SKT-9 Bumblebee

Bumblebee life pod

The Bumblebee is a standard escape pod for the UNSC. At 10.5 meters long, it is longer than a Scorpion. It can hold up to 9 people (Pilot + 8 passengers.) It has enough supplies for 9 people to last a week before it runs out of food and clean air.

Most UNSC Ships carry several of these, and at most airlocks, there is at least one of them stationed. Like Pelican ships, each one has a call sign, usually consisting of three letters from the phonetic alphabet followed by a two digit number.

Features
Bumblebee lifepods are designed to ferry nine people at a time. They have one pilot seat as well as eight backward facing crash seats. The seats have harnesses to keep people from injury when crash-landing. The effectiveness of the safety features on the Bumblebee vary greatly, as can their reliability. Some of the Bumblebees featured in Halo landed without any injuries, while a few had catastrophic failures resulting in the deaths of all aboard. Most of the lifeboats seen had several Marines who apparently did not survive the descent.

Bumblebees have little in the way of maneuverability. They feature thrusters and airbrakes to slow down during descent, but they can not reach escape velocity and leave a planet's atmosphere on their own. Also, normally after a landing, the pod can never be used again, as the pods will probably suffer a great amount of damage, and also the air brakes would have broken off in the impact rendering it useless.

The UNSC Pillar of Autumn carried a compliment of these, likely several dozen. All of them were used to evacuate the vessel when it was shot down during The Battle of Installation 04.

The Bumblebee also has a light that turns red to show the pilot the doors are sealed and it is ready to launch.

Known Bumblebees

 * Lima Foxtrot Alpha 43
 * Kilo Tango Victor 17