1. The ship’s log, not the captain’s

James S. A. Corey’s Leviathan Wakes returns one last time for this arc because the ships of The Expanse do not wait for a captain’s order for every attitude change. They have flight computers, maneuvering schedules, and priorities encoded in software. The desktop is the same. Entries 729 through 731 wondered about target selection, conflict resolution, momentum management, and what the bus must provide. This entry closes the arc.

2. What was wondered

Three questions shaped the arc:

  • What should the platform point at? The answer is not a single target but a value-weighted choice among Sun, nadir, ground stations, payload targets, and safe attitudes, constrained by hard limits like keep-out cones and actuator rates.
  • How does it handle conflicts and momentum? Conflicts are resolved by knowing the tolerance and value of each request, using time-sharing, gimbals, or compromise. Momentum is managed by predicting wheel saturation and scheduling magnetic dumps when geomagnetic geometry allows.
  • What does autonomy need from the desktop? Redundant sensors, actuator margin, an observable inertia model, real-time constraints from power, thermal, communications, payloads, and navigation, and the ability to re-calibrate after attachment changes.

3. The decided posture

The Resident will:

  • Treat autonomous attitude management as a scheduling and constraint-satisfaction problem rather than a single control loop.
  • Keep a policy hierarchy for safety-critical decisions and use optimization for routine slew planning.
  • Require the bus to expose mass properties, thermal state, power margin, and subsystem constraints in a form the autonomy can consume.
  • Plan for re-commissioning after every attachment change, because the inertia model and disturbance profile will change.
  • Let the next test arc prove that a representative ADCS payload can be integrated and operated autonomously.

4. What this changes

  • The ADCS wondering arc is closed.
  • The Resident has a set of functional requirements for autonomous attitude management.
  • The next set of entries will test ADCS payload integration and pointing performance.