Drunkard's Walk Forums

Submitted for the approval of the players Fenspace. This is not something that will immediately happen, but something I would like to have out of the way by February 14 because that's my last day I'll have access to the Internet before I ship out for 3 months of Recruit Training.
Anyhow, any input whatsoever is welcome, especially in the departmnets of inside-Limit speed, quirks, and trivia. One thing worthy of note would be the fact that she's a straight-up Acceleration drive. This is because she was built with the intention of hitting the Limit ASAP and going to super-luminous speeds.
EDIT: Max Delta-V Acceleration has been inputted and added Stealth trivia item.
Ship Name: SS Magnificent Midnight
Created by Benjamin Rhodes.
Registry Number: 133T-5P33D
Base Hull: SR-71 Blackbird
Drive Type: Acceleration - 2 obscenely powerful ion engines each powered by a cola/uncola reactor (I blame whoever was responsible for the Miranda).
Max Delta-V Acceleration: 70 G's
Armaments: Retractable ventrical and dorsal turreted M61 Vulcan and two coil-guns mounted inside the forward chinaries. Coil-gun ammunition is Hi-Ex rounds with ceramic AP tips and ferric alloy discarding sabbots.
Owner of Record: Benjamin Rhodes
Flag of Record: The Republic of Texas (Defunct)
Purpose: High-speed, armed, interstellar courier (No weekend deliveries, please. )
Crew:
Benjamin M. Rhodes (Capt.)
Regina "Gina" Langely (1st Mate)
Known Quirks:
I can't drive fifty-five: This ship loves to go fast. Period. And whatever you do, do not get in her way or else you'll wind up like the Curacoa when it met the Queen Mary.
I'm Pointy: Her uber-sleek and pointy looking hull is a weapon unto itself. With it, she can slice and dice ships smaller than herself.
Lemmeout!Lemmeout!Lemmeout!: She will only stay in one place long enough for cargo to be loaded or unloaded. Afterwards, she will take off and zoom around. Fortunately, she's also a loyal ship and will come back once called for if you give her a little bit of time to roam around.
Daredevil:The only thing she likes more than going fast is going fast through a densly packed asteroid field.
Respect Is Earned: While she's generally sweet natured (if a bit mischievous) to Benjamin and Gina, all others must earn her respect.
Ptichka's Little Sister: Oddly enough, she communicates pretty much the same way the infamous Ptichka does and possesses many of the same mannerisms, only with the kind of spunk and sassy attitude you'd expect from a "Little Sister".
Home Port: N/A
Current Location: N/A
Status: Submission Pending
Trivia:
Fastest FTL: She is speed incarnate and she shows it in being the fastest interstellar craft in Fenspace once she is outside The Limit.
It's cramped in here: Even though a substantial amount of interior space has been converted from fuel tankage to cargo and living space, it is VERY cramped inside. So much that getting out of the pilot's seat and into the cabin requires reclining the seat, grabbing ahold of handles overhead, and dragging yourself out. It is for this reason that Ben really likes his weekends off, no matter how much fun it is to zoom around in Midnight.
Can't find me: She does have some passive stealth capabilities just as she did before she was handwaviumized. Ergo when she turns off her transponder, looking for her in the big-black will be as much fun as looking for a needle in a haystack because her radar signature is about the size of a standard bedroom door.

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Black Aeronaut Technologies Group
Aerospace Solutions for the discerning spacer
"But first, let's test it on the penguin."
"Meep?" O.o

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Drive Type: Acceleration - 2 obscenely powerful ion engines each powered by a cola/uncola reactor (I blame whoever was responsible for the Miranda).
Top Speed: TBD

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The nice thing about acceleration drives is their top speed is limited only by Einstein: burn one long enough and you'll get up to serious "what do you mean it's been three years, I left last Tuesday" relativistic velocities. Of course, they can only do that in a straight line...
Anyway, the question isn't one of *speed* as it is how hard does she burn. My halfassed BOTE calculations (and this kids is why you shouldn't blow off your calculus classes) suggest that the Midnight needs to be able to do a *constant* burn of around 60-70 Gs in order to compete with Ptichka (which IIRC is the fastest speed drive ship of comparable size and mass). Better have gravity compensation inside the living spaces.
ETA: Changed my calculations.---
Mr. Fnord
http://fnord.sandwich.net/
http://www.jihad.net/
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

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Base Hull: SR-71 Blackbird

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Didn't we go through this whole thing with the submarine idea? Blackbirds are still classified vehicles. The location of the mothballed ships is a secret. Unless the USAF plans on emulating the Navy, I don't see this being viable.Ebony the Black Dragon
Senior Editor, Living Room Games
http://www.lrgames.com
Ebony the Black Dragon
http://ebony14.livejournal.com

"Good night, and may the Good Lord take a Viking to you."

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Didn't we go through this whole thing with the submarine idea? Blackbirds are still classified vehicles. The location of the mothballed ships is a secret.

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Actually, after some research it looks like every last surviving airframe can be accounted for, and none of them are in "classified" storage of any sort.
The only problem I can foresee is convincing a museum director to give up their precious Blackbird.---
Mr. Fnord
http://fnord.sandwich.net/
http://www.jihad.net/
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

Fnord:
I kinda figured as such. It isn't so much that she'll be fast inside the Limit - that would be a nice bonus. Where she'll really shine would be once she gets outside the Limit. That's when she really cuts loose and sets some records.
Also, I think I ought to say that she isn't directly related to Ptichka at all. I just figured that since the Blackbird has that similar need-for-speed shape to it that the Handwavium kinda treats it as a cousin of sorts.
Ebony:
Huh? Uh, I'm sorry, since when was the '71 suddenly reclassified? There may be certain aspects about it that may still be classified, but I'm pretty sure those bits and pieces are removed from the Museum Pieces and probably the mothballed craft, too.
In fact, I've seen such a Blackbird in person when I was back home in San Antonio and we went to Lackland AFB to see the old sights. On display is SR-71A #17979. In fact, here's a photo gallery of #17979.
Even all the other variants have been declassified, such as the A-12 OXCART and the YF-12A. What you're probably thinking about is the Aurora rather than the Blackbird. Or maybe it was Lockheed's Blackstar Space Plane?
All that aside, do I have any other suggestions?

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Black Aeronaut Technologies Group
Aerospace Solutions for the discerning spacer
"But first, let's test it on the penguin."
"Meep?" O.o

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- It might be worth waving your hands generally in the direction of "how does the accel drive work, anyway?" You could run a reaction drive, but the reaction mass requirements seem like they would get pretty ugly.
- Cola/Uncola would actually count as a quirk at this point - it's a limit on available fuel that other ships don't have to deal with. This is particularly an issue for those long interstellar voyages.
- You may want to consider attaching some sort of time dilation effect to your interstellar drive (perhaps associated with a bizarre form of fuel source somehow?) as you have a number of characters who Really Like Going Fast, and runs outside the limit will take a while even if you *are* Fast.
- it occurs to me that at some point, your character is likely to be offered a *really* high-paying job, that he can just *barely* fit - but only if he completely fills his living area... and then travels like that for a few days.
- What level of intelligence does the Blackbird itself have? Some of your quirks indicate pretty strongly that there's *some* level of sentience there.
- How *are* you getting a Blackbird, anyway? It's not impossible, but it's probably not all that trivial, either. I know *I* don't have the resources to get one.
(Mind you, in Fenspace, "I went up to Mr Morden and handed him massive amounts of cash" would probably work as a procurement technique for this sort of thing, but that's a *lot* of cash.)

