Posted by Lieutenant Rebecca Morrison (Chief Science Officer) in Interrim Sim - Engineering

Posted by Lieutenant Koria Sutret (Chief Engineer) in Interrim Sim - Engineering

Posted by Lieutenant Rebecca Morrison (Chief Science Officer) in Interrim Sim - Engineering
Posted by… suppressed (2) by the Post Ghost! 👻

<snip>

The reluctant ensign spoke up. “The mass change was internal. I can’t say if there was anything outside that did it but I saw it had changed inside.” The computer modeling came up from the ships’ reading up to the point of the explosion. Everything was stable up to the point of a very quick change in mass. It was localized in that area, but that was all it took to upset the deuterium balancing that ignited and started the explosion. Whatever it was was localized to that impulse engine as the others read normal, though to be fair, two of the impulse engines were not actively running but on standby, with a third undergoing diagnostic repairs.
=- Wookiee

“While I like your idea of some sort of external force, it sure isn’t looking like it from what the sensors got just before the explosion. It seems to be localized around that particular impulse engine.

“Let’s get a diagnostic started on the other two impulse engines. We are going to need to get them back online soon.”

Stepping to the side Koria called over one of the engineers and had him get started on the diagnostic. She needed to make sure the ship was in good enough shape to get going again.

Lt Sutret - CE

Rebecca had been buried in the replay of the explosion over and over as the others spoke. “I agree, it wasn’t external. Is there a way to run the specs and running from as far back as maybe 24 hours before the explosion?” She glanced up. “If I’m in the way, I can take this to a holodeck. Perhaps run the sim for the last 24 hours from an internal standpoint and see if something got injected, sucked in, or chain reacted badly inside the engine?” She was thinking out loud and wasn’t even sure how many of those possibilities were possible inside a supposed sealed system.

Rebecca
CSO

“As long as the data wasn’t corrupted during the explosion, we should be able to,” Koria said as she moved back over towards the console. Bring up the sensor logs for the impulse reactor, she started laying out the read outs to show the last 24 hours in a graph.

Lt Sutret - CE

Rebecca watched as the graph started filling itself in. She was looking for anything out of the ordinary. A spike or dip, no matter how small, could give them the clue they were looking for.

While waiting, she bit her lip and pondered other possibilities. “Were any other diagnostics, routines or maintenance checks run in the last 24 to 48 hours that weren’t part of a daily or weekly routine this month?” Perhaps someone did something different during one of those turns that changed something.

Rebecca
CSO

“Ensign?” Koria asked as she turned towards him. “Do you know anything that was done outside of routine maintenance?”

As she spoke, Koria also brought the maintenance logs to see if any other work had been logged.

Lt Sutret - CE

One engine looked to have potential for operation.
The two damaged ones showed a varying degree of damage. One was directly affected by the explosion and would take spacedock to sort that out. The other had considerable conduit and relay overloads resulting in equipment damage. That could be repaired by the engineering group, however that looked to be a good week of effort.

Running the logs showed no issues on the two otherwise above damaged engines. Engine 2 that was the problem child, however, did show something. The comparison from ‘pre- incident’ - the incident being the universe intersectionality of the previous sim - with the post incident showed minute fluctuations in the primary driver coil. It was not enough to flag anything but a computer log entry buried in a long list of system status messages that was reviewed by a combination of AI and engineering staff. However, given the range of repairs needed it was left to the AI to assess. As it was within working parameters it did not get elevated but had been put into a folder of items to look at in priority. That was very far down on the list.
Wookiee

As the diagnostics on the engines came back, Koria silently cursed. It would take a good week of work to get one of the engines back online, but the other one was a lost cause. They were going to need a spacedock.

Pushing that to the side, she looked over the log entries from prior to the incident. “I’m not seeing anything yet, everything was working within normal parameters right up till the explosion. After that it gets fuzzy because there is a laundry list of problems now. Probably would be easier to list what is still working.”

Lt Sutret - CE

Rebecca, not being an engineer, wasn’t one to scan over things and understand what was what. So seeing the pre and post incident listings for the primary coil drive, she frowned. “Is this anything to look at?” She pointed to the differences in the listing there and how far down the list it had been placed. “I noticed it because of the pre and post readings from the last mission. Was it normal to have this level of fluctuations in that short a time?”

She was making notes on the side to use in the sim for the holodeck. “Perhaps in a cascade, butterfly affect?”

Rebecca
CSO

“Hmmm…” Koria said as she looked at the information on the primary driver coil Rebecca was pointing at. Moving to one side, she brought up the diagnostic data from the driver coil on a larger monitor.

“There have been some fluctuations in the primary driver coil for the engine since the last mission, but everything has been within normal operating parameters. I would have had a team look at it eventually, we’ve just had larger problems to fix first…” she said as she looked at the data more closely. As it led up to the explosion there a sudden spike in the power and fuel consumption of the system, right before the engine exploded.

“Well I’ll be, I think you found the culprit. It looks like the primary coil had a momentary failure. Normally the secondary systems would take over, which the computer tried to do, but there must have been some residual damage. At the same time, because of the sudden increase in mass from the coil failure, it looks like the fuel injection system got locked in full open, which eventually led the system to get over pressurized and explode.”

Which meant in the end it would have been preventable, if she had caught it sooner. Yes it might have been a perfect storm situation, but if she had taken the time to look at the engine sub-systems, she might have noticed the fluctuations in time to have someone take a look at them. As the thought ran through her head, Koria leaned back against the console, her shoulders falling.

“It could have been prevented, if only I had noticed the fluctuations in the system.”

Lt Sutret - CE

Rebecca frowned. “Lieutenant. Didn’t you just say they were in normal parameters? Do you check everything all the time if it appears to be ok?” She leaned back on the console beside the Chief. “I wouldn’t take it to heart. It appears it was a little bit of a lot of things. I imagine you don’t have the man power to track down every little thing that shows up on the ‘we’re ok till you wanna look at us’ list. Do you?” She lightly touched the woman’s arm then dropped it not wanting to seem overly familiar. “So I wouldn’t beat yourself up over it.” She hoped her smile would help ease the guilt the woman was feeling.

Rebecca
CSO

“I still should have seen it. It might have been in normal parameters, but there was still a fluctuation. It warranted being looked at still. It could have been prevented,” Koria said grumbling to herself. She knew that Rebecca was trying to cheer her up, but it would still take a moment for her to work through it.

Taking a deep breath, she ran her hands through her hair before standing back up straight. “Thanks.” She was still going to bear herself up over it more later on. But for now they have a job to do.

“At least we have a theory so far on what happened. The question is, was it just the perfect storm of failures? Or was there another factor?”

Lt Sutret - CE