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[RulerOfNothing]

One question: do we have construction plans to allow us to produce all of the resources that we know of once we reach our destination?

Not sure exactly what you mean by that, but you do have the knowlege to produce everything you brought with you.  The problem is adapting to local conditions and producing in quantity the capital, resource, and infrastructural capacity to actually do so.  Modern society has massive productive structures that we take for granted, and developing them on similar scales would be a huge undertaking.

You don't have the knowlege to make things like nanomachines, antimatter, or the rest of the very cutting-edge of pre-Cataclysm Earth's technology; however, these things were made on some scale before, and can (possibly, not practical for a long time) be again.

Right. I just wanted to be sure that everything was covered in terms of equipment because in Outpost 3 they ran into problems because they had to rely on their chemistry lab to make medicine.

[TopHat]

My turn to go on holiday now. Again, try not to blow everything up whilst I'm away.

[Draxis]

Right. I just wanted to be sure that everything was covered in terms of equipment because in Outpost 3 they ran into problems because they had to rely on their chemistry lab to make medicine.

Chemical or microbe-derived medicines can be made in the General Lab in small batches, and setting up some basic drug production facilities wouldn't be hard; however, making more complex ones or large quantities would take considerable work.

No special actions safe for continuing the research.

Does this mean to continue or not continue the research?

[RulerOfNothing]

I think 10ebbor10 meant "No special actions save for continuing the research", which means that he wants to continue the research, which is a course of action that I support.

[Draxis]

That makes sense.  Continuing the research.

[Draxis]

Update 13
Heart of Gold, 2087

[X] Spend 0.1 more Advanced Parts to try to fix the problems with the 'upgraded' VR module
[X] Continue VR design research. No pressure, but if they get finished with that, then there's a next task. 
         - Finish MCF reactor research
         - Design a water electrolyzing system

Standing Orders:

• Keep 15 crew awake, rotated in shifts of 5 on duty at any time.
• Shut down as much as possible 1 month every 5 years for intensive maintainance, and swap out which reactor is being run then to maintain the other.

Spend 0.1 more Advanced Parts to try to fix the problems with the 'upgraded' VR module
(66) The source of the bugs which had been plaguing the design team are traced back to compatability problems between some of the optronic components and the rest of the system, as well as sloppy construction.  Some parts are swapped out, and the system code updated; while some problems likely remain, the system should now function just as well as the base system, but with considerably higher processing power.

2076-2080
Crew: (76 +5 Expert Crew +5 Biodome) = 86
Ship: (71 +5 Expert Crew +5 Rugged Construction -6 Maintainance Modifier) = 75
MCF Research: (93 +5 Expert Crew) = 98 Project Successful! Good results

In the wake of the potential disaster, the crew really steps up to keep things going well.  Though now almost 35 years old, the entire ship is still running within acceptable parameters - various systems are slowly decaying, especially the ventilation system, but the crew are keeping them in good shape without even going through significant amounts of spare parts.  Meanwhile, the work on the MCF research project has gone even better.
+2 to Maintainance Modifier

The engineers working on the project report that they have developed a fusion core which can keep the particle leaks to even a lower level than was predicted in the models you are equipped with (much better than they really do); while slightly larger, the size increase is not significant compared to the generators and cooling equipment surrounding the core.  This will allow the reactors to be run for considerably longer without risk of containment failure or forced shutdowns.

They have developed, based on existing blueprints, both small and large variants with the new cores comparable to the current models.  However, they advise strongly against trying to produce either of them without first running them through the Central Colony Computer's systems - while they did their best, the CAD software in the VR module was not prepared for high-energy physics, and they believe their calculations are correct but want them checked.

Improved MCF Reactor designs unlocked - same stats as the current models but without the maintainance problems; it is uncertain whether they actually work as intended until they are tested in the Central Computer, though they probably do.

