I went to DFS (dildo's from space) and presented myself as a writer of a magazine. They let me in to have a look around and interview the employees.
I learned quite a lot about the space station. It seems the station has 7 distinct divisions, which are layered in levels. Each level needs to be powered up before the next can be powered up.
- L1 Communications
- Operated by Mazur Bahawalanzai, a nice Indian chap that just graduated from IIT (indian institute of technology)
- L2 Power
- Operated by Bryant E. Snyder, an electrical engineer. He's married, 2 kids.
- L3 Life Support
- Operated by Maria Wilson, a marine biologist. Apparently, she is fully qualified to handle life support because she is an excellent deep-sea dive master. She's a single mom with a 3 year old son. The father was a stockbroker that committed suicide before their son was born. Sad story... I think she has a crush on Laurent, who also works in this company.
- L4 Supplies
- Operated by Michael H. Marcum, a PhD in mechanical engineering. He likes to play snooker together with Cameron from DFS
- L5 Storage
- Operated by Laurent Badeau, a french scientist who had the largest wine collection in his (little) town of "La Barre" in France, before moving here. He's proud of his heritage and claims to know a lot about wine. He offered me to participate in a local wine-tasting course that he teaches
- L6 Factory and Export
- Operated by Cameron C. Snowden, a mathematical genius. He used to be the logistics manager for a very large firm and was a snooker champion as a teenager.
- L7 Orbital Control
- Operated by Nikolai Grigorev, a 64 year old veteran of the USSR space program. He handled the Salyut 1 orbital controls and everyone is full of praise about him here. It looks like he has the most experience with space stations, systems administration and computer security. He also has some weird views on artificial intelligence, claiming all space stations will one day operate themselves.
