Albert McKenzie, Starfliers To: George E. Rolf, Deep Space Engineering Subject: Good and Bad
Hello, George.
I recall one of our own routinely using the Kali Light Fighter as their main vessel. The ship was used in the first iteration of this project and later scrapped in favour of a custom design. It did cross my mind that perhaps having a dual propulsion system design may be best. Though I am no engineer and unable to communicate the intricate terminology. Please do proceed with this as I do trust your team's experience and judgement with such solutions.
There may be a time when I can come down and test the vessels alongside your Team Leaders. Though I cannot promise my availability, as it is fleeting in most cases. The same goes for the remainder of my teams. If there can be a certificate produced of your own flight test, I can at least review that remotely if I am unable to make it there in person.
「o」Neural Net uplink established...
「o」Decrypting message contents...
「o」Displaying message contents...
George E. Rolf, CEO
LOCATION: Susquehanna Station, Cortez
SUBJECT: "Vector" Prototype Development
Mr. McKenzie, it's good to report some good news for a change!
For one, we've got our own reportin' standards, and these'll be accepted by most House vendors regardin' quality control. Now, about the new builds - they performed right within spec ranges, damned if they didn't! And we have plenty of stress-test data for the old prototypes, generated over the previous month of the rebuildin'.
I'll be sendin' the raw data alongside the annotated stuff, but there are two major takeaways.
One, with two engines, we've got redundancy, but we've also got some overengineerin' bleedin' out. As you may recall, the main issue with the single design was critical failure during times of maximal use of all power-driven components. Well, we've solved all that, but at the cost of needin' to throttle the "backup" during the other ~80% of ops. It's all in the specs, and my folks have figured out a nice middle ground default for automatic switchin'. However, if your people know things are about to get nasty, we've also got a "panic" routine enabled for 'em. All the pilot needs to do is push a button, and you've got maximum juice, without any switchin' delays. But I wouldn't recommend runnin' on that 24/7, or you'll run out of fuel real fast. Like I said, it's all in the detailed specs.
The other is far simpler, but not really solvable - mass. It's not as easy to see on the raw numbers, but the qualitative debrief consistently confirms that the pilots can feel the motion delay. I strongly recommend that you make some time to fly both yourself live, or at the very least in the simulators on Baltimore. Unfortunately, I cannot approve any further modifications to reduce the mass, unless you're willin' to sacrifice cargo capacity. Doing this will result in a cascade of other modifications, so I cannot with good conscience sign off on that there mess of work. But I ain't a starched jumper, so I know you can find folks to do it for you out in the dark if you really wanted. In any case, the final product is well within our original parameters, and I think you will be satisfied with the result.
I'm lookin' forward to the final design pass of the completed frames. Them pilot versions are good for tests, but they're uglier than the inside of a MOX processor. Once that's all done, I'll be mighty glad to have you break the bottle over the first formally licensed Vector.
![[Image: t9mWlni.png]](https://i.imgur.com/t9mWlni.png)
![[Image: woJg8mQ.png]](https://i.imgur.com/woJg8mQ.png)