AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 30
ARES III SOL 33
As a Wonderbolt and a trainer of Wonderbolts, Spitfire had had basic field medic training, though admittedly most of it ended with “get a real doctor as soon as you can”. She’d had a compressed three-week course after she’d been picked for ESA Flight 54, which became the third flight of ESA Amicitas. And these days she spent at least two hours every day swotting up on the contents of her medical textbook, which now had over thirty pieces of the alien’s small supply of transparent tape holding together the brittle pages.
But none of that limited training included one word about what to do with a unicorn who had clearly cracked up.
She watched as Starlight Glimmer spent her tenth consecutive minute banging her head into one of Mark’s storage cabinets. She’d already decided to put Starlight to bed and break open the aspirin bottle once the unicorn wore herself out or knocked herself out- and Spitfire would have taken either end of a bet as to which it would be.
On a whiteboard nearby lay the transcription of a message long enough that Mark had been forced to pull one of his ex-crewmates’ space suits off the rack and begin dumping excess water into it. (Needless to say, the Hab’s soil needed no further watering this day.)
REF S DRV SPECS SHOWS DIM LMTR MSSNG FRM S DRV TPT SP ARRAY. REF YR RPT INCDT HYPOS OBJ AVOID PARAM TRIPPED RSLT UNTRCEBLE 5D JUMP & NOVEL PWR SURGE TO FUEL JUMP. SURGE OVRLD BATT, ATT MORE PWR DRAW COMP, NOVEL MG VACUUM RSLT FAIL CASCADE MN PWR. FAILSAFE FAIL DUE TO NOVEL UNANTCP COND. TRACE OF ENV SYS SP INCONCLUSIVE DUE TO LOW SIGNAL, NOVEL VECTOR. PREP 2ND MSG PROCED CYCLE TELP SP. CT WHN RDY.
Starlight Glimmer had gone straight to the ship manuals after hearing the message, tearing two freeze-dried pages in her rush to look up the Sparkle Drive spell array. Once she did, she dropped the book and began her percussive psychological self-analysis, leaving Dragonfly to translate from geek-speak and abbreviation into proper Equestrian.
Apparently the Sparkle Drive had tried to move out of the way of some unseen object in its path. By some oversight the spell hadn’t been limited to travel in three dimensions, so it made a small five-dimensional jump. That jump soaked up far more energy than normal, essentially draining the engine’s array of over a hundred magic batteries. The batteries, suddenly starved for power, tried to compensate by drawing more power from the universal field. But here, in this universe, there was no such field, and the strain of trying to draw energy from a vacuum, added to the Sparkle Drive’s load on the system, had caused at least one battery to shatter.
With one battery down, the load increased on all the others, and like crystal dominoes they disintegrated in a chain reaction. The fail-safes which should have shut everything down in case of a failure cascade hadn’t worked because they, too, relied on a universal magic field for power. Only the two emergency batteries, being disconnected from the main circuit, had survived.
And now Baltimare waited on them to reply so they could send instructions that might- just might- result in re-establishing the telepresence spell and proper, non-soggy communications.
Mark wandered over, looking with concern at Starlight. “Whut sarong whicker?” he said. Of course it would be their self-designated translator who went nuts first, Spitfire thought. But the first word was probably what.
“Du bahd,” Dragonfly replied. When Mark made a more-please roll of his hand, the changeling added, “Du Roscoe.”
“Dihpstix,” Fireball added.
Mark thought about this a moment, then screwed up his face so his eyes were crossed and the teeth in his upper jaw jutted out. He pointed to his face, then to Starlight. When Dragonfly nodded, Mark sighed, reached over and picked up Starlight and carried her to her bunk, repeating, “Hiss alight, hiss alight…” in a gentle voice.
The others let out their breath. “Well, that’s solved,” Cherry Berry said. “Spitfire, what would you have done?”
Spitfire shrugged. “I’m no shrink. If she were a pegasus, I would have told her to take two laps of the obstacle course and hit the showers.” Actually she would have relieved her of duty and called a psychiatrist in to determine if she should be washed out of the program. In short, she would have hoofed the problem over to somepony else as fast as possible. Which, to be honest, was what she’d just done.
“She’s not crazy,” Dragonfly said. “But she is really ashamed of herself. I think she blames herself for our being here.”
“Yeah, she should,” Fireball growled. When the other three stared at him, he added, “What? It’s true!”