2081-2085
Crew: (59 +5 Expert Crew +5 Biodome) = 69
Ship: (07 +5 Expert Crew +5 Rugged Construction -4 Maintainance Modifier) = 13 Narrowly avoided critical status
Electrolyser Research: (28) = 28 Project successful! Mediocre results

The crew keeps up their good work - it seems that the time spent on selection and training really paid off.  Everything on the ship still seems to be functioning correctly, and except for one incident no major crew-related problems have occured.

In late 2084, though, it becomes clear that everything was not in fact functioning correctly.  In the #2 fuel pod's buffer tank, some wiring which had become damaged over time caught fire, which spread to the insulation around the tank and increased tank temprature - and therefore pressure. The computer noted this, increased the coolant pressure, and reported to the bridge crewman.  He quickly initiated an emergency vent of the tank, which prevented a pressure explosion and extinguished the flames. 

A damage control group was sent out within minutes, and they repaired the tank, readjusted some valves put out by the vacuum shock, and refilled it from the main tanks.  No lasting damage was done, but one unit of fuel was lost and some basic parts were expended in re-insulating and refurbishing the large tank.

Everyone is glad they are on such a robust and well-staffed ship - in earlier times, this could have been a critical failure.
-0.2 Basic Parts
-1 fuel

The electrolyser project goes poorly from the start, but because it is fairly simple something comes of it anyway.  A device is designed which can take water dumped into a hopper, and turn it onto oxygen.  While inconvenient and power-hungry, it will suffice to produce precious oxygen.
Mediocre electrolyser designed, but superseded by next turn's research attempt.

2086-2087
Crew: (02 +5 Expert Crew +5 Biodome) = 12 Still a critical failure
Ship: (78 +5 Expert Crew +5 Rugged Construction -4 Maintainance Modifier) = 84
Electrolyser Research: (89) = 89 Continues due to no orders but "continue the research", and gets pretty good results

The group who had been working on the water electrolyser continues their work, due to having nothing better to do in their considerable free time.  They now, learning from the mistakes of the last attempt, redesign it completely, ending up with a very good model.  The new design draws in water from a tube into a buffer tank, distills it to make sure the electrodes remain clean, and then runs a very high current through it to seperate the molecules into their component parts.  There is provision for a system for seperating the hydrogen and oxygen, but as of now no plug-in system for that exists.  It is bulky and power-hungry, but should in optimal conditions be able to turn 3 units of water into 2 of oxygen and 1 of hydrogen, or less in that ratio, per month.

New Production Project: Fabricate Water Electrolyser. Small size. 80 point project; takes metals and some electronics. Uses 3 power.  Turns water into oxygen and hydrogen (which may or may not be retained) at a 3:2:1 ratio, max 3 units of water per month.

The crew continues to maintain the ship well, preventing its state from deteriorating any more.  The ship has now been operating longer than any other was intended to, and despite all the extra systems it carries, is still in good shape.  However, as it ages, more things are going wrong, and the crew only manage to keep everything in good shape with the use of 0.1 Basic Parts.
-0.1 Basic Parts


Update 13 Status: 2076


Starship: Heart of Gold, hybrid Ark-Outpost Ship
Total Size: 160 units
Structure mass: 105 units.

Installed components:

