Ship's broken; I'm grounded.
12 Nov 2015Tristan Pacheco
Well, I was ready to head back out today, but when I climbed aboard the Incorruptible, I just couldn't get it to start. I wanted to make sure it wasn't a problem I could fix myself before I was charged a trillion credits for a repair. I checked everything, even life support (I've heard system checks might not allow the engines to start if systems had failed beforehand). After about an hour of fiddling I figured out what should have been obvious. The radiator vent was stuck open on one side, and naturally, I was parked right out in the open. Normally, this would be a good thing (what's a bit of excess heat in a radiator gonna do?), but it had been storming like crazy, and the water had flooded (through the pressure vent) into the Hydrogen tanks. Believe it or not, spacecraft don't run on water. I can't just dump the fuel because the fuel dump requires power to operate and I can't get the power operating because the engines have to be on, and I can't turn on the engines because there's water in the tanks!!! So reluctantly, I called the station maintenance and they said they could fix it for 8000 CR. That's nothing to me so I agreed. But I'm on a waiting list and I'm not very high on it, so it'll probably be even longer before I'm able to fly again. On the bright side, a loophole in the Federal regs ensure that this will not actually consume R & R time, since I can't actually leave. So I'm on paid vacation until my ship is fixed. Woohoo!