Other Doings...

…besides the remainder of the muckings-about necessary to get a book out of the door, that is.

Well, apart from the usual fic returning, I’m planning for doing something else longer soon, and one of the candidates for that involves some free trading adventures out on the frontiers of the Worlds. But, of course, free traders can’t hardly free trade without a ship to do so in, so I’m taking the time to put a little meat on the bones of the Kalantha-class frontier trader, as ubiquitous in the Expansion Regions as the Firefly-class is in its ‘verse.

(This is an interesting ship to design precisely because it is a frontier trader; it has to be able to service worlds that don’t have much by way of formal starport infrastructure, and certainly don’t have orbital highports, lighter fleets, mass drivers, and suchlike – and carrying a shuttle large enough to ferry the cargo down itself is a lot of extra mass – so it has to be able to land. But that, too, poses all manner of issues and imposes all manner of design constraints on a starship…

The Kalantha-class squares this particular circle by separating neatly into two halves, such that the streamlined, landing-capable, “crescent flying wing” for’ard section can land and take off again using trimodal NTRs with relatively little onboard fuel, etc., required, while leaving the main, unstreamlined, propulsion section with the fusion torch and the majority of the fuel parked in orbit in the meantime.)

Also, thinking about doing this in April to get back into the daily-fic habit…