Hypothesis

The Confederacy's premier survey platform, built around the principle that thorough data collection requires sustained presence. The Hypothesis carries more sensors per ton than any other vessel its size, and the fuel tank was sized so the ship never has to choose between one more survey pass and making it home. Four utility bays accommodate the full Confederacy sensor suite — spectrographic analyzers, gravitational mapping arrays, sample containment — with enough CPU headroom to run them all simultaneously. The default survey scanner and cargo expander are standard issue — the Confederacy considers both non-optional for fieldwork. The cargo hold is oversized for an exploration hull because the engineering committee insisted that samples collected in the field deserve the same chain-of-custody standards as samples collected in the laboratory.