I will provide you with full notes of the most interesting and unclassified lectures. Probably, in the future, many things will drastically change, and these notes won't help you at all. Nevertheless, it will be a very important historical piece, useful for the reconstruction of rapid K-SAF evolution (or degradation).

Mentor Io: K-SAF. Mentor Io. I will supervise your group. You can call me “Mentor”, “Mentor Io” or just “Io”. Welcome to the MID-type family. The strangest part of the SAF.

Mentor Io: If you still don't get it yet, the military astronaut is a field agent, a specialist, the HQ branch, the Absolute branch, the Analytical Corps branch, the Diplomatic Corps branch, and the Mind Games branch. And other corps' branches, if it fits the situation.

Mentor Io: Our time and age are sort of peaceful, so you will get extra lessons in every area you may or may not have to work in. It may or may not prevent yet another diplomatic scandal.

Mentor Io: The flow of the MID-type crew training is streamlined and looks like that: 60 cadets in, 10 crew out. It's the most desirable and most ideal situation, but usually, we get 7 to 9 assignment-ready crews. Unfits either will quit the academy and pay a compensation fee or will be assigned to WNG/LRG-types or stations.

Mentor Io: Academy will build, adjust and send the crew into the wilds. The crew does not change over time, generally, it is set in stone. Due to the nature of the MID-type vessels, it is hard to make crew adjustments or replacements on the fly. The first thing is the casualties. If the MID-type goes down, it goes down with the whole crew. Partial losses are so few and far between, that we can think of, each incomplete crew as a very unique situation. The second thing is psychological compatibility. One assignment can take up to 6000 standard hours. Let it sink with you. 6000 standard hours, 6 astronauts in a small iron box, without a square millimeter of personal space. Everyone is responsible for everything and has complete control over everything. Every vessel's system is just at the tips of the fingers of every member of the crew. One small conflict nice and easy will turn into a disaster. Even small passive-aggressive acts can and will destroy the vessel.

Mentor Io: MID-types have only the absolute minimum of personnel needed to operate and maintain a vessel. A skeleton crew, if you wish. If we cut it down, the combat efficiency will go down. If we expand it, we also must increase the vessel size, so it wouldn't be a MID-type anymore. And we need more personnel for it. And it will change imminent combat readiness. So. It takes much less time to build, equip and send into the field a MID-type. MID-types are workhorses of the SAF. So, the engineers are building vessels and we are building crews. In the Academy we can see and analyze everything, find possible conflicts, and adjust things, trying to evade catastrophes. The truly incompatible cadets will go straight to the airlock. No exceptions.

Mentor Io: Let's look at the greatest example here: cadet Lis. If we pair him with the racist commodore, the SAF will definitely lose a vessel. Lis will not tolerate things. At best, the SAF will have LIS vessel (Lost In a Space) [Oh, the irony, - Rise]. At the worst, the SAF will have a renegade vessel. And, bloody hell, I don't want to have ever again even a ONE renegade vessel in the three-dimensional space. Cadet Rise?

Rise: Why you did not consider the death of the cadet Lis at the hands of the racist’s commodore?

Mentor Io: I did. It is in the best-case scenario. Dead Lis and useless and literally lost in a space vessel with very slim chances of survival without a navigator.

Mentor Io: Ok, next. At the time of war, the Academy must produce a steady supply of crews. The HQ thinks that crew shuffling, or mixing is a bad thing. And so, I'm. It's hard to adjust a new astronaut to the crew, it's hard to take over a new crew. The psychological compatibility, the shared experience, the knowledge about the vessel, crew, and tactics, etc. After a shuffle, the vessel is out of service for a long time. Cadet Safari, yes?

Safari: And what about Artificial Intelligence or True Artificial Intelligence? Most of the planetary jobs were taken by AI, so...

Mentor Io: Let's start with the fact, that all military vessels are automated as much as possible and that's why we can have only 6 astronauts on a MID-type. And let's end it with the fact, that the most efficient, versatile, and autonomous robot that can be produced is the trained astronaut. AI is still the shittiest shit. Well, I don't talk about TEMA from the Alliance, she is unique and was born as fluke hundreds of years ago. Let me give you an example. Once upon a time, my vessel was rammed by a bus. Ordinary bus. On wheels, with an internal combustion engine and stuff. It just crushed through KVS Sunbeam's roof and stuck in the light hull. Also, the gasoline from the bus was leaking all over everything. Ok, riddle me that: what the AI should do in a collision event with a bus? And what did the regular astronaut do? He woke up, listens to the weird report, went outside, taped up the bus to the vessel with the arc welding machine, cleaned everything, and commanded: “abort everything, we are going home”. Cadet Safari, yes?

