I really want to do more murderbot art (particularly environmental studies since I want to get better at those, and particularly ART's interior because ART is the best character), so I have been going through book descriptions to see what's concrete and what's up for interpretation (which is most of it, since Murderbot is allergic to describing things it considers superfluous to its current mission). This has been a great opportunity to dig through the books and notice details I previously overlooked.
That being said, I've come away really feeling like some of the official book art is somewhat misleading on the sheer scale of ART, because holy shit, ART would have to be massive. It is effectively a floating campus, complete with student dormitories, multiple classrooms, a fully kitted kitchen, separate crew quarters with their own common spaces and amenities, an automated surgical suit, (multiple?) laboratories, and multiple auxiliary vehicles - and that's just accounting for the parts of it humans live in and have access to on the reg, and certainly not accounting for its various totally-not-weapon weapons. It houses dozens of crew members and researchers even when it's not housing students. We're looking at something on the scale of the Enterprise rather than the Millennium Falcon, to pull some more famous science fiction examples.
... which does make the fact that Murderbot came on board the crewless Perihelion, fully expecting to commandeer it via bribing its 'bot pilot' and ride off to its next destination, way funnier.