“Not helpful,” Cherry Berry insisted. “Now go get some more of those plastic bins. We’re wasting Twilight Sparkle’s time here.”
Spitfire went to tend to Starlight, who was now babbling something to herself about seeking efficiencies and reduced thaumic churn. She hated being here. She hated being so useless. She hated being so helpless.
Fluttershy should be here, she thought. Fluttershy would have Starlight Glimmer back on her hooves in minutes. Fluttershy would be able to talk to Mark directly. Fluttershy would have the training for her position and the experience to be on an equal level with the others. I’m just a waste of food here.
Then she had a second thought. No, Fluttershy shouldn’t be here. How would she deal with being away from her animals for a month? And how would they cope without her? At least the Wonderbolts are in good hooves back home.
Then a third thought: None of us should be here. Mark ought to be on his way home, and we ought to be getting our third tickertape parade as the heroes who first orbited Bucephalous. And it’s nopony’s fault that we are. This situation is just bucked up, is all.
But I still hate being so helpless.
Maybe, she thought, having Cherry Berry in charge instead of me is a good thing.
TRANSCRIPT – WATER TELEGRAPH EXCHANGE, ESA BALTIMARE and ESA SHIP AMICITAS
(note: all standard telegraphy / Mares Code shortcuts and abbreviations translated)
AMICITAS: Procedures copied for communications experiment Alpha, experiment Beta, experiment Gamma. Alpha not possible at this time due to conservation of battery power for food production procedure estimated four days from now. Over.
ESA: Understood. Prepare for experiments Beta and Gamma in twenty hours time. Over.
AMICITAS: Negative. First available time for tests three days from now due to food production procedures. Over.
ESA: Explain nature of food production procedures. Over.
AMICITAS: You really don’t want to know. Over.
ESA: Fine. Will expect contact sixty hours from now. Over.
AMICITAS: Copy contact sixty hours, out.
I don't know about you or your father, but I'd be proud of an assessment like that. Plenty brave and capable, just not the idiot they wanted him to be.
Does the book mention if there are relay satellites, eg in Sun-Earth L4 and L5? The round trip would be longer, but it would keep communication open for the period when Mars is behind the Sun.
8683840 Nope, because in the book Pathfinder gets fried somewhere around Sol 197, and Watney doesn't begin his drive until Sol 449. In fact, there's a huge time skip right about there in the narrative.
Darn, a short chapter. Will we get a larger next one?
It might be interesting to see communications reestablished in a few days. Also like how mark grabbed a suit to hold water. Nice reminder that a astronaut almost drowed in space once when water somehow got into the helmet!
As for obstacle courses there more of a team building exercise these days. Fun, but field exercises are more fun.
8682610
How can it 'strongly' presume something that it specifically contradicts in the second sentence?
I even mention the fix there - you have the outside pipe be taller than the inside one.
How much taller is the question.
Okay, some figures.
Mars atmosphere is .087 psi - disregard.
Earth at sea level is 14.7, but the habitat doesn't need to be that high, and shouldn't for various reasons. Pure O2 would be 20% of that, but there are issues with pure O2 as well. 3-10 psi is likely.
On earth, water is .433 psi per foot. At .376 g, on mars it would only be .163 per foot. So, in order to not fly out like you said, you would need 18.4 feet of pipe at 3 psi. 61.4 for 10 psi, and 90.3 feet for 14.7, earth sea level.
... some sort of pressure valve might be a better idea that a 50 foot tower now that I've done the math.
8683849 No, Equestrian does have "very" in it. But ironically, Starlight doesn't have the English word yet because of the translation spell, which at least 50% of the time translates it as "honestly" rather as an intensifier. (The root of English "very" being Latin veritas.) But most languages also have repetition as an intensifier, so "good-good" is a logical workaround for not being able to say "very good".
8683853 Shorter chapters will probably be the mode. I'm going to have less time for writing after January, and most of the really important establishment stuff is done. If you see a longer chapter length, it will mean something very important just went down.
I understand the explanation of what went wrong with the Sparkle Drive, but I can't make heads or tails of the actual transcript. And why was Starlight going crazy? Did she hold herself responsible somehow for what happened?
8683913
I think with Starlight it is one of those "D'oh, I was so stupid to forget about that".
