Deep Space 2016/03/24(Thu)18:54 No. 711321 ID: 2b3ecb
File 145887084670.jpg - (261.93KB , 720x540 , Infirmary.jpg )

Opening your eyes, you realize you’re in an infirmary, strapped to an examination chair with a band across your chest. You struggle for a moment, and quickly realize that the strap isn’t meant to keep you from escaping – it’s just meant to keep you from floating away, because you’re weightless.

You unstrap yourself and pull yourself to a floating, sort-of-standing position in front of the chair. Looking down, you see that you’re wearing a dark blue one-piece coverall with a little name patch that says “Kolt.” There’s no visible damage to your body, and nothing feels wrong with you…

…except you can’t remember anything. You don’t know why you’re here, you don’t know where “here” is, and you don’t know whether you’re “Kolt” or not. What should you do?

Search the cabinets for drugs.

Look around, see if you have a medical chart of some kind nearby. If you're in an infirmary, someone must have been treating you for something.

Have a short look around, check for a time-telling device. Presumably this is some sort of hospital, wait a while to see if a doctor comes.

Hrrm.
We should find a window, to be sure we aren't yanno, in a space-station or something.

Deep Space 2016/03/25(Fri)09:39 No. 711419 ID: 2b3ecb
File 145892397581.jpg - (44.93KB , 600x438 , Syringes.jpg )

Looking quickly through the cabinets, you find aspirin and gulp one down. Only two other drugs are there in large quantities: a handful of syringes labeled “potassium iodine,” and a second handful labeled “RADcovery.” One of each has been used.

A nearby touchscreen proves to be on powersave, and has a patient file open. You are (presumably) Eric Kolt, a 34-year old male standing 190cm tall and weighing 85.6 kilos. Scrolling down, you look at the treatment log’s most recent entry: “found unconscious. Analysis indicates high levels of fear and stress hormones; no other anomalies found. Current best diagnosis: patient passed out from fear, for unknown reasons.”

The touchscreen displays the time as 0/24/14:40. That format seems familiar somehow, but you can’t quite put your finger on why.

There aren’t any windows in the room, and wherever you are, it's deathly quiet. Should you peek your head out the door?

>>711419
Does the patient file link or cross reference anything else? Say, a personnel file. Or a history. More information about yourself, which you are currently lacking.

Deep Space 2016/03/25(Fri)20:49 No. 711512 ID: 2b3ecb
File 145896416789.jpg - (16.03KB , 640x400 , Access_denied.jpg )

Your treatment log has only one entry before the latest one: “Standard Coldsleep Revival, nominal recovery 0/20/16:44.”

You spend fifteen or twenty minutes poring over your file for more clues, but the file mostly seems to be focused on your medical situation, rather than anything else. It looks like they have a very detailed profile about you, with a full genomic and bacterial eco-map; from that, the profile is able to make all kinds of predictions, from little things like which foods will give you gas to big things like which foods might, if eaten too often, give you cancer.

Finally, you find another useful tidbit: it mentions that you are physically fit for duty, and also recommends regular exercise to maintain muscle and bone mass “in preparation for arrival,” but unfortunately, it doesn’t say anywhere what you actually do, or where you’re going.

Trying to navigate to another screen produces an error message. When you try to go back, you get the same error message. It appears you are locked out.

So... I guess we've just been pulled out of cryogenics and are being prepared for some sort of military service? But why were we in cryo in the first place? And why don't we remember anything?

If a doctor was going to come for us they would be here already, let's leave.

Take some RADcovery.

>>711514
Not necessarily military. This could be a civy or corporate spaceship we're on, and we're gonna need muscle mass / bone density if we assume wherever we're going has gravity.

>wat do
Try sticking your head out of the door. Anyone around?

Deep Space 2016/03/26(Sat)16:22 No. 711634 ID: 2b3ecb
File 145903452488.jpg - (27.22KB , 800x600 , Living_module.jpg )

You pick up one of the capped syringes with RADcovery in it, then hesitate. You’re not a doctor; you don’t really know where to perform an injection, and you’re pretty sure that just injecting yourself randomly somewhere could cause serious pain and/or injury. Hopefully you don’t need the RADcovery… but you put it in your pocket, just in case.

You open the door and float out into the corridor, and an uneasy feeling creeps into the pit of your stomach. The dim blue lighting out here is nothing like the bright infirmary lighting, and a thought comes unbidden to your mind: emergency lighting.

Still not a person in sight.

>>711634
Well, great.

Head left.

Check the toilets, there might be clean water in there. Then test your current limits at the exercise room.

Deep Space 2016/03/27(Sun)09:54 No. 711754 ID: 2b3ecb
File 145909767963.jpg - (124.09KB , 600x450 , Storage.jpg )

You’re briefly tempted to give the exercise machines a go, but decide that exploring the rest of the ship and finding out why the emergency lighting is on is probably more important. You examine the toilet and find that it’s air-operated, rather than water-operated, but there is a small water dispenser and sponge – presumably for bathing. The water tastes fine, so you take a little drink.

You open the hatch to the left and float into the next compartment. It looks like storage, with four lockers on one side labeled “Mr. Kolt,” “Dr. Chan,” “Dr. Papadopoulos,” and “Dr. Van Borden.” Smaller shelves are all over the walls, ceiling, and floor.

Deep Space 2016/03/27(Sun)09:55 No. 711755 ID: 2b3ecb
File 145909770190.jpg - (18.63KB , 425x371 , Warning.jpg )

The hatch at the other end of the compartment is painted with a warning.

Check all the doctors' rooms

>>711755
Well don't open the hatch with the big warning label on it.

You could try seeing if any of the lockers are unlocked, although I'm not sure going through the doctor's spare clothes and such will be of much use to you. There might be tools or something.

Deep Space 2016/03/28(Mon)14:13 No. 711900 ID: 8ae9ea
File 145919962430.jpg - (66.71KB , 602x1142 , Rad_suit.jpg )

You check the lockers. They’re all unlocked.

You look at the “Mr. Kolt” locker first. It has a second blue coverall, a few articles of clothing, toiletries, boots, and a well-worn rubik’s cube.

There’s also an oddly-patterned, full-body silvery skinsuit near the front. Hmm. You recognize that suit… in fact, you feel an odd sense of pride looking at it. You… you made this? You think you designed this. It’s a radiation suit, made with metamaterials and... something else you can’t remember.

Moving on, you examine Dr. Chan’s locker next. The locker contains a few (male) clothing articles and a tablet reading device, but it looks like most of the contents have been taken recently.

Dr. Papadopoulos looks to be female, judging by her locker’s contents, as does Dr. Van Borden, and both lockers appear to have been cleaned out in a hurry. Dr. P’s locker also contains a package with a note attached: “Doctor, in case you haven’t already noticed, the ‘potassium iodine’ syringes in your infirmary are mislabeled. This package contains the correct pre-exposure radiation medication; please make sure to replace the other syringes.” The package is unopened.

The large locker across from the personal lockers is full of food, enough preserved food to last several people for (you’d guess) months. There’s also a water dispenser, and a fold-out “table” with straps.

