As expected, the yards brought me on. I am part of an engineering tiger team that deals with blue print snafu situations and other miscellanea. I am also part of the actual blue printing team, so, there is sort of a catch-22 but I seem to be the only one that cares.
My first assignments have been managing the documentation of three new build Shishapangma class transports. This wouldn't be much of a challenge since the IMG actually wants these things done to a standard build. The main problem is with the diversity of parts, and the fact that one of the owner/operators wanted Dulzian turrets instead of Charons.
I have to admit, it is nice being back on a regular yard schedule, but I am now spending most of my spare time doing documentation for my own project. At least working on setting up a new base has given me a better feel for what a Survey and Research vessel will need.
It doesn't seem like a decent particle accelerator is going to be viable, but a race track would also be horribly vulnerable in the environments that such a ship is likely to be wandering through. On the other hand, the processor and circuit modifications that we added to Sleipnir can be incorporated into a new build ship, allowing me to mount Gunboat Solaris arrays. I figure that I can get away with those without offending the various governments; that would definitely not be the case with the Cruiser arrays I had on Sleipnir. While it won't be as good as having an accelerator on the ship, we should be able to do more external data collection.
If the plant meets my expectations, we'll have the power for everything we need in about a tenth of the space. Being able to remove the fusion chamber and the various safety features attached to the plant will definitely be a boon. Keeping the ship small enough to prevent too many raised eyebrows is high on the list of goals.
My initial thought is somewhere in the vicinity of the larger liners; that should give us plenty of space without someone screaming, "Warship". With that in mind, I figure we'll still be flying with a Transport shield. I am pretty sure I could hang a Cruiser shield off the plant without problems, but, if she fights that capably, every one of the Houses will invoke Capital ship law, and we'll have the Demon Murphy's own time getting anywhere.
Off on a tangent, but related none-the-less, I have been reading an Old Earth author by the name of Larry Niven. His Man-Kzin wars are some off the wall stuff, especially the parts before they "discovered" hyperspace. Anyway, one of the things that intrigued me was what they call a catcher field. The stories are not particularly heavy on technical details, so I ended up designing my own using existing mining tech. The result is an array that feeds raw materials, water ice in this case, into a the start of a processing system. My processor purifies the water, stores part of it and splits the remainder into hydrogen and oxygen.
As long as the ship isn't in cruise, any ice field supplies all basic operational requirements except food for the crew. I am told that someone successfully mounted a Bio-Dome on a ship once, but I am thinking it is not something I want to try on a vessel that will be getting near high-energy gamma and x-ray sources. It seems safer to stick with inboarded supplies. I will admit that the appeal of "fresh" air would be nice...
Just noticed the time! I am hoping to get over to Minato Harbor before the base food court shuts down for the night. One of the guys told me I need to try the new Thai restaurant. No idea what it is, but he seemed to think it was awesome.
