Links for easy reference: the first group and the second group to which Darvin refers. Also, Hettal (mentioned briefly in Chapter Three) had a supporting role in the short story Fusella Vs. Interplanetary Patrol. As you may recall, Zan was brought in to fill his place when they suddenly realized they needed a complete Survey Contact Team.
I’ve been busy folding flyers and assembling buttons for Penguicon this weekend! I’m really looking forward to getting a chance to meet some of my fellow webcomic creators, such as Kez of The War of Winds and Darc and Matt Sowers of Code Name: Hunter. Plus– and I was so excited when I read this– I found out that fantasy author Patrick Rothfuss will be there! The Name of the Wind was one of my favourite books from the last couple of years, so I expect to go all tongue-tied fangirl when I have a chance to get my copy signed. Based on his blog, I expect he’s a really entertaining person to listen to. Can’t wait!!
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Have I mentioned before how the grey tones add a lot of depth to the comic?
Glad to see you got your copies of The Book… can’t wait can’t wait!
Yes because after how well the existing SCT team have fared so far sending yet another “qualified” SCT person to stand around hand wringing over whether or not to break the Prime Directive is exactly whats needed.
In reality, they’re captured now and with no obvious way of contacting the kidnappers the fate of the SCT is in their hands and well and truly out of the Galaxion’s!
@Insectoid: Thank you!
@Prestwick: I like how “qualified” is in quotes.
Well, now we see why Darvin deserves his IP paycheque. Nice job from limited intel!
As for the crewman in the third panel… he just seems so calm about Fusella taking her frustrations out on his console. It’s almost as if this happens every day
Overheard on the Galaxion’s 2JV intraship comm system:
“Engineering, Bridge; Auxiliary Maintenance team lay to the Bridge.”
“Bridge, Engineering; What’s the problem this time?”
“Engineering, Bridge; Uh… Deckplate maintenance…?”
“……..Bridge, Engineering; Aye… Perhaps the Captain should sit down for few minutes? We can hear her thumping about all the way down here.”
@Andrew, J. Wilde: *LOL*
well, well, well, I would have thought that if Fusella was looking for “volunteers” she would approach this more, uh, direct…
but maybe she does not know yet?
@Andrew: ROFL!! Genius!
@Tara: Hahaha I’m loving the story because there are two organisations with very different ways of operating and the story doesn’t really pontificate about whether might or ‘we come in peace’ is the better method which is what makes it so good I guess. It allows me to be an IP fanboy without feeling neglected by the story if that makes sense
My hobby:
Deciding that ‘SCT’ stands for ‘Society for Creative Terraforming’.
(Look don’t tell me you’ve never had the urge to add a signature to a fjord on a virgin planetoid.)
I’m looking at the TNG-like control console Darvin is perusing, and wondering what a starship console might really look like. He’s looking at what look like media windows there, which is sensible for looking at visual feeds. But of course you don’t necessarily want your helm or fire controls to be like a busy Windows desktop.
With the iPad we seem to have already hit the TNG touchpad interface tech level. If we were designing the UI for an Enterprise-class computer today, what would it look like?
Specifically: would consoles have per-user configurations, so when you take your station you bring up your custom desktop? Or would each role have a very tightly locked down look and feel, only upgraded during layovers, to make sure anyone trained by the book can take over a work station? Would some stations like science or intelligence or Stellar Cartography be much more lax in terms of UI customisation?
I presume these are issues which today’s aircraft carriers probably already face. There must be windowed terminals of some kind in the CIC I guess? Windows, Linux or some really old Unix with CDE?
I was in a mail boat around the Picton bays a year or so back and the skipper had, next to the radar screen, an ordinary Windows laptop running a GPS map. So I guess civilian craft are already okay with Windows as a major (but optional?) component of ship navigation.
In the Space Future, might we already have progressed beyond touchscreens to HUD visors of some kind, and some kind of universal shared visual data thingy? Or would we stay resolutely retro with physical clunky screens?
One neat thing I liked about Avatar was that it did the old anime ‘transparent holographic windows hovering over workstations’ UI cliche in live action 3D and somehow made it work. But I don’t know that I’d want to actually use an interface like that.
