Nav Tank

Nav Tank

Most central and traditional piece of equipment aboard almost  all Union Space Ships ( civilian and military).

It developed from the Course Plotting table of Pre Astro wet keel navy ships of Earth, the Astrograph of the Sarans and the  Astro Nav Sphere of the Ult. It was standard equipment even long before the Uni Design doctrine.

The NAV tanks is usually situated on the bridge or in the so called Command and Control area righr behind or close to the bridge.

It is part of the ships Navigation department's equipment and is maintained by the Chief Navigator.

On ships of the Union Navy, the NAV tank is an independent system with its own energy source, its own Computronic (not connected to the Main Computronic in any way)[4]

On larger ships it has its own sensor array. The programming is not tobe altered and updated by the Union Astrographic Department of the Science Council every year.

It always displays the ship at the center. The display can be zoomed in or zoomed out and always shows all contacts,all celestial objects, stars, known cosmic hazards and traffic lanes.

It further displays all known political borders and spheres of influence.

It calculates its position by reference to known Pulsars and visual data from the ships optiscope.

The tanks have different designs, and sizes. The biggest tank is aboard the USS Devastator and in from of a "look down table". [1] (table surface is 10 x 8 meters )and the smallest is aboard the USS Mighty Mouse, a former Battle ship of the New World Commonwealth , now part of the X Fleet of NAVINT  with a foot print of 10 x 8 cm.

Nav Tanks give Captains, Ship Crews and Navigators an intuitice easy to understand situation view of the 3 dimensional space around the ship.[2][3].

Even the latest and most advanced ships have a NAV Tank. Union Ship designers would not design a ship without it.

[1] One of the favorite tools of Admiral Stahl

[2] Bubble top Bridge systems project the Nav tank view onto the bubble dome with the Command Seat as center focus. But even Bubble Bridge ships have a Nav Tank (usually on a hydraulic system to rise and lower it)

[3] The USS Tigershark was the first with a so called Battle Dome or Battle View component, that allowed a similar experience but even the Tigershark had a NAV tank.

[4] To prevent data contamination in case one system is corrupted or malfunctioning. Knowing the position of the ship has always been paramount information to any Ship command persnnel.