HOME | DD

Description
The Bonaventure Class Explorers first saw service with the Sagittarius Development Corporation in 2353, as they began the preliminary survey and exploration of the Sagittarius Arm. A total of ten of these great ships were constructed, and all but one (Amundsen) returned by 2356 at the completion of the first survey mission. Unlike many research cruisers and explorers which are refits of older military cruisers, the Bonaventure was purpose-built as an explorer. The Bonaventure class fulfills its role as an exploration ship with an extensive laboratory suite, a large bay for landers and other small craft, provisions for generating antimatter for the Long Jump system as well as for "living off the land" for an extended period of time, and is extremely well armed for a civilian starship. As these ships would be entering a part of our galaxy that was well beyond the roughly 150 parsec radio-contact bubble around Earth, there were no guarantees that the Sagittarius Arm would be uninhabited, and arming them against a hostile alien power was judged to be only prudent. Since the crash of the Stargate, it is perhaps serendipitous that the most powerful starships in human space are under the firm control of the SDC.

Bids for the project were tendered as early as 2339, while the Sagittarius Stargate was still a secret to the public at large. The design competition had three strong favorites, being Lockheed-Martin of Earth, Estrella Esperanza of Alpha Centauri, and Mercer Heavy Industries. As MHI's founder Frederick Mercer was a close personal friend of the SDC's Chief Executive, Gavin Aurimas, and Frederick himself was a board member of the SDC, it came as quite a shock to the entire industry when the design and construction contracts were awarded to Estrella Esperanza for a total request of three starships. Wisely enough, Gavin Aurimas ensured that the bid process would keep Lockheed Martin and his own friend's Mercer Heavy Industries involved as sub-contractors providing power plants, sensor platforms, and AMPLAR drive systems. Long Jump stardrives were provided by Aurimas' own Solarian Space-Time Engineering corporation in direct contravention of SSTE's agreements with the Western Alliance (the United States, Great Britain, Japan, Oceania, the Martian Alliance, and the European Union) to keep the sale of Long Jump technology a monopoly only their militaries enjoyed.

The first three starships of the class, Bonaventure, Enterprise, and Fortunato were received by the SDC in 2350 for space-trials and final fitting out at an SDC orbital complex in the Wolf 359 system. The SDC was pleased with the final result in spite of the many problems the design endured from initial drafting to fabrication and integration of components. The Bonaventure was a unique approach to space exploration, being first a starship capable of jumping up to 10 parsecs in a single hop, expected to operate without outside supply for eighteen months, and to be able to "live off the land" for an even greater period of time. In addition, she was to have performance characteristics more in line with a warship than an explorer, and a suite of weapons that made it the most heavily armed private starship class in existence. Though it is no match in a one-on-one slugfest with a cruiser of similar mass, the Bonaventure is a formidable starship in its own right, and reflected the reality that while no intelligent life has been discovered within 150 parsecs of Sol, there are no guarantees at 1500 parsecs.

The Bonaventure class measures 550 meters in length and masses approximately 18,000 deadweight tons when fully fitted out. It has a standard crew of eight officers, twelve senior ratings, and twenty-five junior ratings, plus a science department of forty, and a survey team of thirty-five, for a total complement of 120.

A truncated conical primary hull serves to house the command and control center; forward engineering systems such as reaction thrusters, life support, and an emergency 2500 MWe nuclear heated gas turbine power plant; a free-fall laboratory facility with biological quarantine stations; and the primary armament of the vessel – one heavy 7.5m free electron laser (FEL), three 5m FEL secondary turrets, four 1.5m FEL point defense turrets, and the missile bay carrying four R-45 Lancer antiship missiles. Officially, the warheads for the R-45s were kinetic burst projectile types, but in reality all R-45 warheads were 1000 kT thermonuclear detonation lasers. SDC possession of nuclear weapons was not actually unique for well-heeled non-state actors, but was a surprisingly cynical move for an organization that claimed to support non-proliferation.

Aft of the bow complex is the hangar bay, with provisions for two three-hundred ton heavy VTOL cargo landers, two fifty-ton general purpose landers for vacuum operations, and two fifty-ton VTOL general purpose landers; a large cargo bay attached to the hangar was nominally rated at 600 tons of supplies and gear.

