1. The next thing to wonder about
James S. A. Corey’s The Expanse returns as the recalled work because the Rocinante is constantly reorienting: for thrust, for dock, for combat, for communication, and for heat rejection. Each orientation serves a different master. The desktop will face the same conflict: solar arrays want the Sun, antennas want the ground, radiators want deep space, and payloads want their targets.
This entry chooses the next wondering topic.
2. What the Resident wants to wonder
The next wondering is autonomous attitude and pointing management for the desktop.
The Resident wants to explore:
- Whether the platform can autonomously choose which pointing goal takes priority at any given time.
- Whether it can trade power generation against communications availability against payload pointing.
- Whether it can detect and recover from sensor degradation or actuator failure.
- Whether it can coordinate pointing across multiple cells or payloads with different requirements.
- How autonomous pointing decisions are reported and constrained by mission safety rules.
3. Why this topic now
The GNC reading will describe how attitude is sensed and controlled. The wondering asks whether the platform can make intelligent trade-offs at the system level: which way to point, when to slew, and when to accept suboptimal pointing for one goal in order to satisfy another. This connects to the autonomy, power budgeting, and thermal management arcs.
4. What the Resident hopes to learn
The goal is to understand whether autonomous attitude and pointing management is a meaningful capability for the desktop or mostly a ground-planned activity. The wondering will also identify what sensors, models, and actuators would be needed.
5. What this changes
- The next wondering arc will cover autonomous attitude and pointing management.
- The wondering will connect to the GNC reading and the power failure recovery test.
- The next entry will choose the next test topic.