods could be made to be quite strong and tough. I think pods like this would be most useful and common on smaller ships, which would have less space for escape systems. They would also possibly be common on warships, where space is again at a premium. As a counter point to the above, I have watched Battleship New Jersey's channel, and curator Ryan has talked about escape craft for wet navy ships, and how historically warships don't really have any means of evacuation. It's only with the advent of inflatable rafts that things get better. For instance, battleships with boats tended to have said boats shredded by enemy fire, or the ship was destroyed in a way that precluded any sort of evacuation. Depending on the setting, this could justify a lack of escape craft. Basically, any kind of destruction of the ship would happen so quickly that evacuation would not be possible. But, there are several counterpoints even to this. For instance, unlike the ocean, ships don't sink. So, unless the ship exploded, evacuation should still be possible. Also unlike the ocean, humans can not survive in space for any length of time, meaning that unlike with a wet navy, having survivors waiting to be picked up by a friendly ship is not an option. Unless every crew member is wearing a spacesuit, but even then, escape pods or rafts would be preferable, as they could have more robust life support, and would be easier to find in space. Not directly related to escape pods, but for my own world building, I have come up with other aspects of ship survivability. One aspect of this is that all ships, especially warships, have reinforced parts of the hulls called shove points. If a ship loses propulsion, then a friendly ship can shove them to redirect their course, which in a deep space battle would be back to your own lines. Because there is no friction in space, the disabled ship would keep going until it reached friendly territory, and could then be repaired, towed using an FTL tug back home, or evacuated if there was too much damage. However, the shove points are even more important in orbit. If a ship is disabled, and is not in a stable orbit, than another ship can shove them, and push them in to a stable orbit. Or, failing that, get the disabled ship stable long enough to evacuate. Space is hard, which is why you need all kinds of systems available for when things go wrong.

Trouble is that deep character moments with long lasting repercussions are anathema to modern Hollywood

I'm reminded of 3 different types of escape craft in Star Wars now. The first one is those zorb ball things Anakin, Ahsoka, and Obi-Wan use on Felucia in The Clone Wars. Ejecting just before their shuttle hits a mountain and they just bounce and roll down the hills until reaching level ground. I think they even came with oxygen masks The 2nd is the Salon pods on the Consular-class cruiser and the Charger C70. Meant for diplomats, but could eject from the ships with up to 16 people inside them if needed And the third is the gun pods on the Tantive IV (can't remember the name of the pods, or if other CR90 corvettes were equipped with them). They were in spots that the turbolasers on the Tantive IV were, and were equipped with short-ranged hyperdrives to escape the battle. Handy little things since they could, in theory, protect themselves against enemy attacks, or until the plot deems it necessary for the occupants to be rescued

space fighter ships can also double as escape pods, like the x-wing (star wars) it has a compartment on the underside (just below the astromech housing unit), it can store food, water, and other supplies that the pilot can survive on for days until rescue.

In my own stories, I have two Coffin jokes. One about an airlock so small that only a single person in EVA gear can fit in it at a time. The other being the 90's Beast Wars style life pods designed to keep the occupant alive.

There can be a lot of issues with escape pods, especially in a realistic scenario. Even in my own story building, spaceships don't really have them. However, the ship's shuttles are quite large and spacious, capable of holding a large percentage of crew. In emergency situations, portions of the ship (consisting of modules) can be disconnected to save the crew from an all-out disaster. It's also possible for the crew to put on spacesuits and simply leap out into space to save themselves. With that said, it's very rare, and there usually isn't enough time to evacuate a ship anyway (depending on what's going on in a battle). Lifepods take up too much space on a ship. In battle, the pods can be easily destroyed and become sitting ducks, whereas shuttles at least have some sort of weaponry to defend themselves, along with rations/supplies to keep the crew alive for a certain amount of time. With that said, it's possible to have civilian spaceships to carry them. It would make more sense that they had them, just in case.

