Meg nodded, and said "It's not perfect, but I know I am far from perfect myself."  She indicated a small craft, and asked them both "Want to try that little ship out?  It's got the latest setup of the inertial compensator in it, as well as the engines, and I've had it out, but what *I* can tolerate, and some other people can are two different beasties.  So, want to be proverbial guinea pigs?""

  "While it could lead to a horrible space political incident, honestly I think design should skew towards assuming the residents won't be huge assholes.  Safeguards against misfire are important, and any amount of firepower will always have a risk of misuse.  But when the whole point of this ark is to put the best representation of humanity you can on a long ride, treating them like they need adult supervision at all times is fairly counterproductive to that hope."

  Then Meg brought up expensive amusement park rides legitimate science.  "I do, I so very do.  I'm an indescribable entity of vague origin and I still find this sort of thing fun despite being my own interstellar zipline service.  Though from a legitimate standpoint, I can definitely gauge the physical forces accurately for your tests with my awareness. All I ask is no comparisons to crash test dummies, who are even more expressive than I am."
This message was last edited by the player at 21:20, Mon 10 July 2017.

Ozzy grinned and said, "You even have to ask? Heck yeah! Matt should probably drive, though, in case the G Forces knock me out."

  Matt's nature means he gets to always be able to check his phone, without any of the social interruptions of ring tones, vibration, or physically checking his phone (Of which even he is still unsure it maintains working order beyond expected means, even after five extra years of sci-fi tinkering with it).

  "Huh. There appears to be metaphysical shenanigans about Weston State. Or so I assume, I never get calls otherwise." Okay that's an exaggeration. He OCCASIONALLY gets calls otherwise.

  "Meg, would you mind unlocking the nearest door or a quick access portal?  It would feel rude leaving my own way with all the effort you've put into security."

  Pesky morals.  Could have test driven for science, but no you had to have standards.
This message was last edited by the player at 01:00, Wed 12 July 2017.

"Oh, that's just Roger. If you're talking about the dude with the melty chocolate guy. He's harmless... Well, aside from the psychological trauma, maybe? Still, if you're just in the mood to hit a punching clown, have fun," said Ozzy, as if he were declining an invitation to go see a movie he wasn't interested in.

  This is the life Matt lives now, where that explanation makes complete sense.

  "On the one hand, I don't like punching people for the hell of it.  On the other hand, my nature means I halfway expect Maverick to find ways to cause lasting harm to complacent metas."  That and Matt's apathy towards people screwing with physics and reality, is reserved to those not using it to screw with people (Otherwise, he'd never have any free time).

  Matt texted: Survey says 'Just Rodger, he's harmless' But that's probably small comfort to chocolate guy.  Your call if I play 'concerned entity' or 'apathetic immortal'

OOC: Out of game talks means I can inform Maverick's brother I texted in this thread, handy!

Ozzy shrugs and says, "All I know is that everything Rodger has ever done as part of one of his "evil schemes" has been super simple to reverse. From the patterns I've noticed, he seems to have been set up by the government as a training dummy for the Defenders, as well as any other newbie heroes, I guess. I'll come with if you want, but considering that I go out with Thor to get into fights with jotunn for funsies... Well, I'll mostly stick to crowd control, keeps things interesting."

  "Well, given that informative note it seems Maverick wants to give it a shot by himself first... Which means I still get to drive the space ship!" Oh no Matt is already becoming apathetic and jaded.  Actually, would he be excited about driving the prototype space ship after years of proper space ships if that were true?

Ozzy grinned, "Sweet! Sounds like a plan. We can totally go bail him out if he gets into trouble."

  Meg laughed, and said "Yeah, sounds like a typical Rodger-ism.  Come this way,
 I have a small model in the hangar, which faces out toward the outer planets."  She led the way to the hangar, where a large, (relatively, it wasn't anywhere like the size of the gantry being assembled out there) roughly flattish craft waited, simply floating in the air about ten feet above the floor.  It was all a matte black, with no visible windows or doors.  She moved underneath, and rose up, lightly playing her fingers across a slightly recessed spot, and the bottom irised open, offering them all access.  She said "Hop on in and we can take this one for s spin.   It has the latest version of the grav drive and the inertial compensators.  Full speed is not available within the limits of the solar gravity well,
 but you can still get to almost lightspeed.  Outside of the gravity well, I haven't test-clocked it yet."

Ozzy grinned, "Oh man, this thing looks amazing! I can't decide if it looks more like the ship from The Day the Earth Stood Still or Flight of the Navigator."

He then stopped for a moment and said, "So, wait, we're going to be going to be going near the speed of light? How long are we going to be gone for? I don't want to be missing for sixty years or whatever. I may not be a science genius, but I know enough to know that time dilation is a thing."

  "The second one, definitely the second one." So far the tone set by it's soon to be passengers sets.

  "Ignoring time dilation is like, the first step of a proper spacecraft.  Unless your project or script needs to take advantage of it, in which case it's a claimed to be a feature."

  He shrugs,  ""Still, while I expect Meg took care of that. I'M here, so I can assure you only an act of God's God's boss will make you out of synch with local time." Not, that wasn't an accidental repeat of words.

