In the belly of the ship

I started today by descending down six ladders to "Central Control," the place down deep in the realm of the pasty-faced ones from whence the reactors and the engineering equipment are monitored and controlled. It was a surprisingly small room, but as you might expect, the walls were covered in dials and gauges, showing various pressures, voltages, and other trivial information that some folks find necessary to keep the ship moving. What I was impressed by was the level of automation and reliance on computer based systems for monitoring and reporting of the system status. Almost all the information the Engineering Officer of the Watch, Chief Engineer and Reactor Officer need is just a mouse click away. Yes, this ship is Powered by Windows! Actually, after a recent midshipman tour of the engineering spaces, the poor kid came to the conclusion that the ship was powered not by neutrons and electrons, but by Hate. Engineers on ships (especially nuclear engineers on ships) are not the most jovial of people. We live a relatively good life up here in airedaleville. Anyway, they can point and click through all the ships systems like steam production, electricity generation (and there's a lot of it!), fresh water production (and there's a lot of it), fuel storage, coolant recycling, and even CHT storage (and there's a lot of it!!). For those not familiar with the term CHT, if you've ever owned or used an RV, think black. Yup. When we're in international waters, the CHT tanks are being nearly continually pumped into the water behind the ship (not a place to water ski, let me tell you). When we're close to shore, the tanks start to fill up as it's all held on station. In very little time, the tanks can get full! And they're BIG tanks. Nuff said on that topic. Bottom line, though is that when it comes to aircraft carriers, everything is done on a gargantuan scale. The design engineering is just mind boggling. What I love to learn is the interactions between all the different systems and how they affect how the ship can be operated. Can't go into detail, but it's pretty interesting. OK, I'm sure I've grossed you out with this one. I really didn't set out to write about CHT when I started, but it just gravitated there. I'll work on my stream of consciousness in the future.