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http://ift.tt/1TXrdNh:
Right??????
The thing that’s messing with me is that, in the light of this knowledge that supposedly pilots maintain their own craft (and SERIOUSLY??!?!! you know how much is involved in keeping an AIRPLANE up??? imagine a SPACECRAFT!!!), I don’t understand their rank structure at all.
The way that it works for the US military at least is that for all our aircraft, the pilot is the commanding officer. He not only flies the thing, he also makes decisions, and in the case of craft with crews, commands the crew. So pilots spend the vast majority of their careers in briefing rooms, being explained to (PowerPoint! everything is PowerPoint, oh my god), so that they can make all the necessary decisions. Even if they’re part of a group that’s being led by someone higher up– the pilots are still really well-informed, so that they know as much as possible, so they are able to decide what happens. They know the overarching point of the mission, they know everything it’s possible to tell them about the surrounding area– they’re given the tools to handle the situation if it changes, they’re given back-up plans and secondary objectives and so on. Flying the plane is basically like the least important thing they do.
If they’re spending all of their time with a wrench instead, because aircraft need a shitload of maintenance, then when the hell are they supposed to get briefed?
And in Poe’s case, he’s clearly not just in charge of directing the other craft while on missions, he’s also clearly involved in command decisions including planning those missions. When the hell is he going to have the time to perform routine starcraft maintenance, let alone repair damage??? Most craft have a whole maintenance crew associated with them!
And more complex craft like helicopters– they have a crew that flies with them, they have a crew chief who stays with that same bird– the name on the bird’s nose is NOT the pilot’s, it’s the crew chief’s! It’s HIS bird, and HE does– well, everything except fly it! (I know this because a friend of my dude’s was a crew chief and his bird crashed due to a maintenance issue and it was only because it was a Huey that was literally twenty years older than he himself was that it was ruled not his fault [after a terrifying kind of tribunal situation!]– it was a part that was not replaceable and should not have worn, except that the craft was decades past end-of-life. Fortunately no one was hurt.)
A N Y W A Y. Whoever came up with that bit of worldbuilding has NO IDEA what pilots actually do. OR what maintenance crews do! Even a damn Hum-vee has so much maintenance it needs to keep it running! Now think about the space shuttles and how many people work so hard on those! There is A Lot involved here, and one guy who also has to attend the mission briefings is not going to be able to do it.
And it kind of comes down to the important distinction, in most Earth militaries, between your administrator/officers and your technician/enlisted– a very clear separation of responsibilities and such, and difference in philosophies, and maybe you can structure your space military in a different way but every bit you change has cascading consequences and I just don’t know if anyone’s really thought them all through, you know??
So I’ve kind of solved it by giving the pilots checklists. It makes sense they’d be better-trained on basic troubleshooting etc., because starcraft are likely to strand you far far far from your maintenance team and in a way that they can’t just come pick you up in a Jeep from whatever cornfield you landed in (oh that’s ANOTHER story, the time a Blackhawk set down behind my parents’ house due to a sudden malfunction, oh my gosh my dad was BESIDE HIMSELF. It was pretty cool!) So like. I guess I get it a little, but come on.
Let’s just say that Poe can make all the switches flip to green, but he’s not going to bypass a compressor himself.
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