You check out a few other storage spaces. One of the larger ones is jammed full of parts for a large machine, along with tanks labeled “metals,” “polymers,” and “biopolymers.” A few other drawers contain tools, from plant and rock analyzers and a microscope, to what looks like some kind of wind-gauge, thermometer, barometer, and water analyzer all in one, to tools like a hammer, wrench, and screwdriver. Judging by how space-efficiently everything is packed, cataloguing everything in here could take you hours.

>>711900
Well the big assembled machine with the bins is a fabricator, so nice one. You may also want to open the 'corrected' meds package and take one of those syringes.

Well, probably better to do a sweep of the whole area before you spend hours examining a single room. Go check the other rooms for anything of note.

Deep Space 2016/03/29(Tue)09:59 No. 712095 ID: 8ae9ea
File 145927075099.jpg - (257.84KB , 1000x586 , Cryopod.jpg )

You open the package and add one of the syringes inside to your pocket collection of anti-radiation medication.

>>Don’t open the hatch with the big warning label on it
>> Do a sweep of the whole area

You decide to turn around and go back the way you came, floating through the hatch into the living module and then opening the hatch at the far end.

You come into a small room with cryopods, two on each side. There’s nothing else here, and it’s a rather small room, so you move on and open the next hatch.

Deep Space 2016/03/29(Tue)09:59 No. 712096 ID: 8ae9ea
File 145927077297.jpg - (274.69KB , 640x360 , Cockpit.jpg )

The cockpit has a dizzying array of switches and controls, and inspires an odd sense of déjà vu. There are also a number of lights on the panel that are red that you’re pretty sure shouldn’t be red.

Examine the array of buttons. Any of them labeled?

Deep Space 2016/03/29(Tue)22:10 No. 712346 ID: 8ae9ea
File 145931465321.jpg - (45.70KB , 800x600 , Solar_system.jpg )

Sure, they’re all labeled. The problem is, they’re labeled with things like “Cryo O2 Stir,” “Alt Timer Set,” and “SPS.” You’re very unlikely to find anything useful unless you know where to look.

Still, seating yourself in the pilot seat brings another flash of memory, and when you tap the nav screen, you come across something useful: a map left open by the last person to use this computer. You tap the various objects for more information.

Planet 1 is uninhabitable, being small, hot, rocky, and without any significant atmosphere.

Planet 2 is in the right temperature range for human life, and a breathable atmosphere. It has some liquid water and gravity of 0.93G.

Planet 3 is at the outer edge of the habitable zone, and probably only warm enough for liquid water because of the atmosphere’s high carbon dioxide content (which also renders the atmosphere unbreathable without filtration). This planet has significantly more water than planet 2, and gravity of 1.04G.

Planet 4 is a rocky planet with an atmosphere mostly consisting of sulfur and ammonium. It is mostly cold, but also volcanically active.

Planet 5 is a gas giant with a rocky core and a hydrogen-helium atmosphere.

Planet 6 is an ice giant similar to planet 5, albeit much larger.

Planet 7 is an ice giant with a highly elliptical orbit, smaller than planets 5 or 6 and rotating the opposite direction from the other planets in this system.

Object ‘a’ is the unmanned probe that was sent to this system several decades ago to scout. It is on an elliptical orbit with an apoapsis just beyond the orbit of planet 1, a periapsis near the orbit of planet 3, and a plane of orbit roughly 30 degrees off from the solar system’s orbital plane.

Object ‘b’ appears to be a spaceship, and not a human one. You remember a flash of excitement: this is first contact! Humans have never encountered aliens before! Quickly focusing, you determine that the alien ship has an apoapsis halfway between planets 1 and 2, and a periapsis that almost reaches the orbit of planet 4. Its orbital plane very nearly matches the solar system’s.

Finally, you check your own orbit. Your ship (the HMS Voyager) in a strange elliptical orbit that might have, at one time, crossed with object ‘b’ (and probably crossed with planet 3’s maybe a day ago) but is now likely to overshoot and eventually be captured by planet 2’s gravity.

There’s a wealth of information here, navigational and otherwise. What else do you want to find out?

>>712346
Attempted Hohmann transfer, but missing the second burn?
You have 'Apoapsis' and 'Periapsis' swapped: Apoapsis is the outermost extent, Periapsis is the innermost.

Deep Space 2016/03/30(Wed)12:35 No. 712477 ID: 8ae9ea
File 145936651868.png - (61.26KB , 800x960 , Transfer_orbit.png )

[So I do! Must have been too excited about the aliens :P ]

You hesitate – you didn’t want to inject yourself earlier because you didn’t know how, and circularizing an orbit is a whole lot more complicated than that. On the other hand… you seem to have instincts and half-remembered flashes of procedure here, so maybe you can do it.

That’s when you realize that there’s trouble. The MPDT, which you seem to recall is the main engine, has insufficient wattage. That’s because… the reactor is offline! Well, that explains the emergency lighting; right now, the ship is running off its fuel cells for power (which it’s not supposed to do often), and you’re already down half your fuel. There’s a small chemical engine for backup, but it also draws off the fuel cells and isn’t as efficient.

The diagnostic of the reactor stops with, “Fusion containment test failed.”

>>712477
See if you can call up information on the fusion containment test and the status of the reactor.

>Test failed
Try it again.

Deep Space 2016/03/30(Wed)23:06 No. 712667 ID: 8ae9ea
File 145940440381.jpg - (135.63KB , 800x450 , Tokamak.jpg )

You try to get a more detailed reactor diagnostic, even remembering how to set it to manual when automatic doesn’t work, and it comes back with a whole bunch of stuff that you think you can sort of understand.

It looks as though the plasma in the reactor is supposed to be jettisoned automatically in case of emergency, shutting the reactor down and preventing the ship from melting. The last time the reactor did an emergency shutdown, though, the plasma was well above safe operating temperature and the plasma took (for reasons not detailed in the diagnostic) almost three times longer than normal to escape.

The plasma caused damage to the confinement chamber and put several magnets outside their superconducting temperature range, which, in turn, almost caused the magnets to fry themselves before further safeguards kicked in. The containment test now fails because the magnets are still cooling back down to superconducting temperatures, a process that was begun automatically, but that will take days and is putting a fairly significant drain on the emergency fuel cells. If any magnets have been damaged too much to function properly, the diagnostic notes, it will be impossible to tell that until superconducting temperature is reached.

Hmm. An emergency plasma jettison could very easily explain the Voyager’s odd orbit…

>>712667
Shouldn't take days to cool 'em down. There should have only been a few grams of reaction mass in the reactor tops, and that wouldn't be enough to change the chamber temperature by more than a few degrees.
Even if it did, cooling time goes asymptotically as a system nears its set point, which is why set points are well below what's required for superconductivity.

The reactor is dead, or designed by muppets.

>>712676
Regardless of how/why the initial heating happened, if the coils DID quench they'll ramp up in temperature dramatically just from the resistive losses once they reach Tc.

What to do comes down to supply limits: If we're limited by PLSS supplies/power then faster active cooling of the superconductors is the priority. If the limit is fuel-cell supply then a slower cooling through passive radiators down to equilibrium then a final push to Tc would be more efficient, depending on how much power PLSS uses and how slow radiative cooling would be.

