Holiday Update

There is a new release of the Station Designer app.  The big feature in this release is the ability to load custom parts. This opens up possibilities for new stations designs.  Use the 120° Hub to create hexagonal stations.   Make a grappling station with the CSgtarm.  Build a refinery station with the fuel conversion plant.  The limit is your imagination!

As a second present to everyone, Centauri Spaceworks has released a holiday part pack with two new parts:  Holiday Xmas Module and Holiday Hanukkah Module. Both parts pair nicely with the new Ion Drive part, but can be enjoyed with any of the existing parts.

Right now creating custom parts is a bit of a technical process.  However if you want to give it a try, join the Station Designer Discord.  You can find a link to the how-to there, as well as get any questions you may have answered.

• Centauri Part Pack
• Holiday Part Pack
• Centauri + Holiday Part Pack

Happy holidays and happy designing! 

Station Blueprint Designer Updates

The team at Centauri Spaceworks has been busy updating the Station Blueprint Designer app with new features since its initial release.

Theming

There were some tricks going on as the app got dressed in a new Halloween themed costume.

Happy Halloween from Centauri Spaceworks! It is the last day to experience the spooky side of #stationblueprintdesigner app 🎃👻https://t.co/SJWGWSW6lm pic.twitter.com/4iSwCdGLPp

— Centauri Spaceworks (@CentauriSpace) October 31, 2018

Snapping

Snapping also had a small improvement. Now snapped docking ports are indicated by a circle with a ring around it instead of just changing color. This should make it easier to identify when a docking port is snapped.

New snap indicator makes it easier to see when the docking ports are aligned in #stationblueprintdesignerhttps://t.co/SJWGWSW6lm pic.twitter.com/nk3EunUUDj

— Centauri Spaceworks (@CentauriSpace) November 1, 2018

Discord Server

There is now also a Discord server if you want to share your creations, post suggestions, be a tester, etc.

If @discordapp is your thing, there is a #stationblueprintdesigner Discord server for questions or discussion! Just in case 280 characters isn't enough. Plan on 🚀🚀🚀https://t.co/KnUQen7MjL

— Centauri Spaceworks (@CentauriSpace) November 8, 2018

New URL

The biggest news is that the app also got a new URL: https://stationdesigner.app/. The new URL and hosting service should make for better looking tweets and easier indexing on search engines.

Station Blueprint Designer has a new home with a shorter name! Go build some awesome stations and wow @Nooleus 🚀🚀🚀https://t.co/sdqwP7YXvl

— Centauri Spaceworks (@CentauriSpace) November 10, 2018

Future Features

• Support for running the app offline
• Categories for parts
• Including custom parts such as the 3-way hub and paint shop.
• Ability for users to add their own custom parts.

Tiny Space Program Interface

Centauri Spaceworks has been branching out into the realm of Tiny Space Program.  Tiny Space program is a fun app where you can run your own space program to explore and mine other planets and moons.  You should try it out if you haven't already.

Despite being an interesting game, one of the major issues with the interface in Tiny Space Program is that it does not scale well.  Lists are often contained to a fixed space, and end up overflowing that space because they don't scroll.

Items overflowing out of a panel in Tiny Space Program

Here is a look at what the interface of Tiny Space Program could look like if some of those issues were fixed.

One of the proposed changes is leveraging the buildings on the home screen for functionality.  In the current design, many buttons placed are around the edge of the home screen.  The center is taken up by the building view.  However, the building view only has one functional building out of six.  Let's move some of that functionality into the center of the screen where scrolling can be leveraged.  Other changes include labeling the buildings so players don't have to guess at their functionality.

Instead of opening up a small pop-up in the center of the screen, the different sections take over more of the screen with a side panel or a full screen view and enable scrolling.  Enabling scrolling allows larger items with more information, yet still allows all the items to accessible.

Compare the old market screen to the new market screen.  In the current screen you only see the icon and the count of items for all the items.  You only see the name and cost when you select an individual item. The market will be limited to 10 items before the items begin to overflow into the text area.

