Sellestam S-3 Star Schooner

A Star Schooner's toroidal fusion drive (see Propulsion) also provides primary power through both magnetohydrodynamic coupling and by brayton-cycle generators connected via heat exchangers to the ship's coolant trunks. The coolant itself is a metal-containing oil that interacts with magnetic fields so that it can be handled without recourse to other moving parts. Adaptors at the forward docking bay allow the vessel to be powered by external sources, such as a refit yard's power grid, so that the ship can continue functioning as normal when the drive must be overhauled or replaced.

The name 'schooner' derives from the fact that the S3 features two separate drive busses as well as two prominent sail-shaped structures (see Armor & Defense), suggesting the twin sails of a schooner. As Lepidos is an arid world with large continents, the term 'schooner' does not neatly translate from Evermornan Basic to Tae na Lepidesn, but the engineers at Sellestam Cloud & Star did understand the idea of a wind-powered vehicle and became enamored with the imagery of the term as soon as they heard it from their Evermornan peers.   The first and most prominent of these drives is a particle beam sail at the front of the craft. The seeded star lane between Evermorn and Lepidos is seeded from the Lepidos end from the Tash Mirshep facility on the minor planet Tagdep. These beams use relativistic macron beams to project fusible dust into interstellar space. Much as a solar sail uses the stellar wind and starlight to propel a spacecraft forward, the large sail of a Sellestam Star Schooner rides the macron beam provided by Tash Mirshep. Though the collision of the mass of the beam with the sail does impart some thrust on the craft, the rest is provided by a fusion reaction that occurs when the content of the beam reacts with the film of heavy water ice that exudes from the back of the sail via capillary action. To decelerate into the Evermorn System, the ship not only executes a skew turn, but also maneuvers to intercept the beam from the Wadola Array, in orbit over the gas giant Mintigel in the host system, with its sail. Small course corrections are handled by microwave electro-thermal thrusters using water vapor as propellant, while orientation is controlled through a combination of thrusters and reaction wheels (see Additional & Auxiliary Systems). The schooner undocks from the sail once in system and returns to it when ready to undertake a new interstellar journey.   The second drive system found on an S3 is a standard toroidal fusion drive found at the aft end of the ship. This drive operates in power production mode for most of the journey, but can be used for in-system maneuvering or, if needed, to make the journey to the Armoa System which neighbors Evermorn as its distant binary. This drive uses deuterium fuel in the form of heavy water ice - the same ice that resupplies the sail mid-journey if necessary - but also breeds tritium as a side-product and uses that for fuel as well. Extra water can be injected into the exhaust stream to provide extra thrust at the expense of specific impulse. The fuel torus sits amidships, between the crew torus and the drive, so as to protect the crew from the neutrons and gamma radiation produced by this fusion reaction and its side-chains. The fusion torus' exhaust can be manipulated with magnetic fields, giving the vessel limited thrust vectoring capability for maneuvering, though its longitudinal moment of inertia is relatively high and, thus, its maneuvering ponderous even under thrust. The drive is separated from the rest of the ship by a set of high-emissivity radiators to reduce the coolant's temperature before it moves on to the larger, less materially complex radiators at the forward ablative shield.

The S3 borrows the Cobalt Protectorate's dual-purpose multi-spectral scope technology, using a set of three such arrays at the equator of the forward ablative shield (see Armor & Defense) for both threat detection and point defense against enemy vessels and interstellar debris alike. A set of four service drones mounted to the exterior to the vessel provide some additional defense, but these are primarily used for maintenance and materials handling operations rather than combat. A Star Schooner is not a combat vessel and relies more on escorts for self-defense when not traversing interstellar space.

The S3 features a parasol-shaped forward ablative shield that provides multiple functions. A cap at the center protects the forward docking array used in most embarkation, debarkation, and cargo exchange operations. On the note of docking, the outer perimeter of the shield demarcates the cone in space protected from the fusion torus' deadly radiation by the lithium-6 shielding blanket at the drive and ice tank at mid-ship. The shield is strung with coolant pipes, turning it into a sizeable heat sink and heat rejection radiator for the ship's various systems.

The crew section of an S3 occupies a disc-shaped, pressurized hull at the forward extent of the ship. A ring-shaped pressure vessel within this hull spins to provide the waking crew with gravity and also, with the help of a counter-rotating flywheel, helps to keep the ship on course as a huge moment control gyroscope. This habitat and its flywheel counterpart are suspended from the central support truss via magnetic bearings to minimize wear. A small crew is kept awake at all times to oversee and maintenance and other operations from the relative comfort of this habitat. Closer to the central axis of the ship in a stationary pressure hull are the cryostasis arrays where the majority of passengers sleep through the twenty year journey between Lepidos and Evermorn.   Though automated systems in the form of Protectorate HLAI and their platforms can conceivably allow for all operations to be handled without the need of a waking crew - and, in fact, are present on almost all Star Schooners, there are several factors that prevent this utility from being fully realized. For one, crew and passengers are periodically rotated out of cryostasis because, over time, space radiation from without and the natural decay of atomic nuclei from within a person's own cells will cause damage that will heal naturally only when that person was not frozen. Second, especially after the Armoa Incident, fully autonomous systems are not fully trusted by spacers; even if a HLAI itself is practically immune to hacking, the systems surrounding it are not, and adversaries like Aniki Labs and (potentially) elements of the Tribal Union of Hesparta have an interest in causing issues for Lepidos-Evermorn relations by way of messing with international travel. For these reasons, some segment of the crew and passenger population is always kept decanted and on watch, with 'waking watches' lasting three to six months to allow a month-long on-site training cycle to fit within it.   An S3 has robust medical bay capable of handling a larger number of patients relative to crew size than most other spacecraft. This facility features special equipment and supplies for treating cryostasis recovery syndrome and for administering cryoprotectant therapy. Though efforts are made to rotate crew members out on a gendered basis and to provide birth control when mixed-sex waking watches are unavoidable, there are rare cases where children are born mid-journey. For this reason, the Star Schooner does have limited neonatal facilities aboard. Importantly, the life support system for the long-term habitation ring is also made extra-robust to handle periods where a greater than expected contingent of the crew must be kept awake for some reason, such as due to a section of the cryogenics lab malfunctioning, passengers needing gene therapy 'boosters' due to immune issues, or, as suggested above, because there are concerns that a child below a certain age due to being born onboard would not survive cryostatis without serious developmental issues. The presence of facilities for extra-large waking watches does not mean that the crew take kindly to stowaways, however; there have been horror stories of trespassers assuming they can steal fare because the ship has resources for excess crew only to find themselves decanted more than four decades later, back in their home system with severe cryostatic recovery syndrome long after everyone they ever knew were old or dead.

A typical S3 has four service drones mounted to hard-points on its forward hull. These handle operations such as patching holes, swapping and re-annealing reactor components embrittled by long exposure to neutron radiation, and re-coating the sail when the built-in systems or a refit yard can't handle the operation. In a pinch, these drones can also be used to provide additional sensor coverage or point defense, but their utility in either regard is limited due to being outside the scope of their design specifications. When a Star Schooner reaches a populated system, it often fully exchanges one or more drones for newer models, and the drone operators in the crew take time to train with these new drones to ensure that they will be proficient with them should the need arise. Though it is possible for crew members to leave the pressure hull and conduct space walks to undertake maintenance where the drones cannot, this is seldom done while underway due to the risk of exposure to radiation that makes it past the lithium blanket or high-velocity debris that might somehow make it past the ablative shield.