Deep Space 2016/03/31(Thu)14:28 No. 712726 ID: 2b3ecb
File 145945973367.jpg - (136.36KB , 640x400 , Reactor_error.jpg )

You stare at the readouts. At first you were just trying to take in information, but now that you’re thinking about it, they really don’t make any sense. It SHOULDN’T take 57 hours to cool the magnets down, even if they quenched! Are you missing something in the readouts, is there some kind of leak, or is the diagnostic just wrong?

SOMETHING is wrong. Either the reactor was designed by muppets, or it’s dead.

Can you bring it back to life? Acting on another recalled instinct, you reach over and flip up the cover for the SYS MEM CLR button, but then you hesitate. You keep seeing little notices that the server is down. Would this system reset properly with the server down? You’re not sure.

You close your eyes and try to think. It feels like there’s something tickling at the back of your head, another memory or something you’re missing… oh! Unstrapping yourself from the seat, you float over toward the back of the cockpit and find the procedure manual. Returning to your seat, you find the part pertaining to reactor diagnostics and scan through it. Redundant systems… switch to manual… aha. Clearing system memory will force a fresh reboot and diagnostic, and doesn’t require a connection to the server.

You push the button. The reactor control system reboots, gives you a little warning message about the server being down, and then starts up.

Well, that’s not good.

Well hopefully it's a connection problem. Still a good idea to perform a Visual Check of Reactor Presence anyway.

>>712683
Superconductors are almost always strong insulators when above temp. They wouldn't gain resistive heat, since they'd create an open circuit.

>>712726
The good news is that fusion reactors can't explode like some kind of bomb. The worst they can do is break themselves.
They also don't produce or contain quantities of strong radioemitters; the worst you get is bremsstrahlung radioisotopes on the innermost layers of the core (Which would have most likely decayed away entirely at this point - that's one of the properties selected for in the lining), and that's only if the reaction produces hot neutrons. Aneutronic fusion would have no residual radiation after the reaction stops.

This means it's completely safe to inspect the core visually, unless the root of the problem is an object hitting your craft and causing serious trauma, in which case the reactor area might be open to space.

Deep Space 2016/04/01(Fri)21:08 No. 713176 ID: 2b3ecb
File 145957011964.jpg - (128.60KB , 600x739 , Tokamak2.jpg )

You reflexively hit “continue,” and unstrap yourself to go do a visual inspection of the reactor. You think (from what you can remember) that it should be safe, even without the rad suit in your locker.

Before you get too far, though, the screen catches your attention out of the corner of your eye. The error message has disappeared, and it’s running the diagnostic. Confused, you stick (well, float) around a little longer, and watch it come to the same answer it came to before: magnets overheated, 57 hours to cooling completion.

Your eyes narrow. Something is very wrong here.

You make your way back through the ship, closing hatches behind you out of habit. Coming to the hatch painted with the radioactivity warning, you check the lights next to it and confirm that there’s no vacuum on the other side before opening it. Both the hatch and the wall it goes through are thicker than the others have been, for reasons you’re sure are related to shielding.

At first glance, the reactor is present, and looks undamaged. You pull yourself over and put a hand close to the metal, but detect neither hot nor cold, so you open the reactor’s side access door and inspect the core visually. Other than a little discoloration, nothing seems out of place.

Hopefully it’s a connection problem?

>>713176
Look for where it vented and examine the area for damage, then check the coolant system.
If you don't see any obvious problems, then resume searching the ship for other survivors. Power will be a problem in the medium to long term, but you need to ensure short-term survival first, and that means finding food, water, and other people, plus verifying that life support is in good shape.

>>713176
It;s still giving the slow cooling message, so next thing to check is the cooling system. There will probably be a primary cryogenic refrigerant, a heat exchanger with a secondary refrigerant, and an external radiator. There may be a tertiary high-temperature refrigerant too for a really efficient system (hotter the radiator the more efficient it is), but if that has 'frozen' then there will be at least one radiator for the secondary loop to allow startup of systems to melt the primary loop. If a pump has failed in one of the loops, or a loop has lost coolant, or a heat exchanger or radiator is damaged, or if a radiator is not extended (if retractable) then those could all cause the magnets to cool slower than designed, or not at all.

You're not frying, so at least SOME cooling is still occurring.

>>712912
>Superconductors are almost always strong insulators when above temp. They wouldn't gain resistive heat, since they'd create an open circuit.
When a superconductor heats up above the transition temperature (Tc) it does not instantly become an insulator, it increases in impedance rapidly. And as the only time it's worthwhile to use a superconductor is when you're carrying megaamp currents, having megaamps into a suddenly resistive material results in that energy being converted efficiently and rapidly into heat. Because the heating is so intense, if even a tiny portion of the superconductor rises above Tc, then it will cause a cascade failure and the whole magnet will quench. If you're lucky, the heat generated will not permanently damage the superconductor.

Deep Space 2016/04/03(Sun)23:22 No. 713795 ID: 8ae9ea
File 145975093575.jpg - (87.39KB , 800x530 , Airlock.jpg )

You look for the vent, and for damage, but at first you find neither. After trying a second access door, you finally spot it – it looks more discolored than the rest of the reactor, maybe even charred and melted. Still, you think that if you sprayed it with a fresh coat of heat shield, it would probably be able to withstand another emergency jettison.

The more surprising discovery comes when you realize that you’ve put your hand on a magnet casing while looking inside, and it feels cold. Checking a few other casings yields similar results, and when you double back to the storage room and look beneath an access panel, sure enough, the cooling system seems to be working (though the coolant level might be a little lower than it should be).

>>resume searching the ship for other survivors

You’ve already been to both ends of the ship, so unless they’re hiding in the airlock… wait, there’s an airlock? You blink a few moments as another memory comes back. Yes, of course there’s an airlock, how could you forget?

Shaking your head, you float over to the “ceiling” of the storage room and open a hatch more complicated than the rest. You float up into the tiny chamber and are confronted with a set of controls and a sealed door; the pattern of lights next to it indicates hard vacuum on the other side.

Something about that is wrong. You’re not sure what or why, but it is.

>>713795
Can you check the logs for the airlock?
What's the status of the external sensors? Can you spot human-sized objects at a distance with them?
Do you have an emergency beacon? Or any long-range coms?
Can you check the system logs to find out what happened?

Get something insulative and cover the magnets with it. Some kind of foam insulation, if you have it. The higher the R value the lower the heat gain, and the less time until the reactor is operational. Pity you can't depressurize the chamber; the magnets would likely be cooled within minutes.

>>713795
Normally, an airlock would not be exposed to vacuum unless the outer door was open. The outer door shouldn't be open unless someone did an EVA or similar. So something is definitely wrong.

See if we can get a log for when the door was last opened. Then see if we can close the outer door, pressurize the airlock, and open the inner door.

And I'm starting to get nervous about being alone in this ship. Just for the sake of safety, jam something in the hinge of the inner door before stepping into the airlock, to prevent it from closing behind us.

Check suit storage before closing the outer door and repressurising the airlock: someone may be outside.

Deep Space 2016/04/05(Tue)16:59 No. 714068 ID: 8ae9ea
File 145990075718.jpg - (25.76KB , 320x400 , Spacesuit.jpg )

The small chamber IS the airlock. The lights are telling you that the outer hatch is exposed to vacuum, which… is still wrong. There’s supposed to be something there, isn’t there? You feel like there’s supposed to be something there, but the knowledge of WHAT remains maddeningly just out of reach.

