Opinions? Thoughts? Questions? If he has any of those, he's keeping them close to his chest. His work attending to the health of over a thousand crash survivors keeps him rather busy, you see. Any subtle probing through the colony's data systems for something he may or may not suspect would surely be discounted as a hobby undertaken in spare time. He's getting into cryptanalysis. It's fun.

She's had to break up a few fights. It's just stress. All the unanswered questions building up higher and higher. She'll tell Lucy she needs to be seen more- To be held accountable. People are calling for a switch to a democratized process. They're quiet and couched as 'at some point, we should start planning' for now. But they're not even wrong. Her job remains the same- Order, security, safety.

"...And that's why I think Marlene should be designated as head of the shuttle program. Such as it is. There are seven qualified technicians, we had a bad roll of the dice with shuttle crew, much like the bridge staff... And she's the brightest of them in raw adaptability. Just look at this list of projects. So I've been looking over the records of some Operations and Maintenance folks who have the right kind of attention to detail to offer her."

"Sounds perfect to me. You're really not wrong that a satellite to survey the place would make me feel a lot better."

Nina goes and finds Marlene soon after that. In person, to deliver good news. Face to face is often best that way.

The senior Co-Pilot is here too. He's a familiar sight to Marlene, though it'd be a stretch to say that they know each other. That's what professionalism and a busy training schedule does.

She's happy about the promotion. Really, she is. It's just that her happiness is of a smug, socially-unacceptable flavor, but right now she has to perform a totally different sort of happiness, humble and appreciative and quietly dutiful. "I'm flattered! I appreciate your high expectations for me and I will do my very best to live up to them. It's an honor to represent humanity in this way. I look forward to our future work together, Nina, and to working more closely" it would be bad to only call Nina by first name "with you, Shen. We're fortunate that the shuttle was recovered in such good condition" as they should already know from the reports "and I" she can't say 'look forward' she already said that "think it will be wonderful sight for all of us when it departs to place a surveying satellite, in nine wakes' time, weather and Murphy permitting."

She tries not to resent Nina and Shen for coming to tell her in person. They probably genuinely believe they're being nice. But ultimately, they get something out of this meeting - the ego boost of feeling like they're generous people, that they're liked by their subordinates - and it comes at her expense. It's a deniable way of demanding flattery, so deniable they don't see it themselves.

After that meeting that would have been an email in a just world, she needs to calm down, with that most laudable of activities, stressing out over the name vote.

It's kind of silly to be voting again. But people would resent if the winner was a name they overlooked amid three pages of names, and it makes a better story if there's a smallish slate of front-runners to talk about with their friends. Bah. They're not here to tell a story about an election... except they kind of are, actually, if it will improve morale, it's just that Marlene thinks that the Paradox of Choice means that running a second round of voting might lower morale. And, she shouldn't think this, it's not nice, but maybe it's right for the people who waded through whole list of names to have their opinions matter more. ...She takes a deep breath, observes her feelings, and lets them go.

She needs to think about strategy. Which is, in itself, disappointing - Approval Voting, you were supposed to save us! - but she's not going to discard her ability to affect the result out of spite.

Nova Terra is awful. In her, sigh, subjective opinion. It could be anywhere. Earth even already has a Newfoundland.

Nivis, Glacies, Charon, Exodus, Aurora, Mir, Faith, Stygia, and Refuge are boring. Whiteplains is tolerable. Frosthaven is a boardgame, isn't it? Solstice and Foundation are slightly clever. Icehole, of course, was her own submission. She doesn't understand Nadir.

What is she optimizing for, actually? Her preferences? The happiness of everyone in the colony? The happiness of their future descendants? Yeah, that. The thing that matters the most is not making future generations embarrassed by their ancestors' lack of creativity.

She votes for all of them but Nova Terra.

People are still excited about the green vegetables, but after three days of salads, it's time to think about variety. Better to hide the vegetables now, before people tire of them, and bring them back for a special moment. Yeah, celebration salad! That will be a great tradition for the new world.

