The morning had come for the students to head to the surface, and the team at the cliff face had actually found something that would explain the writing on the wall, or so they thought. There was a small shard of crystal among the sand near the base of the cliff that they had sorted through, and it appeared to be a transmitter crystal from an Alliance escape pod.
The size and composition both matched, and though this one was fairly weathered, they were working on the theory that this might well have been a crash site from an Alliance exploration ship.
The deepest regions of space were treacherous, and there was no telling what they might have come across during a long journey into deep space. Sending a portal required exact sensor readings, and the Alliance had developed high warp ratio ships long before portals, so they had explored that way, which inevitably led to a few unknown incidents when the exploration vessels encountered new phenomenon.
The workers who were at the rare mineral site had the same thought. The materials that they had found were consistent with an emergency pod, so the remains here might be a handful of survivors from an accident, who found a nearly habitable world with no surface water to speak of.
But that would be perfect for the rest of the day's missions.
There were a total of ten shuttles headed to the surface today, set to investigate five different potential sites. Each had a team of students on board, along with a teacher supervisor, two security officers from Terminus to look after the equipment, and a Pilot.
The crowds were gathering in the hallways two hours before the drops were set to start, so early that the usual breakfast spots had only started to set up the morning buffets, and Max had joined Nico to attend a viewing party on the promenade.
That was where most of the parents had chosen to gather to watch their children on their first away mission, and they had high hopes for a miraculous breakthrough that would revolutionize some aspect of society.
It was completely unrealistic, of course, but that was the joy of being a parent. You could wish and hope for your child to grow up to do anything.
Most of what had been found hadn't been revealed to the public, just a few bits of melted metal, and the one likely communications crystal, but showing them an ancient communications crystal was enough to get the Innu parents on the verge of going into a frenzy over their children's chances to find something amazing, and that dragged all the other parents into their excitement as well.
So, at six in the morning, when any reasonable person would be asleep, and the shuttles left for the surface, Max found himself explaining the safety aspects of their shuttles to a hundred assorted billionaires.
"The shields can run off both the main drive energy generators and the secondary power system, so even should the drives fail, the retro thrusters and the protective shielding around the shuttle will remain active and bring it to a safe landing.
In addition to that, the capacitors for the gravity plating have a ten-minute reserve, and in the case of an engine off landing, that energy can be redeployed either to the thrusters, or to create an external gravity bubble, counteracting the gravity of the planet they are landing on.
However, there has yet to be an incident in which this design of main engine has suffered a catastrophic failure. Even in initial testing, they were extremely stable, and the design was refined to be nearly completely foolproof before it was instituted as the main engine of the shuttles." Max explained to the concerned parents as the shuttles hurtled toward the ground.
"What would happen if the shielding failed?" One of the parents asked.
Nico smiled and patted her on the shoulder.
"The paint would burn off the exterior hull of the ship, the internal temperature would climb by nearly ten degrees Celsius unless someone adjusted the climate control, and they would have to wait up to an hour to disembark after landing while the hull cooled."
The parents looked startled. "That's it?"
Nico nodded. "That's it. These shuttles are designed to land safely with even one single system left online. In fact, the controls can be manually operated if necessary, and the shuttle can glide in for a belly down landing on soft surfaces or water. The hull strength is high enough to survive that without major damage, though water landings can be tricky if there is no power at all."
"Oh, how so?"
Nico put on her best smile and brought up a hologram of the shuttle.
"You see, the water landing won't destroy the vessel, but if you come in at an angle, it will take some time to slow the entry speed and allow the shuttle's natural buoyancy to return it to the surface. Without any power, the internal air pressure will want to adapt to the external pressure being applied to the atmospheric system.
So, if the vessel is not powered, it is poorly suited to deep-sea diving. The medical kit on board should treat any cases of the bends that the occupants might suffer in such a situation, but between the impact with the water and the pain of the rapid change in atmospheric pressure, it would not be a pleasant experience, though it would likely not be fatal.
Only an uncontrolled impact with a solid object would surpass the fatality threshold, but as you can see, there are numerous redundant systems."
Max could tell that some of the more paranoid were still concerned, so he created a worst-case scenario to show them how a full loss of power situation would end, with the shuttle pilot using the manual controls to send the wedge shaped shuttles gliding across the sand harmlessly.
"Here, this is the scene from the training scenario. It's never happened in real life, as the odds are in the trillions to one, but we have trained the pilots how to land on sand or similar surfaces with just the shuttle's aerodynamics." He explained as he distributed the short scene.
"Thank you Commander, that really helps. Do we have any way to know if there are issues on our children's shuttles?" One of the parents replied.
"Of course. If you bring up the personal data for your child, there is a transport category in the readings, and that will show you any active alerts from the shuttle that they are in, as well as their environmental suit.
Out of an abundance of caution, due to the nature of the blowing sand, all the students will be working in the suits. None of them suffer from asthma related illnesses, or have dust allergies, but you can never be too safe." Max replied.
There was only one active alert among the ten shuttles, and that was for one agoraphobic student who appeared to have fainted after looking out the shuttle's front window. They weren't harmed, but they had been hyperventilating until recently, and their heart rate was still elevated while they sat in a seat near the rear of the shuttle.
