[Spaceships] Technomancer: Trailblazer

[Tzeentch]

Spaceships 7: Strange and Alien Spacecraft introduces the Trailblazer, a technomagical Earth-Mars spacecraft. As Technomancer itself has not been given an update, it's not entirely clear what TL it should be now in 4e, especially as the timeline is obviously seriously divergent from our own universe by the early 1990's.

In terms of design, the Trailblazer seems simple enough. It has a small crew (21 persons), conventional technology used for most construction, and a Magical Power Plant (NEMA) that powers the plasma drive, magical life support, and teleporters. The teleportation may be handled by the astromancers themselves, but it seems in keeping with the description that they are actually magical devices themselves. It uses unspecified special weaponry to fight various critters that live in Normal mana space - I suspect these are undefined ghost-dynamic energy weapons, blessed ammunition massthrowers, and so on.

For the design I assumed that Technomancer is largely a TL8^ setting, with 'conventional' technological advances quickly becoming stagnant except in areas where magic allows leapfrogging of advances (e.g. Essential Fuel rockets, teleporters, golem drones, etc.). It appears to be a fairly small vessel, similar in concept to the Prometheus (Spaceships 5, pp. 8-9).

Trailblazer Interplanetary Surveyor (TL8^)
The Trailblazer represents the pinnacle of TL8^ astromantic capability, utilizing the latest NEMA reactor design and technomagically-augmented life-support (see GURPS Technomancer, p. 108). Crew accomodations are more spartan than originally intended, but the vessels original design had to be altered in order to accomodate a suite of magical weapons in case it encountered unfriendly entities on Mars.

The vessel is divided into three sections: a command module dominated by the hangar bays holding the colonization supplies and small orbital shuttles, a crew module for the 21 astromancers (the captain gets his own cabin), and an engineering module containing the warded NEMA reactor, fuel tanks, and VASIMR plasma rocket.

The Trailblazer is utilitarian in appearance, with a 1,000-ton (SM +8) unstreamlined hull about 50 yards in length. As a purpose-built vessel, the Trailblazer is unique; if successful, similar vessels may be constructed for additional Mars missions or journeys to the outer system.

Front Hull System
[1-2] Light Alloy Armor (total dDR 14).
[3-5] Hangar Bays (30 tons capacity each).
[6] Cargo Hold (50 tons capacity).
[core] Control Room (C4 computers, comm/sensor 5, four control stations).

Central Hull System
[1] Light Alloy Armor (dDR 7).
[2-5] Habitats (magical life support; 11 cabins, one briefing room, two labs, one physics lab, two offices, two-bed sickbay, and two teleport projectors).
[6!] Medium Battery (magic-powered; two turrets with 100 MJ ghost-dynamic lasers, one turret with a 7cm RF conventional gun).

Rear Hull System
[1] Light Alloy Armor (dDR 7).
[2-3] Fuel Tanks (50 tons of essential hydrogen providing 5 mps of delta-V each in high-thrust mode).
[4] Engine Room (one workspace).
[5!] VASIMR Electric Rocket (0.002G acceleration in high-thrust mode).
[6] NEMA Reactor (one normal Power Point and one magical Power Point).

Crew consists of 21 astromancers. After arriving on Mars a skeleton crew of three will man the ship while the remaining personnel teleport supplies down to the surface and establish a network of orbital navigation and communication satellites.

TL Spacecraft dST/HP Hnd/SR HT Move LWt. Load SM Occ dDR Range Cost
PILOTING/TL8 (Low-Performance Spacecraft)
8^ Trailblazer 70 -5/4 13 0.002G/10 mps 1,000 142.2 +8 22ASV 14/7/7 0 $74.7M