A singleship is defined as a small,
light duty interstellar craft that can be operated for long periods of
time by a single individual. Typically singleships carry a crew
component of
1 to 5 sophonts. They are not
specifically designed for high acceleration, but on average can manage
accelerations of up to 50g for short periods of time depending on the
tolerance of the crew and onboard equipment. These small craft are
usually found
in the hands of nearbaseline equivalent sapients and because of that,
they almost
never contain technology more advanced than mature nanotech (excluding
- if present, of course - the
monopoles
required for the engine).
The typical singleship design has a crew
cabin and at least two engine modules. These are arranged in a line,
with one engine pulling a tungsten shielding block, which in turn pulls
the crew cabin on long tethers, and the crew cabin pulling the second
engine module. This allows for braking without turning the ship around
mid-flight, as such a maneuver would expose the crew cabin to possible
impact with interstellar debris. At relativistic velocity, even a tiny
bit of debris is a potentially deadly missile.
The leading surface of the engine
modules is devoted to shielding the entire craft. Many systems exist to
handle these duties, but the most successful concept is a cloud of
nanotech devices that extends many kilometers in front of the
singleship, coupled with a coolant cloud released from the front of the
engine. These two clouds are constantly magnetically recycled through
the engine module. This allows any matter the vessel intercepts to be
collected for fuel (if the vessel uses Fusion, AMAT, or monopole
reactor drives) and breaks down larger bits of interstellar debris to a
more manageable size as it impacts the nanobot cloud.
Crew compartments require heavy
radiation shielding, as they are directly in the exhaust plume of the
running engine. This is usually accomplished with
ylem,
if the material is available. If not, a tungsten block may be used to
deflect the gamma ray exhaust of the engine.
When inside a stellar system, most
singleships use a magnetic sail drive system that combines the power of
both engine modules, and most also use this for braking upon arrival at
their destination. Other braking systems have the forward facing engine
turn over in mid-flight, and connect to the crew compartment. The
engine is then brought up to power facing in the opposite direction.
The
exhaust plume then acts to deflect incoming debris, or ionize anything
it can't deflect, so the magnetic sail can deflect it.
Most singleships have a
sentient subsophont expert system pilot software suite. This software
suite generally contains a stellar cartography application, a wormhole
link chart, and a short description of each destination. This
information can be updated automatically at nearly any spaceport. This
expert system also maintains the crew of the vessel while they are in
nanostasis - if such is used on the vessel.
The range of a singleship is entirely
dependent on the type of engine and the environment. If the ship uses a
fusion reactor, whether monopole catalyzed or not, as long as the ship
can collect enough hydrogen with it's magnetic shield/scoop, it can
continue running. If the ship is a monopole GUT reactor, as long as
baryonic matter is fed to the reactor, it will continue running. Amat
reactors require, of course, antimatter, which can be hard to find.
Most exploratory singleships, and almost all long-range singleships use
an expensive, transapient designed monopole reactor.
The crew compartment of a singleship
varies from ship to ship, to suit the pilot's needs. Most contain a
small nanofac, a nanostasis unit, and an internal virch world to amuse
the crew while they are in stasis. Most crew compartments are
surrounded in incremental layers of SiCHON material, to be used as raw
material for the ship's nanofac.
Contained in the typical singleship's
archive are the design specification for a multitude of useful objects
that might be required while the vessel is under acceleration for
decades of travel. These objects can be created by the ship's onboard
nanofac. Typically, this includes a plethora of high-acceleration
probes with radio data linkage back to the vessel, small
orbit-to-surface lander craft (with the specification that they can
reach orbit again once they land on the surface of most biont-tolerable
worlds), a gigantic solar collector array usable to charge up a
nanoflywheel array and a multitude of other devices.
With the onboard nanofac, it is not
impossible to completely re-engineer the crew compartment once it has
arrived at it's destination. The onboard nanofac has the capability to
convert local matter in the environment into usable material, if, at
the very least, amounts of carbon can be found. Once the ship arrives
at a destination, probes can be used to gather asteroid material, and
the onboard nanofac can convert both the singleship and the local
asteroid material into quite an extensive habitat. Some rather large
habitats began existence as just one singleship, several dyson spheres
in outer reaches of the
Solar
Dominion began as singleships
half-a-dozen millennia ago.