Checking suit storage reveals one space suit left – yours. All three doctors’ suits are missing. There’s no log for the airlock here, but there’s got to be one up in the cockpit, so you start pulling yourself that way.

Strapping into the seat once more, you try to pull up the logs, but encounter a problem: they were all on the server, and the server is down. The only logs you can access are those with dedicated backup computers: navigation, reactor, life support, and medical. Cryopods and comms are both down, which means the warp gate is also unusable… not that traveling at .3c would help you much right now anyway.

Do you want to take the time to look through one or more logs?

>>status of the external sensors, emergency beacon

Sensors that you can access through GN&C mostly turn out to be good for detecting celestial bodies and asteroids – spacewalking humans, not so much. The unmanned probe has more sensors and is actually the only way object ‘b’ was even spotted… but since comms are down, you can’t ask it to perform an infrared sweep for you.

You look for an emergency beacon, but don’t find anything.

>>pity you can’t depressurize the chamber

Actually, you can; it’s normally depressurized. Want to do that?

>>714068
Was there, by any chance, some kind of escape pod attached to the airlock? It's possible everyone else used it to leave the ship.

>>714068
If the reactor chamber is SUPPOSED to be depressurized then that would explain why it's taking so long for the magnets to cool. So yes, depressurize the reactor chamber.

Were you docked with another craft?

Where IS the server? Can you examine it?

>>714068
> The lights are telling you that the outer hatch is exposed to vacuum, which… is still wrong. There’s supposed to be something there, isn’t there? You feel like there’s supposed to be something there, but the knowledge of WHAT remains maddeningly just out of reach.
Were you docket to something? Is you ship supposed to have a lander or some other atmospheric craft?

Deep Space 2016/04/06(Wed)21:56 No. 714406 ID: 8ae9ea
File 146000500317.jpg - (55.21KB , 400x267 , Fried.jpg )

That’s it! There was a lander. There was…

Wait, where would the lander go? You pull up the nav log, scrolling back through the various calculations. It looks like the Voyager was originally on an intercept course with object ‘b,’ but your current course has deviated from the calculated one somewhat.

There are also a handful of calculations using a different mass value and trying to reach planets 2 and 3. You quickly realize that the mass value given there is the lander’s mass (give or take a bit), and the last recorded burn was deceleration as you prepared to pass planet 3. That’s where half the fuel in your fuel cells went, and the reason for your course deviation.

Your crewmates abandoned you.

Trying to focus past the sudden nausea in your gut, you quickly figure out why: with four people on the lander instead of two, there was no course that would have gotten to the planet before running out of fuel, water, or breathable air. Even with three, it was tight – and risky, with aerobraking and a shallow angle of reentry.

They would only have done this, you think, if the situation on this ship were hopeless; nothing you’ve found so far indicates that. What are you missing that would make them hurry to catch planet 3, rather than restarting the reactor or orbiting for a while in low-power mode and eventually arriving at planet 2?

You press a few buttons and begin depressurizing the engine room. Then you unstrap yourself and float back to storage again, where you open the access panel to find the server.

Or rather, the blackened, partly-melted hunk of plastic that used to be the server.

Someone opened this up before you, because the plastic was pried away in places so someone could look inside. You take advantage of the opening to look too, and see that the inside looks just as fried as the outside.

What HAPPENED here?

>>714406
Ok, spacecraft live and die based on modular design, and server data storage is always at least partially externalized for ease of replacement so it should have been away from the fire.
You probably have a computer in the infirmary. Disconnect the server, replace it with the infirmary system, then move the drives over from the server to the infirmary system. It's all modular and keyed so you can't really put it together wrong.
Once you've made the replacements it should boot up and start working as the server, which should give you access to the logs up to the point where it went down and restore most functionality. Obviously the medical equipment will no longer function without the infirmary system, but you're not about to be giving yourself any ultrasounds or endoscopic surgery anyway. (Unless you have an autodoc of some kind; a robotic doctor would be helpful, but first you need to make sure you'll live long enough to die from poor medical care.)

If the sever can't be repaired or replaced by the medical computer, then can the reactor and engines be operated manually and locally? Hearken back to the early days of spaceflight, and channel the Steely Eyed Missile-Man: time the burns manually.

Planet 3 would be the preferable destination, because that lander will be needed for any ISRU to re-fuel and repair with planetside resources. But we've already passed 3 this orbit, so the only way to get there would be to either circularise and sloooooly phase the orbit around to it on the next pass (i.e. in a Planet-3-year's time), hope we have enough reaction mass to circularise in a higher-phase orbit and let Planet 3 catch us up, or hope we have sufficient reaction mass reserves to go for a sundiver: loop around the local star and perform a gravity slingshot. That would give a good choice for target orbits, but takes time and the ship would need to survive in the environment close to the local star. A makeshift solar sail (e.g. deploy some mylar film, like a disassembled Whipple Shield) would give a big delta-V boost there, but may not be something that can be feasibly jury-rigged or modelled to give a controllable boost.

Best shot is probably to restart the reactor on local control, and time a burn to circularise just above Planet 3's orbit and let 3 phase towards you. Then we can figure if there's enough reaction mass left for a propulsive capture, or try and aim for an aerocapture.

Deep Space 2016/04/08(Fri)18:13 No. 714916 ID: 2b3ecb
File 146016439552.jpg - (332.35KB , 997x1080 , Damaged_wires.jpg )

You grab the damaged server and pull it free, little bits of plastic and debris floating away in all directions. Kicking off a wall over toward the living quarters, you stuff it into one of the doctors’ beds so it will be out of your way, and then go to the infirmary. You open the access panel there, disconnect and remove the computer, and float back to the storage room. The wires that come out of the server’s storage slot look blackened and damaged, but they connect.

You return to the cockpit and, on a hunch, you open the access panels near the back of the cockpit, where the secondary data storage is. It’s also fried, and the wires connecting it to the rest of the ship are also damaged. Was there a power surge? How could that be?

There's some exposed wiring. Should you try to start up the server anyway?

>>714916
Replace the wiring first, then activate the circuit to check for shorts or other problems, THEN power down the circuit, connect the server, and test it.

Deep Space 2016/04/09(Sat)17:16 No. 715290 ID: 2b3ecb
File 146024737663.jpg - (116.09KB , 1023x579 , Startup.jpg )

Yes, of course, why didn’t you think of that? You shake your head. Your headache is one of those constant dull ones, and it’s getting worse.

You get out the spool of spare wire, run some new wires and get out the backup hard drive. The circuit check between the monitors in the cockpit, the drive, and the new “server” checks out, so you hook up the infirmary computer to the backup drive. You don’t check or connect any of the other wires that connected the old server to the rest of the ship just yet – one thing at a time, you’re thinking.

It loads for a little while, and then eventually starts up – though you leave the backup computers running vital systems disconnected for now. The logs are lost, unfortunately, but it seems you may have a viable replacement server… as soon as you test and hook up all the other circuits.

Strapping back into the pilot’s seat, you get ready to sift through the nav data and look at your options, when a double-take becomes necessary: the magnet cooling time is now “–”. A re-scan only brings back the “MAGNET NOT DETECTED” errors, which don’t go away this time.