• 4 Ark Cryobays.  Size 10x4, mass 15x4.  -10x4 power.
• Closed-Loop Lifesupport and Hydroponics. Size 4, mass 3. -6 power. 1 crew.
• Damage Control & Machine Shop.  Size 4, mass 2.  -1 power.
• Large Cargo Bay.  Cost 4 RU. Size 43. Mass 2. Cargo Space Filled: 40/40
  • Organic sludge processor Cost 2 RU, Size 2, Mass 1.
  • Automated production line . Cost 20 RU, Size 4, Mass 7.
  • Prefabricated General Laboratory: 20 RU. Size 6. Mass 4. Electricity 3 MW.
  • Optronic Central Computer.  Cost 10 RU. Size 2. Mass 2.
  • Seed Bank. 2 RU, 4 mass, 3 size.
  • D&D vehicles. Cost 2RU, size 4, mass 4
  • Powered Exo-skeleton Constructor Units. Cost 2 RU, Size 2, Mass 2
  • Ore Processor. Cost 6 RU, Size 4, Mass 5.
  • 3.8x Advanced parts 3x4 RU. Size 1x4. Mass 1x4.
  • 2.4x Basic Parts 2.3 RU. Size 1x4. Mass 1x4.
  • Advanced Medical Supplies 2 RU, size 1. Mass 1.
  • 2x vac suits 1x2 RU, Size 1x2, Mass 1x2.
  • 2x Air tanks. 1x2 RU. Size 1x2. Mass 1x2.
• Medical Bay. Cost 3 RU. Size 2. Mass 1. -1 power.
• Recreational Commons. Cost 5 RU. Size 4. Mass 4 units. -1 power. Modified with optronic components in the VR pod
• Biodome. Size 20. Mass 2.
• MCF Fusion Reactor. Size 5x2. Mass 3x2. 75x2 to 37.5 power. Uses 1x2 to .5 Fuel/Yr.
• Smart Command Centre. Size 2. Mass 2. -3 power. 1 crew.
• 10 Small Fuel Tanks.  Size 2x10. Mass 3x10. Fuel 8x10
• 3 Improved Ion Drives.  Size 3x3. Mass 7x3. -6x3 power. Thrust 9x3. Refitted the main thrust parts in 2074.
• Focused Detection Array. Size 1. Mass 1. -2 power.
• 4x vac suits in hallways. 1x4 RU. Size 4/6. Mass 1x4

Expert Crew Bonus: +5 to all relevant rolls in the Flight phase, due to high levels of training and familiarity with the ship in the crew.
Masterful Engineering Bonus: Effects of having 40 vacuum suits in the crew spaces minimised - only minor mobility issues remain.
Rugged Construction: +5 to all rolls relevant to the ship being overengineered and tested further than usual.
Atmospheric Flight Capacity: While not graceful, the ship is capable of landing with relative precision and control for a multi-thousand-ton brick, on any planet with an atmosphere at least.
Smart Command Center: The ship's central computer allows a high degree of automation, independent reaction, and resilience in the computer systems.  It helps with lots of things.
Maintainance Modifier: -4

Total mass: 286 units.
Free space: 1 units.
Required power: 72 units.
Maximum power output: 150 units.
Total fuel: 40 units
Fuel remaining at destination: 26 units

Crew Lifesupport: 25
Required Crew: 2
Crew Awake: 15
Crew Sick: 3

Destination: Star A, distance 1.
Max. thrust: 27
Flight time remaining: 14 years [/i](mass/thrust*distance*5 years)

Standing Orders:

• Keep 15 crew awake, rotated in shifts of 5 on duty at any time.
• Shut down as much as possible 1 month every 5 years for intensive maintainance, and swap out which reactor is being run then to maintain the other.

Event: Space Sickness

[/color]
During 2087, one of the crewmen comes down with a serious respiratory illness - while not life-threatening with medical attention, it makes breathing quite difficult and painful, and she is put into the medbay for treatment.  Antibiotics have an effect, though not as much as they really should.  After over two fairly unpleasent weeks, she is cured. 

Some days later, early symptoms are found in multiple other crew members.  Alarmed by this development, the crew decides that they will into quarantine in a section of the Medbay, with the food and medical supplies to stay there safely while the current doctors figure out what the source of the disease is.  They find that it is a virus similar to influenza, likely some mutant strain of it, and that it is airborne.  While the air filters seem to take it out of the air supply, it is found in every commonly-accessed room of the ship, and with its long incubation period, it is likely that all of the crew have contracted it, unless some are immune.

A meeting is held to determine what to do.

Choose one:
    [ ] "We should just wait it out.  We have proven that we can treat it in time to save the person, and there is no evidence that there is no immunity. While the running of the ship will suffer if too many people fall sick at once, we should manage for over a month without active maintainance.  The sickness may be painful, but it doesn't stop someone from sitting up in the bridge watching the displays.  Hell, I'll do it myself if there is nobody left untouched, and we have a smart computer system for a reason."

