Tales from the Dish

The flight of the Starsong is an ongoing scientific mission to explore the Evermorn-Armoa Binary System, starting with the local Evermorn System before attempting the journey to the distant binary Armoa. With a live, self-sustaining crew who can sometimes swap out with fresh members from the inhabited inner system, the Starsong functions within its story almost more like a space station or cycler due to its comparatively ponderous method of locomotion and proclivity towards hanging out in orbit near valuable resources or research targets for extended periods of time.

Being older and less automated than modern Evermornan spacecraft, the Starsong (at least in its initial configuration) is much more vulnerable to the dangers inherent to space travel. If the crew fails to work together and address issues in a timely manner, it could mean missing out on valuable scientific discoveries at best and the death of the over one hundred crew at worst.

Some of the more bellicose members of the crew might be inclined to attack crews from opposing factions (see Cruel Tricks) or even send asteroids and orbital debris crashing down on the territories of their geopolitical enemies. The resources of the Evermorn-Armoa Binary System are vast - perhaps vast enough to inspire thoughts of hoarding or smuggling. Questions regarding interpersonal relationships, the chain of command, and scientific ethics are also likely to come up when a group of explorers have spent years or even decades in one another's presence. Such a long assignment creates difficulties in maintaining important relationships with people back on Evermorn, and not all prospective crew members will have the right moral, ethical, or psychological qualities to endure the full span of an assignment aboard the Starsong without drama.

Conflicts between the Cobalt Protectorate and its two neighboring planetary powers are still very much active in the time in which the Starsong is flying. Not only does the Starsong have to operate in a geopolitical milieu that might include direct warfare - in which they would be a potential target as a masthead project for the Protectorate's space program, but they also have to race against the scientific expeditions of the other nations and of private interests looking to corner the market on the mineral and scientific resources present in the system.

The Starsong is a toroidal spacecraft situated astride a pulsed plasmoid engine (example here). The gigantic dish-shaped nozzle of the rocket engine serves multiple roles when the ship is not under thrust, including a high-gain antenna for communications, a radio telescope, a remote laser or solar power collector, and even a weapon. This ship is from a time before fusion was widely used as a primary form of transportation, the onboard reactor only providing paltry thrust when its exhaust products were vented and, thus, being mostly used for power generation. Thus, all journeys of the Starsong were lengthy and had to be carefully planned - and, as such, were the subject of much juicy debate among both the crew and mission control back on Evermorn.

In the Starsong's day, space travel was more dangerous and the technologies to deal with those dangers less well-developed than they are in modern times. Even when there wasn't some kind of threat from space debris, equipment breakdowns, solar flares, and a thousand other sources of danger beyond the protective confines of Evermorn's atmosphere, there were logistical and psychological concerns for the crew to contend with. The Starsong was also not immune to geopolitical events, as later seasons of the show would foreshadow the beginning of the Armoa Conflict.

Tales from the Dish is episodic in nature with story continuity that generally spans several episodes. Life aboard the Starsong is centered around the cycle of the following:
 

1. Choosing a destination for the research teams to explore: Mission command and the crew of the Starsong are often at cross-purposes when it comes to their desired exploration targets, but the interest level expressed for a given target must be balanced against the feasibility of the mission in terms of both resource costs and the dangers involved. With rare exception, everyone aboard the Starsong is either an explorer excited to make new discoveries regardless of the danger, a seasoned spacecraft operator with battle-tested reasoning for why a given mission profile might not be worth the risk, or a representative of mission control keenly aware of the fiscal and material budget sheets that need to be balanced for a mission to succeed.

 
2. Harvesting fuel and resources for the journey:. Early on, this involves a lot of negotiations for pricing and competing against conflicting bids from other missions also operating out of the inner Evermorn System. As the ship moves to more remote regions of space, in-situ resource gathering has its own drama, as scarce fuel and materials for important repairs have to be gathered with their own missions and the crew might run across unexpected hazards in the process (i.e. alien species).

 
3. Travelling to the destination: Being from an older generation of starships, the Starsong is not as durable as modern vessels and required some degree of specialized human intervention in terms of operation and maintenance. Equipment might break down during the journey, it might be discovered that a critical resource wasn't actually as topped-up as hoped, diseases and discontent could spread amongst the crew, and the crew needs to keep sharp through various means in case of eventualities. The crew of the Starsong is mixed sex and large enough that, in the absence of more pressing matters, interpresonal relationships develop, deepen, and sometimes break among them; the long travel periods provide ample time for this sort of interpersonal drama to progress.

 
4. Performing research at the destination: Specialists amongst the crew either analyze the destination with sensors or, in the case of an asteroid or planetary surface, often travel to the destination aboard shuttles to gather data and samples directly. On top of the usual hazards inherent with travel, this is a time where not every planetary surface has been explored, meaning that the environment, terrain, or even ecology could be hazardous to the crew. Medical emergencies are likely to occur, whether through injury, occupational disease, encounters with alien life forms, or even coming to blows with competing expeditions.

 
5. Conveying important findings to mission control: While the actual reporting of findings to mission control is seldom itself a source a drama, events on Evermorn and the broader system continue to progress when the Starsong is underway. Message exchanges might reveal that a crew member has had something come up in their family life when they are away, that geopolitical struggles (i.e. war with the Cinnabar Hegemony or diplomatic wrangling with the Republic of the Obsidian Shores) may have occured, that natural disasters (i.e. intense solar storms) are about to affect the inner system and the crew is needed for relief efforts, and so forth.