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

Safari: But... it is a rather rare exception...

Mentor Io: Well, yes. I doubt you'll get hit by a bus. But on one hand, space is vast and empty, on the other, space is just a junkyard. The merchants are always losing things. Some torpedoes from the First Interplanetary War are still dashing towards somewhere. You can find lots of things, like pieces of stations or vessels, satellites, probes, whole stations, whole vessels, parts of the planets, that lost a star, and pieces of planets after supernova explosions. Somewhere up there is a two-kilometer-long monument to some bald man drifting through.

Mentor Io: Well, all and all, weird emergencies are not a common thing. More common things, something like a hose wrapped around a locator; a piece of armor stuck in the exhaust nozzles; a fallen off GRU (Green Reactor Unit); or a repairman who fell asleep between the active and light hulls. I want to… Cadet Desi, yes?

Desi: I'm sorry… a fallen off GRU?

Mentor Io: Unexpected activation of the emergency release system for the Green Reactor Unit. The MID-type carries two reactor units: red and green, according to the colors of the sides. Well, you can survive with just one unit, but at the time we've lost our last one. So, the pilot, using the very minimum power from the batteries, had to catch up with GRU, and then the crew go outside to catch our reactor and push it back in. The emergency release is a severe procedure, the unit leaves the vessel along with pieces of the reactor compartment, I had to improvise and plug it back in through whatever I had to. This task requires a lot of imagination, you must solve a complex technical problem with a minimum of resources. For example, I used cooked and then frozen army rations as a gasket.

Desi: Roger that, thank you.

Mentor Io: And now to the most important part. To the glass foundation of our world. To the pinhole system. You may think that the shortest way from point A to point B is a straight line. You are wrong. The shortest way possible is not a line, but a dot. With a pinhole system, we can cheat out and bend space, making a hole that will connect point A and point B. You don't need to traverse time and space, you are already there. The nuances of the pinhole systems will be explained in the navigation fundamentals lecture. I will tell you only one main thing. The pinhole system is linked to an observer effect. Someone must be there, so a pinhole can be created. Argentum's labs went through many options: AI, brains in jars, animals, katz in comas, katz in their sleep… Nothing worked. We need an alive and sober navigator. However, a 79% drunk navigator would work, too.

Mentor Io: But one navigator is not enough. The vessel needs to be operated. The autopilot does not always do the job, plus the autopilot consumes the energy and processing power of the vessel. In the direct engagement, these things can be used elsewhere, like, for location systems, maneuvering, guns, etc.

Mentor Io: The pilot and navigator need to see what's going on around them and need to be able to communicate with other vessels. But the first one is busy with maneuvering, the second with routes and pinholes. Ok, let's add a network specialist.

Mentor Io: The pilot can't shoot. This is not a small and simple WNG-type. MID-type has complex firing systems and complex weapons. For example, a torpedo must be prepared: aimed, locked in, programed, launched. You can't do that while maneuvering. Ok, let's add a gunner specialist.

Mentor Io: The heart of the MID-type military vessel is the two reactor units. Two little unstable stars that keep trying to pull some sneaky trick with splitting, decomposition, mutation, transformation, or rebirth. We NEED an engineering specialist.

Mentor Io: So, in the end, we have a navigator specialist, a pilot specialist, a network specialist, a gunner specialist, and an engineering specialist. They can suffer from malfunction too. So, we need a medical specialist. That's it. That's your minimum.

Mentor Io: The nuances and superstitions of each specialization will be explained to you at other lectures in the future.

Mentor Io: In the meantime, you must learn your specialization and socialize with everyone. To get to know each other, to talk, to play, to make friends. To find your best soulmates out of the available resources. For long, long hours, you'll share the small apartments of the MID-type vessel with someone from here. This is more serious than a tribe, clan, biological or synthetic family. It is your crew. Don't forget that.

Mentor Io: Everything that happens in the Academy is a learning experience. Not a final test. You must act, you must learn, you must ask questions, and can make mistakes. Because you won't have the right to make mistakes up there.

Mentor Io: In the Academy, you are not allowed to make only critical mistakes. They are all described in the “critical failures” file. Read it. Dismissed.