    [ ] "We know the virus is mutable, and that it is hard to cure; we can't just wait for the symptoms to pass because they could become worse, and for all we know the last victim was partially resistant to it.  We need to purge the ship - get vac suits, our most toxic chemicals, build air filters, and swap out the afflicted into cryosleep.  We can wake them up and cure them after we land and can figure out just how this works and how to control it better."

    [ ] "We do know what it is, and how to control things very like it.  We can figure out how to deal with this one just the same.  While we don't have all the equipment we would need for a real study, we can at least make cultures and see how they react to different drugs, try out things that work on other flus.  As you say, it is mutable and hard to treat - there is no known cure, and I aim to fix that - and we need to have more information to deal with possible future outbreaks.  Sure, quarantine as best as we can, but our priority should be on finding how to beat it properly.

[Nunzillor]

My vote is for the second option.  We have more than enough crew to lose a few to cryosleep.  And we don't have the proper facilities to do a true study.  Let's wait until we get planet-side to fix this.

The first option is definitely out, I think we can agree.  Letting an unknown disease run rampant in such a small community seems like a recipe for disaster.

[10ebbor10]

Just as a note, you don't use antibiotics to combat a virus. Antibiotics are for bacteria/fungi and other living pathogens, antiviral medicine is for viruses. (A virus is not a living thing, as it has no metabolism and can't reproduce independently. Hence why you can't make cultures of them either (Well, with cloned human samples you probably could). They only reproduce within other living beings.)

Anyway, 2 is the option that should be immediately off the table. Virusses are often extremely hard to destroy. Having no metabolism, you can't hunger them out nor poison them.  Additionally, they're tiny and pretty resistant, destroying all of them will be hard, especially as we don't know what chemicals they will react on. A benefit is that when you find something that does damage, it can't heal. Anyway, It makes no sense to replace a biological contamination with a chemical contamination and a biological contamination. Also, using chemicals means killing of all the plants in the biodome and the hydroponic systems, probably damaging the airfilters, and destroying a not insignificant amount of sensitive equipment. Otherwise the virus might/will hide there. Notice we don't have any spare food, so that is a risk we can not take. Additionally, people waking up from cryosleep probably have a very weak immunesystem, pretty much guaranteeing renewed infection.

Honestly, we don't even know anything about this infection. For all we know, it might just be the standard flu interacting with a weakened immune system resulting of cryosleep, rather than a mutant version.

We know only a few things things:
      - It's a virus, specifically an influenza variant. This is problematic, because these are hard to treat, and tend to mutate rapidly.
                 - Influenza virals are inactivated by sunlight (UV), detergents and disinfectants. This is not a guarantee for destruction;
      - It attacks the respiratory systems and isn't immediately lethal. (Standard influenza behavior);
      - It's airborne. (This is more problematic, as this implies stronger than usual resistance and infection rates).

Anyway, the real question is, where the hell did this mutant strain come from. There's only a very limited amount of people on this ship awake at all times, and this is by far not enough to sustain a viable viral population, let alone allow a new variant to come up undetected. Therefore, someone must have been infected by the virus, and only now has been awakened for the first time. With only 15 people awake, this easily allows us to  That or this is a bioweapon deployed against the outpost for some reason or another.

So far, solidly on option 3, despite the difficulties in treating influenza (We, at this moment, have a total of 2 medicines working on influenza. One shortens the sickness by about 1 day (and does not reduce  the chance of complications), the other only works on a single variant, and the virus has developed and 90% resistance). Making a vaccine should work however, as this is often done in many countries. Simply take a sample, deactivate the viruses, and then infect people and let the immune system resolve the problem for you.

[Mr. Strange]

+1 for #3.