Current Market screen

In the proposed version, you can see the name, cost, and count of all items.   A large number of items can be displayed because the list of items scrolls.  The 'Buy 1' and 'Buy Multiple' buttons do overlap the item list, however the item list can be scrolled to bring those items underneath into an unobstructed area.

Proposed design for the market screen

The VAB building also shows more information.  In the current New Mission screen, only an icon of the ship is available.  In the proposed VAB interface, the icon, name, as well as some key stats of the ship are available.

Proposed screen for ships

When selecting a ship the key stats about that ship are always visible.  The actions, astronauts, and cargo can be drilled into for more details.  In the astronaut detail view, the full name of the astronaut is available instead of just an icon.

Proposed Ship Detail screen

Tiny Space Program has a lot of potential.  It will be interesting to see how the interface develops and if Jerry, the developer, is able to address the scaling issues.

@Jerry, if you like these ideas, you are welcome to use them for my name in the credits.  Let's talk :)

Image Export in Station Blueprint Designer

Station Blueprint Designer now has the ability to export images!  This new feature allows you to save your design as an image.

To access, open the menu and choose 'Export Image'.  It will download a blueprint style image of your entire plan for you.

The export contains the full plan, even if it is too big to fit on your screen at on time.  This one is for you, mobile users.

As always, share and tweet your plans @CentauriSpace!  Happy planning.

Station Blueprint Designer Updates

Recently, all of Centauri Spaceworks resources have been dedicated to improving the Station Blueprint Designer app. There have been numerous updates posted to @CentauriSpace on Twitter.  In case you haven't been following here is a summary.

Improvements include a custom app icon if you save it to the home screen. Normally there is an option in the mobile browser menu to "Save to Home Screen" or something similar.  Very handy if you use the app frequently.  It also lets you run the app in full screen mode without the browser URL bar.

Functional improvements include cargo and power statistics for station designs.  This is in the upper right on phones and lower left on tablets and desktops.  

Thanks to everyone who pointed out that some parts were missing from the original release:  Lunar Module, Transponder, Stand-Alone Laboratory.  These have been added.

The ability to export to an image is currently in progress.  Further in the future considerations are to add the ability for custom parts.

Update 1.9.5

Nooleus had a small surprise update this past weekend.  It added the ability to backup and restore your game data.  This is very exciting for the inevitable time when you need to get a new phone. No longer do you have to worry about what will happen to all your hard work in Space Agency.

Full disclaimer, I haven't tried the restore functionality yet, but I did back up my progress.

In other Centauri Spaceworks news, the whole crew has been focusing on the Station Blueprint Designer app.  Hope to have some more blog posts on that soon.

Station Blueprint Designer App

This is a very exciting post.  Not only is it the 100th blog post, but it is also something that has been on my mind for a while: a station designer web app.

Commander Oz did a great job starting it off with the  Station Planner Kit. He traced out all of the Space Agency parts at scale so that you could move them around in Inkscape.  This worked really well if you knew how to use Inkscape and weren't trying to use it on your phone.

CptArcheron took this idea even further and made a station designer app that didn't require knowledge of Inkscape.  Anyone who had a computer and Java could use it.  But it still needed a computer.

Centauri Spaceworks! is taking the next step and making a web based app for designing stations.  Since it is web based it runs anywhere you have internet:  Android, iOS, Windows, Linux, Mac.  It is touch friendly and responsive so you can use it on the same phone or table that you play Space Agency on.

Here is a demo of the app that shows the basic usage.  It shows adding and editing a few parts as an example.



There are more features that I though about adding but haven't gotten around to yet including:

• Export to PNG/SVG
• Power statistics
• Bulk selection and editing

Happy editing and launching!

Launch Station Blueprint Designer

Fuel VS Ion

The 1.9 update of Space Agency introduced a new part type.  Engines powered by electricity instead of fuel.  Centauri Spaceworks immediately began research into building an all electric ship, the Electric Scorpion.  Despite high hopes, this test was solid failure.

