Member
Sep
ForsytheName of Ship: The Second Chance
Home Universe/Name of Franchise: The Commonwealth Saga by Peter F. Hamilton
TV Tropes
Wikipedia
Namely, the novels Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained.
Ship Class: (Unique)
Role: Exploration Ship
Physical Description/Image:
This image is... somewhat decent.
Supplemented by two versions of the book cover art:
Physical Size (roughly): 400m long x 150m diameter cylinder with a 300m diameter spinning habitation ring.
Armament/Complement (roughly):
200 Missiles - of which 150 have been fired. A good half of those are nuclear.
Plasma Lances - Take plasma and weaponize it! Like a laser, but not! Very hot!
Laser Batteries - Very high frequency lasers, used in both point defense and offensive roles
Two shuttle pods - spherical craft with 10 days of delta-v, room for 15, and no atmospheric capability
24 recon/sensor/scientific satellites - in three different sizes/classes/costs/levels of usefulness.
Wormhole drive: Not a weapon per se, but, it has some useful edge cases. For example, if you chuck some kinetic rounds inside a wormhole and then accelerate the wormhole exit to a decent fraction of the speed of light, you have an effective weapon.
Or you could throw missiles in one end and have them exit anywhere else you'd like.
Of course, the Second Chance's wormhole drive is currently configured for none of this.
History of the Ship: The Second Chance was humanity's first interstellar ship. Prior to the construction of the ship, humanity had expanded into a several-dozen solar system commonwealth linked through the use of wormhole technology. Literally we got from planet to planet by taking trains through wormholes. Humanity had settled the sporadic H-Congruous planets in a big chunk of space, but had barely explored anything but the habitable planets they occupied. It wasn't until the astronomer Dudley Bose observed a pair of stars - the Dyson Pair - abruptly winking out before humanity felt the need to explore beyond the reach of commercial wormhole gateways. To quote Ozzie Isaac, one of the inventors of wormhole tech, "Oh, man, that is so beautiful. Whaddayaknow, the space cadets won after all. Let's press the red button and zoom off into hyperspace. [...] Everything we built our wormhole to avoid."
Then a rather significant incident involving a race of xenophobic, genocidal aliens happened.
This may or may not have to do with humanity sending a spaceship over to poke at a pair of stars some advanced alien race had sensibly cordoned off with a giant force field.
The Second Chance was therefore repurposed from a well-appointed, noble exploration ship into a not-great war ship. When the aliens attacked the planet Anshun - a regional industrial capital - the Second Chance was in the right place at the right time to try and defend the planet. While doing a passable job at fending off the aliens, the greatly-outnumbered Second Chance was seemingly destroyed - the enemy surrounded it with eight wormholes designed to interfere with the ship's hyperspace drive, and then 768 nuclear missiles detonated.
Astonishingly, the crew found themselves in a different universe instead of dead.
Notable Crew:
The Second Chance is currently operating in a reduced crew capacity - since the ship became a part of the Navy, there's been less need to have the full complement of science crew. So, you know, they could pick up passengers at some point.
Tu Lee, Captain.
Tu Lee is one of the many rapidly-promoted people brought about by the sudden need of the Commonwealth to create a Navy. This is her second week as Captain - the first week was a long-range recon mission searching for enemy wormhole activity.
Prior to becoming Captain, Tu Lee was the pilot of the Second Chance during its mission to investigate the Dyson Pair.
Gertrude Arany, XO.
Gertrude was the commander of a planetside coast guard ship before being drafted into the Navy. She absolutely hates space. Rather than show it, she stuffs those feelings down a deep, deep hole. She's the kind of person who refuses to back down from any challenge or task - this may be related to how much she hates space and refuses to show it. When very drunk, she may admit to her fearloathing of space.
Craig Laroch, Sensors.
Abraham Gunther, Pilot.
Optional, but helpful:
Unique Technology:
In general, humanity is very good at manipulating wormholes, cyber/bio-ware, and hyperspace technology, but not so good at the rest of space technology. They've got hyperspace, but sublight "drives" still operate on 300-year-old plasma rocket tech. There's no artificial gravity, but there are tattooed-circuitry limited-AI's known as Virtual Intelligences.
