What a view. The first parts of the Invictus are in place. The ship that will finally get me back into space and - if everything works out as intended - to our mission objective: the blue planet not far from here.
I did some calculations: based on the amount of material I need to take with me I will have to be a bit more creative. Going for a modern thruster approach would take a lot of gold and platinum. Even if I can find the required deposits, refining will take a considerable amount of time. Instead I will try sticking to a hydrogen thruster design combined with just the minimum amount of ion thrusters (so the ship stays maneuverable even if I run out of hydrogen fuel).
The Invictus will use industrial dropship frame for the ship hull. It should be possible to include atmospheric thrusters for low altitude flight, a large cargo hold, at least 2 large hydrogen tanks - and a crew quarter! I'm not going to sleep in the pilot seat this time.
I have always found historical spacecraft designs fascinating. Back when the first colonies were established - without the high powered omnidirectional ion thruster setups of today - accelerating, braking or even small course corrections had to be done using the ship's main hydrogen engines. These "burns" were even performed in combat conditions, often by doing fast turns and High-G maneuvers.
I remember piloting one of those ships in the simulators when we had our combat training sessions. It was just an exercise and we tried pitching the old designs against some of today's high-tech military corvettes. Even in the simulator it was pretty damn difficult to fly these things and with their large hydrogen tanks as weak spot, the opponent ships quickly found a way to take us out. Against state-of-the art strike craft - launched from jump-drive equipped carrier ships - you would not stand the slightest chance.
We did find something that worked great though, at least in the simulator: some of us would hide their ships close to asteroids, shut down the ship reactor and wait for approaching enemies. Once within combat range, we powered up the core and set the hydrogen main thruster to full burn. In most cases we got within the projectile guns firing distance way before the others could even spot us.
Construction of the Invictus will require all the tricks I've learnt in my engineering career. I want to be prepared for any obstacles I might encounter. I don't know what happened to my fleet and I could be on my own for some more time.
Whatever awaits me on my journey, the Invictus must be ready for it.
"Just good enough" won't cut it.
Previous journal entries:
Day 1 - Day 2 - Day 3 - Day 4 - Day 5 - Day 6 - Day 7 - Day 8 - Day 11 - Day 14
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