So NaNo is coming....

[tephra]

After due consideration, I think I need a name for a small starship. She will be crewed by people with too much wanderlust to stay dirtside, I'm thinking explorers/prospectors, but I am open to suggestions. I'm basically going "I really like Andre Norton's free traders, let's write something like that!"

I wouldn't mind suggestions about thinks like how many crew I would realistically need to run a small interstellar ship. I only have three of the crew at the moment, and only in the most sketchy of forms. They don't call come from the same planet, but they are all human (thus far) though tweaked to suit the planets they've been colonizing.

Crewmate #1 is comes from a planet with a bright sun, a lot of vegetation (but not a lot of trees) and not a lot of animal life. She (or he, I haven't decided) can photosynthesize and is therefore green from chloroplasts (or whatever equivalent I need to cook up). This is a supplementary thing, she isn't hanging out in hydroponics soaking up the full spectrum light rather than chowing down in the mess with the rest of the crew, but she does need more light than they do so she's the main caretaker.

Crewmates #2 and #3 are from the same solar system but different planets. The star is rather dim so both of them are adapted to lower light. The genetic engineers took divergent paths partway through the process so while both are sensitive to bright light only one of them can get around using filtering lenses (in Earth normal sunlight) due to a functional nictitating membrane. Other than this trait I haven't decided what else is different between the people of the two planets yet.

On other subjects, I survived the summer trip to see the family, though I had the lovely adventure of having the exhaust drop on the Jeep while traveling the NY Thruway. Thankfully my AAA membership was current and I was able to get a tow to a muffler shop in Canandaigua that was able to get me a new midpipe and catalytic converter (ouch!) and have me back on the road with only two and a half hours of delay.

There's not really a whole lot to say about the last few months.

I read a lot and despaired for the amount of romance crammed into otherwise interesting books. I read a very good original fiction novel by a fan author I enjoy and wished she had written more in that universe. Tanya Huff got me hooked into another series of hers.

I knitted some, but nothing that interesting since I focused on finishing a pair of socks identical to the last pair I knit except for being half an inch shorter in the foot. I'm currently juggling a few doll projects. One is finished and needs to be dyed and blocked, the others are all still in progress. Since one of those is destined to travel to Utah with the one that needs to be dyed I'm trying to focus on that one. Unfortunately the last couple days have been very, very bad with my hands so the 00 needles aren't fun.

I got an awesome haircut that I need to go have trimmed . I should have about two weeks ago actually. Wish me luck in getting it cut the same way again by a different stylist since the one that did the original is back in Massachusetts. There is one stylist I am pretty sure can do the cut, but I can't remember her name (I only had her cut my hair once before) so hopefully she'll be working and I can get her.

I lost a bit more weight, just enough that the awesome jeans I bought on clearance for $3.60 require a belt. I'm very glad I didn't spend more on them or I would be ticked.

And I think that gets everything caught up. Get ready for the NaNoWriMo spike in postings. :)

Comments

[joisbishmyoga.livejournal.com]

Well, it depends on genre, but I've always thought I'd name a personal starship something like the "No Air 'Tween Here And There", "No Air" for short.

Size of crew depends a lot on what your starship and crew is like. Some people do well with a "three people means eight hour working shifts and two people usually awake at once" structure, others might be more "as long as someone's always watching for debris, who cares that the guy who likes piloting gets sixteen hours and the guy who prefers tinkering on the engines gets four, have you been up twenty-eight hours again sigh". As for the ship itself, if there's an emergency what's the minimum number of conscious and semi-mobile people necessary to pilot and patch up damage? A tiny enough ship could get by with a good autopilot and one conscious person hip-deep in repairs, but if you've got a more Enterprise-type system you need a full engineering squad if opposite ends of the ship are damaged, plus separate people on helm, weapons, and comms, and a captain to coordinate everything.

Chlorophyll (the pigment chemical) in chloroplasts (the cellular organelle) is green because it absorbs at wavelengths adapted to our sun's spectrum. There are other pigments in yellow and red that we see in the autumn because they're broken down later than the chlorophyll is. But the point is that your photosynthesizing crewmember might be olive green, or yellow or red depending on the spectrum of her sun. It may also be a very vivid color, or augmented with melanin, for UV protection. Just something to keep in mind.

Your dim-light crewmembers are likely going to be very pale, unless their planet(s) food sources include a lot of Vitamin D, and if their sun's spectrum is significantly redder or bluer than ours they'll probably have blue eyes, which studies show see better in red firelight and blue twilight than brown eyes do. Albinism may be common.

[tephra]

I'm reminded that cleolinda has said she'd name hers "The Good Ship Nobody Dies". :D

Hmm, yes. I was thinking about how Norton worked it but more automation makes a lot more sense with fifty more years of real world technical advancement. I think if I were shipping out I'd want some redundancy but I can probably keep my numbers down more than I thought originally. Five or six perhaps.

Good point about the light spectrum effecting color, I'd have completely forgotten about that and then kicked myself 50k words later. I'm going to plaster that all over my NaNo workspace. Thinking about her apparent color changing indirectly lead to fleshing that character's background out a bit too, thanks!

I did not know that about blue eyes, interesting. I'll have to ponder just how much the genetic engineers played around with my dim-light folks. It would not be out of genre to have those planets settled by some really dedicated LARPers. XD

[toshirodragon.livejournal.com]

You have new dolly coming too..

Starship name: Instructions... now you CAN have a total female crew!

[tephra]

It's going to be a long couple months waiting for Talar to get here. :D I thought about picking up some sock yarn for her sweater and slippers but I know I wouldn't be able to resist starting the sweater and maybe Rico would work for a fit model for body and arm length but I'd be ticked if I finished it and it ended up short when Talar got here. I'd have to make the hem bigger anyway because Rico has no butt and Talar apparently will have booty to spare.

Pfft. I'll probably end up with an all female crew anyway, I just tend to make female characters anyway. At the moment I have a medic that does double duty as environmental tech and hydroponics caretaker, an engineer, and pilot/weapons/communications person. I need another two with the pilot/weapons/comm skill set, and another engineer at least. One of the trio of duplicate skills might be captain, or I'll have another character for that and duplicate a critical skill with them, another medic wouldn't hurt.