MPA Student,
Sounds very familiar! Definitely a good idea to get some feedback here, nothing like hearing it from the horse's mouth.
Interesting what Avtur said about the Mission Console orientation, however in our design we went for the side facing consoles for space efficiency. That was where our design probably gained the most over the others. Our cabin was very efficiently laid out (probably at the expense of crew comfort!) allowing a small fuselage and significant weight savings.
If you can find a way of laying out the consoles facing rearwards without compromising on space efficiency then you're probably onto a winner.
Another general comment is that the design drivers for our spec were heavily weighted to minimise procurement cost rather than operating cost which lead all the groups into fairly conventional designs (mostly high-wing quad-turboprop). Hopefully 'Hairmuss' will have changed this to give you impetus for more inventive designs, although they're probably hard wired to appreciate conventional 'boring' design concepts.
As a note to the other contributors to the thread, the fundamental requirements for this project are quite rigid, so while discussion about the practicality of loading and layout of the cabin are most useful, bigger questions like the need for an MPA, whether it could be replaced by a satellite etc. are probably best saved for another day!