The procedure manual recommends visual inspection, and suggests that if the magnets appear undamaged, the control chips may have failed. The recommended course of action is a manual bypass of the affected magnet, as there are several emergency magnets the reactor computer can use to compensate. It does not, of course, have a recommended course of action for when ALL the magnets are not detected.

>>manual control for the reactor

There isn’t really. The current reactor design allows it to run for as long as several seconds before magnetohydrodynamic instabilities will cause the plasma current to quench, but without micro-adjustments, sustained fusion won’t be possible and the reactor will vent the reaction mass to space (and hopefully avoid destroying itself) when it quenches. Unfortunately, if all the magnets’ control chips were damaged, the sensors needed for the computers to make adjustments probably won’t work either….

You analyze your options, assuming for the moment that the MPDT’s delta-V is unavailable to you. There IS a manual control for the engines, but you shouldn’t need it because the backup GN&C also has control.

Planet 2 is ahead of you, but without some circularizing and some phasing, it will take several orbits before you’re captured. You might have enough fuel to end up in orbit sooner, but without a lander, there’s not much point. Even if you sprayed a perfectly-distributed coat of heat shield on the correct parts of the ship, there are no atmospheric control surfaces or parachutes to help you land.

Planet 3 is behind you, and circularizing in a higher orbit so it can catch up to you will probably take most of your fuel and about 16 hours. Going around is a definite no, because Planet 3’s year is roughly 390 days long, as your mission clock measures days, and the fuel cells won’t last that long – which means your CO2 scrubbers won’t, either.

A search for workable sundivers proves fruitless, the fact that the emergency engine draws on the same fuel cells as everything else proving to be too limiting… not to mention that you’re not sure the Voyager has sufficient shielding to actually survive the maneuver.

You almost do another double-take. Has object ‘b’ changed orbits? More out of curiosity than anything else, you punch it into the computer as a potential destination. It comes back with sort-of-good, sort-of-bad news: if you burned most of your fuel, you could cross orbits with object ‘b’ within 8 hours.

>>715290
Now that you have the server up, get comms online. Start with the emergency beacon. Is FTL communication possible? Do you have a means to call home for advice?
The lack of spare parts and long-term facilities suggests this was an advance scouting mission or short trip, meaning that a rescue mission might be possible. You might wind up having to depower the ship and put yourself in cryo, though - once the ship's power is off it'll quickly cool low enough to keep your cryo stable.

Directional antennas allow you to communicate with distant objects without spending much power, allowing for the range of a gigawatt broadcast at a cost of only a few watts. All craft have at least one, but since you have a landing craft you'll have at least two. Point one at the planet and attempt to contact your crew. Point the other at Object B and start listening.

Meanwhile, execute no burns. Object B is apparently crewed and moving to something of an intercept course, so save your power.

Now that the magnets are cooled to temp and in a vacuum it should take basically no energy to keep them there. Suit up and start checking the magnet control system for damage - hopefully it's something repairable.
Your suit can be connected to an external life support system, yes? Consider turning off main life support and just having it keep your suit going. Keeping one person comfortable and the rest of the ship marginally within operational range is orders of magnitude less power than keeping an entire ship comfortable for humans.

Deep Space 2016/04/11(Mon)19:18 No. 715926 ID: 2b3ecb
File 146042751680.png - (856.66KB , 513x927 , Magnet.png )

>>FTL

You’d think you’d remember it if they’d found a way around Special Relativity. Instead, you seem to remember being put into cold sleep for almost a decade to get here.

>>Get comms online

You start testing circuits so you can reconnect the server to other systems. Everything ultimately seems to check out, other than comms, which has a short, so you hook up everything else and start a full diagnostic while you go to run some new wire.

Opening the access panel reveals why there was a short – there isn’t much left of the transmitters, antennae, or communications system at all. Again, it looks kind of like the aftermath of a power surge… could it have come in through comms? Could it be an EMP? Were you attacked? And why are you getting another feeling of déjà vu?

Going back to your diagnostic, there’s more bad news: PLSS, GN&C, cryo, the reactor, and (less surprisingly) medical and comms are all “not responding.” In other words, this server can’t do anything – you have to keep using the manual backup systems you’ve been using.

>>Object B

You examine Object B’s orbit more closely. You must have been imagining things – its orbit is the same as before. B and the Voyager are still going to cross orbits, but without a burn, you’ll miss each other by kilometers.

>>Suit up, connect suit to external life support, inspect magnets

Pushing yourself back toward the storage room on limbs that feel oddly jelly-like, you get out your space suit and put it on. You enter the tiny airlock between the storage room and the reactor room, depressurize it, and enter the reactor chamber.

Once your suit is hooked up to the PLSS, a random magnet casing is chosen. Careful to leave the parts floating in a specific order so that you can put them back, you disassemble it and do a visual inspection, finding no obvious damage. It’s probably the sensor/control chip.

Now what?

[Readers, please be advised: Deep Space is entering a planned communications blackout. Expect to reestablish contact in approximately 144 hours.]

>>715926
Your limbs are feeling jelly-like? Sounds like the CO2 scrubber is offline. Check on life support as soon as you're done here.

Can you examine the sensor and chip? Is there any obvious damage?

You can rule out an external attack. Spacecraft are heavily shielded, both against radiation and EM interference, and electrically isolated from any components. This is one of the absolute requirements of space travel. Any kind of pulse attack would be diverted along the hull with zero effect on anything inside, unless the pulse were strong enough to melt the hull.
Now, a pulse COULD have damaged the antenna, but those have layers of surge isolation which would have kept it from making its way into the ship.
Still, you can check that by going to the circuit breakers. Look at which breakers are tripped, and where the damage is. I expect that somebody bypassed the breakers, as otherwise it makes no sense for multiple systems to be damaged by a single power surge.

You're going to have to check the radio systems to see if you can get them up. This ship is in very bad shape, so your best chance for survival is either contacting whatever ship was following you (You completely lack the resources and facilities for a solo mission, so you ARE an advance scout for a larger ship, yes?) or hoping that Object B is alive and friendly.

>>715968
Nah, CO2 accumulation would be super-obvious from a suffocating sensation it would induce. A drop in O2 partial pressure would be harder to notice unless you're familiar with the symptoms of Hypoxia. Either O2 supplies are running low, or more likely the O2 generator is running at low capacity of failed entirely, which is worrying given the server lists it as running normally.

Or, it's unrelated to the atmosphere. Could just be hunger.

>>715926
>You examine Object B’s orbit more closely. You must have been imagining things – its orbit is the same as before. B and the Voyager are still going to cross orbits, but without a burn, you’ll miss each other by kilometers.

'Miss by kilometres' in space is little different from 'pinpoint targeted'. Either the ship was already on course for a flyby before whatever emergency prompted the lander to depart, or the emergency happened before and the ship was deliberately targeted for a flyby with you onboard and waking up just before. Losing your memory likely was not part of the plan.

Deep Space 2016/04/18(Mon)16:37 No. 717666 ID: 8ae9ea
File 146102264117.png - (25.62KB , 399x373 , Circuit_breakers.png )

You examine the sensor and chip, but don’t immediately see anything wrong with them. Still, you’re pretty sure a surge wouldn’t have to melt them to make them quit working…

Grimacing, you reassemble the magnet casing.