Aft of the primary habitat is the spin-gravity hub and associated machinery, which links a pressurized ring with an outside diameter of 170 meters through three pressurized 'spokes' of four meters in diameter. Situated 120 degrees apart on the ring are three secondary habitats of twenty meters by sixty meters by ten meters, each mounted on independent gimbals that allow the secondary habitats to pivot to provide artificial gravity either through spin or through main drive acceleration. Standard operating procedure called for the habitats to be oriented for acceleration only during transit burns, and oriented for spin the rest of the time to provide as much continuity of gravity as possible for the health of the crew. The ring spins at an adjustable speed between one and three RPM to provide artificial gravity between 0.1 to 0.9 G. Habitat 'A' is the primary berthing area for the crew and laboratory technicians, habitat 'B' is the main dining and recreation area, as well as the berthing for the officers and senior scientific staff, and habitat 'C' is the main laboratory section with full biological quarantine safeties. The laboratory section can comfortably accommodate a science department of up to forty researchers and their assistants and technical staff, and can perform advanced biological, physical, geological, chemical, and if need be, archeological analysis on any survey samples collected. The ship's twelve bed sickbay with four bed ICU capacity is also located in Habitat 'C' to take advantage of the quarantine facilities and access to the science staff and equipment. All surgical procedures up to and including heart-lung bypass and cybernetic limb replacement can be performed in the surgery. Each habitat has its own independent atmosphere control equipment, climate system, waste heat radiators, and waste water recycling systems, though there is sufficient redundant capacity for one habitat to take up to half of the load of another. This allows two functioning habitat life support systems to handle the loss of the third's systems.

Aft of the spin hub is the Drive Section, which houses the four General Atomics GA-35R Antimatter-Catalyzed Fusion Main Reactors (10 TW total output each), their associated Lockheed Martin TTM-9000 Antimatter-Catalyzed fusion torch plasma drives (45,000 KN thrust each, total jet power 36TW), the SSTE Class XI Long Jump Stardrive, and the supporting radiators, auxiliary equipment, and fuel storage for the ship. The primary reaction mass is 3270 tons of liquid hydrogen, deuterium, and helium-3, plus up to 85 kilograms of antihydrogen for the main engines, power reactor, and long jump stardrive. The Bonaventure is capable of making up to four maximal range (10.0 parsecs) Long Jumps with its antimatter reserves, and given sufficient power reserves, can manufacture enough antihydrogen for one Long Jump in two weeks time.

Modeled with Google SketchUp. Rendered with Kerkythea 2008. Textures created with Paint Shop Pro 9. Bonaventure design by J. Austin Wilde, all rights reserved.

Description
The Bonaventure Class Explorers first saw service with the Sagittarius Development Corporation in 2353, as they began the preliminary survey and exploration of the Sagittarius Arm. A total of ten of these great ships were constructed, and all but one (Amundsen) returned by 2356 at the completion of the first survey mission. Unlike many research cruisers and explorers which are refits of older military cruisers, the Bonaventure was purpose-built as an explorer. The Bonaventure class fulfills its role as an exploration ship with an extensive laboratory suite, a large bay for landers and other small craft, provisions for generating antimatter for the Long Jump system as well as for "living off the land" for an extended period of time, and is extremely well armed for a civilian starship. As these ships would be entering a part of our galaxy that was well beyond the roughly 150 parsec radio-contact bubble around Earth, there were no guarantees that the Sagittarius Arm would be uninhabited, and arming them against a hostile alien power was judged to be only prudent. Since the crash of the Stargate, it is perhaps serendipitous that the most powerful starships in human space are under the firm control of the SDC.

Bids for the project were tendered as early as 2339, while the Sagittarius Stargate was still a secret to the public at large. The design competition had three strong favorites, being Lockheed-Martin of Earth, Estrella Esperanza of Alpha Centauri, and Mercer Heavy Industries. As MHI's founder Frederick Mercer was a close personal friend of the SDC's Chief Executive, Gavin Aurimas, and Frederick himself was a board member of the SDC, it came as quite a shock to the entire industry when the design and construction contracts were awarded to Estrella Esperanza for a total request of three starships. Wisely enough, Gavin Aurimas ensured that the bid process would keep Lockheed Martin and his own friend's Mercer Heavy Industries involved as sub-contractors providing power plants, sensor platforms, and AMPLAR drive systems. Long Jump stardrives were provided by Aurimas' own Solarian Space-Time Engineering corporation in direct contravention of SSTE's agreements with the Western Alliance (the United States, Great Britain, Japan, Oceania, the Martian Alliance, and the European Union) to keep the sale of Long Jump technology a monopoly only their militaries enjoyed.

