Sure, I could post a high def picture of the ASP Explorer's cockpit, and you might think, "Yeah, I've seen it a hundred times. Nice cockpit, nerd". But the photo would just be a dirty lie. Like looking at a 4K picture of the grand canyon versus standing on the edge of the precipice itself, taking in God's gut-clenching majesty, a perfect creation of millions of years of erosion.
I did the research. I looked at the stats. On paper, the ASP Explorer was the next logical step for me for my haulage aspirations. Great. Let's go. I sold my my Cobra Mark III and its utilitarian cockpit. I bought my Asp Explorer, boarded her, and walked up to the cockpit hatch. I opened the hatch, and it happened:
The glorious, glass shrine stood before me like a rhapsodic vision. What is this? I am floating in a huge glass bubble, the perfection of the galaxy's stars painted all around me. I don't even need to use the external camera to take in my surroundings. The Lakon engineer who designed this cockpit should be carried on the shoulders of their peers from the parking lot to their cubicle every day for a month, and given extra bags of Funyuns at no charge.
The Cobra's cockpit was a dirty stain compared to this, waking up in an unknown room, your head fuzzy, memories gone, a stranger sleeping next to you. You do the tip toe dance of shame, cringing at the clank of your belt buckle, trying to find your way out. Your way home. To the cockpit of the ASP Explorer. This is what you didn't know you wanted until you found it.
And you can say, "But wait until you see the cockpit of the [insert ship name here]". And to you I say, "good day, sir!". Let me have my moment in the shrine.
Mind the hole in the floor...
Starboard:
Aft:
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