Wormholes - The Second Chance takes advantage of humanity's longstanding mastery of wormhole tech. Rather than a standard FTL drive, the ship makes a wormhole, slips into it, and then moves the endpoint before the ship reaches it. It travels in a series of moving wormholes, and has the capability of creating wormholes with two free-floating endpoints, given sufficient modification. Of course, that would disable the ship's FTL.
Memorycells/Re-life tech - Consciousness is backed up onto memorycells embedded in the brain. If you die, you can simply be uploaded into a new clone. Usually this is handled on a nice, comfy planet with a recovery clinic and, preferably, some recreational facilities nearby. The Second Chance, however, was going to be several thousand lightyears from the nearest human industry, so it was equipped with a slow, poorly-functioning relife clinic. It may take a couple of months before someone's clone is fully grown.
Rejuvenation - On the other hand, why wait until you die? Every 30-50 years, people can get "rejuvenated" and restore their body to a biological age of 20. This is, obviously, not a facility included on the Second Chance.
Cyberware/Biotech - Implants and wetware are commonplace. For instance, you can have a transceiver implanted into your neural network which lets you access the Unisphere (the interstellar internet) from anywhere. OC (organic circuitry) Tattoos are also common. OC Tattoos are often colorful, metallic tattoos which act as processors for other implants, allowing anything from credit transfer to expanded senses to muscle augmentations. Finally, you have the uncommon wet-wired implants - guns, forcefields, explosives, scanners and the like that are implanted beneath the skin.
Augmented reality is very much a Thing.
Force Fields - actually secretly given/suggested to humanity as a long con by an alien from a crashed ship - but they work! They're not amazing, but they are functional.
VI - Virtual Intelligence - a very capable computer program that's been carefully designed to avoid becoming self-aware. Humanity has created a true artificial intelligence - which now lives alone on its own planet, connected to humanity only by a zero-width wormhole - but people and ships limit themselves to VI's for general processing power.
Crew Size: 800, but currently down to 250
Faction/Operator/Owner: CST (Compressed Space Transport) Exploration Division. CST is the company which owns over half of the Commonwealth's interstellar wormhole network.
Home Universe/Name of Franchise: The Commonwealth Saga by Peter F. Hamilton
TV Tropes
Wikipedia
Namely, the novels Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained.
Ship Class: (Unique)
Role: Exploration Ship
Physical Description/Image:
This image is... somewhat decent.
Supplemented by two versions of the book cover art:
Physical Size (roughly): 400m long x 150m diameter cylinder with a 300m diameter spinning habitation ring.
Armament/Complement (roughly):
200 Missiles - of which 150 have been fired. A good half of those are nuclear.
Plasma Lances - Take plasma and weaponize it! Like a laser, but not! Very hot!
Laser Batteries - Very high frequency lasers, used in both point defense and offensive roles
Two shuttle pods - spherical craft with 10 days of delta-v, room for 15, and no atmospheric capability
24 recon/sensor/scientific satellites - in three different sizes/classes/costs/levels of usefulness.
Wormhole drive: Not a weapon per se, but, it has some useful edge cases. For example, if you chuck some kinetic rounds inside a wormhole and then accelerate the wormhole exit to a decent fraction of the speed of light, you have an effective weapon.
Or you could throw missiles in one end and have them exit anywhere else you'd like.
Of course, the Second Chance's wormhole drive is currently configured for none of this.
History of the Ship: The Second Chance was humanity's first interstellar ship. Prior to the construction of the ship, humanity had expanded into a several-dozen solar system commonwealth linked through the use of wormhole technology. Literally we got from planet to planet by taking trains through wormholes. Humanity had settled the sporadic H-Congruous planets in a big chunk of space, but had barely explored anything but the habitable planets they occupied. It wasn't until the astronomer Dudley Bose observed a pair of stars - the Dyson Pair - abruptly winking out before humanity felt the need to explore beyond the reach of commercial wormhole gateways. To quote Ozzie Isaac, one of the inventors of wormhole tech, "Oh, man, that is so beautiful. Whaddayaknow, the space cadets won after all. Let's press the red button and zoom off into hyperspace. [...] Everything we built our wormhole to avoid."
