It would be remiss of me not to make this point nice and early. I was recently pointed towards a discussion on one of the pages of the slightly wierd FVB offshoot the 'Design Alliance' wherein a series of people were discussing IES's. I took note of the dated thread and I must admit, the fact that it started the day after I first posted this page has strained my acceptance of coincidence almost to breaking point.
The Design Alliance have, it must be said, taken this idea in several interesting directions other than my default spherical pod, so I'll withhold coughing 'ripoff' and decide to simply be flattered that my take on the IES was taken up by others so enthusiastically. At least, I think I would were it not the case that the Design Alliance have opted to copy great chunks of my work wholesale and 'sell' it as their own. Ach well. No good deed goes unpunished.
Much of my work involves
determining methods of giving ships various elements determined to be
obligatory. One of the toughest of these is the escape pod situation.
One of the earliest problems with these is the stupendously foolish
act of assigning escape pod roles to the tapering cone sections on the
'hips' of the Millenium Falcon. This was intensely stupid for a number
of reasons;
1 - The insides of these structures has been clearly shown, most obviously in ANH when Solo rushes into the ship in Docking Bay 92. No escape pods are visible.
2 - Whilst the tapering is consistant with the tapering of the escape pod fired from the Tantive IV, this is the only feature they share. The Falcon's sections feature no thrusters, nor view ports.
3 - It is explicitly stated that when the Falcon arrives on the Death Star that 'Several escape pods were jettisoned.' meaning more than one pod. This doesn't explicitly force these features out of the pod role, but it does seem unlikly that a ship the size of the Falcon would feature more than one kind of escape system.
RPG sources compounded the error, making otherwise perfectly good ship designs feature large, unwieldy pods of the Tantive IV type. Finally I found these constraints to be too oppressive and increasingly farcical, and so determined that other solutions must be found. The first solution was the CEC Type 3 Escape Capsule. These exceedingly small environments were only a meter tall, and wide. These measurements were determined by empirical means (physically modelling the environment with a number of volunteers) to be plausible, barely, as a viable alternative to death. These capsules would fit into very small spaces, including being small enough to fire from between the limits of the YT-1300's brim trench. Even these though didn't feel right.
More research was what was needed. I delved into many sources, weighing options of a varied nature. Several things began to solidify; the Star Wars Universe has several technologies that are notable partly for their utility, partly for the fact that this utility is so often overlooked. Chief amongst these for this purpose is the repulsorlift, with shielding technology coming close behind.
When looking into actual vacuum escape systems being developed by NASA and RFSA amongst others I found that current thought was heading towards inflatables. Once you get your head round it, it makes a lot of sense. As long as you don't pierce the enclosure, rubber is as solid as steel from the point of view of keeping space out there and not in here. Rubber like materials don't tend to radiate heat that well, so they're not prone to losing their heat, which means they don't get cold to the touch. They're cheap, and most importantly, they are very small when not inflated. The resultant IES system has become, now, fully refined.
This is the IES in a cutraway form. The device is perhaps best explained in step by step instructions for use.
01 - The
eighty centimeter diameter device is pulled from its container and set
with the porthole/hatch faced upwards.
02 - The red pin is pulled from the lower left corner, which causes
the system to arm and the hatch to pop open, revealling the padded back
of the pack section below.
03 - The user steps onto the padded section and grasps the handles of the
three kilogram porthole/hatch section, and rasies it above their head.
04 - Either of the triggers in the hand grips will cause the hatch
to close and seal.
At this point the user is protected from exposure to vacuum, everything else secondary.
05 - Upon
the closure of the port the environment will auto inflate the interior
sphere.
06 - The user lies with their back down on the pack section, deploys
the straps and buckles in.
07 - The user stands. The flexibility of the environment allows the
environment to conform to a degree, allowing limited freedom of movement.
08 - The porthole/hatch section clips onto the buckle section, forming a very
rudimentary space suit.
09 - The user can navigate to an egress point such as a standard airlock
or possibly emergency hatches.
10 - The user debarks the vessel.
11 - The user releases the porthole/hatch section which floats free, and activates the control
on the buckle section. This causes the inner sphere to inflate to its
full size, and also inflates the outer sphere, forming a
ten centimeter barrier between the two that protects the user from the cold of space.
12 - Thruster controls are released, allowing the user to navigate their
way from the ship.
13 - On some ships by this time externally stored junction sections
and / or extended supply units have been ejected, and the IES can navigate
to, and dock with these.
14 - An emergency transponder is automatically activated.
15 - Some models feature shields and repulsors sufficiently powerful
to provide a safe re-entry and landing option. Most however will simply
drift, waiting for recovery.
The image above has the environments rendered as semi-transparent to allow you to see inside.
The system I have presented here is obviously not one hundred percent useful for a military vessel. I would suggest that such vessels would feature hard pods as we have seen in the films. Rather these are for civilian transports, where the likely cause for abandoning ship are fairly slow proceedural failures of the hull. As such the fragility of the shelters isn't entirely relevant, just as inflateable lifeboats aren't considered wierd in the real world. Their small size means they can be stored pretty much anywhere, typically below bunks or in lockers by airlocks. I would generally assume that any relevant surface on a ship would be treated with a chemical that would allow them to glow in the event of power failure. Obviously these shelters would also feature self-powering lights, as well as supplies of emergency rations and atmosphere.