If they used one of the suits for comms, they could flick the stream at key speed instead of splort, and still ahve the suit available for use, and the main feed for when the suits in use.
Wonder if they could use the primary water feed to spray build ice walls? Of course they would have to be thick to flow and cool properly, but wouldnt thick walls be rpeferable?
What three experiemnts are they thinking of trying, apart from getting Glimmer to take the modified and origional teleport functions, invert and delta the twoa nd try and teleport something small back? After all, if they can work out why the ship didnt explode, they could work out how to stop other objects exploding when teleportted?
then again, they said the batteries went boom through trying to soak up a field that wasnt there so tried to use their internal energy?
8683913 Starlight did a dumb, i. e. she left out that component of the teleportation spell so it could cycle faster. Now she's engaging in modern self-flagellation, or as we know it today, headdesking.
The de-abbreviated message:
"Reference to the Sparkle Drive specifications shows the dimensional limiter is missing from the teleport spell array. Based on your incident report we hypothesize that the automatic object-avoidance parameter was tripped, resulting in an untraceable five-dimensional jump and unexpected power surge to fuel the jump. The surge overloaded the batteries, which attempted to draw more power to compensate, and the unexpected magic vacuum resulted in a failure cascade of the main power system. The power cascade failsafes failed due to the unexpected and unanticipated conditions. Trace of environmental system spell failed due to low signal and unexpected vector. Prepare for second message containing procedures to reactivate the telepresence spell. Contact when ready."
8683913
Here's what I got from it:
Reference Sparkle Drive specs shows dimensional limiter missing from Sparkle Drive teleportation spacial array. Referring your report incident, hypothesise object avoidance parameter tripped, resulting in untraceable 5D jump & novel (unexpected) power surge to fuel jump. Surge overloaded battery, [ATT] more power draw [COMP], novel (unexpected) magic vacuum resulted in failure cascade of main power. Failsafe failed due to novel unanticipated conditions. Trace of environmental systems [SP] inconclusive due to low signal, novel vector. Prepare second message proceed cycle teleport spacial coordinate when ready (not fully sure about this last sentence).
8683977 The book Hermes uses a constant-thrust ion engine which is more efficient than a point-thrust nuclear engine. It does indeed have a reactor of some kind, and although solar panels are not mentioned, cooling vanes are. The only rockets of any kind mentioned in the book are Hermes, the MDV, the two MAVs, the "Delta-IX" booster from Eagle Eye III for Iris, and the unnamed booster for Tai Yuang Shen that became Iris II. (Delta-IX being a fictional successor, I presume, to the modern Delta-IV.)
Also, the problem with your flight estimates is that you focus on the Hohmann transfer window. On Sol 6 that window is about three and a half months in the past or twenty-two months in the future, have your pick. Iris I would have made the trip with a 850-ish kg payload, balloon-tumbler landing, in a flight time of 414 days from a launch date of approximately nine months after / sixteen months before Hohmann. It might be possible to work backwards from that data to guess a Delta-IX booster's delta-V budget, but I'm not knowledgeable enough for that.
8682581
5. Fabricobble up an electronic sensor and just leave the thing outside.
Point the dispenser down in a dust-shroud enclosure with a heating element to prevent freezing. Have an infrared LED on one side of the water stream and a sensor on the other. Measure signal with a PIC microcontroller or Arduino-alike, and send data into the Hab on a serial interface. Let a computer transcribe it in real time and log to file.
A similar creation using a suit dispenser and a servo motor could do the same for transmission. If they have a spare dispenser, or one they're willing to lose full-time, they could just leave it in there and automate call-and-response queries with the computer.
8683864
Well, I doubt that the typical head honcho can flip the table on their company's bureaucracy, even if they founded the company. Such would be the act of a tyrant (be they of good, bad, gray-area, or chiaroscuro morality). (Besides, did you hear his opinions on riding the city bus?)
8684025
Sadly, the free tools I have for orbital mechanics (I can't FIND a tool that lets me do otherwise) only works for those kinds of transfers.
There's two other issues that are involved here-
1)You need to get the (deleted) payload into orbit, and that's going to be a LOT of your fuel budget for getting this thing there.
