Chereads / The Last Year of the USDS Explorer / Chapter 8 - Day #7 [Is our luck getting better?]

Chapter 8 - Day #7 [Is our luck getting better?]

When I wake up around 11 am I find that the rest of the crew has already started working on the ship. I grab some food and start to head out the airlock to help then notice that the airlock is fully open, safety override is active (both inner and outer doors are open). After being stunned for a few seconds I walk out to discover that the entire stairway and lower deck is pressurized and the airlock by the main hangar has been fixed. I go through the airlock and see that someone has started rebuilding the port side hangar door (there is one on each side of the ship so when open it is more of a tunnel). I see that the starboard side is open and the miner is gone so I can only assume that somebody is out getting more supplies. I try the comms but get nothing but static. I go outside the ship and see that Abbie is now working on sealing the upper deck while Arrica is working on the comms array. I get closer to Arrica so I can ask where George and the miner is to be sure. I learn that he is out doing a simple patrol about 2500km from the ship and will be out until we get the comms and main sensor array back online. I decide that this is a good idea since we don't even know what is near us without running scans for 8 hours just to find some iron at a range of more than 500m. Our main sensor array in normal condition is able to pickup a spec of dust at 20,000km on a bad day. I start trying to help get the sensor array fixed and discover that it is both intact and working but the signal is not making it to the computers. I try to see if I can find the issue but have no luck since the computers can't even detect the array nor any of the data nodes that are supposed to connect to it. I decided to just leave it for now since it is going to be the biggest issue to find the fault and there is more important stuff to work on anyway. I then go over to the port hangar door to see if I can finish the job only to see that we can't because we don't have any gold for the computer boards that control the hydraulics. After checking most of the other systems I find that the only thing we can do at the moment is to finish sealing the hull of the ship since it only needs steel sheets. I then go to help finish sealing the upper deck since it does have direct access to the cockpit, cryo bay, and both main docking airlocks. Once Arrica finishes with the comms array she calls George back to the ship and starts helping to get the upper deck of the ship sealed. Once George gets back I have him go inside and start checking the production equipment to see if he can fix any of it and if not to go ahead and start sealing that bay so we can work faster while inside. After almost 18 hours we finally manage to get the upper deck sealed and head back inside. George comes back into the engineering section as well and says that we will need another load of iron, ice, and uranium to be able to finish sealing the ship. We will also need silicon, gold, silver, nickle, and cobalt to finish making repairs on the rest of the equipment. As such I schedule tomorrow to be mostly used for mining and production of parts after we take a full inventory of what we have and what we need. I also plan on getting some extra just in case we need it. I also decide it would be a good idea to make sure that we get enough supplies to allow the construction of 2 cryo trays and replace the solar array that we lost. At this point we will have almost 40% of the ship sealed once we finish the upper deck. On a final note for the day I just realized that even though we can go back to our own cryo pods to sleep (since they also function as normal sleep chambers) and the main galley is what we use for our meeting room as well as the common area for both passengers and crew, we have gotten into the habit of coming to the engineering section for everything. At a few minutes before 9 pm we finish sealing the upper deck all the way to the bulkhead between the crew cryo bay and the production area. George was able to seal one set of production equipment on the port side so we can run that set at full capacity and save some time. All of us go back inside for the night and I get a plan in place for each person so we can scavenge some parts from the passenger areas to be able to repair some of the other parts of the ship.

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(Damage report)

Main hull breach

Cockpit integrity 5% (leak detected)

[cockpit pressure 0%]

Hangar integrity 30% (door incomplete) (leak detected)

[hangar pressure 0%]

Production integrity 60% (leak detected)

[production pressure 0%]

Medical integrity 90% (damage detected)

[medical pressure 5%]

Cryo integrity 80% (damage detected)

[cryo pressure 5% and climbing]

Airlock 1 integrity 30% (leak detected)

[airlock 1 pressure 0%]

Airlock 2 integrity 30% (leak detected)

[airlock 2 pressure 0%]

Airlock 3 integrity 90% (leak detected)

[airlock 3 pressure 0%]

Engineering integrity 98% (unknown item detected)

[engineering pressure 95% and stable]

Engine Status

Main ION engines not responding (not enough power)

Maneuvering ION engines 80% (dependent on power level)

Main Hydrogen engines not responding (no fuel available)

Maneuvering Hydrogen engines not responding (no fuel available)

Gyroscopes OK (hot-dog roll / passive ship cooling mode)

Jump Drive 10% remaining power (jump not possible at this time)

Power Status

Main power 80% and rising (approximately ?wks remaining) (requires nuclear fuel)

Auxiliary power 50% and stable (port solar array lost / starboard solar array damaged)

Backup power 60% and stable (standby mode) (no external fuel available)

Emergency power not responding (battery status unknown)

Vapor Gas Status

Total o2 capacity (? remaining / currently refilling tanks)

Total h2 capacity (? remaining please seek ship yard help)

o2 tank 1 0% not responding (removed)

o2 tank 2 0% not responding (removed)

o2 tank 3 80% and stable (damage detected) (starboard solar array damaged)

o2 tank 4 80% and stable (damage detected) (starboard solar array damaged)

o2 tank 5 not responding (port solar array lost)

o2 tank 6 not responding (port solar array lost)

o2 farm 1 not responding (port solar array lost)

o2 farm 2 not responding (port solar array lost)

o2 farm 3 0.35Lpm (low power mode) (starboard solar array damaged)

o2 farm 4 0.35Lpm (low power mode) (starboard solar array damaged)

o2/h2 generator online (leak detected) (reduced capacity)

h2 tank 1 5% (leak detected) (WARNING critical explosion if exceeding 30%)

h2 tank 2 5% (leak detected) (WARNING critical explosion if exceeding 30%)

Sensor/Data System Status

Main sensor array not responding (unknown status)

Auxiliary sensor array damaged (max range 50m)

Backup sensor array offline (unknown status)

Emergency sensor array offline (unknown status)

Main computer array 90% capacity (running systems check)

Auxiliary computer array 10% capacity (low power mode active)

Backup computer array 10% capacity (low power mode active)

Emergency computer array 10% capacity (low power mode active)

Production System Status

Refinery 1 damaged (reduced capacity) (leak detected) (standby)

Refinery 2 damaged (reduced capacity) (leak detected) (standby)

Assembler 1 damaged (reduced capacity) (leak detected) (standby)

Assembler 2 damaged (reduced capacity) (leak detected) (standby)

Recycler damaged (low power)

Other Systems Status

Weapons offline (damage detected)

Welding drone (unknown)

Recycling drone (unknown)

Relay drone 1 (unknown)

Relay drone 2 (online)

Scout drone 1 (unknown)

Scout drone 2 (unknown)

Combat drone (offline)

Mining ship (98% integrity) (80% o2 capacity) (power system damaged)

Asteroid anchor (online)

Cargo system (online)