Then a rather significant incident involving a race of xenophobic, genocidal aliens happened.
This may or may not have to do with humanity sending a spaceship over to poke at a pair of stars some advanced alien race had sensibly cordoned off with a giant force field.
The Second Chance was therefore repurposed from a well-appointed, noble exploration ship into a not-great war ship. When the aliens attacked the planet Anshun - a regional industrial capital - the Second Chance was in the right place at the right time to try and defend the planet. While doing a passable job at fending off the aliens, the greatly-outnumbered Second Chance was seemingly destroyed - the enemy surrounded it with eight wormholes designed to interfere with the ship's hyperspace drive, and then 768 nuclear missiles detonated.
Astonishingly, the crew found themselves in a different universe instead of dead.
Notable Crew:
The Second Chance is currently operating in a reduced crew capacity - since the ship became a part of the Navy, there's been less need to have the full complement of science crew. So, you know, they could pick up passengers at some point.
Tu Lee, Captain.
Tu Lee is one of the many rapidly-promoted people brought about by the sudden need of the Commonwealth to create a Navy. This is her second week as Captain - the first week was a long-range recon mission searching for enemy wormhole activity.
Prior to becoming Captain, Tu Lee was the pilot of the Second Chance during its mission to investigate the Dyson Pair.
Gertrude Arany, XO.
Gertrude was the commander of a planetside coast guard ship before being drafted into the Navy. She absolutely hates space. Rather than show it, she stuffs those feelings down a deep, deep hole. She's the kind of person who refuses to back down from any challenge or task - this may be related to how much she hates space and refuses to show it. When very drunk, she may admit to her fearloathing of space.
Craig Laroch, Sensors.
Abraham Gunther, Pilot.
Optional, but helpful:
Unique Technology:
In general, humanity is very good at manipulating wormholes, cyber/bio-ware, and hyperspace technology, but not so good at the rest of space technology. They've got hyperspace, but sublight "drives" still operate on 300-year-old plasma rocket tech. There's no artificial gravity, but there are tattooed-circuitry limited-AI's known as Virtual Intelligences.
Wormholes - The Second Chance takes advantage of humanity's longstanding mastery of wormhole tech. Rather than a standard FTL drive, the ship makes a wormhole, slips into it, and then moves the endpoint before the ship reaches it. It travels in a series of moving wormholes, and has the capability of creating wormholes with two free-floating endpoints, given sufficient modification. Of course, that would disable the ship's FTL.
Memorycells/Re-life tech - Consciousness is backed up onto memorycells embedded in the brain. If you die, you can simply be uploaded into a new clone. Usually this is handled on a nice, comfy planet with a recovery clinic and, preferably, some recreational facilities nearby. The Second Chance, however, was going to be several thousand lightyears from the nearest human industry, so it was equipped with a slow, poorly-functioning relife clinic. It may take a couple of months before someone's clone is fully grown.
Rejuvenation - On the other hand, why wait until you die? Every 30-50 years, people can get "rejuvenated" and restore their body to a biological age of 20. This is, obviously, not a facility included on the Second Chance.
Cyberware/Biotech - Implants and wetware are commonplace. For instance, you can have a transceiver implanted into your neural network which lets you access the Unisphere (the interstellar internet) from anywhere. OC (organic circuitry) Tattoos are also common. OC Tattoos are often colorful, metallic tattoos which act as processors for other implants, allowing anything from credit transfer to expanded senses to muscle augmentations. Finally, you have the uncommon wet-wired implants - guns, forcefields, explosives, scanners and the like that are implanted beneath the skin.
Augmented reality is very much a Thing.
Force Fields - actually secretly given/suggested to humanity as a long con by an alien from a crashed ship - but they work! They're not amazing, but they are functional.
VI - Virtual Intelligence - a very capable computer program that's been carefully designed to avoid becoming self-aware. Humanity has created a true artificial intelligence - which now lives alone on its own planet, connected to humanity only by a zero-width wormhole - but people and ships limit themselves to VI's for general processing power.
Crew Size: 800, but currently down to 250
Faction/Operator/Owner: CST (Compressed Space Transport) Exploration Division. CST is the company which owns over half of the Commonwealth's interstellar wormhole network.