Starfleet Flight Control Systems report

In 2381, Lieutenant Diziara wrote a report for Admiral Johnson about the flight systems of various Starfleet craft, largely focusing on issues she encountered during the course of her duties and she felt needed to be addressed. This report was done voluntarily—to the surprise of nearly everyone who knew Diziara at the time—in the hopes that it would cross the PADD of someone who was in a position to address any of it, and because when she'd started to have the discussion verbally with Johnson, his eyes had glazed over so she felt that it would be a waste of her breath to continue in that manner. The report has become the stuff of legends even as the craft and flight control systems she utterly panned in the report have largely passed into retirement.

The Report's Contents

Those who've read this report and are familiar enough with piloting starships and other space faring craft, and/or are engineers (particularly ones familiar with flight control systems) have largely found it both an informative and highly entertaining read. Diziara's (then future) brother-in-law, Jeff Wright of Schoester & Wilkes's Sport Craft division, described the paper as a beer and popcorn read. Celine of S&W's Starfleet Fighter Collaboration division had this to say:

“That was half the amusement. She’d dump like three heavily technical paragraphs, just utterly panning some system, and then throw in a short paragraph rehashing it politely in layman’s terms… and then manage to make a joke at the expensive of the non-technical reader at the same time. It was a work of art."

The report largely focused on the operating system used in all class of space faring vessel within service of Starfleet. One of the biggest issues she focused on is the inefficiency of the systems for shuttlecraft and runabouts, and how quickly those inefficiencies could compound if their maintenance cycles were not aggressively maintained.

The OS needs to be rethought on the shuttle craft and runabout class ships. They start to get a little sluggish if the regular maintenance isn't run, but with all the other stuff that happens on a starship, they tend to end up at the low end of the priorities list. Talking with Spiegel and Waterhouse, it sounds like the main computer core on the starships also suffer from this problem, but because their processors and memory are much more powerful, and because their deficiencies are in the face of the engineering team day to day, they tend to get the maintenance they need. The smaller support craft, they suffer greater for their sluggishness, and it gets in the way of a skilled pilot trying to do their job.

Perhaps we need to look into scaling the OS designed for the fighter craft. I know a special system that does its own maintenance was designed for those, and that doesn't suffer from the same level of performance drop when the maintenance fails to run regularly. Why haven't we scaled this up to the other craft in the fleet?

She had this to say about aerodynamics:

Also, aerodynamics have been pretty much shot all to hell on craft design. Yes, in space it doesn't matter what shape the craft is, as there is no atmosphere to give resistance for the maneuverability of the craft, but the smaller craft are intended for in atmospheric use also. We need to start considering the aerodynamics for in atmosphere use much more. I know I'm not the only pilot in the fleet who's complained that bringing a shuttle or runabout into atmo is like trying to pilot a lemon wrapped brick by telekinetics alone.

An astute reader will pick up on the fact that she has a fondness for the Delta Flyer, designed by Lieutenant Tom Paris of USS Voyager while the ship was stranded in the Delta Quadrant. She doesn't out and out say it, but there are numerous passing references to things the Delta Flyer design handles well that she felt was lacking in Starfleet designs at the time. There is speculation that she attempts to minimize her praise for the Delta Flyer in an effort to not come across in a gushingly awkward manner — it is clear that she holds the craft, its design, and even the designer, in high regard. Her mentioning of the Delta Flyer is easily the sloppiest aspect of the report, often times building up praise and suddenly stopping without a clean dismount from the thought in progress, possibly even having deleted a longer thought after expressing it and missing that she'd not tucked in a stray thread when editing.

The Response and Legacy

Even before she penned the report, her friends anticipated enjoying it enough they asked her to send them copies when she filed it. It reached Schoester & Wilkes by way of (her then future) husband Corey Waterhouse when he passed it to Jeff, so that the two of them could discuss it together over beers. Jeff read a lightly redacted copy of the report, but when he passed it along to his friends in the Starfleet Fighter Collaboration division, they were able to access the unredacted copy.

The story goes that the fighter division all read the report individually, combing through it to make exhaustive notes and earmark things to investigate within their own designs over the course of a week, then they got together to read it as a group, making a drinking game out of it as they went. Celine was easily the smallest person on the team and yet she was the last person standing when the last words of the report were read aloud and the last bottle was abandoned on whatever surface was available to it. The next round of fighter craft to enter Starfleet's service after this has largely been lauded as a revolutionary advance, and Diziara's report is highly present in the bibliography of the design specs and reports tied to the project.

Engineering students specializing in flight control and starship design at Starfleet Academy heard of the S&W drinking game, and for a number of years after it was a common hazing ritual for those students to run the gauntlet of recreating it until 2386 when one cadet ended up in the infirmary with Alcohol poisoning. It has since been listed as a banned activity for Starfleet cadets, but from time to time someone will work up the nerve to do it anyway. No one has been caught by anyone with authority to punish them.

Project Torchwood partially hails from the legacy of Corey Waterhouse spending his leisure time designing fighters and shuttlecraft in the early days of his career, and he heavily referenced Diziara's report before officially inviting her to collaborate with him. While Torchwood's focus was originally Emergency Fighter Pilot Holograms, when the project's focus expanded as a result of the advanced development of the holograms, and they started designing vessels with the holograms' integration in mind from the ground up, the report resurfaced as the leisure designs by Corey and Diziara were used as a jumping off point for the Torchwood craft designs. From there, the report passed among the holograms like a hot potato and soon in jokes were being shared in reference to the report nearly constantly — even after the initial trend died down, jokes still pop up in day to day conversation even to this day.