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[arbiter787]

You are the [insert chosen title here] of the [chosen ship name]. Your predecessor's mission was to establish a colony in Proxima Centauri. Unfortunately the generation ship experienced a problem with the storage drives a few hundred years into the journey, and you and most of the others on the ship have only scattered knowledge of Earth, true orbital mechanics, and how the ship really works. For all you know, there may already be humans in the star system. Over the roughly 80,000 year journey, not much is known. You're certain the ship had communications with Earth, however something happened before the drive corruption and you don't have communications now.

About the Ship

The ship is constructed as a rotating ring with farms on the inside to provide food. It's easily a few miles in radius. You presume it was constructed in orbit, and signs indicate it was a last-ditch effort to relieve overcrowding. There are is easily enough space for hundreds of millions of people on the 25-mile long ring, even a billion. Now, however, the population is much smaller-only a few million.

Propulsion is provided by eight conventional liquid-fuel engines, and you presume the ship used most of the fuel to decelerate from interplanetary speed. (The ship ran on autopilot until now; the only notification of its arrival was a loud beep and a "Autopilot disengaged"). Power is provided by a low output fusion reactor.

There are a lot of buttons on the console, and since most of them had no use while on autopilot you have no idea what they do. There are other seats for bridge crew to sit on, but they are never used, seeing as the ship was flying itself. From what you can tell, the ship is unarmed.

You have no idea what to do first; the autopilot has just disengaged. What do you do first?

tl;dr: You got a starship but no clue as to how to work it

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

If you want to know more about the ship, just ask. Keep in mind that I (sadly) don't have a very good track record when it comes to keeping things going, but hopefully I can at least keep this going for a while.

[RulerOfNothing]

Are there any display screens or indicators? If there are, have a look at them.

[arbiter787]

The captain's console has quite a few screens, each displaying different bits of information. However, all but the one labeled "Fuel" are turned off. Guess the other ones weren't important in interplanetary spaceflight.

The fuel console reads "Fuel Estimate: 5,134 liters." Not much, although you don't know how much fuel the engines burn.

Looks like you can't change orbits until you refuel, wherever you are. Better hope there's something you can refine for fuel, or else you're stuck here.

[Orange Wizard]

Is there an instruction manual or user's guide somewhere around here? Also, how wacky has everyone become from the inevitable incest in an isolated population?

[arbiter787]

Most paper objects rotted away long ago, however there is a hermetically sealed case containing something book-shaped that the previous captain had given you. It's in your quarters, but you may wish to do something else first.

The general populace has a deeply intertwined family tree, however there are enough people living that incest hasn't become a truly significant problem. Most people are able to find someone rather distantly related to marry, but marrying into closer family (cousins, for example) isn't considered taboo, as long as it's neccesary.

[10ebbor10]

So, voyage time of 80 000 years, gives us an average flight speed of  about 16 km/s. Which is small, as in comparison, Earth's escape speed is about 11 km/s, and that of the sun higher as 600 km/s.

Okay, 5134 liters is nothing (also, it makes much more sense for fuel to be expressed in mass, rather than volume). For comparison, each engine of the first stage of the Saturn V burns 1500 liter of fuel, per second.

Most likely, what we see now are the maneuvering engines, and the real lifting was done with a significantly larger and more efficient engine.

Anyway, actions:

Look to the history log to see how much fuel was burned in previous maneuvers. If those don't exist anymore, than just compare the amount of fuel we have now with the size of the tanks.
Secondly, look out of the window, where are we. Are we in orbit of a planet. If not, goodbye Alpha centauri, as we don't have the fuel reserves to put us into orbit.

[arbiter787]

Outside the window there is a whole lot of stars. Upon fiddling with the display labeled "Orbit" you turn it on. It appears the autopilot has placed you in a orbit around something, although you are too inexperienced to know what the numbers mean.

The general theory about the lifting is that it was done by a large external booster. You have no idea why you were going that slow, but it may have had something to do with communications being cut off.

The tank capacity is, according to the display, something around 2,500 tons per tank. There are eight tanks. Looks like there may be enough to get you to another planet when they're full, but you still don't have any idea on the engine efficiency. It appears the ship was more intended to just stay parked after arrival.

((Please note that I will be abstracting fuel as just a single liquid, not a blend or liquid hydrogen-liquid oxygen pair.))

[Orange Wizard]

Is there anyone else on this ship who might know what's going on? We should chat with them about our current situation. Otherwise, let's go grab that thing the captain left.

[arbiter787]

There isn't anyone else who you know personally that would know what's going on. There may be other people who know something, but it would be pretty hard to manually search through millions of people for someone who may or may not exist.

You retrive the case from the desk drawer you kept it in. Upon unsealing it, you remove the book. The cover reads, "The Many Functions of your C-Class Generation Ship". Maybe there was more than one built, if the manual is standardized. Looks like something for a car. The book is moderately thick, at least fifty or so pages. You better hope this isn't just a brochure or something.

[10ebbor10]

Well, I suppose we should start reading it.

[Worldmaster27]

PTW

[ShadowHammer]

Well, I suppose we should start reading it.

+1

[arbiter787]

You read the book. The book/brochure describes how the ship is equipped with construction facilities, processing bays, docking ports, and the capability for upgrades, provided you could produce them. According to the book, the planet you are in orbit around is lifeless, but has everything you need for life, including a ever-so-slightly-too-thin atmosphere, described has being "on top of a mountain", whatever that feels like.

The section entitled "How to Operate Your Ship" contains a long string of words you don't really understand, things about perigees and apogees and prograde and retrograde. In the back of the book is a disk labeled "Orbiter" and instructions to "insert this if you have no idea what you just read".

[RulerOfNothing]

Given this, I suppose we should just stick the Orbiter disk in.

[arbiter787]

You insert the disk into a slot handily located on the main console. One of the larger screens, the only one with a keyboard and mouse, lights up. On the screen is a list of scenarios, most notably "Ship Tutorial".