"Reason for an exterior control panel on a space ship" Topic

"In my story, the AI on a space ship has been corrupted, causing it to try and kill all living occupants.

The ship is on a collision course with a planet, and the main controls are inoperable due to the AI (crashing in to the planet happens to be the most effective way for the AI to kill the passengers, as most other systems have overriding safeguards). The only way to regain control is by accessing a control panel outside the ship, obviously via spacesuit.

What would be a logical reason for these controls to be outside?…."

Main page
link

Amicalement
Armand

Hey, I saw HAL at his worst when I was an impressionable age. I'm going into hyper-sleep with a pair of bolt cutters.

People keep locking themselves out?

If you're serious, it isn't really a control panel. It just lets the maintenance people access things without the extra hassle involved in getting inside the ship. (Higher clearances? Bunny suits?) But our heroic (or desperate) characters can USE it for a control panel.

Plan B. In the testing phase, the entire interior of the ship was filled with sensors, so controls were put on the outside for access during the test. No one ever took them off.

Option C it's what the writer needed.

Agree with Robert – alternately, it could be a control panel to – say – an airlock or cargo door that could be hacked into

Not really outside the ship, but a diagnostic panel that's accessible from the outside. If you've got an engineer handy, he can turn it into a control panel.

Secondary bridge in case the main bridge gets fried. Also maybe not actually outside, but in a different part of the ship with blast doors blocking the pathways inside. So the only route available to our intrepid space-beings is to go outside.

I'd agree with Stryderg and add this.

In modern buildings there has been a growth of what some call "Fire Brigade Panels". That is, a panel, accessible only from the building exterior, containing controls, permissive overrides for a buildings electrical and HVAC systems. This ensures that, when the firemen are working their way through a burning building, they're not confronted with HVAC feeding air into a fire or exposed but live electrical systems. Some of these are pretty sophisticated. A buddy of mine worked on the one for Canary Wharf in London. Armoured conduits, duplicated HVAC controls, communication systems etc.

You could use that same logic for a space vessel. An exterior control point for S&R / Damage Control or Salvage team to understand what has happened or is happening inside the ship before sending crews inside. Those ships are big and expensive. Bigger the ship, more such control locations.

I'd agree with Narratio's suggestion, it's a salvage, rescue, and repair console.

If the whole ship's infected with some nasty mold, you need a way to be able to see that from the outside.

Similarly, it would really help rescue teams to shut things down if they didn't have to enter the ship. Read Michael Z Williamson's Brute Force Approach for a scenario that would have been greatly eased by having a SR&R console accessible from outside the hull.