Boondocking in a Starship

I had to park my thoughtship in the Walmart parking lot for the night to effect repairs of the graviton generators. I set the cloaking to make my ship appear like a Class C RV. That way no one would even look twice, I see class C RV's parked overnight in chain-store parking lots all the time. I did some research and what I found is that lots of RV Full timers will park overnight in a parking lot to get some sleep and rest from driving on the way to their next great boondocking or RV hookup site.

How do you do that?

A lot of people have asked me how I manage to make my Thoughtship look like a Class C Recreational Vehicle. The exterior of the Starfire is covered with a microns thin layer of nano-coat. The nano-coat is sprayed onto the outer hull at the factory like a paint, except instead of pigment it has microscopic nano-machines called pixelbots that can change colors, have no color at all, or just reflect light at a certain angle. Signals transmitted through the hull of the ship to the pixelbots contain a hexidecimal code which tells each tiny pixelbot what behavior is required by the cloak generator control module.

Much of the time, for example when I am parked in orbit around a planet, the nano-coat will be in absorb mode. The pixelbots turn a dusky bluish black color which is how they look when absorbing photons to charge the battery banks that power the convenience oriented functions of my starship. Interior lights, television, mp3 surround sound player, non-essential computer systems, and other non-system critical devices.

Boon-docking my Thoughtship in the Parking lot for a night.

Usually if you make a purchase or you ask the manager politely, large chain-stores with huge parking lots will allow you to park your rig overnight if you keep a low profile. In my case it shouldn't be a problem. I will have to buy several electronic devices to scavenge the parts I need to make the required repairs to the graviton generator.

Time to go for now, I need to go talk to the walmart manager and ask him politely if its alright to park my "RV" in the parking lot overnight.

Scifi Mystic's FTL Thoughtship

Welcome to Thoughtship Wanderings.

My name is SciFiMystic, I am an FTL Thoughtship pilot. My Faster Than Light Thoughtship, which I have named The Starfire, can travel to any destination in space time at the speed of thought. Indeed, a thoughtship's complex navigational systems, interfaced bio-metrically with the conscious and sub-conscious brain wave patterns of the pilot, allow for crossing the boundaries of the inter-dimensional barriers themselves. Inter-dimensional travel is rarely done however, it is incredibly reckless and dangerous to thought-jump to a location that the navigational AI has no map data for.

Travel at the speed of thought is made possible by a cooperative effort between a highly trained thought pilot's mind, and the incredibly powerful navigational AI, which translates the pilot's thought waves into 7 dimensional space/time/x coordinates. The warp field generator then bends space to the desired shape and the Thoughtship and all its contents, skip through a fabricated wormhole gateway to the desired coordinates.

The navigational system is chiefly responsible for avoiding things like thought jumping into the middle of a burning star for example. Therefore the navigational AI contains a massive database of all known objects in the galaxy and cross references the pilot's desired jump coordinates against the database to avoid mishap. Jumping outside of the immediate galaxy is absolutely possible but once you travel outside of the navigational computer's mapped space/time, it becomes exceedingly risky to blind jump a great distance.

Depending on the destination, the travel time between two points may be measured in negative or positive increments of time. Without the pilot, the thoughtship can only perform normal sublight maneuvers. My ship, The Starfire, is not unlike an airtight, pressurized, heavily shielded, luxury private jet. The interior quarters are much as you might find on a high class 75 foot yacht, it didn't start out that way, but I made substantial modifications to make the interior space more comfortable for extended voyages.

I was fortunate enough to make a bit of money when entrepreneurs like myself were finally allowed to pursue marketing and advertising efforts on the Trans-Galactic Communications Network that connects the civilized beings of this galaxy. Someday Earth will be connected to the TGCN as long as you Terrans don't blow yourselves up first. Admittance to the TGCN will surely be granted as soon as Earth scientists make the proper scientific discoveries about the relationships of the subconscious, the human soul and the true nature of reality. I see that some of your high level mathematical theory is certainly bringing scientists closer to these observations.

I knew I wanted a Thoughtship since I was a little kid, it's the most amazing ship one could ever hope to pilot. After I saved up enough money (a lot of money), I advance ordered my ship and went into pilot training. It takes nearly 2 years to completely integrate a pilot's biometric interface with the navigational technology of the ship and the training and interfacing procedures are mentally exhausting.

When I was finally able to take full licensed possession of my Thoughtship, I decided that the interior was in dreadfully utilitarian taste, so I came to Earth and hired a famous Terran yacht builder to design a new interior for me. I led him to believe that he was designing a unique interior for an ocean going vessel. Terrans can be so artistic and creative, the plans were superb, and I compensated him handsomely.

I had to modify the plans slightly to allow for the biometric connective matrix that enables me to interface with and navigate my ship. Some other smaller modifications were also made to the original interior plans.

Eventually the modifications to the blueprints for the interior design were completed after much tweaking and fussing. Then, satisfied that the plans would be suitable to my needs, I made my way to the Spacefarers Guild outpost located in a massive orbital complex near the Epsilon Eridani star system.

It took me about 15 minutes to get there from Earth. 10 minutes to physically interface with the navigational systems, 30 seconds to concentrate on my destination and mentally visualize and feed the desired jump point into the ships computer, .0034 seconds to actually travel there, and roughly 4 minutes to shutdown the system and disconnect from the piloting interface.

After I performed the expected ritual communications greetings and verifications, I made my way into the Spaceport proper, and commissioned talented builders from the Spacefarers Guild to re-construct the interior of The Starfire to the desired specifications.

The most expensive interior modification was the addition of the Shortwave Graviton generators that now provide a variable gravity field inside the cabin. I opted for the more expensive variable gravity generators for several reasons. Occasionally zero-G or low-G can be useful, especially if you need to move fast to another part of the ship in an emergency. Another bonus of the variable output is that if I feel like I need a workout I can turn up the graviton generators and increase the force of gravity in the cabin, making every movement require extra effort. This is especially useful if I will be visiting a High-G environment, I can match the intended destination planet's gravity and acclimatize gradually so that I don't suffer grav-shock when I disembark.

The graviton generators are rated up to 5 times Terran normal. I would never turn it up that high under normal circumstances. The only time such a strong field would be needed, would be in the case of evasive maneuvers, or accidentally thought-jumping near a strong gravity well, the pseudo-gravity can then be modified on the fly by the ships AI, and used to counteract forces that might otherwise rip things apart.

I have to go now, my sensors indicate a debris field passing near earth and I will have to put my defensive shields on full power to be safe, that means no connection to your fiber optic relay satellite through which I connect to your Earth internetwork. I could just fire up the thought propulsion and clear out of here, but I want to see much more of your planet.