Ascent

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Reusable SSTO HLLV, in low Earth orbit with radiator panels deployed after its ascent, designed for my Orion’s Arm future history setting.

Sixteen Gas-Core Closed-Cycle Nuclear Light-Bulb rockets arranged around a truncated-plug provide lift-off thrust, producing 1,200,000 pounds of thrust (5,340,000 newtons) each, from a thermal output of approximately 80 gigawatts. Radiator panels’ deployed on-orbit dissipate waste-heat generated in the reactors during liftoff.

The vehicle is a dual purpose passenger-cargo craft lofting payloads bound for Earth's moon and Sinclair’s lunar outpost.

This is the first generation of spacecraft operated by Earth men since the anti-corporate/anti-technology hysteria and subsequent purges and mass executions, which ushered in the Pandemonium, brought an end to the Age of Prosperity; its design and construction is derived from technical specifications and advisement purchased from the Martians.

Historical Note: The Martians are aware that Sinclair has orchestrated a grand hoax – using the hysteria generated by the first appearance of the Martian Uplift vehicles to play one gang-ruled kingdom against another … (the operation of the Martian nuclear pulse heavy lifters being visible over vast regions of the Earth). Sinclair turns tribe against tribe in order that he might increase his territory and extinguish his foes, building on an axis of kingdoms, the leaders of which he can manipulate and bend to his will – however, the dealings of Sinclair amongst men are not their concern. The Martians have a singular goal and purpose – in regards to Sinclair, their only interest is that he fulfill the contractual terms of his agreements.

Sinclair uses this arrangement to increase his influence on Earth and secure his clan's escape to the Moon. Leveraging the one thing the Martians require he provides the services of his people to act as on-the-ground security and a source of labor for the Martian Uplift operation, in exchange the Martians provide technology and advisement. In less than the span of a human lifetime Sinclair manages to construct an extensive base of operations on the lunar surface - which the Martian's find useful as a cargo terminal.

Contact and eventual collaboration between the Martian’s and Sinclair was perhaps inevitable. Sinclair’s tiny axis of large and small kingdoms being the only point on Earth where anything resembling technological civilization was to be found, having persisted through the long night of the Pandemonium.

Sinclair’s manipulations can be seen (from a historical perspective) as akin to a knot in the stream of history, formed the way a largish stone chucked into a stream creates a permanent turbulence, downstream from which eddies swirl … Just downstream from this minor eddy in time: men even more ambitious than Sinclair eventually emerge, plunging the world into 75 bloody years of the Unification War, forging the first global empire.    

Image is part of a future historical setting; see my journal entry Orion’s Arm Future History, A Synopsis.

A Timeline Graph is to be found here: Timeline.

For detail on Sinclair’s grand hoax and the relationship between the Martians and Sinclair see my journal entries:

Martian Earth Return.

Luna.

Vehicle design inspired by Anthony Tate’s Liberty Ship and the Convair Nexus.

Earth background image courtesy NASA/JPL

Related Images:

Ascent

On-Station

Point of Divergence

Selene II