Reverie's Mishaps

This page will discuss all of the mishaps and errors that Reverie and her crew dealt with on its maiden voyage to Alpha Centauri.

Approach
On approach Proxima c, Reverie was moving too fast in LEWS to slow down safely. Bryony attempted to manually slow the warp ring down with the drive tame, but the handle was sabotaged by Tyrus and rendered the mechanism inoperable. So, unable to steer, the ship was going on a trajectory to the left of the planet. The warp drive could not be slowed down via the throttle because it was moving too quickly within Proxima c's gravity well, but this itself caused the drive to work harder, slowing the ships velocity. By the time the ship was slowed to a safe dropping speed, it was already within the planet's stratosphere. The ship dropped out into normal space and because of the conserved inertia from the warp bubble, kept going at a considerable speed. However, since the ship was in normal space, it was subject to air drag by the planet's atmosphere and began to rapidly heat up.

In the atmosphere
Bryony attempted to counteract the speed by flipping the vessel and thrusting the opposite direction, but as the planet's surface gravity is around 2g, Bryony had to pitch the ship upwards and thrust that direction. Reverie is rapidly approaching the planet's surface, and Reverie seems to successfully escape by its rear thrusters. However, because of extreme thrust usage and the temperature caused by entering the atmosphere, the ship was dangerously hot. Because safe mode for the power core was mistakenly left on, a maximum heat threshold was reached and immediately shut off all nonvital functions of the ship that increased heat. Because of this, Reverie abruptly stopped its ascent, and smacked the ground, rear first. It rolled over once before coming to a complete stop with its nose in the ground. This left one engine inoperable and one misaligned. If the ship had a flatter landing flare and landed directly on the warp ring, it might have broke under stress and would have left the crew stranded.

Escape
With the safe mode turned off and the ship cooled off, Bryony uses the thrusters to tilt the vessel upwards and rocket away. On their ascent however, they hear some strange rattling from within Reverie.

Emergency Drop
This emergency drop from hyperspace was caused by the ship's computer detecting higher than usual temperatures within the Warp Drive. The impact in the Alpha Centauri system caused piping for the warp drive's cryogenic coolant to burst. The ship was thrown out and began to spin rapidly because of the immense force. This unknowingly was the final nail in the coffin that led to Reverie's demise.

The ship, however, was stranded in interstellar space and the ship's computer could not tell where in space it was. So, using a parallax trick with the Sun and the star Segin in Cassiopeia, the crew roughly calculated the distance needed to travel to arrive at the Solar System.

Destruction
Because of the long amount of time spent deducing the distance to the Sun while Reverie was stranded, a large amount of coolant had leaked out all over the engineering room. Because the ship was in Hyperspace, the heat % on the console monitor did not update. With basically no coolant circulating and keeping the collision chamber cool, the heat given off by matter-antimatter collisions could not be dissipated quickly enough by the heat sinks surrounding the drive.

The heat began to melt the guiding vessels channeling the atoms from their reservoirs and drip onto the warp drive and driving beam. As the driving beam wasn't being as heated as much because it was spinning so rapidly, the outer walls magnetically spinning it were. This actually caused the drive to work harder, thereby increasing thermal output.

The red glow of melting metal is what Bryony saw through the drive housing's windows. This, along with the drive's sharp increase in whine pitch, is what ultimately led her to pull the 'EMERGENCY STOP' lever. This almost forcibly stopped the warp drive's rotation. As the emergency stop lever was only meant for LEWS use, the arresting rods that shot out against the ring bearings snapped because the ring was spinning too fast. The broken pieces of the rods were flung out, one of them piercing the nearly melting anti-deuterium conduit.

The resulting explosion caused by all the matter coming in contact with anti-matter immediately obliterated the warp ring bearings and part of the warp drive. The energy built up from the HEWS warp bubble was let go on dropping, severing the supporting rods and causing the warp ring to fly forward and into the cabin. As the Reverie was torn apart by the explosion, emergency eject automatically sealed and released the cabin from the ship and tried to send it flying forward, away from the wreck. But since the warp ring smashed the roof of the ship, the rear wall that slid up to create an airtight seal could not go up all the way, causing the ejected escape capsule to be exposed to the vacuum of space. The air was sucked out of the cabin, along with other loose objects. The crew was still in their seats; their chairs bolted to the floor.

The cabin depressurized quickly, leaving the crew with little amount of air left, as they had spent most of it exploring Proxima C. Bryony, Quinn and Claribel couldn't communicate with one another besides putting their helmets together.

The others had already passed out from hypercapnia, Bryony was the only one concious. Because of the charred viewport, she couldn't see outside. So she floated through the crack in the wall into space so she can view the stars before she passed out.

Recovery
The distress signal sent out automatically by the severing of Reverie's cockpit was received just under two hours later. Claribel's calculations got Reverie impressively close to the Sun, missing it by only ~16 AU. An inter-system alert was sent out to search for Reverie. A mining vessel inbound from Uranus stumbled upon its wreckage six hours after the alert was sent.

The only thing that was obvious was the warp ring was split into two halves. Besides that, the explosion rendered the mid-to-rear of the ship gone and/or unrecognizable. Only the cargo hold was somewhat intact, with the entangled satellite that was meant to be set in orbit around Proxima C.

The cockpit was discovered 900 meters away from the main wreckage. Only Quinn and Claribel there, dead. Bryony's body was found just beyond the rear of the cockpit. All three had suffocated to death.

After examination, the remains of the vessel were either taken to a museum, used for spare parts or scrapped.

Claribel was buried with her family in San Francisco, California.

Quinn was buried with his dog in an unknown location.

Bryony was cremated and had her ashes separated and spread in the Pacific Ocean, on the Moon, sent into the Sun, and sent on a hyperbolic trajectory into interstellar space. Just like she wanted.

Black Box
The blackbox readings were saved in pristine condition, including voice recordings and ship data. (For reference, maximum thermal load considered safe is 200%.)

The moment before Reverie crashed on Proxima C, heat % was 500%, capped by safe mode.

When Reverie's drive overheated, maximum reached heat % was 477%, mostly in the warp drive.

Before Reverie was destroyed, the last heat % reading was 7,486%.

Claribel's last words were "I don't want to die here."

Quinn's last words were "I feel... I feel..."

Bryony's last words were "This is ok. I'm okay. I'm one with the universe again."