@Tara: Isn’t today the first Friday of the month? Hmmm? :–)
@Nate: I believe I’m correct in recalling that the TNG panels could be customized by the user. There was a standard layout for people who didn’t bother with their own or have to use it in an emergency.
I don’t know for sure, but I believe most modern day military vessels have specific purpose screens. A notable exception is later gen fighter aircraft, but their screens still only show one display at a time.
I know that until recently military subs didn’t use computers for much of anything. The idea was if things went very bad, they wanted to still be able to work the ship. I believe the latest gen subs finally have a swim-by-wire setup, though they maintain a mechanical means of control as backup.
I actually like the idea of a 3-D in-air touch display. Avatar meets Minority Report. It gives you an extra dimension to store information panels as well as to see icons or displays (e.g. damage control can see all around the ship, navigation can rotate the sphere of stars, and of course sensor displays can be shown in 3-D).
Personally, I like the Ghost in the Shell concept of display and control…it’s all in your head.
I even came up with a Star Trek-esk universe in which all the crew have cybernetic implants to help in their missions. Landing parties would have internal communicators (talking and hearing all in your head) for communication with the ship as well as transporter beacons for emergency beam-outs. And, of course, a universal translator.
@Quieteyes, actually, it’s the LAST Friday of the month. Come back next week!
I know, it WOULD be lovely if we got an extra page today, but I know Tara’s at a convention this weekend.
@Torjin: Well, Fusella has to play by the rules, too.
@Prestwick: I think it’s pretty cool that there are IP fanboys!
@Nate: There is an image I printed in the old graphic novel (the one with the black cover) that has Vessa surreptitiously carving “Vessa was here” into a rock. No lie.
My original concept for the Galaxion’s consoles was similar, I guess, to the iPad idea. It’s a customizable touch-screen, so any of the stations could be used for any user. It totally makes sense that a pre-programmed personalized configuration would pop up whenever someone sits down and logs in. Having said that, though, people still generally sit in the same places. Force of habit?
HUD visors could certainly solve some problems for ships that have space and weight restrictions. No bulky consoles to have to find room for! I guess I never really considered them for this story because they still feel kind of impersonal to me. The people are shut away in their own reality instead of working together (even if they are, in VR-land). Also not as fun to draw.
A configurable touch pad type interface would allow the greatest flexibility and efficiency, but there is still a place for actual manual controls – anything that must be operated in extremis. It was one of my biggest criticisms of the tech in Trek – so much of their damage control apparatus relied on both power (electricity or EPS taps or whatever) and control (the ship’s main computer or a subordinate controller). Lose power and your force-field fire suppression and emergency pressure boundary systems go away. Now what? Main computer goes offline or gets co-opted – you’re in the same boat.
And it doesn’t have to be a shipwide casualty, either. A fire that damages control conduit or a power feed can cut off all damage control support in a section of the ship, and then you’re faced with letting it burn/depressurize.
In short, everything important related to controlling, protecting, and fighting the ship should have a manual backup. Things like air-tight doors, if not already of the hinged door/hatch type, should have a mechanism for shutting them that does not require power or remote operability functions. I actually came up with an airtight damage control door concept that went like this:
The doors are normally open ‘sliding curtain’ type doors that you see on shows like Trek. They have a small pressurized hydraulic system that exists only for that door. This hydraulic system is trying to shut the door at all times. It is balanced against shutting by a small flask of pressurized air. A pressure switch tied to a normally shut solenoid valve keeps air pressure in the flask. Upon a loss of pressure below the sensor’s setpoint, the solenoid valve is deenergized (this also means that a loss of power on that circuit will affect the same result), causing the valve to open, and vent the air flask. The air flask is vented through an air horn, producing an extremely loud warning to anyone around that the door is shutting, and that they had best pick which side of it they want to be on. The air flask is balanced against the hydraulics in such a way that the hydraulics will not start to shut the door for a short period of time allowing people to pass through, then as pressure bleeds off through the air horn, the doors will start to shut at an ever increasing rate until the door is closed, sealing off the affected area from the depressurization casualty. The system requires no operator response, a loss of power actually initiates it, and requires no sophisticated computer system – just a solenoid valve and a pressure switch you could find at Granger or Home Depot – and fails safe.