>>CO2 scrubber offline
>>no, it’s the O2 generator

You’re… not sure which one it is, but you do feel a little short of breath, so you decide to check on the atmospheric systems. You pass through the airlock and open up the appropriate access panel to take a look.

Nothing is exploded, melted, or damaged as far as you can tell, so you force a reset and return to the cockpit. The backup computer for the PLSS restarts along with the system itself, and when it comes up, you note that it lists atmospheric O2 content as normal but CO2 content at almost 3%... but now the number is falling. Hooray.

>>consider turning off main life support and just having it keep your suit going

You’re alright with the idea in principle, but you still need access to food, water, and a toilet (your suit has limited bodily waste storage) if you’re planning to stay on the ship for more than another day or so. The internal hatches are secure against hard vacuum, but the only internal airlock is the one between the reactor chamber and storage, so partially depressurizing will cut you off from those parts of the ship.

>>check breakers and try to fix radio

First you check the breakers, finding that just as you suspected, someone bypassed them, and you catch yourself exasperatedly muttering “Peter…” under your breath. As you try to trace the damage, you become more and more convinced that somehow, the power surge DID come in through the antenna and get past the surge isolation, frying the server and many of the things it was connected to.

Your head hurts. This keeps making less and less sense.

>>pinpoint targeted
>>“your ship (the HMS Voyager) is in a strange elliptical orbit that might have, at one time, crossed with object B”

Yes, you’d wager the ship was meant to be on an intercept course. If you do a burn soon, you could probably get within a few hundred meters and a few m/s…

>>717666
It looks like the systems are beyond your ability to repair them. Go for the intercept, and attempt to dock with it. It doesn't need to be a proper dock - just tether the craft together so they don't drift away.
If you can't get the reactor up and running by the time you intercept then you're almost certainly not going to be able to get it up at all. If you DO get it up and running by then, then the spent fuel is essentially a non-issue.

The purpose of turning off life support would be to conserve energy, and almost all of that is spent heating the craft. Set the thermostat as low as it can go so the craft will stop spending energy to keep the heat up.
You're on a tight energy budget, and every joule counts.

Deep Space 2016/04/21(Thu)16:00 No. 718187 ID: 2b3ecb
File 146127965478.png - (53.22KB , 800x600 , Nav_view.png )

You turn the thermostat down to just above 0 Celsius.

It’s not so much that the systems are beyond your ability to repair them, as beyond your supply of spare parts. The fabricator in the cargo bay might be able to make some replacements for some things, but it was supposed to be one of the things the lander took down on the second or third trip, so it’s disassembled, solar-powered, and meant to work in planetary gravity.

You’ll look for more parts once you’ve done the more time-critical things, like navigation.

Nav tells you “docking” will be tricky. Between the burn back by planet 3 and that planet’s gravity, your orbits aren’t quite aligned any more, which means that you’ll be lucky to pass by (or crash into) object B at a few m/s. To conserve power, you won’t tell the computer to run all the possibilities—just a handful.

What do you optimize for?
1. Longest time flying parallel
2. Closest speed match
3. Soonest capture by planet 3 after the flyby (probably still after you run out of power)
4. Something else

[In addition to choosing an option, give me a d100 roll, please.]

rolled 76 = 76

---

>>718187
Closest speed match, and if at all possible rig up an external tether with some kind of hook on the end. When the tyranny of the rocket equation won't let you hit the dock properly, go fishing.

Deep Space 2016/04/26(Tue)12:47 No. 719312 ID: 8ae9ea
File 146170007746.png - (152.06KB , 800x465 , Object B.png )

You take a more detailed look at the information you have about object B, run some calculations, and do a double-take. The alien ship is BIG – as in, multiple kilometers long. You can only imagine what it took to get such a massive vessel into space.

You run some calculations and manage to get a course that will, at its “best” point, bring you alongside the ship and within 4 m/s of its speed. Your finger hovers over the “execute” button for a moment, and then you grimace and push it.

Acceleration presses you into your seat and a deep rumble fills the whole ship, along with the distinctive rattling sound of metal vibrating. What the chemical rocket lacks in efficiency, it makes up for with sheer thrust.

A warning you hadn’t noticed before pops up much more prominently on the screen—the GN&C isn’t getting feedback from the thrusters. It will attempt to fire them anyway, for appropriate periods at the appropriate times, which you THINK should work even without feedback… but what if they don’t fire?

Trust the computer, or have the HUD display your “target” and try to aim the burn manually?

>>719312
Do both. Have the HUD display your target, and if the thrusters don't fire then fire them manually.

Deep Space 2016/04/27(Wed)09:31 No. 719475 ID: 8ae9ea
File 146177468081.jpg - (52.74KB , 600x451 , GN&C.jpg )

Well, yes, but the problem is telling whether the thrusters are firing or not. Pressed into your seat as you are by the acceleration, it will be hard to feel the comparatively small pitch and yaw changes… and since the GN&C is just assuming the thrusters fire, the indicated orientation might change even though the actual orientation doesn’t.

Wait… you’re forgetting something again, aren’t you? There has to be a gyroscope or accelerometer or some kind of separate instrumentation that can tell you if the thrusters fire, doesn’t there? You check the displays and discover that yes, of course there are “manual” instruments—some of them are giving weird readings, but if this one is accurate… then you’re already turning slightly. Why can’t the GN&C use these readings for feedback? Sighing, you chalk it up as one more malfunction. Still, this makes you surer the thrusters are firing properly…

The burn terminates a few minutes later, leaving you on course for your intercept. You unstrap yourself and float into the back of the ship, looking for a tether and some kind of fastener or hook. Any suggestions on what you need?

>>719475
Depends on the mass of the craft. High-test cable or chain, most likely.

If there's any large protrusions on the other craft you can just take a large loop, affix it to the ship in several places, and let it catch on the other craft.

A really indispensable factor is that the tether has to do it's thing outside of the hull. You could maybe attach one end inside the airlock, but then that prevents the airlock's outer door from working while the far end is attached to the target.

So, does this ship have some sort of external robot arm? Or an EVA suit? If not... you could probably retain full consciousness in vacuum for at least a minute or two with a plastic bag tied over your head, which might be enough to clip a tether onto some hardpoint right outside, pull yourself back in, seal the door, start the lock cycling back to survivable breathing mix. Remember to untie the bag before you pass out.

>>719628
But he does have a space suit (as stated back in >>714068.) He wore it earlier to enter the depressurized fusion reactor chamber and I think he's still wearing it now for safety reasons. So a spacewalk to attach a tether to the ship's hull is possible, as long as there's enough hand holds and suit tether anchor points to climb over to where the tether will go. I would like to know if he has a space suit thruster pack to maneuver out to the alien ship to attach the tether, since otherwise he'd have to do something like make a big lasso out of the tether and chuck it out to catch it and that's risky.