Take samples from different crewmembers to see if there are any other mutated variants of the virus among them. Can we take samples from those in cryo? If yes then do it. I don't think bioweapons are realistic threath in this situation (unless it was homebrewed by depressed lab assistant during coffee break), it's more likely that someone who was defrosted recently had it and it didn't spread till now (dat long incubation period). Also, run the MCF Reactor designs trough computer systems for some bug hunting, if we have time from our current bug hunting...

[10ebbor10]

I'd rather not use the optronic ship computers for debugging. We're reliant on those for most of the shipboard systems, even more so with the reduced crew activity.

[Nunzillor]

Makes sense.  I didn't think that they would put harmful chemicals near the biodome or sensitive equipment just as a matter of common sense.  But yeah, I guess without such measures in those areas the virus will exist in those areas...

How does one go about deactivating a virus?  Can we do it in this environment?

[Draxis]

Just as a note, you don't use antibiotics to combat a virus. Antibiotics are for bacteria/fungi and other living pathogens, antiviral medicine is for viruses. (A virus is not a living thing, as it has no metabolism and can't reproduce independently. Hence why you can't make cultures of them either (Well, with cloned human samples you probably could). They only reproduce within other living beings.)

Welp, changing out antibiotics for antivirals, I guess they just figured out it was flu and used their slightly more effective-than-us virucides on it.
The cultures are being kept in small tubes of drawn blood with magic nutrient liquid in it.

Anyway, It makes no sense to replace a biological contamination with a chemical contamination and a biological contamination.

Most toxic was sort of an exaggeration, they wouln't use anything which would really hurt a human if used properly.  Think space bleach or something.  The biodome has some plant-safe disinfectant stocked, but not enough to clear it out more than once, so a lot of care would be needed.

For all we know, it might just be the standard flu interacting with a weakened immune system resulting of cryosleep, rather than a mutant version.

It is mutated to some degree, as it has a longer incubation time and lasts considerably longer than usual. Also, it is slightly less affected by the anti-flu antivirals.

How does one go about deactivating a virus?  Can we do it in this environment?

Sunlight, antiviral chemicals, and detergents are all known to work against influenza.  They are usable, though in limited supply (especially sunlight).

[10ebbor10]

Since I'm doing a crusade for biological correctness anyway, I might just continue it. Influenza doesn't infect blood cells, it infects only epithelial cells, which line the cavities and surfaces of the structure of the body. Anyway, turns out making cultures of them is still pretty easy, you just need a compatible bit of tissue, which really shouldn't be a problem.

Anyway, still in favour of option 3.

[Nunzillor]

Okay.  +1 to number 3.

[Draxis]

Update 14
Heart of Gold, 2087

Over the next week, the three sick crew members are joined by three more, all of whom are put into the Medbay.  There is are no beds left, but since it seems that there is no specialized care at this point except for warmth and antivirals, it shouldn't be a problem.  At this point, there are still enough people on their feet to keep the ship running and take care of the sick with no problems.  No symptoms have been noticed that are out of line with the original set, and no variants have been found in the cultures.

The ship's doctors, neither of whom has fallen ill yet, make good progress on their research.  They discover that the virus is disabled effectively by the expected disinfectants, and while it is more resistant to the anti-flu antiviral on hand than many other strains, the drug at least holds back its growth, and at best can wipe out small concentrations of the virus.  Unfortunately, by the end of the week, enough of it is left for only another two weeks, assuming not many more people fall sick.  It is unknown how bad the effects of the disease will be without it, but there are other immune boosters and more general antivirals which ought to have some effect.

The virus has been successfully deactivated in small quantities, so starting to produce a vaccine would be practical now; however, the doctors would rather delay a few days to make sure that it won't cause any problems.

Choose 1:
    [  ] Continue virus deactivation research and then begin vaccine production.
    [  ] Begin vaccine production immediately.
    [  ] Focus on finding alternatives to the main antiviral.

Update 14 Status: 2076

Crew Lifesupport: 25
Required Crew: 2
Crew Awake: 15
Crew Sick: 6
Crew Cured: 1