The Electric Scorpion was constructed and tested in the Centauri Spaceworks Workshop.  Left, right, forward and back worked well as expected.  However, the ship was unable to achieve any rotation when firing diagonally opposing engines.  Initially, it was suspected that the cause was the same mechanism that allowed ships like the Hummingbird or the Slug Transport to operate in a straight line was preventing the rotation even though their engines were offset from the center-line.

The Electric Scorpion was modified with arms that offset the ion pods from the main body.  This would move the engines even further away from the center line of the ship to increase the torque.  Unfortunately as, seen in the video below, the Electric Scorpion was not able to rotate even with the longer arms.

Without the ability to rotate itself the Electric Scorpion was not very useful as an independent vehicle.  However there was still more testing to do.

The second round of testing involved checking if the Electric Scorpion could be brought to a complete stop.  This would validate the use of ion engines for keeping a station in a fixed location.  Station keeping doesn't require much thrust, just enough to offset the occasional bump from a missed docking attempt.

The ion engines were good at bringing the Electric Scorpion to a near stop.  Unfortunately, they were not able to  precisely cancel out all of the velocity like a burst of RCS thrusters does.  There would be small amount of velocity going forwards, and a burst of the ion engines would result in a very small velocity going backwards.  While the station was visibly stationary, the navi-comp still displayed a red velocity vector indicating that the station may very slowly drift over time.

Linked ion drives are still an exciting technology, however they are not yet able to completely replace chemical fuel engines.

Station Blueprint Kit Updated

With the release of Space Agency 1.9, the blueprint kit has been updated to include the new ion drives.  As with all the parts, these new parts are compatible with Commander Oz's SVG kit as well.  The link-able ion drive has a link icon so they can be identified on station drawings. 

You can download the blueprint kit.  It is an SVG file that you can edit in Inkscape (or any other SVG editor).

There are some parts that the blueprint guide doesn't have (like fairings) because they aren't typically used in Centauir Spacework's construction.  If you need to use one of those, here is a guide for how to convert parts from the Commander Oz style to the blueprint style.

1. Select an existing blueprint style part and copy it.
2. Select the Commander Oz part.
3. Ctrl-Shift-G
4. Ctrl-Shift-+ (the plus/equal sign on the keyboard)
5. Ctrl-Shift-V

1.9 Release Review

Here are the highlights of the 1.9 release of Space Agency:

• 2 new missions
• New ion drive station parts
• New Arianne 6 and PSLV rocket parts
• Draco Trunk bug fix.

Overall this is a great update: new parts, new rockets, new missions, and a key bug fixed.

New Missions

As usual, there are new missions to introduce the new parts.  I really enjoyed Mission 36.  In mission 36 you need to attach two parts, on of which is the new ion drive, to a test vehicle.   What I really liked about this mission was that you don't have easy access to one of the docking ports that you need to attach to.  The vehicle is parked so close to STA that even if you were to fit the part it, the tug would impact STA when it released the part.   This added a bit of extra challenge on top of the standard launch and attach parts style mission.

Mission 37 is similar to mission 36, but it uses 4 parts and includes the new linked ion drive parts.

New Ion Drive

I am very excited for both the new ion drive parts.  They are both small sized engines, which was one of the aspects that I was hoping for when the Mighty Joe Thruster was designed.   They also do not have atmosphere which was another key aspect of the Might Joe Thruster. 

Having the ion engine run off of power instead of fuel is a great way to add more variety to the game play.  If that weren't enough, the linkable ion drive engine allows you to fire multiple engines at the same time.  This eliminates one of the major constraints to ship design in Space Agency.  Because you could previously only fire one engine at a time, the engine needed to be located close to the center line of the ship to keep the thrust balanced.  Linkable ion drives no longer have that constraint because they can be fired simultaneously.

New Rocket Parts

Not one but two new rockets: the Ariane 6 and PSLV.  Both also include new boosters as well.  Centauri has started using the Ariane 6 body with the Airaine 5 boosters as one of the go to rockets for launch.

Araine 6

PSLV

Draco Trunk Bug

Very happy to see this bug fixed.  Now you can access the cargo inside of the trunk.  This means that Draco can now carry a huge 11 cargo.

