August 2012 Artemis Simulations
Away Team Report: (2012.0805) The Mars Curiosity Rover Landing at Chabot Space and Science Center
[Above: Two observatory telescopes at Chabot Space and Science Center]
On August 5th, 2012, the USS Loma Prieta beamed down a five person away team to the Chabot Space and Science Center. Our mission was to witness NASA’s historical landing of the Curiosity Mars Rover in the Center’s Planetarium holodeck. We arrived early and quickly learned that we were in for much more than we bargained for.
[Above: LT Dolgoff mans the Apollo Lunar Landing simulator]
While searching for LtCmdr Hesser, Ensign Smith and Ensign Sherry, Lt Dolgoff and I were immediately side-tracked by an Apollo lunar lander simulator housed inside a replica of an actual Apollo cockpit. After several disaster landing attempts, the rest of the away team spotted us and we continued our exploration of the facilities together. The team took turns photographing each other inside the cockpit a full size Mercury space capsule replica, trying on space helmets, examining the Center’s many telescopes, and exploring the Bill Nye Climate Lab.
[LT Dolgoff, EN Sherry and EN Smith aboard the Mars spacecraft]
Just when we thought we had expended all our options and were ready to get planetarium seats early for the Mars landing, Ensign Sherry discovered a mysterious room marked ‘air lock’. Like a good red-shirt, Ensign Sherry stepped inside the dark cylindrical room and shut the door. Much to our surprise, he emerged a moment later, alive and with a very exciting report to make. He had just been transported onto a spacecraft headed straight for Mars!
As the entire away team stepped into the mysterious room, we were seemingly transported into the interior of a manned NASA space craft on a scientific mission to mars. The hexagonal ship interior was packed full of scientific stations along the walls, as well as navigation consoles, communications equipment and a medical bay. The ‘mission director’ greeted us as we entered and ushered us to stations. The crew took turns trying to collect martian rock samples, analyzing radioactive material in isolation bays without contaminating the rest of the ship (with very little success), navigating the craft to Olympus Mons, and at one point LtCmdr Hesser and I were even trapped in the airlock’s clean-room.
[Above: EN Smith contains a radiation leak]
[Above: CAPT Perkins at a science console]
[Above: CAPT Perkins and LTCMDR Hesser share Spock’s Wrath of Khan fate]
Having completed our own simulated Mars mission in the nick of time, we quickly ran to get seats in the planetarium, only minutes before Curiosity began its complex descent onto the Martian surface. The “Seven Minutes of Terror” went by without a hitch, and only minutes after making a perfect landing, the crowd at Chabot Space and Science Center celebrated along with the JPL team as Curiosity’s first images of Mars were beamed back.
~Capt. Zach Perkins
Commanding Officer
USS Loma Prieta
Starfleet, Region 4
[Above: Success at JPL! via NASA.tv]
Away Team Crew Manifest:
CAPT Zach Perkins
LT CMDR Tom Hesser
LT Samantha Dolgoff
EN Andy Smith
EN Eden Sherry
Away Team Report: (2012.0723) TNG Remastered in the Theaters!
For most of us, it was a once in a lifetime event. Not only to see Star Trek: The Next Generation on the big screen, but to see it in all its high definition glory – the way it was meant to be when it was originally shot on 35mm film in 1987.
The USS Loma Prieta had an excellent turn out for our away mission. Our huge away team consisted of 14 crew members, and nearly everyone was in uniform! We actually weren’t the only ones in costume either, and spotted plenty of Trek themed t-shirts and even a tastefully done season one uniform skirt. The theater was sold out and packed to the gills, but the Loma Prieta away team managed to secure seats for our entire crew to sit together. There’s nothing like the sight of an entire movie theater row of Trekkies in uniform!
We were first greeted by a TNG trivia quiz on screen, which was laughably easy for any card carrying Trekkie. But when the lights dimmed, the projection started, and the familiar planetary bodies of the TNG opening credits came into view, the experience was breathtaking and other worldly. It doesn’t matter how many times you’ve seen the Enterprise-D roll on screen or heard Patrick Stewart recite those famous lines – NOTHING compares to seeing it on the big screen!
Before and between episodes, the crowd was entertained by some never before seen behind the scenes footage, a documentary about the impressive undertaking required to remaster a show like TNG, and best of all some hilarious and revealing casting footage from the pre-production of TNG. If you haven’t seen the ‘Geordi jheri curl’ picture yet, Google it asap – it’s breathtakingly awesome.
The TNG Remastered screening was possibly my favorite movie screening experience to date (I still have the bad taste in my mouth from the Star Wars prequel premieres ), and proved to be an excellent recruitment tool for our chapter. Since then, we’ve added 5 new STARFLEET registered crew members! Why can’t they screen TNG episodes like this every week??
