| This page needs revising! This page contains information that is either out-of-date or from a different source (e.g. Upstream SS14). Some information on this page may differ from how it actually works on Delta-V. Reason for revision: "Add how to deal with pressure, preventing/dealing with gas flood, etc." |
ENGINEERING STAFF
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 Atmospheric Technician |
Difficulty: Medium to Hard Requirements: 10 hours in Engineering Access: Maintenance, Engineering, External, Atmospherics Extended Access: None Supervisors: Chief Engineer Subordinates: None Duties: Restore breathable atmosphere to depressurized areas. Ensure the station's air remains at liveable conditions. Get bored and create tritium. Guides: Atmospheric Science, Pipes and vents, Gases, Setting up the mix chamber |
As an atmospheric technician, your primary job is to maintain a safe and breathable atmosphere inside the station. As a member of the engineering department, you may also be expected to double as a Station Engineer if they don't know what they're doing in exceptional circumstances.
The primary threats to a safe and breathable atmosphere inside the station are:
- Air escaping into space due to intentional or unintentional removal of walls or floor tiles (spacing)
- Buildup of unpleasant or outright hazardous gases such as miasma or plasma
Atmospheric technicians are essential to keeping the station alive and breathing, and consequently are ineligible to be Traitor.
Quick-Start
- Grab equipment from your atmospheric technician locker. You should grab at least a hardsuit or fire suit and helmet, a gas mask and gas tank, a gas analyzer, and a holofan projector. Consider grabbing inflatable walls, inflatable doors, steel sheets, and metal rods to be ready to fix spacing.
- Find the distro pipe and inspect its pressure and temperature using your gas analyzer. If the pressure is zero and shows no sign of rising, take corrective action.
- (optional) Set filters to recover gases from the waste pipe. Because gas miners are available on most stations, this step is not very important. And, unless scrubbers are set to siphoning, there will only be waste gases in the waste pipe.
- Deliver portable scrubbers to locations that expect miasma build up. This is usually the cloning room or morgue in the medical bay.
- Monitor the station's radio or patrol the station yourself for spacing or other atmospheric issues. Fix issues if they arise.
- Make sure that suspicious people are not sabotaging your department.
Equipment
Like your fellow Station Engineers, you start with a full belt of tools. Atmospheric technicians may also have access to:
| Picture | Name | Description |
|---|---|---|
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Portable Oxygen Tank | Small enough to carry around. Hook this up to a mask, and you can have a portable air supply to breathe while in space or fixing leaks. People will probably ask you for these. |
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Gas Analyzer | Use this to analyze the composition of gases in the air around you, or to measure the temperature and pressure of gases inside pipes. |
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Portable Scrubber | Can be wrenched down to scrub waste gases to an internal tank. Useful for cleaning up a miasma problem. Must be emptied once full. |
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Holofan Projector |  |
Atmosia
Main article: Atmospheric Science
Atmospherics, sometimes referred to as Atmosia, is where most of the station's air handling machinery is located. Each station has a different atmospherics layout. While seasoned atmospheric technicians may have atmospheric layouts memorized, frequent useless station remodeling station engineering changes mean that it is more important to be able to quickly understand the layout of the station that you're currently working on.
Gases
Main article: Gases
Pipes and Machinery
Main article: Pipes and vents
Pressure and moles
All gas can be quantified by its pressure, mole amount, and temperature. These three variables are closely related and directly affect one another. If you add more gas(# of moles) to a given area, the pressure will increase. Take the same amount of moles and lower the volume by using a smaller room and the pressure will be even larger. If you then heat up the gas, the pressure will be even larger still. The opposite is also true, less gas means lower pressure. cooling down gas will also lower the pressure. Volume, or size of the room, also plays a role in pressure. A larger area will require more gas while a smaller area will require less gas to reach the same pressure. using this knowledge we can see why space has a low pressure because the area and temperature are so low.
Moles are a way of measuring how much gas is present in a given area. A higher pressure does not always mean more of a gas in the given area. If you want to physically fit a larger amount of a gas in a specific area, you will need to cool the gas down to lower the temperature, thus lowering the pressure allowing more moles to fit inside the given area.
If you open a canister will 100 moles of air into a large hallway, you will hardly notice a difference in pressure. However, if you open the same tank in a small room the pressure difference will be greater.
The standard livable air requirements are about 20 moles of oxygen and 80 moles of nitrogen at a pressure of 101kpa and temperature of 20° Celsius. If you have less than 20 moles of oxygen present, your character will begin to gasp and take oxygen deprivation damage. If the pressure is any lower or higher than 101kpa, your character will begin to take brute damage in relation to the depressurization or overpressurization levels. If the temperature is much lower or higher than 20°C, you risk your character taking burn damage from the extreme cold or heat.
Generally speaking:
- More gas(# of moles) = more pressure.
- Less gas(# of moles) = less pressure.
- Hot gas = more pressure.
- Cold gas = less pressure.
- Large hallway = more moles/higher temperatures needed to notice pressure change.
- Small hallway = less moles/higher temperatures needed to notice pressure change.
Space wind
Explosive decompression, or space wind, is caused when a sudden low pressure or depressurization zone occurs and all the atmosphere flows from high pressure to low pressure. Space wind often happens due to a sudden hull breach or when the clown opens the external airlock. All personnel and lose objects in the area will be flung toward the low pressure area as if a gust of wind blows you towards the breach site, thus the name 'Space Wind' is dubbed.
Space wind is very deadly to any crew member not wearing hardsuits with internals. Space wind will often suck you far away from safety and toward the breach site. The damage you take from slamming into objects(and objects slamming into you) along with depressurization, lack of oxygen, and freezing temperatures will often quickly kill any unsuspecting crewmember who gets caught.
Space wind was disabled on 5/9/2022 until it is fixed or there is a better alternative. You will no longer be pushed around by explosive decompression or airflows.
Useful trivia and tricks
- Always be prepared to fix a breach. Carry your Atmospherics hardsuit or firesuit with you so you can survive long enough to fix any breach at a moments notice.
- The Atmospherics firesuit is space proof and functions like a hardsuit. Just make sure you wear the helmet with it or else it wont give you any protection.
- The standard air mix is about 21% oxygen and 79% nitrogen @ 101.325 kPa at 293.2K (20°C).
- A quick and dirty way to vent high pressure or unwanted gases is to expose the area to open space. Breach a wall or open an airlock to quickly suck out all the atmosphere. Just be sure you have the area sealed off and no crewmembers get caught in the depressurization zone!
- Overpressurization can be just as harmful as depressurization!
- A pressurized pipe will violently decompress if unwrenched!
- If you want to check the pressure and temperature of a pipe, hold your gas analyzer in hand and left-click on the pipe.
- Make sure that the distro loop never connects to anything else like the mix or waste loop. unless you want to flood the station with superheated plasma and risk getting an angry admin message.