[Galaxy] 2161, December 3, "A series of lectures" Pt 2

[Mark Berry]

[Starfleet Command, San Francisco]

With the NX 2000 brief summary given, Markus flicked the slide show back to
the basic bulletpoint list once more. He had already set it up so with a
push of a button he could highlight the relevant point for any question
asked of him by the assembled Admiralty that was present.

"Are there any questions at this time regarding the NX 2000 upgrades?"

Cmdr. Hill watched the briefing with some interest. Her job within the
Corps was a flexible one so she had had at least some dealings with most of
the upgrades mentioned. She also noted that a couple of things that she had
seen were absent; she imagined due to continued testing or outright
abandonment. As such she figured that it probably wasn’t the best time to
bring them up given the presence of so many high profile figures and
focussed her question elsewhere. “How involved will the energy shielding
generator installations be? I don’t imaging that the generators are that
small?” She barely paused before adding, “And will this be an NX only
upgrade, or will it be rolled-out across the entire fleet?”

"Currently the shield system is limited to the NX upgrade, with no
intention of rolling it out to the Sol and Neptune classes. I will be
addressing that with the Admiralty in coming weeks, but it mostly comes
down to the fact that the Sol and Neptune's are to old. The speed and
weapon upgrades being rolled to those classes are more stopgap measures
until Project Daedalus can start coming forward in numbers."

Markus then flicked up a slide that showed where the shield generator was
going to be installed. "As you can see, there is the loss of some volume
within the hull dedicated to science, but I am confident that with
increases in computing power and sensor capability that abilities will not
be hindered from their current standing."

As Fleet Ops Commander, Commodore Adrienne Sheppard was already privy to
much of this information in general. She'd had various personal meetings
with Kravchik and was delighted at his presentation of the new upgrades.
She lifted her hand briefly and spoke, "Commodore. Thank you for this
succinct report. You've talked a lot about the upgrades in terms of their
function, all of which is justifiable, beyond a doubt. You just mentioned
that Science will loose a modicum of space to the shield generator. Again,
a very justifiable trade-off. What other departments or current space
allocations will be affected, and how has the SCE arranged to accommodate
upgrades within such departments as Science, Medical and Ops. I know they
are lobbying for new equipment and reallocation of space, as well.

Sheppard continued, “I understand the Corps is dovetailing their overall
space allocations to take that into account, but could you be a little more
specific. For example, there has been a request by Medical to centralize
all space allocated to that department; such as, instead of using a cargo
hold on another deck as a crisis management ward, to rearrange cargo
allocations so the cargo holds on E deck with the rest of Medical could be
used for such emergency medical space. Is that feasible from an engineering
perspective. Ops is also currently using storage closets for offices. I
guess what I'm asking is how many walls can we knock out without
compromising structural integrity," she laughed.

"There has been much...discussion...over this issue within the SCE. Space
allocation and relationships have been a key priority as well. While a
starship does need redundancy and distributed assets to prevent a
completely loss of some sort of activity, certain things do make logical
sense. As such we are moving emergency medical equipment to more central
locations in order to assist starship medical crews as much as possible.
With the NX class, the centralised nature of the infirmary would mean after
all that loss of the infirmary would typically be associated with loss of
the vehicle. As for operations, plans are in line for them as well."

Markus pulled up a wireframe of the NX class and highlighted a few
compartments. "As you can see, walls and compartment partitions in some
sections of the ship will be removed to make way for more comfortable
office space for Science and Operations. Additionally, space-saving
technologies are being utilised in a variety of departments to either
reduce total cubage or to make way for more instrumentation and increase
capability within pre-existing cubage allotments. We have even liberated
enough space in the NX 2000 upgrades to squeeze in a few more crew quarters
to bring the enlisted crew numbers aboard ship up as well."

Sheppard nodded her head, “That’s good news. I know some people who will be
very grateful. Thank you.”

"If there are no further questions, then I will proceed with my
presentation regarding Project Daedalus." Markus then entered in a brief
command into the podium computer and on the massive screen behind him the
new seal seen earlier took over.


TO BE CONTINUED...


--------------------

Commodore Markus Kravchik
Starfleet Corps of Engineers

&

Commander Hill
Starfleet Corps of Engineers

&

Commodore Adrienne Sheppard
Starfleet Operations

&

Assembled Guests and listeners
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