2)When Andy Weir wrote this book, SpaceX had gotten a few things up, but they hadn't done the launch recovery of the first stage booster, hadn't proposed the ITS or the BFR, or a number of other things. So, Andy Weir had to assume extrapolations of current boosters (and, God help us, Elton Musk is working on the Falcon 9 Heavy, which only the Saturn V and Energya could lift heavier payloads to LEO), and they start at really, really anemic. If Andy Weir wrote the book today, I would safely assume he would do an extrapolation of the Falcon Heavy or the BFR to get that payload to Mark.
And, yes, the Hermes was a nuclear-electric ship (nuclear reactor, ion engines). Which bothers me because all ion engines have issue with electrode degradation and the VERY low thrusts that the engines can generate. Even VASMIR technology is pretty anemic. There's issues with nuclear thermal engines (one of the big ones is that they really need to do research on the nozzle, as the tests during the '60s used nozzles optimized for chemical engines and there were efficiency issues), but that' s just engineering. Nuclear thermal engines give us the advantage of getting our explorers to Mars very quickly, and every near term Mars mission plan that I've seen is built around the idea of getting the astronauts to Mars fast, and on the ground fast, where they have gravity, (some) atmosphere, and a (highly anemic) magnetic field to keep radiation away.
The issues becomes this, especially now in this story-
1)They have to get a payload to Mark and the ponies on Mars. It can't just crash into the planet, it has to land just soft enough to recover.
2)They have several VERY narrow time frames (planetary mechanics, running out of food on Mars, etc, etc)
3)They can't just send ten gallons of liquid vitamins, a ton of butter, a large case of Weeabix, and a few gallons of other kinds of amino acids for Mark to suck on, since they don't know the Equestrian dietary requirements. Until they get into communications, they have to guess.
4)Throw in first contact...
I'm interested in how they're going to solve it.
When I went to boot camp, we had an obstacle course AND a confidence course. Later in my Army career, we were also subjected to a team-building course. The team building course REQUIRES cooperation, as well as looking at the problem from different angles. The confidence course was very similar to the obstacle course, but did not prohibit assisting your fellow participants. It was also filled with "Don't look down" obstacles. The obstacle course is generally a test of agility and mobility.
Wow.
I’ve been reading fim/fanfics for years, and NEVER, I mean NEVER, have I seen such a dedicated, interesting, unique, and inspiring author such as yourself. And I know many people agree with me, and for that, you should be proud! I’ve been reading since about chapter 5 (daily), and I NEVER would have thought about this story concept and ponies on mars with Mark Watney, no matter HOW long you gave me! And yet this is in my top three EVER FICS! As well as ‘my little dashie series’ (still makes me cry) and ‘Dragon Ball Z: Daughters of Destruction’ (another insanely dedicated author). Bravo to you!
One thing out of the countless chapters you’ve made I’d tell you, is that when using a radio, ‘out’ means ‘I don’t expect a reply’, whereas ‘over’ means ‘I am expecting a response’. Only tryhard movies who don’t do research do this fatal yet common error ‘over and out’. If you could please fix that, I have nothing more to say!
As much as I love and very much appreciate the technical and scientific aspects of your stories, I must admit, that sometimes I wish you would focus more equally on the character interactions, like in this chapter. Mark's comforting of Starlight was sweet, almost like she was his child. Spifire's self-loathing, followed by her logical assertions about the real value of her role was well-done, even if she still has more to do to build up her confidence and realize her valuable role in the team.
There's still unresolved issues that Dragonfly pointed out with Berry Cherry having to spend so much time and effort to keep the team working efficiently together, now so more than ever with Starlight's new fragility and Spitfire's feelings of inadequacy. And that'll effect Dragonfly's intake of emotions, which Mark still has no idea about.
It's just, I hope these very engaging issues don't take a back-seat to the also very engaging technical issues affecting their survival.
8684332 8680929 Okay, I fixed it.
8684376 I can give moments, but time must pass and the story must advance. I don't have the time or energy to devote the 10,000 words each day -could- bring, giving full attention to every detail.
8683958
It's a good thing desks aren't designed to draw blood. Though I'm not sure per- (or con-)cussive activity is any better.
I hope Starlight doesn't damage the furniture too badly. It's hard to find replacements in space.
Your dad sounds like a hero of some description. Being able to dance around insubordination without falling in sounds impressive.
