Exploring in Style. And Chlorine. But mostly Style.
25 Oct 2017LongDistanceClara
Really silly one, this one >.< But you gotta have a giggle right? 
I had to cut my jaunt down the Orion Spur a bit short, as I needed to futz with a few things in-game to get the ball rolling on "stuff", but that's all taken care of now. Heading out to the Bubble Nebula at the mo, will probably do some nonsensical blurb about that soon enough. But for now - brief intermission from sanity, here's some stupid stuff!
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Ok so here's the thing; I want a swimming pool on my ship.
<and around the galaxy, a thousand facepalms are heard>
Or a hot-tub! I'm not picky! But there's an obstacle or two - one minor and a bunch of majors.
The minor one is that apparently some people think that you're not a true explorer unless you have a beard that supports a small ecosystem and you haven't taken a shower in months. I'll be honest - facial hair isn't going to work for me and if getting my "explorer" badge requires me to have all the sanitary habits of a skunk - then you can keep the badge, I'm fine without it
So that's not a biggie. The larger problems are these; firstly, a swimming pool is pretty heavy (ya think?!). I figure it'll run a coupla/few hundred tons. That's doable, the Clair and the Cass could both handle that. Granted it'll wreck their jump-range and handling but I'll sacrifice a lot for the chance of a cheeky dip in the big black!
Moisture and electronics, not a great cocktail; but that's ok, if I'm springing for the customization of a cargo hold, I'm sure the tech-heads can rustle up some kinda airlock to cycle the moisture. Now to the bigger issue - gravity.
Wishful thinking face!
Only I suddenly realized - it's not an issue at all. Generally when I'm running the multi-day tours, I'll set down on a planet or a moon at day's end; and even if there isn't a landable in the neighborhood, we'll generally setup on autopilot around a big enough gravity well that we can feel the deck beneath our feet. It usually takes a few days to get your space-legs under you and since our tours are normally only a coupla days long, it's not much fun for folks who aren't used to space travel to spend half their time looking green!
All well and good - what about in the (albeit very rare!) event that there are no suitable gravity wells around? Aha! Little bit of trial, a dash of error and a whole bunch of pretty elementary mathematics and boom - we can program the ship to fly loops at a specific radius and speed to create the desired gravity at the pool.
And when there's no gravity when we're cruising? No-one will be poolside then, so that's what the pool's watertight shield/cover is for. Although given how tired I am last thing in the evening, might be an idea to tie that through to the gravimeter...This may be the most stupid thing I've ever done in a ship.
Really can't wait
(So the plan just for the hell of it is to actually knock up a model of this pool in Blender/Unreal, render some piccies and very slowly, rl permitting, model the rest of the ship interior. And yes, I'm fully aware it's ridiculous but c'mon be honest - a pool on your ship? Who wouldn't!
)