Mighty Joe Thruster

Nooleus announced that that there will be an update to Space Agency tomorrow, and that we can expect a new engine in this update.  Everyone at Centauri Spaceworks is very excited for this update.

But before the update drops, Centauri designers would like to put out their idea for a new engine.  They have no idea if it is anything close to what Nooleus will release but it is something that would make ship building more interesting.

This is the Mighty Joe Thruster.  It is designed to be used on larger ships and stations that can support a stand alone engine module.  The Might Joe has two advantages that make it a great choice for an engine.

• It does not have any atmosphere.  This means you can mount it on any part and not get the annoying no atmosphere warning when looking at your station or ship.  
• It it fits in the width of a standard station module. This means it can fit in smaller places that other engines cannot.

These two attributes make it ideal for an engine on your next station or ship!

Trade Station Omega

First, an apology for no blogs last week.  Centauri Spaceworks has been diversifying into Tiny Space Program.  A significant portion of resources has also been devoted to developing an asteroid mining game.   And everyone in the Space Agency division decided to take their vacation last week.

Here is preliminary design of Trade Station Omega.  It isn't complete but it is close. The design doesn't have the locations of the oxygen gardens, med bays, and control rooms placed.  It also doesn't have the power calculations, but with 4 nuclear generators and 12 large solar panels it should be enough to power it.

It does have 4 major docking ports (the airlocks), 4 minor docking ports (modules at 90 degrees off off the air locks), and two high security docking ports.  That is a total of 10 docking ports for ships. 

What suggestions do you have for it?  Tweet @CentauriSpace.  Maybe your suggestions will make it into the final design.

July 4th Fireworks

In honor of the July 4th holiday, here are some Space Agency fireworks.  This video was recorded as the Crystal Voyager was being disassembled for parts.  Because most parts were overlapping, it caused an explosion when trying to undock.

Happy 4th of July!

Centauri Spaceworks Social Media Department

Welcome to the tour of the Centauri Spaceworks social media department.

Starting off on the right is the Twitter department.  You can tweet to them at @CentauriSpace.  This is Centauri's most active social media channel.  The team sends out updates of all new blog posts within hours of them being officially published.  On off days when there isn't a new blog post they scour the archives looking for some interesting facts to share or old posts to talk about.

The Twitter department is staffed with several eager go-getters.  It is the most active social media platform and very responsive to any inquiries.  Chances for a retweet are pretty high if you post a photo of something you created in Space Agency.

To the left on at a single desk sits Hans Shultz, the sole employee responsible for the Facebook page.  He is nearing retirement and has a large amount of vacation time to use.  Typically he only can be bothered to post notifications about new blogs.   If you message Centauri on Facebook, Hans might take a while to get back to you.  But that shouldn't stop you from liking and sharing the posts if Facebook is your preferred platform.

And last of all, behind a large stack of boxes is a folding table that is the makeshift desk of the the YouTube Channel department.  It is run by seasonal interns.  It only has a few videos and doesn't get regular updates.  The interns haven't been very good at making new content so basically the videos posted there are just supporting material for the blog posts or a tweet.

That concludes the tour of Centauri Spacework's social media department.  I hope you enjoyed hearing about the different channels and maybe discovered a new one or two.  Happy launching!

Station Blueprint Kit

Here is the release of Centauri Spaceworks Station Blueprint Kit!   This SVG comes set up to use in Inkscape to plan out your stations and ships.

The kit is based of Commander Oz's Station Designer Kit.  You can look for the style of this kit to be included CptAcheron's Station Designer App. If you are looking to plan out stations, you should check out both of these resources.

Download the kit.

Crystal Starliner

The Crystal Starliner was a cruise ship designed to be a sister ship to the Crystal Voyager.  It included a Pod for excursions, as well as an Orion III lifeboat.  The initial prototype model was constructed in September 2017.

Despite the solid design and construction found on every Centauri Spaceworks vessel, it was it never put into mass production.  However the cabin design with four hubs and two viewing cupolas lives on as a part of the Palm Tree Hotel. 