Tabbouleh and felafel? Not hidden enough. Spinach omelettes? Better wait until the supply of synthetic egg is bigger - they need that egg for baking. Soup with wilted greens and firm tofu? Yeah, and some kind of bun on the side...

Sabah votes for the whole shortlist except Icehole. Why do people vote for that. Do they really want the future galactic congress to refer to "the junior senator from Icehole"? 

Shen Takagi might end up spending a lot of time near the shuttle. Not interfering with the work or making demands, he knows that aircraft tech-pilot relationships can get tense if there's too much hovering, just... Reveling in the simplicity of checklists.

Nina can't quite read the room if she's not working with other Maintenance people and the drivers. It's a whole little subculture. He volunteers to take talking to the Shuttle people off her plate. As pilot he's better suited to it anyway, right?

If he's hanging around, what are his opinions on configuring the fantastically-complicated engines? At this pressure and oxygen content, the manual says to remove the props entirely, but, as she understands it, that will reduce the maximum reverse thrust, requiring an even longer runway. And she had an idea to remove the turbine blades from two of the engines and use them only in scramjet mode, what does he think? Keep the turbojets on number two and three, so a low-altitude engine-out has less asymmetric thrust, or the other way around?

.......He has to think about it and do some research before getting back to her. There was a simulator pod in the same cargo unit as the shuttle; They can program it with the new configuration acceptably enough, and Shen and two other backup pilots can play with the simulator a little bit.

He ends up coming at it with pilot opinions more than technical ones: He'd really rather keep the reverse thrust. For takeoff abort, if nothing else. The scramjet idea seems fine after due consideration- The improved performance in the upper atmosphere and transfer-to-space envelope is very nice to have.

Oooh hmm there are already ducts for a cross-bleed start, if they enlarge them a bit and leave the high-pressure turbines in the two engines which are otherwise only used as scramjets, they can power all four of the retractable props. It wouldn't be worth doing on Avalon, but in this atmosphere the two intact engines can produce a bit more thrust (forward or reverse) with four props than with two. They'll need a wake to do the modification and another wake to update the procedures and reconfigure some alerts in the ECAM system.

...He follows along the logic... As long as sufficient due diligence is done in simulation, ground testing, writing the procedures, writing tests and training for the procedures, triple checking the ECAM and making sure everything is accounted for...

"It might be better to mark this down as a future improvement. Two days' delay is not trivial. If we haven't found one of the survey satellites by the time the shuttle is otherwise ready let's revisit?"

"Sounds good, thank you!" That's exactly why she's talking to him; she doesn't know if two days is a reasonable delay for the colony, and she doesn't have a pilot's perspective to evaluate risks.

The wheels on the shuttle are pretty sturdy, enough to handle some improvised chains. The group of techs considers crushing ice to make a soft runway-end safety area, but decides against it, out of concern that the wind might blow chunks of ice at the shuttle, so the runway is just really really long, almost ten kilometers.

They can use one of the Transports to do this really fast! They're basically construction equipment on top of being super heavy trucks.

A living alien! What sort of climate does he like?

Perhaps the newest and greatest mining town?

Hey.

No it's fine, the Orocide will surely soon be the greatest mining town. Not the greatest in the drydark, the greatest on the planet.

(Kef is better as a prosperous supply depot and resting place for travelers, not as a tourist attraction of its own. So that the experiment is undisturbed, and so that when it succeeds, its success will be accurately ascribed to its economic system, not a whim of fate.)

We invite the alien to visit the great and ancient empire of Lei.

By the way, how's the breeding program going?

There is no practical reason for the alien to go gallivanting around. We would be delighted to pay for the Allheart Alliance to construct a residence in a location of the alien's choice. Nay, no mere residence, a monument to inter-world diplomacy!

We insist on contributing to this project to the same degree as the Freedom Democracy.

At great cost to our reserves! As you surely know, we take pride in maximizing our population and stretching the productivity of our land to the utmost. Should the Freedom Democracy continue making such expenditures, forcing us to match them out of fear of some dastardly plot should we appear stingy in comparison, we will surely face tremendous hardship.

There are more aliens! At least, that's what this one claims.