However, there's the bigger problem of how to we keep this ship from crashing into the alien ship if and when the tether catches, or at least impacting within safe structural tolerances. There's not enough thrust left to kill that 4 m/s relative velocity, so catching the tether will send this ship on a nice arc right into the alien ship. That is, unless there's enough tether to loop around the alien ship, and I very much doubt he has thousands of meters of cable or chain on board. Maybe if he used the maneuvering thrusters to pass just above the alien ship's hull, then caught the tether on it so that this ship would collide on the widest, strongest side to maximize surface area. Or, even better, if there's a anchor point all the way in the rear of the ship on or near its center line and the alien ship has any solid protrusions from it's hull larger than this ship, then tethering that anchor point on this ship and lassoing around the protrusion would be the best option I can think of. It would decelerate this ship with the least amount of forward velocity converted into turning, and what is converted might be small enough for the maneuvering thrusters to counter.

Still need to pick a tether, though. Pull up the cargo inventory and see if there's any cable and cable fasteners that are rated for the amount of force that would be generated decelerating a ship of this mass by 4 m/s. Then get the ship schematics and pick structural points where it could be tethered and stand up to that force. It'll probably be towards the front or rear, since presumably the ship is longer than wide so tethering in the center would possibly bend it beyond structural limits.

Deep Space 2016/04/30(Sat)18:29 No. 720120 ID: 2b3ecb
File 146206615675.gif - (23.77KB , 416x78 , Nanorope.gif )

Yes, you’re still wearing your suit. It’s rated for up to 12 hours of EVA, and hooked up to PLSS so you’re not drawing on any of its resources. There’s a tether for spacewalks; you don’t have a “thruster pack,” per se, but you have two emergency “thrust sticks” you can strap to your forearms, which can be fired in short bursts for a total of three seconds’ worth of thrust. If you’re feeling extra, tie-a-plastic-bag-around-your-head-for-a-helmet crazy, there are also two fire extinguishers on board that you could improvise into thrusters.

Psst, wanna buy some thrust sticks?

Without the lander and with current fuel levels, the Voyager’s mass is a little over 500 tonnes. There’s still reaction mass for the fusion reactor, propellant for the MPDT, and some fuel in the fuel cells that you kept in reserve to power an attempt at restarting the fusion reactor. If you’re desperate enough, you could probably vent propellant or atmosphere for some horrifically inefficient thrust, or burn reaction mass or fuel, to match speeds with object B.

You’re starting to feel hungry and thirsty. Water is easily taken care of when you arrive in the cargo room, but you put off food for later.

Fortunately, there’s a little spool that wasn’t in the lander: 1cm “carbon nanorope,” a hundred meters long and strong enough to hang multiple cars from. You don’t think one strand is enough for the Voyager, but maybe several together… if only you had something to attach it to. Closing your eyes, you try to think. There’s an anchor point next to the airlock, designed for spacewalkers to attach tethers to but probably not strong enough to tow the whole ship by…

>>get the ship schematics

Right, maybe that will help. You pull them up to look for points where you could attach something… and almost immediately, your eyes settle on the three anchor points at the Voyager’s center of gravity.

Of course, how could you forget? The lander wasn’t the only thing the Voyager was carrying. It also carried the warp gate you could use to get home—three rings connected by a spine, big enough for your ship to pass through with the lander docked on top. The important thing is, when you ejected the gate upon arrival at the outer edges of the solar system, you also jettisoned the three struts that attached it to the Voyager, leaving the tow points open. That means there are four strong attachment points on the ship that you can use, evenly spaced on the four “corners” of the ship.

You have about 7 hours until intercept. What’s the plan?

You grab some food and eat quickly. Six and a half hours left.

Is there any information you're missing? What's the plan?

Five hundred tons at four meters per second is almost exactly a kilowatt-hour of kinetic energy, which you need to safely dissipate as part of an inelastic collision. Let's solve two problems at once: spool some cable around the driveshaft of an electric motor, so that as the cable pulls taut it turns the shaft and recharges shipboard batteries.

>>720675
Heat's not an issue. Material science for fullerene in this sort of configuration isn't readily available to me, but running the numbers for carbon showed it heating up by about 7 degrees kelvin.
The cable shouldn't be a problem at all, but you can double it up to distribute the load. You'll want multiple attachment points on our end.

Honestly? The energy is going to be dissipated over a period of time as the cable accelerates your ship into the side of the object. You're going to get in a fender-bender with the other craft at a few feet per second - you're going to want to have the impact happen on the side OPPOSITE from the airlock, and ideally it would hit the heaviest portion so as to cause the least strain to the structure.
Your craft should be completely fine, albeit slightly dented on the exterior hull. Not pleasant, but not dangerous either.

>>720701
Who said anything about heat? I'm talking about using a regenerative braking setup as a shock absorber, because the alternative is all that kinetic energy being converted to mechanical damage. Even if there isn't something exceptionally fragile on the striking surface, off-axis loads might cripple girders in unpredictable ways, or that big tank of remass could tear free, or something could puncture the habitat... we need to put that energy somewhere specific so it doesn't run around loose, and recharging the fuel cell makes as much sense as anything.

Deep Space 2016/05/05(Thu)20:21 No. 721219 ID: 8ae9ea
File 146250488139.png - (179.56KB , 800x465 , Object_B_transit.png )

>>hook up the cable to an electric motor drive shaft

It’s a great idea… if you had a big enough electric motor. Problem is, you actually can’t remember any electric motors anywhere on the ship, though whether that’s because there aren’t any, or just because your memory is still fuzzy, you don’t know.

>>have impact on opposite side from airlock, and on heaviest portion of ship

The remass tanks are opposite the airlock, and probably one of the heaviest parts of the ship. You think they’re strong enough to survive the impact, so you execute a roll and point that side toward B.

Your flight path is due to bring you within 10 meters of B near the tail end (where you assume the engine is), and within perhaps 20 meters up by where the “branches” or “tentacles” start (transit image not to scale). The Voyager is about 15m tall, so you could make two 32.5m ropes and two 17.5m ropes, or two 50m ones; you haven’t done any tensile strength calculations, so you don’t know what’s enough.

Then the question is, what do you attach the ropes to on the other end?

>>721219
If you're coming in from the left, you don't need to put anything on the far end of the cable; just lasso the nearest tentacle.

If you're coming in from the right... have you got some kind of resin that'll harden rapidly on exposure to vacuum? Maybe intended as hull-breach sealant? Basically make a big water balloon full of that stuff, wrapped around the far end of the tether, then 'crack the whip' so it impacts object B hard enough to pop. Get the angles right, with two 50m tethers, and the glue would have about 20 seconds to dry before it needs to bear a load.

Deep Space 2016/05/10(Tue)18:44 No. 722493 ID: 8ae9ea
File 146293107477.png - (20.83KB , 800x465 , Object_B_visual.png )

You’re coming in from the right.

You have a resin like that, yes, but you have doubts about its ability to bear a 500 tonne load. Still, it’s the best option you’ve got, so you start getting ready.

A few hours later, after a braking burn, you’re finally coming up on B. It… doesn’t look so good. You’re pretty sure that hole in the side wasn’t there when the probe took its thermal image. Still, if you can find something inside the hole to attach your rope to, that might be a better option than the water balloon.

You get ready for EVA. How are you planning to do this?

>>722493
Four meters per second and a 50m cable means you've still got less than thirty seconds to identify and secure a solid attachment point... unless you're running ahead with a lighter guide-line, but that's another thing you probably don't have on hand.

