The Home Stretch
I have entered the homestretch on the Bonestell Project. The forward dome, essentially a sort of shield composed of large replaceable blocks as this thing would plow through the solar system, has been successfully integrated with the habitation ring. All the lights work, including the anti-collision lights, which I admit for a vehicle as big as this would be unnecessary.
I’ve also been thinking about the size of the vehicle. As an artist (as opposed to engineer), my primary objective is to produce something visually interesting and not necessarily realistic, though I admit to putting considerable thought into a few things. For instance, the engine is an intertial confinement fusion drive system, similar to the one conceptualized decades ago for Project Daedalus. The propulsion system consists of various tanks (who knows what’s in them), followed by a shield, presumably from accidental radiation and disruption that might occur for the instruments in the middle of the ship. The middle is composed of microgravity modules, perhaps storage and labs and so forth, with a small lab on an arm that rotates about the axis for gravity-related studies. Finally, we get to the habitation ring and the characteristic dome shield, itself containing machinery necessary to produce a magnetic shield emanating from the forward-most piece. This inspired a quick rendering showing dimensions, with the largest cruise ship in the world added for scale. All told, the thing would be a kilometer long and the habitation ring wud have a diameter of 400 meters. I assume the mass of the vehicle would be somewhere around a million metric tons.
Needless to say, I live vicariously though these imaginings…
