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Description

Four Kilometers long and massing in at 35 million tonnes, this starship was designed to ferry colonists across the void of interstellar space on journeys which, at their shortest, would take decades. Using a single massive fusion drive, she would attain a speed of 0.1 C over a period of four years in a long continuous burn and then gently coast through the void. At her front is the dust shield, a layer of ice and processed asteroidal rubble to absorb impacts from micro-meteors along the way. Her payload was her passengers, living in the forward drum section on a few square kilometers of land under the illumination of a central light shaft. Any machinery that the population might need can be assembled in a set of factories lining the outside, though all raw materials need to be recycled. At the end of her voyage would jettison it's shield, flip itself around and perform a deceleration burn, gradually acheiving a steady orbit around the new star. Once there, the ship would begin to unload her passengers onto habitable planets using her small fleet of shuttles to ferry them down to planetary surfaces. It would also provide the colony with industrial support in their formative years, mining moons and asteroids for raw materials as well as performing repairs to the craft itself. After a few years the ship will usually move on to seed a new colony.

Description

Four Kilometers long and massing in at 35 million tonnes, this starship was designed to ferry colonists across the void of interstellar space on journeys which, at their shortest, would take decades. Using a single massive fusion drive, she would attain a speed of 0.1 C over a period of four years in a long continuous burn and then gently coast through the void. At her front is the dust shield, a layer of ice and processed asteroidal rubble to absorb impacts from micro-meteors along the way. Her payload was her passengers, living in the forward drum section on a few square kilometers of land under the illumination of a central light shaft. Any machinery that the population might need can be assembled in a set of factories lining the outside, though all raw materials need to be recycled. At the end of her voyage would jettison it's shield, flip itself around and perform a deceleration burn, gradually acheiving a steady orbit around the new star. Once there, the ship would begin to unload her passengers onto habitable planets using her small fleet of shuttles to ferry them down to planetary surfaces. It would also provide the colony with industrial support in their formative years, mining moons and asteroids for raw materials as well as performing repairs to the craft itself. After a few years the ship will usually move on to seed a new colony.