With more ship's systems reaching late development, the need for a functional environment in which to test these is becoming apparent. At the current stage this will not require the full bridge.To this end, concepting has begun for a small scale simulator for testing purposes, along with personnel candidate screening, systems familiarisation and training, and crew co-ordination and ship-handling drills. As a secondary aim, this will allow the development team to monitor crew interraction and behavious to help inform design of the full size bridge.
Based on feedback from the previous passive sensor integration pass, specifically regarding the towed array, work has been continued on expanding options for remotely deployed sensor platforms.
Work on sensor suite integration into the basic spaceframe has been continuing, with the latest pass covering three areas: refining the navigational radio telescope installation, initial passive sensor placement, and long range long-range investigative sensor placement.
Thanks to work by the astronomy and sensors teams, we appear to be able to move forward with a forward facing radio telescope/long range navigational array, and a second integration pass on that system has been scheduled to pick up currently understood shortcomings of what had been, until Zoe the team working on the ATCA array came to the fore, considered something of a throwaway option.
While that discussion was underway though, integration of exterior systems into the design has been continuing, namely for the boat bay and propulsion array:
