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gcronau (4)
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Email was available to the tech savvy by the mid 70's and to the non-techie by the mid to late 80's. Pay phones were still very much present well into the early 00's and you can still find them in various places(airports, hotels, etc) though they are getting to be a rare animal.
She's 26. I'd call that mid 20's.
I was somewhat annoyed that they referred to Jim throughout the movie as simply a "mechanic", as that implies a technical level job and job duty/activities. Technician level workers, for the most part, perform installation and repair work using tightly defined and taught procedures that are created by people at the engineering level. They're NOT encouraged to be creative. "Just do what's in the book, Bob. The book is always right..." Engineers, on the other hand, are usually involved with research, development, and design level work. They *are* encouraged to be creative.
But at the beginning of the film, when Jim is just being defrosted(so to speak) in his hibernation tube, his status and data display shows: "JAMES PRESTON DENVER COLORADO RATE 2 MECHANICAL ENGINEER".
A Mechanical Engineer is *not* a mechanic. Also, they show that Jim is a bright, curious person who's skills go beyond just the mechanical engineering field. He's obviously also talented with electronics and robotics, and probably many other areas. He appears to be a born "tinkerer".
(Actually, this could be a failure of the script writers to actually understand what the difference is between an engineer and a technician. Also, to top it all off, the skills Jim demonstrates are actually more appropriate to an electronics engineer, not a mechanical engineer. Which might be a further indication of the cluelessness of the script writers in this particular area.)
As for the ship, they state in the movie that the ship carries "spare parts for everything". It has an advanced inventory system, so locating what they need should be relatively easy, plus it's shown that repair manuals appear to be plentiful and easy to get to. Probably even more so once they gained bridge access via Gus's high-level crew wrist ID thingy.
The ship is shown to already possess a very advanced auto-diagnostic and repair system. It was able to keep the main reactor from blowing for over 2 years before it couldn't keep all the balls it was trying to juggle up in the air. And by Jim's own acknowledgement, most repair work in the time period of this move was just unplug-and-replace at the module level. So the idea that Jim was able to locate the correct manual that said:
How to repair main reactor control computer:
1.) Secure replacement core processor module XQ999Z/A1 from storage location 7932/B.
2.) Unplug and discard old module.
3.) QUICKLY Install new module.
4.) Cross fingers.
was not actually all that far-fetched.
After the main reactor's control computer was fixed, that took the load off all the other systems on board. Once Jim brought the auto-diagnostic system back on-line(or it brought itself back on-line), the ship was likely able to fix all it's other problems by itself.
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