Something interesting which factors into your mention of lifepods needing 'additional' reinforcement of their hull if they are meant to land on inhabitable planets is actually the fact that unlike oceanic lifepods, space lifepods most likely will need a lot of that reinforcement anyway, even if they are just meant to drift through space awaiting rescue. Why? Well, there's a wonder demonstration of one possibility in the Andromeda episode where the Systems Commonwealth is launching I think the first new capital ship since it's restoration and the Andromeda visits. Except said capital ship unexpected explodes, though most of the crew make it off the ship in life pods. Only then some of the lifepods start exploding and no matter what, no cause can be found for it. Until it's revealed that the reason for why the lifepods are exploding is what it turns out was the same reason the capital ship exploded. The shipbuilders had done 'cost savings' by removing (I think it was) carbon nanotubes meant to armour the antimatter fuel storage and the lifepods. One stray high velocity particle at the wrong place and the fuel storage goes up, and then all the wreckage from the exploded ship drifting through space along with the damage from the launch event meant that some of the lifepods were suffering 'catastrophic structural failures'. So when you consider that lifepods for starships would need extra reinforcement in order to safely land on nearby inhabitable planets, you also need to ask the question: how much of that extra reinforcement can serve a double purpose in keeping any lifepods which can't land on an inhabitable planet protected from the hazards of space, near a catastrophic ship loss event and all the other issues which will be doing their best to also destroy the lifepod?

I always felt that on Star Trek, each of the Turbo-Lift cabs should double as a lifeboat, and every Turbo-Lift shaft should end in a blowout-panel on the ship’s hull.

B for Butterfly? The life ferries on the colony ship were airliner-sized shuttles. The titular unit is capable of interstellar travel by itself; a rescue pilot actually admires it and is jealous of it as it launches off bearing the kids and the alien. Alias Mr Hackenbacker? Brains goes the other way and instead of ejecting the contents of the plane - he designs the entire fuel system to eject.

Yeah, you never want to hit the lifeboats in interstellar space even between planets! Just think about the speed your own ship has prior to ejection and you end up flying into nomansland. They should really make these pods coffins and all that crashing into mountains and stuff just kills everything inside.

I wonder why Star Trek doesn't use transporters more for this: either for getting to the escape pods or for launching the actual pods from protected locations. I could also see transport buffers being used for more "compact" storage of escapees: you could put dozens of people inside a single buffer and just launch that with a power source.

During the hunt for malevolent in the clone wars tv show there is a good episode with this premise with plo ku and some clone troopers escaping and drifting in space.

In Trek I think a fun thing would be if turbo lift pods could be used as last resort life rafts. Have a character just barely make it into one and the pod gets shot out of a hatch seconds before the the ship explodes.

Imagine if Warhammer just used the Drop Pods that Marines use

I can't see M.O.O.S.E. working out without basically making "Human ala Sous Vide"

Ds9: weeks in that pod...just you and klingon opera

Something about escape pods in sci-fi facinates me. I've been trying to think about how escape vessels would work on large civillian craft (like a space cruise ship) to be able to cover all kinds of emergency situations. How would they be designed so they could easily be used without training? I imagine they'd be able to be used as temporary shelters while still attached to the main ship in the event of a fire while its being extiguished or contaminated air supply etc.

In the Polish book series "Algorithms of War" escape pods have an interesting secondary use as an elements of electronic warfare. Same of the escape pods are used as decoys in the ships last line of defense. When you have to abbandent ship during a battle, the crew usually has already suffered such losses that not all escape pods well be needed.

Starship Troopers. Escape pods probably designed by rally racers instead of engineers. 😢 Let's make escape pods that hold a whopping total of TWO people, so that we can equip each and every one with its own rocket propulsion, navigation and life support systems, and storage compartment. And then let's place it in the middle of the ship so that it has to travel down a long (hopefully undamaged) tunnel to get clear of the ship, because why would that tunnel space possibly be needed for anything else?

Space Engineers music is a nice touch for this video

Something you have not really mentioned here is the idea of something like one of those 1 man coffin pods, equipped with stasis and possibly a rudementery ftl drive. Especially for warships I like the idea of escape pods that automatically get you to the nearest freindly base or charted habitable planet in no time. Litterally.

"Spacedock : The Safest Spaceship Ever" for those who want an inhouse video of the galaxy class's lifeboat design (also my favorite spacedock video)

I'm sort of surprised no footage from Lifepod made it in here - maybe it's just too obscure? It's a movie about characters escaping a cruise ship in a lifepod and what happens to them as they drift while awaiting rescue