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Okay, Carolyn, I've had a question posed by one of the MR people: how is it that artifical gravity continues to work while your ship is getting the tar whupped out of it by the Raians?
"Well, this ship hasn't been 'whupped by Raians'... thank goodness. If you're referring to our first mission, remember, the Ranger heavy cruiser Superman showed up and deflected a particle beam that would have cut us in half. At that point, it wouldn't have mattered how good the gravity systems were. The gravity systems work in conjunction with inertial manipulation fields to maintain a steady gravity, and usually do a great job. However, when you're near a strong gravity well... say, inside a Sun's corona... it'll work, but so weakly that it's like it isn't even there. Then things can get messy. We bounced around like ping pong balls on that one, and Tirri almost ended up crushed by machinery in the bay. Fortunately, she's very agile."
And did it take long to repair the bay after that incident?
"Well, we had to take a few weeks to check and remount every security harness in the bay. The standard mounting system was to spec, legally ... but I decided they could be much better. That kept us going nowhere for awhile, but we didn't want to see it happen again. Uh, what?"
You're climbing a ladder.
"Yes?"
Well, this is a space ship. Aren't there turbolifts, or something?
"What's wrong with ladders?"
Well, nothing, I guess...
"A space ship is a self-contained vessel that travels alone in deep space. You don't waste power on things like turbolifts in deep space when you don't have to. And we don't have to. Besides, there are service shafts that run from top to bottom, and stem to stern, which are isolated from the gravity systems and therefore maintain a neutral gravity. If we have to move something heavy from one level or section to another, we use those."
Okay, I get it. No wasted energy. Good thinking. So, these are the upper storage bays. It's sort of like walking around in a big self-storage facility. Does each one of these maintain its own environmental system?
"About half of them do, by default. Others can be set up to run their own ecosystems, if needed. A lot of them are just used to store our own things. That one there holds most of Sarander's excess engine supplies. Come on, the farm is right over here."
Yes, I want to see this...
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