Lunar Logo

Lunar domination complete!  Centauri has laser etched its logo into the surface of the moon.

See the previous posts in this series:

• Lunar Domination
• Lunar LEM
• Lunar Laser

Lunar Laser

Step two towards lunar domination complete.  The space laser has been assembled outside of HOM's orbit.

See the previous posts in this series:

• Lunar Domination
• Lunar LEM

Lunar LEM

The reflective markers for aiming the laser have been successfully placed on LUN.  This completes the first step towards etching the Centauri Spaceworks logo into LUN.

A SLS Core and Boosters was used to launch a LEM and Orion III towards LUN.  A Delta V second stage provided the thrust for the trans-lunar injection burn.

After successfully entering LUN orbit, the Orion III and LEM undocked.  The LEM docked and the two crew were able to complete their mission placing reflective markers. These markers will be used to help aim the powerful laser that will be constructed in the next phase.

Lunar Domination

Centauri Spaceworks is making plans for lunar domination.   The plan is to dominate the moon by carving the Centauri logo on the lunar surface. 

1. Place targeting markers on the lunar surface using a LEM lander.
2. Assemble giant space laser
3. Etch logo on the surface using the targeting markers from step 1 and the laser from step 2.

The laser is powered by a nuclear generator and has two radiators to disperse the immense heat generated by the power lunar surface etching laser.  See a rough blueprint below.

Paint Shop

In Ask Andy,  the developer of Space Agency said  "I’d like to make the parts in Space Agency more customisable from within the game. Colour schemes, graphics etc."  That led some creative employees in the part idea department to think of this fun set of modules which are collectively know as the paint shop!

The first module is the applicator head. This has nozzles for applying the paint. The second is atomizer and compressor.  It prepares and processes the paint.  The third is the control unit.

When  all three are assembled in the following configuration, they make an operating paint shop that can customize the color or apply a logo to modules within a certain distance  The one exception is the modules of the paint shop.  They have been coated with a paint resistant coating for easy clean up and therefore will always retain their stock colors.

In addition to the three new modules, the paint shop would also need a new cargo:  paint!  In order to paint modules or apply logos, the paint shop must be supplied with paint.  The applicator head has two cargo slots for paint tanks.  These paint tanks get used up (like the other types of cargo) as modules are painted. The amount of paint needed to paint a module can vary from a full tank of paint for larger modules, down to a quarter of a tank of paint for applying a logo.

Orion II

The Orion III is one of the main vehicles used by Centauri Spaceworks.  Players are also probably also familiar with the Orion Command and Service Module.  However there hasn't been much written about the Orion II.

Initially Centauri was using Apollo CSM as escape pods on its very early stations, such as Station XST.  Apollo CSM's were hard to maintain with the small target area for dropping cargo, such as O2 and CO2 scrubbers.  The service module was also fairly bulky compared to the space for human occupants.

Variations like the Apollo + Small Tug were tried on ships like the Joyceln E.  This reduced the footprint of the escape pod, but it still suffered from the maintenance problems of the Apollo CSMs.

The next step was the Orion II.  This was the same concept as the Apollo + Tug, but scaled up to use an Orion CSM and Medium Tug.   The maintenance and performance was good, however something about the look of the vehicle was off.  The large tug made the vehicle feel bulky.  Because of this visual concern, the Orion II was superseded by the Orion III  which used the smaller Heavy Tug.

From left to right: Apollo, Orion II and Orion III

Only two Orion IIs were put into trial service.  Both were replaced with Orion IIIs prior to the host ships being launched.

Nooleus-D

Centauri engineers have been working on developing an alternative to the large Nooleus X launch stack for getting a Draco capsule into space.  One vehicle being tested is the Nooleus-D.

The Nooleus-D is a tricky vehicle to launch.  If you follow a normal launch procedure and keep the main engines at full throttle, the vehicle with not make it to orbit.  However with good throttle control it is possible to get the entire launch stack to orbit.  This leaves all the fuel in the Draco capsule for a trip to the station and return to HOM. 