Hmm... The ion engines can probably run on the atomoized waste of the cola/uncola reactors, as there's always bound to be a waste by-product in any power plant. If that's not good enough, then Heavy Water for reaction mass.
Yeah, fuel can be an issue, but Midnight, holding true to her heritage, will get her best "mileage" at top speed. That said, I figure that 1,000 gallon tanks for each fuel would do the trick nicely. There's going to be definite Points of No Return designated on their navigational charts.
Hmmm... Maybe when he really pushes it. I don't really recall anyone saying anything about time dialation effects with FTL drive outside The Limit, but it's an idea if we're really gonna push the envelope with the speed.
*Chuckles* Yeah, the Professor's huge bulk order for an emergency fuel supply was one such order early on with the Jetta. There's bound to be a couple of those with Midnight.
Midnight is gonna be a pretty bright girl. Smart, mischievous, calculates cold dishes of revenge. Think of her like the darker half of Lasse. She'll come to the rescue, but if there's someone responsible she's gonna kick their asses and enjoy doing it, too.
Probably make an offer to the USAF to purchase a "Display Piece" they have at any one of their bases or museums. Ben, being the proud Texan he is, will probably want the on over at Lackland. Failing that, he'll get sneaky, but still leave them with a reasonable amount of funds in exchange anyways. He's honest like that.
If all else fails he probably would go to Mr. Morden and drop a stack'o'bibles on his desk.
As for the source of the funds... Well, he is a Big Name Fan among racing fanatics for a reason. He's got more than one First Ever In Racing under his belt and is a regular at all the circuits where big reward money is handed out. After all, the Bullet Boy Express was Handwaviumized with speed, among other things, in mind. Also factor in the regular dayjob running critical in-system courier services.
All that cool? ^_^

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Black Aeronaut Technologies Group
Aerospace Solutions for the discerning spacer
"But first, let's test it on the penguin."
"Meep?" O.o

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If all else fails he probably would go to Mr. Morden and drop a stack'o'bibles on his desk.

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If that's how it happens, then Noah "Mr. Moneybags" Scott is going to think to himself "damn, I'm in the wrong business."
Not saying "don't do it", just pointing out it's going to take a lot of dead presidents to pull off...

-Rob Kelk
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

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Hmmm... Maybe when he really pushes it. I don't really recall anyone saying anything about time dialation effects with FTL drive outside The Limit, but it's an idea if we're really gonna push the envelope with the speed.

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Well, to be honest you're probably not going to see significant dilation effects for in-system travel. The thing about acceleration drives is that they're really best for long, *long* distance travel. Observe:

(Distances are of course all mean; refer to your navigation tables for current positions and distances.)
You'll notice that the acceleration drive doesn't start to approach the mean travel time for a speed drive until you get past Uranus, really. Travel times can be shortened by upping the acceleration, of course, but you don't see real benefits until you start hitting 1000 Gs or more, which is well above the laugh line for me.
More to the point, Midnight at the halfway point for the Sun-Pluto run (where you turn around and use your acceleration drive for braking) would be the fastest thing in the solar system, moving at roughly 20.5% the speed of light. So speed is more'n covered for distance runs.---
Mr. Fnord
http://fnord.sandwich.net/
http://www.jihad.net/
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

Oh yeah, I had kinda figured something like that. I just didn't have a way of getting exact figures like those.
What I was kinda thinking about is: What if she's going so fast in FTL that you get relativistic affects despite Handwavium's tinkering?
Odd? Yes.
Quirk worthy? Most definitely, I think.
It would be like the Universe is telling Midnight that she's just trying to go too damn fast for anyone's good and that Ben needs to pull back on the reigns a bit.

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Black Aeronaut Technologies Group
Aerospace Solutions for the discerning spacer
"But first, let's test it on the penguin."
"Meep?" O.o

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What I was kinda thinking about is: What if she's going so fast in FTL that you get relativistic affects despite Handwavium's tinkering?

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Hm... I'm a little leery of letting Midnight break the 500c wall, though with enough song-and-dance I could be persuaded.
Anyway, two thoughts on dilation effect:
1) Flipping relativity around suggests that once over the light barrier you start to see time *expansion* instead of compression. A week long trip in FTL feels like a month or more for the crew, something like that.
2) A light engine. This one transcends "quirk" and aims somewhere around "tragic flaw," in that it works at *exactly* the speed of light. Experienced travel time is zero, though the actual travel time is however long it takes light to reach the target. Now imagine that Ben thinks he's discovered the Limit Break and tries to prove it by travelling to Starbase 2...---
Mr. Fnord
http://fnord.sandwich.net/
http://www.jihad.net/
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

My mistake. I was under the impression that the Blackbirds were still under wraps.Ebony the Black Dragon
Senior Editor, Living Room Games
http://www.lrgames.com
Ebony the Black Dragon
http://ebony14.livejournal.com

"Good night, and may the Good Lord take a Viking to you."

