"Spaceflight will never tolerate carelessness, incapacity, and neglect." - Gene Kranz
11 Apr 2018Logan Darklighter
Back at Jacques station after about a 7000 LY round trip to the North edge of the Galaxy and back. Very VERY profitable! Lots of good survey data and first discovery bonuses. And it's a good thing I got nearly 10 million credits for my trip from Universal Cartographics because I had to spend over 1.4 million credits to fix up my ship.
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?
I was a little shocked when the Jacques Engineering crew gave me the news after they'd run the usual diagnostics.
I initially didn't understand because on this trip I'd never suffered any hull damage (though most of the paint had been stripped off over the course of the journey).
The FSD did need re-furbishing after all the Neutron star boosting I'd done, so that was no surprise.
But the main cost was in basic structural integrity. Although the outer hull and internal modules were all in good condition. The backbone of the Lightning was in bad shape. It was then that I remembered a couple of very hard landings on high-g worlds where I'd bounced the bottom of the ship coming down too hard. The shields and hull never cracked. But apparently I'd done some very stressful things to the internal skeleton of the ship. Micro-fractures were found all throughout.
I had a bad image in my head of one hard landing too many and my poor 'conda's spine breaking in two. That didn't happen. But the engineers here on Jacques showed me in detail how close I was cutting it.
So I paid the premium price gladly to have all the main structural elements repaired or replaced. My 'Conda was at one point in the process literally in two distinct pieces with only the repair gantry holding her more or less together and bundles of wire and cabling hanging out as the only connecting strands between the forward hull and the engine block.
Those guys at Jacques work fast and do good work though. 64 hours later I got the call that the Azhanti High Lightning was back together as good as when she first left the assembly line back in the bubble.
I'm embarrassed, but the boys tell me I'm not the first to bang up a 'Conda during the learning curve. I'm an experienced pilot, but moving up to the big ships has been a little difficult. I've only had the Lightning for a little over 6 months now. I'm used to smaller craft like the Cobra and the Asp.
One of my heroes from the early space age more than a thousand years ago is Gene Kranz, who said:
"Spaceflight will never tolerate carelessness, incapacity, and neglect."
I fucked up somewhere, and I need to step up my game. I'll do it though. I'll iron out my technique and procedures.
I'm just glad my baby gave me a second chance to do so. Tough bird she is. Never even knew she was hurting. I won't let that happen again.