Gagarin Class Survey Vehicle

In looking for ships to inhabit my Northwest Passage subsector, I've been doing a lot of flipping through 2300AD material. I love the ship designs in 2300 and will be using a lot of the larger designs as is. However, it lacks tailsitters, crafts in which the decks are stacked to take advantage of the ship's own thrust to simulate gravity. This makes sense, the chemical rockets in 2300 can't burn constantly for that continuous thrust, so tailsitters aren't practical in 2300. This isn't so for Northwest Passage, which uses fusion torch drives similar to (though a bit more modest than) the Epstein Drive from The Expanse, so tailsitters are the norm for ships too small for spinning habitation drums. I particularly liked the design of the ISV-2 Independent Scout from 2300 and decided to redesign it as a tailsitter for my own purposes.

I mean come on, the thing is just begging for it with that cylindrical design and naturally seperated deck sections the perfect width to be decks of their own if flipped on their side.

A Couple of Planets for Traveller

Hello. I've been quite busy for some time now, but things are finally cooling down enough that I can begin dedicating some time to this blog again. Here's a few planets that I've rolled up in Classic Traveller (with some extra tables and tools from Traveller 5 and the Worldbuilder's Handbook) that I thought I'd share.

The assumed setting is a bit on the harder sci-fi end than the OTU. TL12 is the maximum for human space, and grav tech doesn't exist at all, but cheap and efficient fusion is commonplace enough to make 1G constant thrust gravity achievable, a la the Epstein drive from The Expanse. It's near enough into the future that present-day cultures from Earth are still largely recognizable, but the area being described is far enough away that it lies at the very edge of any meaningful political influence from Earth. All of this can be changed relatively easily, and it can be used in any system, but I've included UWPs in case you wish to use them for Traveller.

I'll probably be posting planets in this area, which I'm calling the Northwest Passage Subsector, occasionally, but not on any regular schedule like I tried to do with my hex a week posts. On the subject of those, I'm unfortunately a bit burnt out on early modern Spain. I may return to the setting in time, but I no longer have any intention to flesh out a hex each week. It was a fun challenge, but ultimately not one I could keep up with, and especially not one that I can now.