Public Rescue Service

The Public Rescue Service is the component of the Emergency Response Bureau which handles members of the general public responding to Distress Beacons.  

Origins

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Registration

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Individual pilots of starships are able to submit an application to the Public Rescue Service with details of themselves and their ship. From there, background checks are performed to ensure that the individual is considered able to act in good faith as well as ensuring the ship is in good condition and capable of performing rescue missions.   Once the application has been accepted, a retrofit is performed to the systems of the ship, allowing it to perform limited modifications of relay messages to allow the pilot to attach their response signals before the message is relayed further.  

Obligations and Protections

While all starships contain the necessary Emergency Relay Suite systems to make, receive and broadcast distress calls, the only requirement placed on the general population by these distress calls is to relay them and are actually advised against responding to them without first attaching their own response code to the relay. Members of the Public Rescue Service, however, have the duty to rescue when it is within their capabilities. All members are obligated to attach their response code and ID to the relay before broadcasting it out further.   Exceptions to the obligation are made when the pilot is already acting upon another distress call, the distress beacon is out of their ship's capabilities (such as extreme conditions on a planet or lacking the fuel to safely perform the rescue and return to a safe location), or when they would reasonably believe that the rescue would endanger themselves as well. In these cases, the response code is adjusted to advise as to why they cannot respond and the relay is broadcast with these adjustments.   When responding to a distress call, members of the Public Rescue Service are legally protected against breaches of other contracts, most trespasses and are given priority over most other ships when it comes to traffic