The ship is a Gazprom Space Systems Stividor Multipurpose Transport. It is somewhat old but in generally good shape. The plasma rocket can give a 100 km/s delta-v and produces a decent acceleration of 0.02 G. Hydrogen thrusters can provide 0.2 G navigational thrust but use up the fuel at a rapid rate.
• The ship looks like a long rod, with the main engines, reactor and radiator array at the rear. The total length is 320 meters (340 if counting antennas and docking equipment). A spinal hallway 2 meters across runs along the length of the ship.
• “The hot zone” around the reactor and drive is normally dealt with using telepresence robots, but it is possible to get there in principle along the spinal hallway by passing through two bulk doors.
• Further ahead is a section where cargo modules can be attached. For this mission there are just two: one containing the course change thruster, and another one with miscellaneous teleoperation equipment. Neither module is pressurized.
• The crew quarters are a series of modules further ahead along the ship spine, protected from solar flares by the hydrogen tanks. They are microgravity habitats and fairly cramped. It is not uncommon for people to “camp” along the spinal hallway to get some extra space. The rear part of the quarters is workshops, equipment storage and water tanks, as well as fold-out cargo manipulation cranes.
• The next section is the main water, reserve power, life support and workshop section (“engineering”). The section has four connection points, two of which are the main airlocks and docking tubes. The central chamber is the largest space in the ship, often used for gymnastics.
• Two hydroponics modules have been attached on the outside of engineering to provide some fresh produce and relaxation (the sterile spaceship environments tend to make spacers appreciate gardening to a surprising degree). They are fairly unprotected from solar flares but not essential for the ship either.
• Ahead of the engineering section is further cargo sections (currently not used), ending in a connector array that allows the ship to dock with a SIPG-Airbus cargo infrastructure. Various sensors and antennas are attached here.
The interior is very utilitarian: white plastic-graphene walls, textured to provide good traction when moving in zero-g and equipped with hand/footholds everywhere. There are foldout drawers for storage and tech access everywhere. Crew quarters are little more than ellipsoidal pods. The zero-g sanitation area is minimalist in extreme, making it easy to keep perfectly clean (there is a reason spacers love the clean metabolism biomod).
The light systems can produce colored and textured light to improve the claustrophobia: one section might for example be set to dappled sunlight through forest, while another runs "clear morning on SouthWest adobe". The ambient sound system (mainly intended to dampen ship noise) can add some minimal background noise to fit.
However, most crew members have their own AR overlay or spend time in simspaces. The ship has an official “bridge” AR/simspace giving overall status information, and allowing crew members with the right access control from wherever they are.
However, most crew members have their own AR overlay or spend time in simspaces. The ship has an official “bridge” AR/simspace giving overall status information, and allowing crew members with the right access control from wherever they are.
Just before the Fall the ship was retrofitted with a Changfeng Inc. radiator system and an Oxsensis reactor. Getting the different hardware systems to talk to each other properly is a fun problem: far too often the reactor sub-AIs go into a chatty mode and confuse the Mandarin interfaces of the cooling system, making it panic and invoke the somewhat dour main ship AI Pitr. Pitr is smart enough to know this is a regular problem and practically never important, but also has to obey its ancient security code and have an engineer look into the problem. The human engineers have been trying for over a decade to get the system to stop alerting them at inconvenient times, but with no luck. The reactor and radiator controls are hardwired, and Pitr is too useful and experienced to be modified.
The ship has an industrial cornucopia machine (a Naukograd C45) with licenses for many kinds of salvaging equipment, space gear and ship spare parts. It is connected to an industrial recycler that is used to get rid of junk and waste. New blueprints can be bought remotely, but it usually takes about 15 minutes from sending a buy request to getting the blueprint (assuming the ship is somewhere in the inner system). The CM is run by a very friendly, almost obsequious, AI named Karen.
The mess has a Nizhnekamskneftekhim Kpovara fabber for making food, which is surprisingly good – the secret of good shipboard cooking is red market device drivers that enable some of the more interesting options, like printing copyrighted food. There is also a small medical fabber for drugs and medical spare parts in the sickbay.
The ship has five automechs used for repair and inspections. One (nicknamed Mussorgsky) is stationed in the reactor/drive section, two are attached on the hull (Balakirev and Cui) and two (Rimsky-Korsakov and Borodin) are present in the habitat section. Someone has added a minor hack making them hum music while working. They are not normally used for salvaging.
The ship already has a well equipped store of disassembly tools, including some of the more specialized zero-g large scale shipbreaking. It also has pre-built supply of things like breadcrumb positioning systems, heavy spindles, canisters with wallfoam (a foam that forms thick, fluffy walls in space that protect workers from micrometeorites and keep debris from salvaging from polluting a site), a collapsible EVA sled, thruster packs, rolls of graphene patching material and other things that are commonly used.
There is a disaster cupboard near the airlocks containing emergency bubbles, distress beacons, hull and spacesuit repair spray, reserve light vacsuits (although everyone onboard have their own heavily customized work standard vacsuits) and emergency medical kits.