If you do need to separate the Draco crew capsule from the Nooleus first stage, pitch control is critical. The Draco crew capsule engines are not able able to correct the pitch angle.  If the vehicle is pitched to the right following a normal launch path, it will start to slowly tip further to the right after separation and eventually go below horizontal.  Prior to separation the Nooleus-D should be pitched to near vertical to prevent the Draco crew capsule from pitching back toward HOM before reaching orbit.

Even with a full tank of fuel, the Draco capsule will use it all up during the round trip with no fuel reserves.  The pilot must be careful to leave enough fuel to decelerate on the return leg.  This means that the return leg is at a slower sub-escape velocity speed that the outbound leg.

Due to the fuel concerns the Nooleus-D is best suited for in orbit tours of HOM and not for station resupply missions or crew changes.

Blueprint Kit

It was the Memorial Day weekend in the US so not much work got done at Centauri Spaceworks for this week's blog posts. Today's post is a shot of the station planner SVG kit that was used for the Pollux and Trade Station Gamma.  This kit is based off of Commander Oz's SVG station planner kit.  It is still a work in progress.

Trade Station Gamma

The labor shortage at the workshop has gotten worse so this week there is another set of plans for you to build.  These plans are for a modest size space station to support interplanetary trade. The design is named Trade Station Gamma.  It functions as a small cargo port where ships can dock and resupply or transfer cargo.

With two main airlocks for ships to dock at this station is best suited for moderately traveled trade routes. There is a larger trade station design in the works that includes four main airlocks, two high security docking bays, and four auxiliary docking ports. The larger plan would be more suitable for heavy traffic trade routes near HOM.

Despite it's modest size, the station is fully equipped with facilities.  These include a control room, oxygen garden, and medical bay.  There is a long rang communication antenna as well as a cargo hold for temporary storing cargo awaiting transfer to another ship.

Safety features include an asteroid and meteorite detection system mounted on the upper left support wing.  An Orion III escape pod is also docked at the lower right support wing of the station.

Be sure to comment or tweet if you build this station or modify the design.  Looking forward to seeing your builds!

Shuttle Re-imagined

In Mission 30 the player recovers the shuttle, and docks it at STA.  The shuttle can't re-enter HOM because of damaged heat shields.  This post discuss an idea for how that could be fixed and we can bring the shuttle home as well as add a new feature.

Assembly

The shuttle would come in two parts: the boosters plus fuel tank, and the orbiter itself.

Splitting up the shuttle from the boosters and fuel tank would also allow for an Energia style vehicle to be constructed.  The Energia could reuse the same booster and fuel tank part, but would have a separate one time use rocket that could carry a medium payload instead of the shuttle.

After the shuttle is placed on the external tank and booster combination, the player can load up the shuttle with supplies.  A small sized payload can also be placed in the open cargo bay.

Launch

The orbiter would be launched in a side profile view, with the fuel tank and boosters on the right and the orbiter on the left.  This keeps the view consistent across all of the modes of operation.The launch tower would be displayed behind the vehicle instead of the the left.

The orbiter would follow the same pattern as other rockets of pitching over to the right during launch.  This places the orbiter on top of the external fuel tank, which is different from real life launches.  This difference is important because it sets up the orbiter in the correct orientation for re-entry with the heat shield facing down.

Operation

The shuttle movement would operate similar to other vehicles.  There is one additional button to support a unique feature of the orbiter.

The button controls the cargo bay doors.  The cargo bay can be opened using a special button in the interface.  Once the cargo bay is open, if the cargo inside free floating.   The shuttle can be maneuvered away from the object to have it exit the cargo bay.

The cargo bay can also be used to capture existing objects and return them to HOM.  The shuttle can maneuver so that the object enters the empty cargo bay, and then the cargo bay doors can be closed around the object (assuming that the object would fit).  This secures the object in the cargo bay.

This cargo bay system is simple and can work with any cargo that will fit, including those that don't have a docking port.