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My mistake. I was under the impression that the Blackbirds were still under wraps.

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The only wraps the Blackbird is under anymore are mummification shrouds 8 (
That, and the exact, accurate capabilities are still classified Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979

Was just looking at the accel vs speed list you have there, and I have to say it feels a bit unbalanced to me. In particular, if the whole point of accel drives is to make those long hauls in short order, then having the Sun/Limit run be the exact same amount of time means that, well, there really isn't any good reason to have an accel drive. The only time it would be really worthwhile would be if you happened to have to go from an outer planet on one side of the sun to an outer planet on the other side of the sun, and even there you could just head to the limit, warp drive the circumfrence and head back in again. In the meantime, you're much worse off for the little "tooling around the inner system" runs that people tend to want to make a lot of.
Caveat the first: this is off of the .1c speed drive limit, and accel drives don't have the same sort of size factor (though accelerating a large thing will obviously require more engine than accelerating a small thing). Essentially, then (if my understanding is right) accel drives would still work well for large ships moving medium-to-long distances but not for anything small enough to pull .1c itself.
Caveat the second: This entire structure ignores slingshotting, which is significant but not always available.
Caveat the third: some folks might have accel drives anyway because that's what they got, or because they just don't cae but so much about speed.
Still, even with those caveats, I think it's something to consider.

Comparing speed and accel drives is a bit like comparing... oh, a container ship and a 747. They both have their merits, but they also have their drawbacks. The obvious drawback for speed drives is the mass limitation - bigger the ship, slower the speed no matter how big or how many engines it has. This limits speed drive to certain roles, mostly involving people or time-critical cargo from point A to point B in a hurry. Accel drives - torchships - don't have that mass limit, but their big drawback is that they have to pay closer attention to mundane physics than speed drive ships. That means they can't sprint, flying them is more complex and not as user-friendly, and they're on average a hell of a lot slower.
So why have a torchship instead of a speed drive in the first place? Well, why have container ships when you've got 747s? A torchship can carry as much cargo as it's got engines to push it (and fuel to push it with, something we should gloss over to the best of our abilities) and can still get there in a reasonable amount of time - days and weeks instead of hours and days, but still much better than the months and years necessary for hardtech Mundane spaceflight. Torchships would do their best jobs carrying bulk cargo - stuff from the Belt and the outer system to the terraforming projects, food and widgets from Earth and the cislunar colonies to the rest of the system, that sort of thing - and as cruise liners. These are the sorts of jobs where you *don't* need to have it there the next day, so a relatively sedate accel drive does the job just as well or even better.
Since most of our POV characters are small independent transports or layabout types, we don't have many torchships on the Registry as yet. (and the one we *do* have is MIA atm)
As for the Midnight... I admit that I'm not totally sold on the usefullness of an accel drive with her stated purpose as "speed, speed and more speed." The light engine I mentioned earlier in the thread might work as a substitute - it's a third way, not quite speed or accel - but... well, I'd rather hear blackaero's opinions first before I start beating that drum.---
Mr. Fnord
http://fnord.sandwich.net/
http://www.jihad.net/
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

Well, Fnord, on that note, you have to bear in mind the Midnight's heritage. The Blackbird was designed and built around a single theme: obscene power to weight ratios. When you sit down and look at the figures, the Blackbird really outclasses everything out there. And to think, that's before Handwavium.
Post Handwavium? Your gonna have a real beast on your hands. The Blackbird simply exudes speed with a no nonsense attitude and the Handwavium is gonna recognize that and go "Ooooh! Daddy likes!" Having an acceleration drive would permit going beyond the .1c limitations within system. Not by a hell of a lot, and you're halfway through the system before you get there anyways, but that isn't entirely thr point, either. Her acceleration drive just gets her to the Limit in a hurry. And then she really kicks in the afterburners as she goes FTL.
EDIT: oh, and BTW, he's not gonna be using Midnight for in-system hops. He'll keep the Bullet Boy Express around for that.

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Black Aeronaut Technologies Group
Aerospace Solutions for the discerning spacer
"But first, let's test it on the penguin."
"Meep?" O.o

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EDIT: oh, and BTW, he's not gonna be using Midnight for in-system hops. He'll keep the Bullet Boy Express around for that.

