Example scenes

Examples
A simple scene:

The long distance vessel, set to drop another batch of humans onto Cinova Primus had been traveling at FTL speeds for over eight months.  Jaxa and Morren watched the systems come online, even computers would fail in the chaos of FTL, and begin to feed data back to the command station on Earth.  Jaxa watched the screens as part of her primary duty, while Morren was tense and looked tired.  His wife and children were on this flight and the months of worrying had taken a toll.

There are a few good things about this, but not many.  A few interesting facts about future travel and some emotion, but the narrator tells us all of these things and it doesn't feel as though anyone is truly experiencing it.  Let's try it again with some dialogue and a bit more raw emotion:

"What have you got?"  Jaxa jerked in surprise.  Morren had walked up unheard and caught her off guard.  She took a deep breath and rubbed the end of her middle finger between her eyebrows.  Morren was difficult enough on the best of days, but today he was all jangly nerves.  It's hard to care for someone you don't like, but she could at least be kind to him today.  "We received a ping from the system boot.  If there is a problem, it would have delivered error logs right after the ping."  Just be patient, she reminded to herself.  If it was your family that far out in space, you'd want to know if the ship was still operational enough to bring them out of hibernation.

He sat in the chair next to hers, staring into his coffee cup.  She could see the veins in his head standing out.  "You alright?"

He eyes glanced at her and then back to his coffee.  "We'll know in a few minutes.  They still say it's the safest form of travel, but if something goes wrong..."

We have dialogue, both internal and external, and we know these two coworkers don't get along.  A bit of man vs man with an emotional concern over man vs nature (space).  The dialogue breaks up the introspection, providing us with insight into the relationship, a bit of technical background and both tension with a disliked coworker and the need to be supportive at a delicate time.  It would benefit from a little more background, but you get some of the points form the first example. 

Let's try it with some action this time:

"What have you got?"  Jaxa jerked in surprise.  Morren had walked up unheard and caught her off guard. 

"You can read the screen as well as I can," she jabbed at the keyboard to bring more receivers online.  The first ping had been faint enough she wanted to bring a few more up to catch any further data transmissions.

Morren settled into the extra chair and Jaxa bit off a nasty response about being unwelcome.  She took a deep breath and rubbed the pad of her middle finger between her eyebrows.  Morren was difficult enough on the best of days, but today he was all jangly nerves.  It's hard to care for someone you don't like, but she could at least be kind to him today.  "We received a ping from the system boot.  If there is a problem, it would have delivered error logs right after the ping."  Just be patient, she reminded to herself.  If it was your family that far out in space, you'd want to know if the ship was still operational enough to bring them out of hibernation.

He sat in the chair, staring into his coffee cup.  She could see the veins in his head standing out.  "You alright?"

He eyes glanced at her and then back to his coffee.  "We'll know in a few minutes.  They still say it's the safest form of travel, but if something goes wrong..."

Not a lot of physical action, but the surprise of his arrival creates sudden tension and her banging on the keyboard represents a spillover of frustration before she reigns in her dislike of Morren.  That little bit adds a sliver of edginess and, in my opinion, increases the conflict and tension.