Re-entry

The existing shuttle design works in space, but it just doesn't feel right for re-entry because of the position of the heat shield.  In other vehicles, the heat shield is positioned along one edge of the vehicle and this is edge of the vehicle that enters the atmosphere facing down.  The current shuttle is different, the heat shield is actually underneath and not really shown, so there is no way to position the vehicle with it facing down.  This can be fixed if the shuttle is shown in profile view instead of top down view.

The shuttle would re-enter similar to other vehicles.  The nose of the shuttle would be toward the right side of the screen, in the same orientation as in orbit.  The shuttle would tilt backwards and forwards due to turbulence. As it descends through the atmosphere, the goal would be to keep it level using thrusters.

Once the shuttle reaches a low enough altitude the landing gear can be deployed (instead of a parachute).  Then a cut scene would take over and show the shuttle landing on a runway.  A successful landing of the shuttle in sandbox mode awards the player one quick launch.

Mission 30

Mission 30 could be modified to use the new shuttle design with little impact.  Both designs have a docking port on one side of the vehicle.

Big thanks to  Chris @ York Space Agency for letting me bounce some of these ideas off of him.

Station Icarus

After the destruction of Solar Outpost 1, and the subsequent abandonment of Solar Outpost 2, the need to do solar research increased.  A new station, Icarus, was constructed.

Station Icarus is positioned in a similar location to Solar Outpost 1. However all parts of Icarus were kept outside of the circle of influence to avoid avoid falling inward if another gravitational fluctuation occurred.  If an experiment requires being inside the sphere of influence a probe can be launched instead of placing the station in the solar orbit.

Station Icarus has been in service for some time now.  An oversight in the public relations department delayed the publication of information about it until now.

Pollux Design

The Centauri Spaceworks workshop is currently struggling with a labor shortage.  Construction of the Raza took over a week and modifications to the ISAAC Star have halted entirely.

This week, instead of releasing a fully constructed vehicle, Centauri is publishing the blue prints to a ship and outsourcing the construction to whatever agencies would like to build and evaluate it.  

The Pollux is a new design that has not been tested.  It place both the forward and reverse engines at one end of the ship. Engineers are curious to find out how well the ship rotates, or if it can be rotated at all.  They would love to hear how it works if you build it.

In consideration for construction and materials, Centauri Spaceworks will link to your post/tweet from this blog in addition to retweeting.  This is multiple contract opportunity and is not limited to just one agency.

Update:  Here is a list of everyone who has built the Pollux. They look great! Just a reminder, this is a non-exclusive contract and still open to other agencies.

• @Christophercw 
• Rimor Locus  (tweet and blog)
• @NSAPlayer

The Raza (Dark Matter)

This build is based on the Raza from the sci-fi series Dark Matter.

Notable features include the 4 engine pods, created with ADS cores and Voyager X bodies.  The front two engines are for show and fuel storage as they create a rotational instability in the ship when used.  However, the two rear engines are close enough to the center line that they can be used without causing the ship to rotate when fired. The ATV at the center is well positioned for maneuvering and braking.  The pod can also be used to provide forward thrust if needed.

The pod can also double as the ship's shuttle, the Marauder.  On the show, the ship's infirmary was a re-occurring set.  The Space Agency version includes a medical bay as well.

Thanks to TheTruthisWrittenInBlood for uploading the image of the original Raza.

ISAAC Star

Centauri Spaceworks started work on developing an navigational aid.  This device emits a bright beam of light on regular intervals, similar to a lighthouse or a pulsar. The device is designed to help guide astronauts in space back to HOM and the Space Agency Wiki.  The official name is InterStellar nAvigation Assistance deviCe, but is nicknamed the ISAAC Star in honor of one of the major contributors to the Space Agency Wiki who has been away for some time.

At the core of the ISAAC Star are two space telescopes that have been modified to emit bright beams of light.  These are powered by a nuclear reactor.    Once assembled the devices is spun up to a specific rotation.  The rotation causes the ISAAC Star to appear to flash at a specific frequency.

