— Lee Shackleford

Ever wonder what Konyechny is supposed to look like?  This silhouette is the most I’ve ever “officially” shared …

When I started writing the first notes for the series, I put a lot of thought — and research — into what a long-range spaceship might really be like, how everything would work. And of course nobody knows for sure —  not yet, anyway — but a lot of finer minds than mine have put a lot of thought into this. So naturally I’ve tried to read all I can about that and extrapolate logically.

Once I had a sort of “sketch version” of the ship, I even went so far as to design mission patches for both the Konyechny crew and the ground control crew in Puerto Rico. I’ve made them available as stickers and t-shirts in our Zazzle store (https://www.zazzle.com/relativity_podcast and I share them here now.

Getting a good look at the mission patch for the ship may amount to a plot spoiler! Because the ship’s actual mission (including the full contents of the Cargo Bay — pardon me, the Habitat) has not yet been fully revealed. So why did that crew leave with this image sewn onto their jumpsuits? What do the various elements of it actually mean?

The name is a bit of an inside joke, lost on people (like me) who don’t understand Russian. Eventually its true meaning will be revealed, but meanwhile I am deeply indebted to my Russian-speaking friend Maureen Hannan for suggesting the ship be christened with that name. (A couple of other Russian quips have popped up along the way, and they always mean I’ve been messaging Maureen with “Help! I need a character to say something else in Russian!”)

Confession: Getting back to the design of the ship, though, I’ve already gotten myself in trouble with the time it takes to get from one place to another on the ship. In one episode Chris sails weightlessly from the bridge to the junction with the rotating wheel in about thirty seconds. In another episode, it takes several minutes! Why? I don’t know. It’s one of those things where I hope nobody listens to the show while looking at a stopwatch.

I mentioned the two mission patches, so I want to share the other one. I envisioned it as an extremely simplified version of the giant receiving dish in Puerto Rico, with waves reaching out to the ship, which is represented as being in Another Realm.

By the way, I’m not entirely sure why I thought Mission Control for this deep-space program should be connected to the famous giant dish at Arecibo. I only know I wanted very much to represent the idea of an international effort that sent these ships out on their mysterious mission, so I didn’t want Mission Control to be in Houston or Pasadena.

Here’s the real present-day receiving station at Arecibo. It is not a coincidence that this is one of the main settings of Contact, one of my all-time favorite science fiction films.