WIP: Relay station
roflo1
🖼️ 3 images Surveyor
Here's another neon-coloured map I decided to try out. This time, I did take note of the map I wanted to mimic (link), but I feel like I'm waay behind.
Don't get me wrong, I still like the way it's turning out. But it took a form of its own, and it's not really what I sought out to emulate anymore.
Anyway, here's what I have so far. Suggestions are, as always, welcome.
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I like it! A bit more description and backstory would be nice but I can see such a deck plan posted by the main hatch to direct visitors.
I don't have much more than a few disorganized ideas in my head, but here are some tidbits...
This space station design was commissioned by the IISS to the lowest bidder. And it shows. Sure, the comms are prefectly suited for a relay station, but it often feels like a death-trap. Just ask any of the employees.
Made up of four general-purpose modules glued together, and then fitted to accomplish it's purpose, any outsider would think everything should work fine. However, many bottom-credit decisions were made and it might be just a matter of time until something goes wrong.
For instance, the original design had a fourth spoke for an additional docking module, but it was scraped from the implementation and now this station only has a single docking port, usually occupied by the emergency escape pod. Mind you, the pod can seat 2 sophonts and the station has 4 or 5 regular employees (though it can house up to eight at a time), so any real emergency would lead to drawing straws.
The escape pod itself is also bare-minimum, with only a 1G M-drive (and no J-drive). The two lucky survivors would arrive at the closest port after 4.5 days (just as much as the pod's life-support will last autonomously).
If that's not enough to label it a death trap, just consider that most of the life support systems are phisically located in the station's center module, but only the docking module could be properly isolated in case of a hull breach.
And I'm sorry but I can't believe the Imperial bureaucracy would allow such a stupid design to become standard. (Imperial safety regs wouldn't permit it.) There should be an additional docking port specifically for the escape pod in the design even it was badly positioned and frequently damaged and out-of-service so the pod would routinely be docked at the main port used for personnel and cargo transfers. Note that a regular escape-pod port would only be designed for a single use so if the pod was used as a general utility vessel for the station… The error was not really in the station design but in the inadequate escape pod assigned to it. ("Oh joy! Joe, it's your turn to walk-the-pod so the shuttle can dock.")
Yes, Traveller would be the main target of this project. Though I must admit I'm fairly new to it.
Imperial safety regs wouldn't permit it.
Maybe. I don't know enough about the official setting to contest that. So I'll go on a tangent and say that, IMTU, bureaucracies will cut costs even if it means breaking safety regs. And while there's a process to correct such things, bureaucracies don't excel at working fast.
In that case what is it relaying?
I would think mostly op comms and survey data. Let's say there's a mining operation somewhere along the Kuiper Belt (or whatever, but within a parsec, even within a system). A quick Google search says it's around 30 to 50 Au from the sun. That's far enough to use J-drive to get there, whenever possible, but not far enough to send X-boats or other ships to transfer information (quick math says it takes at least 2 weeks at 6G to cover 30 Au, but radio comms would take less than 5 hours).
There should be an additional docking port specifically for the escape pod in the design even it was badly positioned and frequently damaged and out-of-service so the pod would routinely be docked at the main port used for personnel and cargo transfers. Note that a regular escape-pod port would only be designed for a single use so if the pod was used as a general utility vessel for the station… The error was not really in the station design but in the inadequate escape pod assigned to it.
Yes. IISS has been notified. Multiple times.
"Oh joy! Joe, it's your turn to walk-the-pod so the shuttle can dock."
Quite the joy! *grumble, grumble*
It's more likely the IISS bureaucracy has the correct design but the contractor producing it is cutting corners while being protected by noble patronage. (I'd need a tonnage for the station to work out a carrier for the prefab components.)
When I think "IISS relay" I'm imagining a interstellar communications link rather than a local one. A local comm station would most likely be the responsibility of the system government and not the Imperium at all. It would probably be constructed locally from a purchased design so Imperial regs might not apply. The IISS would probably complain rather loudly about putting its own people in danger but wouldn't care so much about what happened to local spacers stupid enough to use the design.
Huh.. That does make a lot more sense. Thanks!