Interstellar Travel - Jobs

How many jobs will it take to run a spaceship? Although the exact shape a ship will take is unknown at this time, educated guesses can and have been made - extrapolating from current technology and knowledge, to the possible branches such tech might take us. Also mix in a bit of whimsy at times, or fantastical, and you have the field open to how a ship might be designed, constructed, and built. Then comes the staffing of the ship, and what different fields will prove to be the most important to train for, and what jobs are absolutely indispensable. Training an initial crew will be the ideal situation for original staffing, but replacements must be drawn from the population of the ship, and eventually the crew will be replaced by spaceborn humans.

Not only must a plan be laid out to replenish the stock of capable workers in each job identified as critical, a structure must be in place to train replacements in the absence of qualified educational staff or even a living user of the skills. In the case of emergency, it would be possible to lose all people with particular skills. The idea of cross-training between different fields, having extended "basic" courses across a wide range of subjects, formalizing and enforcing a rigorous diary system whereby students can pinpoint shortcomings and areas that could use improvement, etc - these are all things that need to be examined when codifying the curriculum.

Another item to be considered is what size population must exist to support certain jobsets? Basic family practice should be relatively easy to maintain, but what about advanced surgery? Research into disease? Preventative medicine regimens? A certain number of lower level assets must be maintained to ensure access to the most advanced of sciences; medical, engineering, computer science are but a few of the fields that have sufficiently advanced concepts to need a broader base in order to maintain the level of proficiency and availability aboard ship.

Jobs need to be categorized using a graded scale - different aspects will contribute to the overall value of a job, which will be used to determine priority when filling and planning for new staff, allocating resources based on the discretion of individuals, and terminating people in crisis situations where the population must be culled for survival. The question that comes next is, how are different jobs compensated? Will there be uneven distribution of wealth, or will the ship work as a commune? For a smaller, military style voyage, the answer would be simple. But in a ship the size of a colony, there will inevitably be a disparity of wealth, and it will most likely form along careers and parentage. Hopefully a system can be developed that is as much meritocracy as possible, rather than pure generational happenstance.

Ship Organization
Command
Ship Maintenance
Food Services
Medical
Government
Police



Basic Fields
Command
Crew
Medicine
Engineering
Construction
Military
Police
Food Production
Food Preparation
Waste Disposal
Education
Fitness

Job Ratings
Survival
Morale
Ship Survival
Prestige
Flexibility



Interstellar Travel