Re: [TML] What does Engineering look like? Phil Pugliese 05 Sep 2014 06:02 UTC
Anyone remember the old sci-fi TV series 'StarHunter'? How about that old wreck that they tooled around the Solar System in? It even had an inoperable hyper-drive! -------------------------------------------- On Thu, 9/4/14, Craig Berry <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote: Subject: Re: [TML] What does Engineering look like? To: xxxxxx@simplelists.com Date: Thursday, September 4, 2014, 5:03 PM A well-run, well-maintained ship would have color and symbol coding as you describe. Another ship might have a fleck of the original pipe colors and a few bedraggled wire tags left here and there, with most of everything worn away or covered in grime, and most wires in impenetrable tangles. A third might look much like the first, only some fraction of the colors and codes are wrong -- "Yeah, that was the only replacement pipe we could find that fit when the last one cracked, so it's in O2 green rather than LHyd blue" -- creating a whole series of accidents waiting to happen to new crewmembers, or old ones who lose track of what's right and what isn't. All of these parallel the things you'll find in present-day industrial plants. On Thu, Sep 4, 2014 at 4:44 PM, <xxxxxx@comcast.net> wrote: Hello Jeff Zeitlin, My best guess is that piping and wiring are going to be coded in some manner. Piping maybe color coded with alpha-numeric designators and arrows denoting flow. Wiring may also be coded with alpha-numeric designators on stamped tags and probably on the connectors. IIRC several Star Trek episodes showed the ship's plumbing and the like which where coded in different colors and numbers. Of course in one of the movies Scotty was bragging about knowing every pipe and such only to knock himself out by running into one.;-) Tom R From: "Freelance Traveller" <xxxxxx@freelancetraveller.com> To: "The Traveller Mailing List" <xxxxxx@simplelists.com> Sent: Thursday, September 4, 2014 3:28:05 PM Subject: [TML] What does Engineering look like? (Side note: I suspect that something got jammed up at the Freelance Traveller mail server; the 'missing' messages came back to me in one swell foop. Only it wasn't so swell that they didn't come in "on time". Seems to be OK now, though.) In "classical" Traveller (i.e., the Third Imperium and 'compatible' settings), ships are allocated engineering space, and on deck plans the various 'drives' are roughed in as very irregular shapes. However, with the sort of miniaturization of electronic components that we can do even today, about the only thing that causes irregular shape is _mechanical_ connection or interfacing. If controls are electronic, they can be managed by a touch-screen arrangement, much like on /Star Trek: The Next Generation/ or /Deep Space Nine/ or /Voyager/. So, if I walk in to Engineering on e.g., an Empress Marava or a Beowulf, what am I going to see? Will I see grey, blue, white, purple, etc., boxes with consoles attached? Or will I see something that looks like steampunk updated to the 1970s? Or will I see something like Engineering on one or another of the Star Trek franchises? (Ulterior motive: At some point, I want to build a Traveller starship interior using The Sims 2, and then do a "photo tour" for Freelance Traveller. I can fake up a bridge easily enough (there are Star Trek consoles of all sorts downloadable as add-ons), and living areas are essentially trivial, but Engineering is a potential problem.) -- Jeff Zeitlin, Editor Freelance Traveller The Electronic Fan-Supported Traveller® Fanzine and Resource xxxxxx@freelancetraveller.com http://www.freelancetraveller.com http://freelancetraveller.downport.com/ ®Traveller is a registered trademark of Far Future Enterprises, 1977-2014. Use of the trademark in this notice and in the referenced materials is not intended to infringe or devalue the trademark. Freelance Traveller extends its thanks to the following enterprises for hosting services: CyberNET Web Hosting (http://www.cyberwebhosting.net) The Traveller Downport (http://www.downport.com) ----- The Traveller Mailing List Archives at http://archives.simplelists.com/tml Report problems to xxxxxx@travellercentral.com To unsubscribe from this list please goto http://archives.simplelists.com ----- The Traveller Mailing List Archives at http://archives.simplelists.com/tml Report problems to xxxxxx@travellercentral.com To unsubscribe from this list please goto http://archives.simplelists.com -- Craig Berry (http://google.com/+CraigBerry) "Eternity is in love with the productions of time." - William Blake ----- The Traveller Mailing List Archives at http://archives.simplelists.com/tml Report problems to xxxxxx@travellercentral.com To unsubscribe from this list please goto http://www.simplelists.com/confirm.php?u=EwREIRgLK8vaUEhNlnoNdSGKwnjoID8a