I still wonder why the ship choosed to jump into another reality, when there was million much easier destinations to reach. The only way it would make sense is if they they were flying around a hole between realities in the moment the ship was avoiding the object. I persume there is rather big resitence between two realities and the teleport spell will always choose destination with low resistence to avoid teleport into an object which could cause destruction of the object or it could push the object away in dangerous speeds. In one episode we saw Twilight to use forced teleportation. It caused destruction of a ball when she teleported inside of it. She could have hurt the girls. But she was very stressed in the moment and wasn't thinking stright. Question is why the ship even had the ability to forcejump into something with big resistence when there was space around with much lower resistence. The designer of the spell would have to be very drunk to design it in such way. And the same goes for others in the Equestrian space program.
8683906
Well, while the pressure is then sufficient for the water to be balanced at first, it would not stay that way.
If it was sufficiently heated, the pressure at the upper end of the tube would still only be Mars pressure and it would boil away layer by layer.
Without heating it might also freeze first (though I think boiling would happen faster), which would not be as bad for the hab, but still defeat the tube's purpose.
I think without some sort of valve this endeavor is doomed to fail.
8684915 It didn't choose to jump to Mars. It followed a pre-coded protocol: if a dangerous object is detected at the point of reappearance, shift the jump in a random direction to avoid impact or co-materialization. The problem was that, when it came time to generate a random jump, the spell wasn't limited to three dimensions of movement, and thus took a random 5D vector instead of a 3D vector.
I wonder if they tested this collision prevention system before using it on actual ship.
Their engineers are definitely not paranoid enough.
i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/264/534/c50.gif
Well, at least now they know what went wrong for next time. Of course, any rescue attempt will be greatly complicated by the magical requirements of a 5D jump. The crew doesn't have the time and food to store that kind of power, and Equestria would need to account for making two jumps, finding the right coordinates, and having enough juice to get back home.
Of course, that's a long-term issue. At least they'll hopefully have nonaqueous comms back up.
Has Mark told the equestrians that everything earth culture related he's shown them is 60 years old? I just had this picture in my head of them getting rescued by NASA and only then finding out that it isn't the 70s anymore.
I can confirm that, at least in Canada, the term 'confidence course' is used. When I was in Air Cadets (similar to JROTC but themed closely to the WWII RCAF and given some funding an support by the Department of National Defence) the large obstacle course at Camp Borden was called the confidence course. I personally think that naming convention is stupid.
8685137 The Sparkle Drive had made one unmanned flight and one manned flight before Amicitas. They thought it checked out. But they hadn't deliberately tried to ram it through space debris to see what would happen. They assumed it would be one of two things: (1) nothing, or (2) loss of spacecraft due to meteor strike. The third option, becoming involuntary roomies with a weird naked ape thing, strangely didn't occur to them.
8685197 Cherry Berry hasn't 100% given up on the "build a raft to get off the island" option, even if the materials to hand are insufficient.
8685593 English language lessons proceed sporadically, so the ponies don't have enough words to understand the message yet.
8685640 I'm amused by the term for its irony- and how its true meaning (destroying recruit confidence) is perfectly counter to the official meaning (building recruit confidence). From outside the military it looks like a prime example of military jargon.
8685754 The Rich Purnell Maneuver works for three reasons: (1) there's an existing ship already in flight with the capacity to fulfill the mission, (2) it has a ton of existing momentum and delta-V to build on it, and (3) the resupply probe didn't need to waste space on orbital or landing systems and thus could be almost 100% cargo or additional delta-V. Hermes is the only thing that fills the bill for parts 1 and 2.
Also, a radioisotope thermal generator (RTG) isn't a reactor. There's no chain reaction. Hermes is referred to multiple times in the book as having a reactor and a reactor room on board ship, so what it has is quite definitely not a 1500-watt-heat, 100-watt-electrical RTG.
8685915
To know if it (1) or (2) is still kinda important (like "would ship kill its crew" important). They could at least conduct a few experiments on the ground: program smaller Sparkle Drive to make a single jump and put a brick directly in front of it, for example. There is a lot of careless spellcasting in the show, but to bid lives on a newly developed system that never worked in actual reality before is too much even for ponies and changelings
Probably the simplest way to vindicate Spitfire would be to have some sort of accident happen that requires a pegasus to keep somebody from dying. It's established that pegasi don't fly purely because of aerodynamics. Their wings are too small. Magic is what allows them to fly. Therefore...it's plausible that a sufficiently strong flier, like for example a wonderbolt, might be able to overcome the low density atmosphere.