The initial test of the ISAAC Star was a partial success.  The device was able to be spun up and maintain a stable position in space.  However there was not enough fuel on board the two converted telescopes to be able to spin the device up to the desired speed and have enough fuel to decelerate it when maintenance was required.  More research is required to make this a functional device.

The Peacock

Last week Centauri Spaceworks debuted the Hornet, a small agile racing craft.   This week, Centauri is excited to  the introduce another vehicle that will make an appearance at a solar system wide race.  However it won't be at the starting line, but on the side lines.  The Peacock is a support vehicle for up to four Hornet class racing ships.

The Peacock is critical for hosting racing events.  The small racing vehicles don't have enough power and oxygen to sustain them for very long.  Traveling out to the start of the race and waiting around for the starting signal could drain the power and oxygen reserves from the ship.  The Peacock can transport the ships to the race start and provide them with power and oxygen until they are ready to queue up at the starting line.

The Peacock is named for the three auxiliary solar panels that are mounted on the rear of the vessel.  At the right angle these solar panels have an iridescent glimmer like the feather's of of a peacock.

There is an attachment point on the right hand side of the vehicle that allows for customization.  Clients can choose to put a transponder module to make it easy for the racing vehicles to find the support ship.  A Voyager X engine is can be fitted in case the Peacock is a quick service pit stop.  This would allow it to store full tanks of O2 and CO2 scrubbers to immediately swap instead of waiting for ones to recharge in the oxygen garden.  A third option  is to outfit the Peacock with an additional fuel silo for extra fuel capacity.

Astronaut Dreams

You can almost recreate the moon landings in Space Agency.  Almost, because the closest thing to a man that a player can send to the moon is a tank of water.  Space Agency doesn't have astronauts.  Andy Barry, the developer of Space Agency has said that he is working towards adding astronauts.  This blog post will show a vision of what astronauts could look like.

If you visit the Space Agency Wiki, it is not a surprise that many of the players use the game to role play.  They create their own agencies and plan out missions.  Astronauts could really enhance the role playing use of the game.  In addition to building up a space-scape of stations and a fleet of vehicles; agencies could also build up a corps of astronauts!  Boring resupply mission: send the newbie astronaut to get some experience.  Harrowing shuttle rescue mission: send your top commander to make sure the job gets done.  This adds a new human dimension to the game.

Above is a the astronaut detail screen that shows the player all the information about the astronaut.  The player can customize the astronaut's name and uniform coloring to help with identification.    It also shows the astronauts experience.  How many times they have launched, landed, and how many times the mission went fatally wrong.  This gives the astronaut a deeper depth than a fungible piece of cargo like a oxygen tank.

There would also be an action menu for the astronaut that could support interactions with other game play mechanics in the future. Possible ideas for these interactions include repairing modules and doing EVAs, but it isn't limited to those.  There might be no actions initially, but making providing a place for them helps to insure that the astronaut interactions can be expanded in the future.

In the space view, astronauts would work similar, but not identical, to cargo.  A new tab is added to the far left of the view menu.  This brings up the astronaut bottom panel.  

Moving astronauts works similar to moving cargo.  The player drags them from the panel to the destination module.  One difference would be that the starting and destination module must be connected by an path of open doors.  Astronauts can't travel through closed doors or non-atmospheric modules.

To give a better indication of where valid move locations are, the accessible modules should be highlighted in a light green while an astronaut icon is being dragged.  The module where the astronaut will be moved to should be highlighted in a dark green.  This will help aid in moving the astronauts to smaller modules like the crew capsule and identifying closed doors that block movement.   This concept of highlighting the drop module could also be applied to cargo moves.

Another difference between cargo and astronauts is that tapping on an astronaut's icon would take you into the details for that astronaut.  That lets you access the details and possibly perform actions with the astronaut.

That covers some of how astronauts could work.  Hopefully this inspires you and Andy Barry to dream big about astronauts.  I hope to see them in the game soon soon in whatever form they take.

Centauri Spaceworks would like to thank other agencies for contributing their ideas and giving feedback:  Rimor Locus, United Space Alliance, and York Space Agency