Camdous powered up the main drive. “All systems looking, good commander.” Samus nodded, “Roger, let’s see if we can get this ugly bastard off the launchpad. And ugly she was, but by design. Many parties had come together to create this upgrade for the trusted Beale Spacecraft:
- KSC had offered the Beale 01 that was currently in a parking orbit of Kerbin in exchange for a long duration study of the interplanetary space between Jool and Kerbin. Most ships had used cryo pods to get there like the ShadowMage, Linux, Nathan Kell, and the Galahad class. Whereas others lacked the laboratory facilities like the NX Class.
- SkyLab Industries had a working prototype of the NX-03 which was originally intended for the Navy, basically an NX-02 with deployable missiles from the cargo bays. Despite many hours of fiddling with the robotic arms the whole project was scrapped after the Battle of Duna due to the ineffectiveness of the smaller missiles. Ironically 8 of those were loaded on the NX-10. The base frame would be capable of gravitic propulsion and cargo deployment. Further testing of the fusion generator was of great interest to them.
- SpaceX offered a rotating habitation ring, originally constructed for their Minmus space hotel. Longer travel without cryo would benefit from some form of gravity and the gravity plating installed on the NX-10 was horrifically expensive. They were offering to take care of launch, assembly operation, and financing the first mission if the Beale would be turned into a deepspace luxury tourist vessel after this had been completed.
And so an unusual contraption took off from the launchpad and headed for the Beale (FF-01) that would become the most traveled spacecraft in history. With manned missions to the Mun, Minmus, Eve, Gilly, Duna, and now the Jool system.
Upon arrival, the ground engineering team initiated the separation sequence on the Beale that disconnected the trusted nuclear drive system that had send them on countless journeys for four years and prepared the craft for its replacement.
“Careful, you’ll scratch the paint,” Julia said when Samus was flying awfully close to the old drive. The new drive was powered by new EPS reaction control thrusters that ran on plasma rather then monopropellant. The first ship that would use this kind of RCS.
Soon after docking, they laid in a course for the Jool system and send the Beale on its furthest journey ever. They would not break the NX record, but since they would a bit more luck with the orbital alignment around Jool, they would arrive roughly 13 days later at JPS.
“I could totally get used to this,” Julia said when she relaxed in the fine cabins onboard the ring. Camdous was less enthusiastic. She had EVA’d over to the lab on the Beale and was running experiments in zero-G for the next 100 days. Samus was powering down systems and examining the static charge build-up. The Beale made a nice cruise liner, she would definitely chat with SpaceX if she could remain on board a fly her.
The Jool mission was a simple taxi and test run, fly over there, run your experiments, deliver supplies, rotate some crew, and then come back here to run the greatest tour of the galaxy, (well that was how SpaceX was promoting it already.)
KSC Archives 