Friday, February 14, 2014

What happened to my Asteroid? Section 14:


Commander Kimberly Dickerson struggled to get her chair and harness adjusted properly.  She was just over the minimum height requirement at 63cm but had stubby legs and a stocky build which made it a challenge to get the proper adjustments.  She had a special cushion that flattened out the seat so her feet could get to the controls but it still took a lot of adjustments since the officer she was relieving was over 2 meters tall and half her width.  She wore her blonde hair quite short for convenience since she didn’t like binding her hair or having it floating around in zero G.  Her hair and stocky stature made her look considerably more butch than she really was, although it did come in handy at times.  Her position was transport operations supervisor, directly between and a little behind the two transport operations control stations, which were tilted 45 degrees to either side to allow the 3 of them to get full view coverage around the front of the station.  The transport operations supervisor station was usually oriented such that “up” is toward the axis of the station, but the cluster could be oriented any way desired.  The observation dome extended far enough forward of the end plane of the station to give the cluster a full 180 degree view around that plane and unobstructed view forward.  At least two of the three positions could observe docking operations all the way in to the docking bays at all times.  The view was incredible but had a tendency to give some people vertigo.

The forward docking bays were arranged in a triangular pattern centered on the axis of the station with Docking Bays 2, 3, and 4 at the vertices and Docking Bay 1 in the center of the other 3.  The transport operations control room was centered between Bays 2 and 3, a scientific observation deck between Bays 3 and 4, and the command operations center, also known as the bridge, between Bays 2 and 4.  This pattern was duplicated at the aft of the station with Bays 5, 6, 7, and 8 but with a smaller transport operations control room and two smaller general purpose observation decks.

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