The first three starships of the class, Bonaventure, Enterprise, and Fortunato were received by the SDC in 2350 for space-trials and final fitting out at an SDC orbital complex in the Wolf 359 system. The SDC was pleased with the final result in spite of the many problems the design endured from initial drafting to fabrication and integration of components. The Bonaventure was a unique approach to space exploration, being first a starship capable of jumping up to 10 parsecs in a single hop, expected to operate without outside supply for eighteen months, and to be able to "live off the land" for an even greater period of time. In addition, she was to have performance characteristics more in line with a warship than an explorer, and a suite of weapons that made it the most heavily armed private starship class in existence. Though it is no match in a one-on-one slugfest with a cruiser of similar mass, the Bonaventure is a formidable starship in its own right, and reflected the reality that while no intelligent life has been discovered within 150 parsecs of Sol, there are no guarantees at 1500 parsecs.

The Bonaventure class measures 550 meters in length and masses approximately 18,000 deadweight tons when fully fitted out. It has a standard crew of eight officers, twelve senior ratings, and twenty-five junior ratings, plus a science department of forty, and a survey team of thirty-five, for a total complement of 120.

A truncated conical primary hull serves to house the command and control center; forward engineering systems such as reaction thrusters, life support, and an emergency 2500 MWe nuclear heated gas turbine power plant; a free-fall laboratory facility with biological quarantine stations; and the primary armament of the vessel – one heavy 7.5m free electron laser (FEL), three 5m FEL secondary turrets, four 1.5m FEL point defense turrets, and the missile bay carrying four R-45 Lancer antiship missiles. Officially, the warheads for the R-45s were kinetic burst projectile types, but in reality all R-45 warheads were 1000 kT thermonuclear detonation lasers. SDC possession of nuclear weapons was not actually unique for well-heeled non-state actors, but was a surprisingly cynical move for an organization that claimed to support non-proliferation.

Aft of the bow complex is the hangar bay, with provisions for two three-hundred ton heavy VTOL cargo landers, two fifty-ton general purpose landers for vacuum operations, and two fifty-ton VTOL general purpose landers; a large cargo bay attached to the hangar was nominally rated at 600 tons of supplies and gear.

Aft of the primary habitat is the spin-gravity hub and associated machinery, which links a pressurized ring with an outside diameter of 170 meters through three pressurized 'spokes' of four meters in diameter. Situated 120 degrees apart on the ring are three secondary habitats of twenty meters by sixty meters by ten meters, each mounted on independent gimbals that allow the secondary habitats to pivot to provide artificial gravity either through spin or through main drive acceleration. Standard operating procedure called for the habitats to be oriented for acceleration only during transit burns, and oriented for spin the rest of the time to provide as much continuity of gravity as possible for the health of the crew. The ring spins at an adjustable speed between one and three RPM to provide artificial gravity between 0.1 to 0.9 G. Habitat 'A' is the primary berthing area for the crew and laboratory technicians, habitat 'B' is the main dining and recreation area, as well as the berthing for the officers and senior scientific staff, and habitat 'C' is the main laboratory section with full biological quarantine safeties. The laboratory section can comfortably accommodate a science department of up to forty researchers and their assistants and technical staff, and can perform advanced biological, physical, geological, chemical, and if need be, archeological analysis on any survey samples collected. The ship's twelve bed sickbay with four bed ICU capacity is also located in Habitat 'C' to take advantage of the quarantine facilities and access to the science staff and equipment. All surgical procedures up to and including heart-lung bypass and cybernetic limb replacement can be performed in the surgery. Each habitat has its own independent atmosphere control equipment, climate system, waste heat radiators, and waste water recycling systems, though there is sufficient redundant capacity for one habitat to take up to half of the load of another. This allows two functioning habitat life support systems to handle the loss of the third's systems.

Aft of the spin hub is the Drive Section, which houses the four General Atomics GA-35R Antimatter-Catalyzed Fusion Main Reactors (10 TW total output each), their associated Lockheed Martin TTM-9000 Antimatter-Catalyzed fusion torch plasma drives (45,000 KN thrust each, total jet power 36TW), the SSTE Class XI Long Jump Stardrive, and the supporting radiators, auxiliary equipment, and fuel storage for the ship. The primary reaction mass is 3270 tons of liquid hydrogen, deuterium, and helium-3, plus up to 85 kilograms of antihydrogen for the main engines, power reactor, and long jump stardrive. The Bonaventure is capable of making up to four maximal range (10.0 parsecs) Long Jumps with its antimatter reserves, and given sufficient power reserves, can manufacture enough antihydrogen for one Long Jump in two weeks time.

Modeled with Google SketchUp. Rendered with Kerkythea 2008. Textures created with Paint Shop Pro 9. Bonaventure design by J. Austin Wilde, all rights reserved.