Go ahead and swing your glue bomb, aiming to hit right in the center of the wound on the alien ship. Maybe the glue will work exactly as intended, maybe the cable will get caught on a jagged edge of the hole, maybe the whole sticky mess will get tangled up with some damaged pipes inside, maybe a little bit of all three. Remember, the tether doesn't actually need to support a 500 ton weight against gravity after this shoddy, desperate docking maneuver is over, it just needs to transfer enough momentum and safely dissipate enough kinetic energy that your ship matches vectors with object B.

If possible, patch the maneuvering thrusters into a remote interface on your suit, so you can make last-second adjustments to minimize damage from the impact.

You cut two 50m cables and prepare a “glue bomb” for each. Sealing your suit, you exit through the airlock and tether yourself there. Connecting the non-bombed ends to the two anchor points on the B side of the ship is easy, though patching the thrusters into your suit proves more difficult with comms destroyed. You ultimately manage to run a wire out through part of the destroyed antenna array and spool it along the hull to connect your suit to the nav computer.

Finally, all the preparations are ready, and you’re rapidly coming up on B.

Give me a d100 roll, and any last-minute plans.

Deep Space 2016/05/27(Fri)16:00 No. 726377 ID: 527107
File 146439004623.jpg - (61.44KB , 1000x891 , Cable_connected.jpg )

You’re still amazed at the size of the other ship. You can’t imagine how it could be used for anything other than interstellar travel, simply because forcing it to accelerate at any speed would require a ridiculous amount of fuel.

Looking down at your suited body for a moment, you double-check your tether and firmly grasp the cables. Your breathing is loud in your ears and your heart is beating hard—you’re only going to get one shot at this. Of course, you made a few practice swings earlier, trying to get the right motion down (and even managed to not break the balloons on your own hull), but you’ll still be trying to hit a moving target with a 50 meter long whip.

B’s surface drifts steadily past, brownish-gray in the distant starlight. When you see the hole coming up, you steady yourself, wait another few moments, and swing. Your ropes arc out together, just like you’d been hoping, and in slow motion, cross the space between hulls. To your good fortune, they both fly into the hole and disappear, so you start retreating around your hull to avoid being squished.

For the next several seconds, the Voyager continues passing B, and nothing happens except a gradual straightening of the cables. Then, in absolute silence, you watch one cable, then the other, go taut, and feel the jerk through your grip on the Voyager’s hull. You have only a moment to realize that you’ve been given a second miracle to follow the first: the cables have attached to something, and they’re holding.

You’ve barely realized that before your ship starts to arc into the side of B, nose-first. Trying to prevent a slow-motion train wreck, you reach down to fire the maneuvering thrusters, and manage to get the “bottom” of your ship – the part you’ve chosen to impact with – somewhat flatter before impact.

Your “fender bender” jars slightly, but nothing explodes and no warnings immediately appear. A few moments later, you notice the tension of the cable nearest to you decrease and feel another slight jolt; the resin must not have been able to withstand the impact. Fortunately, while the Voyager is still moving “forward,” the direction it was going before, it’s only moving at a snail’s pace, and the maneuvering thrusters are able to do the last little bit for you.

You check the nav results. Even though the cable came loose, it looks like you’re speed-matched with B.

Now what?

Check back inside the ship, it would suck to find out later there was a slow leak and all your breathing gas is gone. Maybe power things down to a minimum while you're out of the ship.

Back inside first, refill suit tanks, quick snack, that kind of thing. Do whatever further damage-control checks you can from inside the hab, while you wait for adrenaline to wear off. Then, back out to inspect the point of impact, make sure you're not bleeding remass.

Finally, gather whatever tools seem appropriate and go explore the alien spaceship.

Seems like really good news that the resin worked the way it did, actually: you used exactly the right amount, absorbing the majority of the impact energy while leaving both halves of the tether free for further projects. Can't go dungeon delving without rope!

Deep Space 2016/05/29(Sun)20:37 No. 726732 ID: 8ae9ea
File 146457946782.jpg - (93.74KB , 1000x491 , Tools.jpg )

The airlock cycles, and you open the inner door and float into the storage chamber. You glance at the readouts to make sure there’s still breathable air, and then pop the seal and remove your helmet. The cold hits you like a hammer, but it’s actually kind of refreshing, given that you only napped a little while approaching B and otherwise haven’t slept for probably 18 hours.

You eat a quick snack and run a few checks from inside. As far as you can tell, you’re not leaking any remass or atmo, but you still want to do a visual inspection from outside, so you put your helmet back on and return to the airlock.

When the perfect silence of space has returned and the outer door opens, you attach your tether to the outside and then pull yourself out. Floating around to the “bottom” of the Voyager, you inspect the point of impact and discover that, while there does seem to be a little crumpling, the micrometeorite shielding and the packing material you were able to strap to the tanks have taken the worst of the blow. There’s an indentation in B’s hull, too – several centimeters deep, it looks like.

Satisfied that the ship’s not going to explode or spin off into space due to a leak, you return inside to begin collecting tools you’ll need. The first and most obvious thing is a flashlight, which you put in a backpack along with your thrust sticks and plasma cutter. You’re also tempted to bring a sonic multitool and a micro-fabricator, but you opt for a lower-tech toolkit including an adjustable wrench and hammer instead, because they don’t require atmosphere or gravity (respectively).

You scratch your head. What else is appropriate for exploring an alien spaceship?

>>726732
First, make sure your ship is firmly affixed to Object B. Otherwise it will drift off while you're inside, and that would be awful.
Second, make sure everything is going to survive without you for 8-10 hours, then get some sleep. You need it.

Part 1 END Deep Space 2016/06/01(Wed)21:44 No. 727314 ID: 8ae9ea
File 146484268273.png - (43.56KB , 600x430 , Space_jump.png )

Yeah, you wouldn’t say no to some sleep… but you don’t want to drift away, either. You leave your backpack floating off to one side, grab some more resin, and secure your helmet again. The feeling of strapping the thrust sticks securely to your arms is accompanied by a slow tightening in your body, as though you were a spring being wound up.

The airlock cycles and you take a slow, measured breath. This time, you don’t attach your tether. You pull yourself out to the outside of the hull, carefully take aim, and take another deep breath.

You jump.

Crossing the approximately 50 meter gap between the Voyager and the hole in B’s hull seems to take hours. You reach out as you fly, catching the cable in your hand once you’re close enough but not using it to arrest your momentum until you’ve reached the edge of the hole. There, you take some of the resin and slather it on the cable and hull in a little mound, watching as it hardens almost instantly. You wait a few more seconds, just for good measure, and then brace against the hull and give the cable a few tugs. It doesn’t go anywhere.

Ship secure. Your mission accomplished, you pull yourself along the rope back over to the Voyager, attach your tether and collect the second, now unused cable, and then return to the airlock.

Once you’re inside, you confirm that everything is in order, take a cold, miserable bathroom break, and hook up your suit to life support before strapping yourself in to sleep.

[Thank you everyone for participating! Sorry if the quest was a little boring or technical – I’m still trying to get the hang of this storytelling style. Feel free to give me suggestions on how I can improve; hopefully the next part here will pick up the pace a bit.]