Ozzy nods and says, "Fair enough. Then let's do this thing!"

With that, Ozzy hopped into the craft, ready to help test Meg's new ship.

  Meg laughed, and said "You won't be gone that long.  For one, it would seem like less time to us than it would to anyone else, and for two, we aren't GOING to go all the way to Pluto or Uranus, just a fast swoop around.  To see if you can tolerate the G forces involved."  She indicated to Matt where he should sit, and she tapped on the large glassine globe that sat low on the floor in front of the seat.  It came alight and rose up to a comfortable height for the person sitting in the driver's seat, and a holographic screen lit up, the entire front wall of the craft appearing to become transparent as it did.  Meg checked the hatch, which had irised closed, and she then used her magnetics to open the hangar doors, but maintaining the atmosphere inside.

Ozzy said, "Exactly! If I just randomly disappeared for like 60 years, Clarissa would *kill* me!"

He then grinned and added, "Still, since we're not going far, it'll be fine!"

  Matt has always been interested how for the most part, regardless of design style there became something familiar with 'space ship pilots seat' over the years.   Well, outside of the ones with deliberately outlandish control methods.

  "Learning to fly ships without crashing was really sped along by the fact I could crash with zero repercussions.  It was like murphy's law of property damage."

  That mixed message given, he goes to ease the ship out the airlock after the universal ritual of 'make sure it's not in park or reverse'.

OOC: Fortunately, Matt does not share my habits from when I was still playing Elite Dangerous... Well, unless he needs to prove a point. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLBon8U1Ez0 
This message was last edited by the player at 20:50, Fri 14 July 2017.

  Matt discovered that the controls were very intuitive, permitting the slightest movement of his hands to direct the ship forward or back, and the further forward (or whatever direction), the faster it went.  So a slow, gentle glide out of the hanger rapidly had them outside, and then accelerating toward the open space that was past the asteroid belt.  The ship was beautifully responsive, and it purred subtly under his hands as they rapidly reached more than half of lightspeed without seeming to, the only way to tell by the faintest sensation of one's tummy doing the roller-coaster-drop to the rear.

Ozzy was grinning wildly as the trio started zooming through space, the sensation of rapid movement giving the long time adrenaline junkie just what he'd been hoping for.

"Hot damn! That was some pretty ridiculous acceleration, and I feel fine! I think you're on the right track with your ship, Megs!" crowed Ozzy as they continued their test run.

  It was times like this, that helped Matt feel better about the fact the closest he can get to eating a pizza these days is to headbutt it.

  That feeling when you can personally gauge the accuracy of a prototype ship's space speedometer.  Things like that were what made leaving his inefficient organic biology behind worth it.

  Matt was glad to be home, but space had been good for him.   "So, who wants a loop around a stellar object?"

Ozzy thought for a moment and asked, "Wait, what's that? I'm not up on all of my astronomical terminology. But, sure, I guess."

  "Oh, it's just an excuse term you can apply to basically anything in space." That said, Matt maneuvered to take a conservative loop around the closest uninhabited moon, mindful of staying well out of any notable amounts of gravity.

  "That reminds me, Meg.  While your project intentions are for all space, all the time.  Are you designing these to be able to handle reentry and the influence of local gravity wells in a practical manner?"

  Meg answered "This one can enter the gravity well of a planet, but you have to switch to a different drive system.  It will automatically switch drives when the sensors detect a stellar object with a deep enough gravity well is detected.  The Ark itself won't be able to, but I would be placing quite a few of these aboard it too.  We could literally land this in the back yard at my house, but then we would definitely have to call Ethan and let him know it's NOT hostile aliens making a landing.  I haven't had any of the ships close enough to really register on anyone's radar systems."

Ozzy chuckled, "Heh, I imagine some folks at SETI would be pissed if we buzzed their radars in this thing. Well, at least when they find out that we're not aliens. Probably a good thing that you his out in the asteroid belt, otherwise you might have been seen."

  "It must be a real headache for SETI when their job involves not only looking for things, but also how often they are told not to report their findings when they manage."

  Matt is glad to hear the ship is normally accommodating for practical travel, "That sounds like a smooth transition, especially if it scales back the speed on it's own rather than an a systems straining emergency stop so you don't hit something even at the more leisurely superluminal speeds."
This message was last edited by the player at 01:00, Tue 25 July 2017.

  Meg chuckled, and said "Yeah.  Well, anything that isn't able to land itself on a planet will need shuttlecraft, so I figured I could design a good working shuttlecraft before I made the bigger ship so it would have viable options since I don't want to horse with teleportation like in Star Trek.  If someone else wanted to horse with that design, they are welcome to do so.  I think I did pretty well coming up with a functional FTL design.  But in any case, I am glad to see that this design works well, and we can make it work for the Ark.
  And then hopefully make an Ark a viable and working 'emergency plan B' that we can put into action."  She poked Ozzy with one finger, and added "Are you sure your Dad will be up to working closely with us on the idea for this one?  It IS a big tangle of potential legal headaches, since I do NOT plan to restrict potential 'employees' of the Ark to American citizenship."