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Y'know, this actually brings up a point that's been nagging at me... you've got Midnight set up as an interstellar courier, but there's practically no interstellar travel. The Trekkies have Starbase 2, but that's not a gig they contract out for; there's a few flag-n-footprint missions to the nearer stars and the Miranda expedition, but for all intents and purposes that's it. Unless you're planning to bring Midnight in way, *way* down the line (as in more than a year or five past the current storyline) there's no good place for her to courier *to*.
Thoughts?---
Mr. Fnord
http://fnord.sandwich.net/
http://www.jihad.net/
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

Eploratory scout, then. The thing was originally built to carry cameras, after all. Hell, if we really go that route, NASA will probably all but give him one of their fully functional Blackbirds. I could only imagine what Handwavium applied to a Pratt & Whitney J58-1 would do.

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Black Aeronaut Technologies Group
Aerospace Solutions for the discerning spacer
"But first, let's test it on the penguin."
"Meep?" O.o

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Aside from the small problem that NASA doesn't *have* any more SR-71s. They're all in museums now, remember?
ETA: I take that ack - NASA still has one at Dryden, but it's also a museum piece these days.---
Mr. Fnord
http://fnord.sandwich.net/
http://www.jihad.net/
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

*Shruggs* Ah well. As long as it's still mostly together - simply mothballed rather than gutted.

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Black Aeronaut Technologies Group
Aerospace Solutions for the discerning spacer
"But first, let's test it on the penguin."
"Meep?" O.o

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It's a notable point, actually - when you're talking about trips to the limit, you're not talking zero/zero intercept anymore. That takes a whole *lot* of time off the total.
Random question: *Why*, particularly, does your character want a Blackbird? Answering that question might give you a decent idea of what he was willing to pay (not just in money, but in promises, contracts, and years of indenture) to get one.
Random note: You're pretty deep in the Professor's pockets. There almost certainly are a few backdoor relationships between the Professor and *some* scientists at NASA. On the whole, though, my understanding is that they don't like and/or trust him much. Still, with a sufficiently important mission, you might be able to get an under-the-table deal, if there was a mission imporant enough, and assurances strong enough. Interestingly, this would fit in really well with the Mayan Calendar plot. If the multi-year exploration mission doesn't come back in time... well, they have a limited quantity of at least some of their critical supplies (even with the safety margins) and . By the time you know enough to start worrying about it, you're going to want something really fast to get out there before they run out, and you're going to want someone who's a really good flyer once they get there, in the hopes that he can deal with whatever they've run into. Now, suppose that the bureaucracy back home isn't willing to mount a serious effort to go out and save them - by now, no one cares anymore. Suppose that someone in just the right place in NASA has friends and/or family on board. It comes out in conversation, and the Professor muses that, you know, he could probably make something that would go *really* fast, if he just had something like a Blackbird to play with.
Clarification: I had been throwing around the time dilation idea, not as a result of any sort of relativity, but just as another inexplicable quirk. After all, it's the #defined fastest warp drive in space. It *ought* to have a few quirks, of one sort or another. On the other hand, given the relative unimportance of warp speed to the overall narrative, there's no particular reason why they'd have to be *bad* quirks. On the gripping hand, with enough dilation, and enough distance, you can still wind up with a whole *lot* of History Lag.

hrm.. rescue mission Beyond The Limit?Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979

