The Lotus-class vessel Slipshot is a near-light-speed (NLS) core band patrol boat or BPB. The keel was laid down 12/25/12008 by Core Autonomous System "Hera" running planetary maintenance in the Perseus sector, ten thousand light-years from Core Prime (Sagittarius A). The Slipshot operated for eighty thousand years at an average time dilation factor of one hundred, making the vessel eight hundred years old in ship time. Though this sounds like an excessively long service life, virtually all of the Slipshot's mass has been cycled during standard planetary service and overhauls, and other Lotus-class vessels have similar service lives.
The Slipshot may be described as a slim wedge or torpedo balanced in the middle of a starfish, with the reaction area or gush behind. Total vehicle mass is thirty tonnes empty, most of that weight consisting of neutron condensate composite armor and shielding material (NUCCASH). The vessel may carry more than three thousand tonnes of combined fuels: metallic hydrogen/antihydrogen (HIHO) for near light speed (NLS) flight and deuterium nodules for fusion drive. All fuel and reaction area facilities are in the starfish part of the craft. The wedge contains all non-drive inventories. Decks in the wedge are numbered from forward to aft, with the decks arranged so that "up" is forward, so as to provide a comfortable up-and-down orientation during normal mode of operation, where acceleration provides "gravity" towards the rear of the vessel.
Deck 1 contains the com room and weapon arrays. The com room is where most officers will spend their time in combat conditions or in emergency acceleration; it is the only location that mounts full gee protection. The pilots and available flight officers "lay down" on the deck's gee couches to accommodate maximum acceleration. Powered cable hoists flight crew as needed into the couches between the bulkhead and the flight instruments. All controls are analog-capable for manipulation at NLS, as micro circuitry sustains unacceptable failure rates at velocities approaching the speed of light. The bubble canopy over the control area is a transparent version of the NUCCASH material further protected by an ultraviolet laser array. The weapons pod immediately beneath the com room contains the BPB's standard weapons: 1) 200 gigawatt rail gun firing guided or unguided flechettes at variable masses and velocities, 2) 4000 rounds-per-minute gauss automatic nuclear cannon (GANC) with 4000 guided fusion bomb rounds each adjustable to 10 megatons at variable ranges, and 3) the main laser system, which is used to deflect micrometeors, strike targets in gigawatt mode, or provide close-in weapon system (CIWS) coverage. A potent weapon of last resort is the BPB itself; at 99% C, the mass of an empty BPB impacts with 4.05E+27 joules of energy, two orders of magnitude greater than the total energy output of the sun. If adding any substantial amount of HIHO, the resulting explosion is in the order of a small supernova.
Deck 2 contains four officer cabins, head, galley, and 4 lifeboats. Cabins are four by two meters with a bunk, zero g bag, desk, and transparent viewing window. Head and galley both interface with the life support systems further aback. Lifeboats contain cryogenic suspension facilities for up to sixteen hominids. Further survivability is provided in crash mode, a large injection which stabilizes the hominid body into g-resistant solids, greatly increasing the amount of acceleration or deceleration the crew can undergo. The BPB Norwich has been documented dumping twenty percent of its velocity in this manner by flying through the photosphere of hypergiant VY Canis Majoris. Decelerating in this manner is guaranteed to cause critical damage to the spaceframe and probable LOCV (Loss of Crew and Vehicle), but as the Norwich did not have the fuel for deceleration, that drastic measure was its only option.
Decks 3, 4, and 5 are split between the cargo area and the life support system. The cargo area is the largest single space on the Slipshot, as the BPB program relied heavily on intersystem barter, and rehabilitation of a planetary system can require a large volume of seed stock. The entire cargo area may be used as an airlock, but as an expedient, there is a smaller lock located off deck 6. On-planet equipment is also housed in the cargo area, due to the logistics of having a larger hatch in this area. For most purposes, planet-specific equipment is designed and manufactured as needed in the deck 6 machine shop. The life support system is an integrated gas exchange and consumables production system, producing nearly zero waste product. Excess volatiles from the life support system are routed to the plume shield generators.
Deck 6 is laboratory, repairs, and factory/machine shop. There is also a supplementary airlock on this deck to facilitate EVAs and other activities. This deck houses the extensive machine shop and engine tooling areas; cabling and other conduit is frequently run into the starfish from this deck to facilitate testing, maintenance, and other engineering activity without necessitating EVAs.
Deck 6 also houses "the sponge", a five meter spacecraft that allows relatively rapid HIHO refueling. The sponge is an autonomous vessel composed of 1) an orbiter with miniaturized cyclotron HIHO production unit, 2) a 6.9E+16 meter superconductive tether, and 3) a sundiver that is lowered into the core of a standard yellow sun to generate power directly from solar fusion. HIHO is stored in the orbiter’s expandable cold laser tanks as it is produced, along with deuterium nodules for the sponge's fusion propulsion system. Fully laden, the sponge is capable of a maximum acceleration of point five gees, enough to get it 1 AU in 4 days of ship time.