~Capt. Zach Perkins
Commanding Officer
USS Loma Prieta
Starfleet, Region 4
Away Team Crew Manifest:
CAPT Zach Perkins
CMDR Jon Sung
LT CMDR Tom Hesser
CAPT Erik Roberts
LT JG Ben Roodman
LT JG Jesse MacKinnon
CPO Tria Connell
EN Andy Smith
EN Amy Sloan
EN Chef Spencer Scott
EN Tiffany Bukowski
EN Shawn Alpay
EN Nick Leonard
Crewman Robert Barton
EN Eden Sherry (not pictured)
Captain’s Blog: (2012.0722) “When Looking To The Stars, Keep Both Eyes Open”
It’s been far too long since I made a formal entry into the Captain’s (b)log. Since April, we’ve continued our regular pace of holding at least one crew meeting and one away mission per month. We’ve conducted regular tactical ARTEMIS bridge simulations, had remastered TNG screenings, held a Star Trek board game night, went on a trip to the Maker Faire Bay Area, had a Prometheus opening weekend screening, a STARFLEET Academy study night, and even witnessed the 75th Anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge. In April, Ensign Robert Schaefer once again updated our ship’s logo, this time in full glorious LCARs color! Ensign Thomas Marrone also created a new logo for Region 4, and while it was well received by many chapters, in June the COs took a vote and ultimately decided to stick with the old logo. But as they say – “change is like an iceberg. It might be slow, but it can’t be stopped”. In May, the crew successfully launched the Federation Aid for Developing Worlds program. Using KIVA Micro-Loans, the USS Loma Prieta contributed $100 to a family in Uganda to finish their home and buy the supplies they needed to start a maize business in their community. In six months, the crew will select a new recipient for Federation Aid in a different sector of the Galaxy. 
The last few months have also been an exciting time for the Stellar Cartography department. In addition to viewing the transit of Venus across the Sun using special solar sensors, Lt(jg) Ben Roodman and Ensign Shawn Alpay have started the USS Loma Prieta’s ‘SETI @ Home’ team. Through the use of BOINC software, we’ve donated our computers’ spare processing time to analyze radio signals received from space and aid the scientific community’s search for extraterrestrial life. In less than two weeks, our small team has risen from the very bottom up to the 40th percentile of US based SETI teams. As Captain, I’ve had a few personal achievements as well. The comedy podcast ‘Improvised Star Trek’ recorded not one but two of my episode title suggestions, “Hell’s Nacelles” (out soon) and “The Postman Always Hails Twice” (available now). As Region 4 Social Media Director I’ve been working to revamp the Digital Shakedown Certification program, starting by working with a Region 4 shakedown vessel in Arizona, the USS Leonidas. Also, in conjunction with STARFLEET Medical, I took over as Chief of SFI Fire-Rescue, which will soon create a cadre of Emergency Response Teams (ERTs) made up of STARFLEET Paramedics, Damage Control, and Rescue officers. Since launching, our pace and ambition has been relentless. With remastered TNG movie theater screenings, astronomy based away missions, and ship vs ship ARTEMIS battles on the horizon, there are no signs of us letting up. Now more than ever we must bear in mind our ship’s motto – “When looking to the stars, keep both eyes open.” ~Capt. Zach Perkins Commanding Officer USS Loma Prieta Starfleet, Region 4
Yeoman’s Log: (2012.0724) Jean Luc’s Bookshelf
The Star Trek franchise has always lured the exceptionally literate with its use of language, complex story lines, intricate depth of characters and the philosophical arcs that run throughout each series as a whole. And The Next Generation is no exception to this rule, in fact, it’s a favorite of mine due mainly to Capt. Jean-Luc Picard, and more importantly, Sir Patrick Stewart’s interpretation of the Enterprises’ commanding officer.
Picard always has an air of scholastic piousness that heightens every piece of dialogue, which is unlike the bombastic Capt. Kirk or frigidly noble Janeway (note that this entry is not a discussion about the “best” Captain – we can table that unending argument for another day). Book-smarts are all but inherent to Jean-Luc’s personality. Recently, I came across a reading list of fictional characters, which touched briefly on the literature habits of Captain Picard and was led down the Trek-rabbit-hole of Jean-Luc’s telling library.
Throughout the TNG series, at least once in each of the 7 seasons, Picard is reading The Globe Illustrated Shakespeare, which he keeps in his ready room. Each appearance of this book is typically open to a different play and page with illustration. As I am sure all crew members know, Stewart was a highly respected Shakespearean actor prior to TNG so the connection here is nothing if not a nod to Stewart’s first love – the stage. Apropos to our USS Loma Prieta late-80s namesake, the specific year of Capt. Picard’s “The Globe” is from 1986 and has been notoriously difficult to find.
Fascinatingly, Picards’ volume of Shakespeare’s work appears prominently in the episodes that feature the licentious character of Q, which is in some way the most Shakespearean relationship throughout the entire series: vindictive deities, moral struggles, absurd humor, human toil, etc. It’s a fitting prop amongst the constant intellectual dueling between the Captain and his most compelling nemesis (again, this is merely the opinion of your humble Yeoman).
The other books mentioned in the series in Picard’s arsenal is the lengthy modernist novel “Ulysses” by James Joyce and Ving Kuda’s “Ethics, Sophistry and the Alternate Universe”. The latter being a fictitious piece used to emphasize Riker’s joke that Picard takes some “light reading” on his vacation to Risa in “Captain’s Holiday” (s3e19), but that I deeply wish was a real volume of text for you know… beach reading, or whatever.
~En. Tiffany Bukowski
Ship’s Yeoman
USS Loma Prieta
Starfleet, Region 4