A rough day on the bridge. What happens at night?
"Is fake news real?"
"Uhh .."
The xenon conspiracy.
Just sounds neat. Not explained, leave it to the imagination.
Would the Alouette story be a novel, a television show, or movie? That's unclear. But nothing will come of this anyway.
A rough day on the bridge. What happens at night?
Star Trek has a bridge, with a handful of people who have specific areas of responsibility. They're travelling through space looking for weird worlds, new life and civilisations. There's a captain, a communications lady, a science officer, and whatever Sulu and Chekov do. The doctor and the engineer have roles, but they are not on the bridge.
Who would be on the bridge for Alouette? Alouette is a long-distance space bus, with some colourful attached pods and some science. Alouette goes fast through a solar system. Also it goes at ludicrous speed through (part of) the galaxy. Pods, shuttle craft, space stations, refuelling are all tricky. Alouette does not land on planets.
So the Alouette bridge would have, I don't know, an executive officer/officer of the deck, a helmsman to steer things, a navigator, maybe someone to keep an eye on the status of the ship ("What's that alarm?"). When dealing with separate space craft there could be other officers, including a communications person. Other people would be based largely elsewhere on the ship. The captain, who is responsible for .. everything would be various places including the bridge. There is the medical section. Engineering. Integration officer, to deal with the pods. Science people. Supply. Guest services or some such.
Is the communications person responsible for external communications - and internal communications?
I imagine going on a long trip through deep space would mostly be stultifyingly boring on the bridge. Cruises and yachts sometimes have passengers visit the bridge. The space bridge crew at least pretend to have important things they are doing.
Then they go back to doing close to nothing. The guy clicks back to the thing on his screen that he had clicked away from.
If Alouette has pods attached to it asymetrically, for example a smaller cruise ship, would that throw things off balance while going through space?
One of those has a sauna in it.
Do you get restless and claustrophobic looking at these pictures? People do eventually make their way to planets.
So would there actually be a cruise ship as one of these pods, in this work of fiction? Ehhh .. probably not. But lots of people would be moved in a ship to distant destinations, and there would be a demand for stimulation and
comfort. Ideally each component contributes something different. Like green space, for example. Or ping pong. Maybe the pods are more about bodies and supplies, while the huge Alouette provides facilities.
The pods are meant to be self sustaining. People can go on Alouette, give or take. You can't bring your dog; not without special permission.
I hope nobody loses their luggage somewhere in the galaxy.
Think of the new, exciting, unnerving, visual experience of a passenger going on such a trip. Think of a kid experiencing this. All the "airport" stuff. Boarding a craft to go to near earth space. Attaching to Alouette. Going increasingly fast, bye bye planet. Then going ludicrous speed, where you can see stars going slowly by. Have you ever thought of deceleration? Alouette stuff. Going to a new planet.
There is certainly work to do with science, technology and worldbuilding, but that will have to wait for another day.
People go to distant, inhospitable planets for a reason.
But back to the issue of bridge crew.