Deck 7 contains access systems to enter the starfish or drive area. Access tubes in the wings theoretically provide access to the HIHO wing tanks, but clearances of less than thirty centimeters prevent access for all but the smallest hominids. Manual field controls and analog displays allow the engineer to control flight from the engineering area or from the bridge controls. Flight computer access is also located in the ventral area of the spines, where solid-state circuits may be guarded against permanent relativity failure. Although the computer housing protects the mainframe in NLS speed, it does not allow the system to function beyond 50% C.
The starfish area contains deuterium tanks, hydrogen/antihydrogen (HIHO) tanks, plume shield generators, primary power generation, and reaction chamber (gush) management. The deuterium fuel provides gush at speeds under 12 percent of C. The plume shield is a heat exchanger system that provides bulk cooling and regenerates the plume shield that surrounds and protects the BPB while in NLS flight. The main fuel storage facility is capable of carrying two thousand tonnes of metallic HIHO in eight 400 square meter tanks, contained by cold lasers. The laser interaction on the metallic HIHO also generates a powerful magnetic field for the gush, which both directs thrust and generates electrical power through its interaction with the energetic particles of the gush. An unfortunate result of this is that power output and nozzle capability is cut as the fuel supply is diminished, reducing the vehicle's maximum gee capability.
The engine cycle from dead stop to NLS can be described as follows. Laser primed fusion powers the BPB to twelve percent C. At 12% C the deuterium fuel baffle shuts and the drive shifts to pure HIHO. (Alternatively, the HIHO baffle may be manually engaged earlier, depending on the need for acceleration and the proximity of planetary populations). The superconductive injection system (SIS) works identically with deuterium nodules and metallic HIHO flake, simplifying the transition. The same baffle that runs the deuterium feed also toggles the plume shield pumps, which begin operation at this time, pumping excess volatiles from the life support system.
The Lotus-class BPB can sustain 50 gees of acceleration for two years ship time, although hominid crews are unable to survive sustained 20 gees. Hominids in crash mode have survived decelerations in excess of 10000 gees. 15000 gees is maximum acceleration for the spaceframe, and can only be sustained for four hours before all fuel is depleted. HIHO burn at this level of acceleration introduces other complications, such as lethal levels of gamma radiation for nearby planets and disruption of the hull NUCCASH material due to extreme radiation. 5 gees is considered maximum cruise for ship and crew, which the BPB can sustain for 10 years of ship time. At maximum cruise, the Lotus-class BPB can travel from the core to the galactic edge in 4.6 years of ship time, equaling approximately 30,000 years of subjective time.
Lotus-class vessels are capable of planetary landing. Drive spines are mounted on rolling brackets that permit their reconfiguration into rough airfoils, vertical stabilizers, or floatation keels. Microfusion units on the underside of the craft provide some VTOL landing capability. On landing, the crew must re-orient themselves with planetary gravity, as the axis of planetary gravity is likely to be perpendicular to the axis of acceleration, which is the normal axis of gravity orientation during spaceflight. Caution must also be applied in using the VTOL system, as high output from the fusion arrays could vaporize large swathes of planetary crust before landing.
The primary mission of BPBs was to interdict intragalactic threats as perceived by core prophecy. The secondary mission of the BPBs was to increase the safety of galactic sophonts to the greatest degree possible without endangering Order Zero. Near the end of the BPB program a third mission was introduced where Lotus-class vessels began laying lightways from the Core outplanets into the Outer Bands.
The fourth mission, not specifically stated, was to keep the BPB serviced and fuelled, the latter of which was itself particularly daunting. The total HIHO energy of a fully fuelled Lotus-class BPB is in the order of 2E+23 Joules of energy, or 4.7E+7 megatons of TNT. The onboard HIHO production plant has a high degree of efficiency, but is limited by the crew's capability in locating power sources. In optimum conditions, given a G2V (Sol) class star, with the stellar power conversion unit (aka "the sponge") functional, an empty tank still takes a month to fill.
Servicing the Lotus-class BPB was done entirely in the field for three reasons. One, the Lotus class was out of production for three thousand years of its service life. Secondly, the outer arm star systems patrolled by NLS BPBs were so remote from the core that the timeslip made delivery of core technology problematic at best. Third, available technology in the outer arms always lags tens of thousands of years behind the core- sometimes much more. Core science was mostly used in non-moving, simple structures, such as the drive spines, hull, and the like.
BPB crews, unsurprisingly, quickly became little communities in themselves as their paths crossed across the millennia, a pattern that has continued even after decommissioning. It has proved impossible for many BPB crews to adapt to planetary life, and many retired crews continue to provide transport to the wild planets of the Outer Bands.
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