Starship Awesome
Starship Awesome is the craft used by Cobalt during his official extraplanetary assignments as an Ambassador Of Boink.
Contents
Basic Data
Designation: Starship Awesome
Registry: A50M3
Manufacturer: Galaxy Aerospace
Model: Starflyte 700
Assignment: Diplomatic Courier & Transport
Pilot: Moonmist
History
Model Details
The Galaxy Aerospace Starflyte 700 was designed as a jack-of-all-trades workhorse, much like a spacegoing pickup truck or parcel van. It was designed with a multitude of attachment points enabling the craft to be reconfigured for whatever job would be required of it, from cargo delivery to crop spraying. The ease of customizing it to suit any given task led to it becoming fairly commonplace before it was eventually replaced in the manufacturer's lineup by a more advanced model. Still, the sheer number of these craft out in the hands of the public meant that even after being discontinued, parts remained available in ready supply, both used and New-Old-Stock.
Starship Awesome History
First Life
There is every indication that the ship now known as Starship Awesome led a relatively uneventful life as a cargo hauler before being unceremoniously junked by its former owners and operators. It rested in a boneyard of ships on the planet Earth, where over the years parts were scavenged from it by visitors to the site stripping it back practically to a bare hull. Eventually, what was left of it was discovered by Moonmist, after he was given free reign of the boneyard to select parts for constructing his own ship, by the boneyard's owners.
This reward had been granted to Moonmist, after he had rescued one of the owners of the boneyard from certain death. The boneyard's owner also operated a local fuel depot, and on one fateful afternoon, was in the process of delivering a freighter full of highly flammable liquid fuel, only to discover that the landing gear of his craft had been sabotaged to prevent it from opening, ensuring the craft would crash during landing and explode.
Luckily, Cinnamon had been on call to the area in his capacity as an Embassy Liason, and Moonmist had tagged along to take advantage of the flying lessons available at the local spaceport. When the alert warning had been broadcast about the stricken fuel freighter, the training vehicle which Moonmist had been flying was the closest ship to it. Leaving the craft in the hands of its robotic autopilot, Moonmist then used an antigravity skydiving harness to reach the stricken craft and, clinging to it's superstructure, had repaired the landing gear's damaged hydraulic line, allowing it to land safely.
For this he was granted his pick of the parts in the boneyard. During the walkthrough of the yard to identify which parts could be collected for the start of the project, Moonmist found the abandoned hull, still showing the registry number A50M3 in faded lettering, which he instantly decided read "Awesome." Together, he and Cinnamon dredged the hull up out of the dried mud of the boneyard, and together, they made regular visits to the boneyard to scavenge parts, shuttling them back to Boink for reassembly. Slowly, the ship began to come back to life, and after much work, they managed to get it flying again.
Second Life
Moonmist and Cinnamon rebuilt the ship and got it airworthy, but as they were working with junkyard parts, they were unable to get it sealed airtight, and so it served only as local atmospheric transportation for them on Boink. During this era of the ship's life, the outside of the ship was roughly painted with loose van-style graphics done with spray paint. These graphics were provided by Rockweed a hippie surfer Delos who Moonmist and Cinnamon were friends with, during one of their regular weekend beach jaunts. The ship would serve as their hippie surf wagon until spiraling events led to the craft requiring some extensive repairs.
Third Life
Starship Awesome was badly damaged, when Moonmist crashed it through the wall of a building, to prevent an assassination attempt from being made on a visiting dignitary. As a result of the actions performed by Cobalt, Moonmist and Cinnamon on that day, Cobalt received official Ambassador status, Cinnamon received a promotion and was made Cobalt's personal Embassy Liason, and Moonmist was made an official Embassy pilot.
The entire front half of Starship Awesome had ended up a crumpled wreck. So, in payment for services rendered, the two governments (those of the visiting dignitary and of Boink itself) pooled their resources to have the ship completely rebuilt and upgraded, this time to spaceworthy condition, so that it might serve as an official embassy transport. With the official seal of the Stellar Alliance applied to the exterior, Starship Awesome once again rose from the ashes and took flight.
On Board Equipment
Moonmist has continued to tinker with the craft, and several new pieces of equipment have been added to it since that rebuild, including an aftermarket food replicator, and a top of the line tractor beam emitter designed for hauling cargo trains. The first of these was added after, and as a result of the ship's first official mission, as seen in the comic Dry Run.
The interior also features a computer workstation, storage cabinets, a minibar refrigerator, a self-cleaning fold-away table, a bed, and a trash compactor disposal chute which feeds matter dumped into it directly into the ship's fusion reactor. There are seats for a pilot, a co-pilot, and computer operator, as well as bench seating at the fold-away table.
Furthermore, the pilot cabin features a device known as a "trainer box" - this is a metal cabinet with a hydraulic lifter platform inside, built into the craft's dashboard, which is designed to house a robotic autopilot. By slotting himself into this space and connecting up to the onboard systems, Microbot can operate any function of the ship himself, enabling him to act as pilot, autopilot, and navigator.
Landing Bay
Starship Awesome has an official landing bay in the basement levels of The Rubicon, Designated as Hangar Bay 83. The ship will be found parked here when not in use, and Moonmist has made use of the space as a garage, for working on the ship between missions, usually assisted by Microbot.
