Patrick Moore-class Autonomous Cargo Rocket
With the deployment of Earth's Bifrost orbital ring, Mars' Beanstalk space elevator and the Moon's magnetic catapult, the System's logistics are vastly easier and cheaper than in the old days of the dawn of the true Space Age, when expensive and fuel-inefficient chemical rockets were needed to lift payloads into orbit. However, the far-flung nature of the System means that there are plenty of planetside or moonside colonies and outposts which lack such massive infrastructure investments but do have significant gravity wells to climb out of.
The LL-218 Patrick Moore-class of autonomous cargo lifter are one of the primary solutions in use in the System.
A simple reusable nuclear-thermal rocket able to take off and land vertically from a gravity well up to 2/3 Earth standard (or approximately twice Martian gravity), the Patrick Moore rockets are sufficiently efficient that quite a large payload can be lifted for a relatively small fuel mass, and sufficiently flexible in their basing requirements that even the smallest outposts can throw together landing and refueling stations.
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A desperately simple model, but I'm quite pleased with the fact that I can now tile a whole 20x20 square and make a semi-decent small landing pad.
Patrick Moore-class Autonomous Cargo Rocket
With the deployment of Earth's Bifrost orbital ring, Mars' Beanstalk space elevator and the Moon's magnetic catapult, the System's logistics are vastly easier and cheaper than in the old days of the dawn of the true Space Age, when expensive and fuel-inefficient chemical rockets were needed to lift payloads into orbit. However, the far-flung nature of the System means that there are plenty of planetside or moonside colonies and outposts which lack such massive infrastructure investments but do have significant gravity wells to climb out of.
The LL-218 Patrick Moore-class of autonomous cargo lifter are one of the primary solutions in use in the System.
A simple reusable nuclear-thermal rocket able to take off and land vertically from a gravity well up to 2/3 Earth standard (or approximately twice Martian gravity), the Patrick Moore rockets are sufficiently efficient that quite a large payload can be lifted for a relatively small fuel mass, and sufficiently flexible in their basing requirements that even the smallest outposts can throw together landing and refueling stations.
~~~
A desperately simple model, but I'm quite pleased with the fact that I can now tile a whole 20x20 square and make a semi-decent small landing pad.