Personal Log: 822/02/04, Omega-9, Star Enterprises
This extended research mission is more stressful than I had originally expected. I very nearly got Star into an international incident by planning to take Sleipnir into House space and dock at system capitals, and three out of the four Houses at that. When Sandra realized what I was thinking, she very politely pointed my error out to me; gotta love good subordinates! Shadowcat got sent out to gather the needed supplies, since no one really notices another Serenity wandering around.
We managed to reduce the number of parts to 5 Optronics Arrays by moving them "up" the data runs to the point where the individual feeds merge. Each array could handle the input of two weapons. We are only using 5 of the Gravity Field Stabilizers, but there, it is because mounting them externally reduced the interference more than the original idea of pairing one off with each hard point. Unforuntately, we couldn't do the same thing for the Energy Field Equipment, so there are 9 of those mounted into a split circuit configuration. The primary circuit is for combat, and the alternate circuit runs through the EFE to switch over to scanner mode.
I ended up taking Sleipnir back to the base to pick up the supplies, and to catch up on admin tasks, since the paper chase never ends. After looking over the Crimson Council's response to us, there should be no problem with us doing the research from Omicron Alpha, so that is where we will head next. I just have to ensure that we keep the locals apprised of our goings on.