Why does he want a Blackbird? Why would you want a Ford GT? (Warning: flash video intro)
As he finds beauty in the world of nature, he finds beauty in the wolrd of man-made machines, such as a test of a J-58 engine at full afterburner as shown here.
As for what he'd pay... Well, the original cost of of a Blackbird airframe was, in my mind's eye, surprisingly little: 34 million dolloars a peice. But that was 1964. What cost $34 million in 1964 would cost a little more than $205 million in 2005. Considering that the B-2 Spirit costs well into the Billions, the Blackbird's a steal.
Of course, even if Ben were to cough up the dough, they wouldn't just let him have it. First of all, they'd probably want assurances from him that he wouldn't do anything like use it against the US Government. But even then, they'd be reluctant, so Ben opts to do favors for NASA and the US Government for free or at-cost, depending on what said favors are. I dunno how long this would last, though. NASA had better be paying him something in addition to the fuel bills to make long-distance runs for them on a regular basis.
And before anyone says, "Well if they had Ben in the first place, then why did they bother with the Miranda, then?" Simple. Much longer range with much more scientific equipment that will not be tampered with by Wave-tech. Ben offers no guarantee that any of his wave-tech systems will not interfere with the readings he takes. Fortunately, though, the data he does gather will be pretty clean. Midnight knows what she's doing and so she makes the effort.
Ben is pretty well into the Professor's pocket. Thing is, Ben's met some pretty strange people in his time on Earth. Thus, the Professor hardly even turns any of Ben's hairs because as crazy as he is, his stuff -works- and has a basis in reality. So to speak, anyways.
Give Ben's level of sanity and his connections to the Professor, I'd day say that NASA would use him often as a go-between themselves and the Professor, especially if they don't want it known that they're getting his help on something. So yeah, There probably would be a few under-the-table deals.
I like where you're going with the Mayan Calender idea. granted, getting out to the Miranda could be trouble as far as fuel is concerned. Perhaps if he had a pair of external tanks, then I'd guess it'd be do-able. Just have to see what Fnord thinks.
I think that the Professor would want Ben to go out and save them, if anything else then for the sake of science. After all, those men and women have boldly risked their lives in the name of science and my guess is that he feels that we need more intrepid scientists like them. That and a death in a tin box floating in vacuum at who knows how many light-years' distance from home is most assuredly not a nice way to go. The professor is, after all, certifiably insane, not inhumane (though any Julian Friese would tend to dispute that).
However, despite all that, I don't see the Professor himself having any great desire of a platform like a Blackbird. Sure, he'd love to see just how fast Ben can make her go and how he did it, but I think that would be the extent of his curiosities. Actually, I could see him involved in the development process, it's just not his project, really.
In response to time dialation, here's a new quirk I just thought of - please comment:
Time keeps on slipping...: In a most bizaar quirk, whenever Midnight pushes herself beyond her normal levels in FTL flight an inverse time dialation effect will occur: relative time inside the space-frame speeds up, giving the effect of seeming to have spent more time in transit when they actually have not as far as the outside world is concerned.
And another quirk I thought'd be nifty:
What AI?: Originally, Ben intended to transfer Gina over into the Blackbird, but despite the absence of a central computer core, something resembling an AI manifested anyways. She can not be found in any of the auxilirary computers (navigation, engineering, weapons control...) but she's there, non the less. Ben figures that the Handwavium simply brought the spirit of the Blackbird to manifestation. The Professor, equally baffled (that is to say, no more perplexed than Ben was), feels that the Handwavium itself has formed a sort of AI-like peronality matrix within the space-frame itself and controls the ship through its auxilirary computers.

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Black Aeronaut Technologies Group
Aerospace Solutions for the discerning spacer
"But first, let's test it on the penguin."
"Meep?" O.o

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I like where you're going with the Mayan Calender idea. granted, getting out to the Miranda could be trouble as far as fuel is concerned. Perhaps if he had a pair of external tanks, then I'd guess it'd be do-able. Just have to see what Fnord thinks.

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Well, here's the thing. Sending Midnight out to the Miranda's last known position is certainly feasible, but... what's the point? Midnight can't carry enough for a resupply, she sure as hell doesn't have the space for passengers... it's like sending an F-16 out to rescue the crew of a foundering fishing boat; sure it can get to the scene faster than a chopper or Coast Guard cutter, but all it can *do* is orbit overhead while watching the boat sink.
I suppose if that's your kink you could go with it, but I'm gonna need more convincing on that point before I rubberstamp.---
Mr. Fnord
http://fnord.sandwich.net/
http://www.jihad.net/
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

Hmm. Cargo supply of 'Life Rafts'? Dunno. It wasn't my idea. I take it, though, that the Midnight herself has a rubber stamp of approval? Yes/no?

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Black Aeronaut Technologies Group
Aerospace Solutions for the discerning spacer
"But first, let's test it on the penguin."
"Meep?" O.o

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