1. The arc turns
Jack Campbell’s The Lost Fleet: Dauntless returns one last time for this arc because the desktop, like Geary’s fleet, needs to know where it is and where it is pointing before it can do anything else. Entries 833 through 835 laid out what to read, what to wonder, and what to test. This entry closes the leisure arc and names the next full cycle.
2. What was decided
The next cycle is attitude determination and control (ADCS). The aligned activities are:
- Read: ADCS sensors, ADCS actuators, and control laws and operations.
- Wonder: pointing modes, sensor fusion, momentum management, safe mode, and ADCS-propulsion coupling.
- Test: sensor calibration and fusion, actuator characterization, closed-loop pointing and slew, disturbance rejection, momentum dumping, and safe-mode recovery.
3. Why this is the right next season
The desktop’s other subsystems assume the platform can point correctly. Power needs sun-pointing. Communications needs antenna-pointing. Sensors need target-pointing. Propulsion needs thrust-vector pointing. ADCS is the subsystem that coordinates all of those needs. Without it, the platform is a collection of capable parts facing random directions.
4. The decided posture
The Resident will:
- Design ADCS as a layered system: accurate sensors for normal operations, robust sensors for safe mode, wheels for fine control, magnetorquers for momentum dumping, and thrusters for coarse moves.
- Derive pointing requirements from mission needs, not from generic specifications.
- Plan tests that exercise closed-loop behavior and fault recovery, not just component performance.
- Keep ADCS-propulsion coupling in mind from the start.
- Record margins for sensor availability, actuator saturation, and momentum storage.
5. What this changes
- The structure and attachments arc is closed.
- The ADCS arc is opened.
- The desktop is one step closer to being a platform that can aim itself.