Class 24 Starship

• Heavy-duty technical tools such as laser cutters and pry bars, along with a versatile collection of electronics and computer maintenance tools.
• A large medical kit, allowing for intensive procedures such as field surgeryand detailed medical diagnosis.
• Excavation tools, including a hypersonic rock pulverizer, as well as simple shovels, picks, and trowels.
• Camping equipment and survival gear, including climbing tools, portable cooking equipment, and two pressurizable and temperature-controlled four-person tents.
• A small six-passenger flier with a gravity-bender engine. The flier can travel up to two hundred kilometers per hour, and can travel through atmosphere and vacuum equally well. The crew can disassemble the flier for compact storage during interstellar flight, and reassemble the flier within a half-hour when needed.
• Radiation-shielded pressure suits, with built-in zero-gravity maneuver jets. Each suit can hold enough oxygen and power to sustain a crew member for forty-eight hours.
  

As a scientific vessel, a Unknown carries a sophisticated array of sensing and recording devices. These sensors can provide the following information about objects on a planet the ship is orbiting:

• Optics can produce images detailed enough to allow crew members in orbit to read a book on the planet’s surface, even if nothing but distant starlight illuminates the pages. These optics can also produce images using infrared and ultraviolet light.
• Ground-penetrating scanners can identify the approximate size and outline of subterranean spaces.
• Electromagnetic sensors can pinpoint energy sources as small as a wristcomp or tri-wave pistol.

At a distance of one astronomical unit—the distance from the Earth to our
sun—the ship’s sensors can determine the following:

• Optics can produce images with sufficient detail to read text with letters a half-meter high.
• Spectrometers and mass calculators can produce detailed information about a planet’s environmental conditions, including the composition
  of its atmosphere and oceans, strength of its surface gravity, and both surface and atmospheric temperature measurements. This information
  is sufficient for the crew to determine whether a planet can support human life, or whether visitors would require environment suits or other
  protection.
  
• The ship can detect power sources strong enough to sustain spacecraft, cities, or factories.
  

The ship’s sensors are not infallible, and intense radiation or energy pulses can
blind them temporarily. Basic camouflage can fool a ship’s optics, while dense
materials or electromagnetic jamming can defeat other sensors.
The ship will continuously record all sensor readings of the n