At least, in a single, crucial short burst, before burning out in the low magic environment.
8686172 Only if she's out of her suit. Equestrian spacesuits don't have wing sleeves.
This is getting more enjoyable by the minute.
that "confidence course" discussion made me think of the "Phule's company" books by Robert Asprin.
come to think of it, most of the characters only used nicknames and not actual names...
For whatever reason, upon reading this, I immediately tried replicating that face.
8909091
I think most of us did
Heh, percussive maintenence on one's own head.
Cya
Raziel-chan
no fourth though summed up as "buck murphy"?
"Dimensional limiter missing"? Welp.
untraceable... that's not good
Though they could do some more tracing on their water channel...
That was already explained in the original incident's description, wan't it? Well, at least now they know it too.
Yeah, but those kind of rules are rather irrelevant in a stranded situation like this. Not to mention, the psych would probably tell you that in that situation, this kind of behaviour is to be expected
How so? Didn't Twilight design that drive?
It's some deep shit, man
That's a very ominous tease of their alpha plan. Why do I get the feeling it's going to involve the water main shooting...uh..."extremely fertile" soil?
Wow
Even after a second view this work is still amazing ;)
One question though:
Recently I'm trying to translate the whole work into Chinese, and these quotes "Du Roscoe"/"Dihpstix" just can't make sense to me
Seems like they attempted to pronounce English using Equestrian Rule XD
9445511 That's exactly it. "Du bahd" and "Dihpstix" etc. are meant to be, "This is more or less what it sounds like, but it's not quite right."
"Du Roscoe" - Do Roscoe, i. e. "act like (buffoon) Roscoe P. Coltrane.
"Dihpstix" - Dipsticks (the Dukes of Hazzard G-rated replacement for "dipshits").
8686172 I'd just like to point out that this was months before I came up with the Great Black Spot, but I did eventually adopt this (without remembering who suggested it, or even that it had been suggested). So well spotted, you.
9445723
WAY back in the 1940s, George O. Smith wrote a bunch of "Venus Equilateral" stories
https://ebookhunter.ch/venus-equilateral-by-george-o-smith_55d5053b3a3e153da60b5db8/
There was a giant space station in the Venus Trojan positions to act as communications relays.
Here, they don't have that so at any given time half the solar system is on the other side of the sun & thus out of touch.
9449300 That's interesting, but what does it have to do with Spitfire flying?
By the way, the URL you post is flagged for malware.
8846864
That was actually part of the Space Legion military culture. Using your real name was actually frowned upon, and the whole reasoning was that most Legionaires had, shall we say, "spotty" histories. By which I mean "dubious if not criminal."
Rereading this story and going through the authors notes more thoroughly.
Having spent four years in the military at this point, I won’t say anything about your father. Instant obedience to orders is indeed something that they beat into you during basic, and discipline is essential for a working military.
But Vietnam was a shitshow. We had people with minimal combat training leading AND fighting that war. The only reason we where there was because of politics and the damn Red Scare. War crimes where the norm, and the conflict was unpopular from the start.
I’ve had to comply with stupid orders before, but they generally pertained to policy, and never under the kind of duress those men had to deal with. Maybe your father had issues following orders. Maybe his LT was a moron and he just did what he had to do, and he got pegged for it. Plenty of both in that time, so as someone who has never met him, I couldn’t tell you which it was.
On the topic of courses, I’ve always seen confidence courses as a physical confidence boost. Many people before enlisting have never done anything like an O-Course before. Getting them to go through it two or ten times get them familiar with it, and their own physical abilities. It let’s them know “Yes, you CAN do this, stop being a baby.”
8683958
was going to ask for a .. translation of this.
9681612 That IS the translation.
9663942 One of the few stories Dad told about his military experience- and he only told it in my hearing once- was that he cleaned up on a football bet at his forward operating base... and the base commander, a Navy captain, Welshed on his part of the bet. Dad's response was to literally kick the door in on the captain's office and pin said captain to the wall until he paid up. This got him his money, but cost him a pay grade and two weeks in the brig. I doubt the story is true as he told it- laying hands on the captain for any reason would potentially be a capital offense rather than a masthead disciplinary issue- but twenty-five years after the fact, Dad had no regrets.
So, yeah, with Dad I'd lean more towards "incorrigible fuck-up" than "heroic nonconformist".