FTL Shuttle (WIP) 01

Designed for a science fiction universe being developed by a colleague, this FTL (Faster Than Light) Shuttle concept was an interesting proposition for me. I was to design the hardware for this project, so ships and props and other elements that would visually breathe life into this new sci-fi landscape. The fictional universe had to have a feeling of a not too distant future Earth, so possibly technologies recognisable today. Not as far out there as Star Trek, more grounded.

The FTL Shuttle would be a good test bed to start with. The tech used here would also be used on her mothership, but considerably upscaled. We came up with a ring drive based FTL engine design inspired a great deal by the FTL concept design commissioned by NASA some years ago. While being an auxiliary craft for a much larger mothership, the thing had to be quite autonomous, capable of going out on exploration missions for weeks at a time.

I decided to make my design quite modular to allow for the swapping out of sections for different mission profiles. I also knew this ship would have to be pretty sizable to be able to achieve what was being asked of it, so it had to be larger than say a Trek style shuttlecraft. As a result this thing is more comparable in size to the NASA Space Shuttle, though not quite as big as that. As well as being modular I also liked the idea of being able to detach the shuttlecraft from the FTL Drive assembly. This would give the ship much greater flexibility, and allow the design to be much more utilitarian. Without the drive attached the shuttlecraft could be used just like a space bus, shuttling crew between installations in orbit, or just to go down to a planet's surface from orbit. For more extended missions such as exploration or interstellar travel, the FTL Drive would need to be attached. I also didn't want to have to dump the ring drive to land the shuttle, so I developed landing gear options for the shuttle both with the ring drive, and without it, once again speaking to that need for versatility.

The drive ring also includes sublight engines, so the shuttle is a much more capable craft with the drive ring attached at sublight as well as FTL speeds. The fuel for the FTL drive is also attached to the ring drive assembly within a bulb on the end of a pylon as far away from the ship as possible, the idea behind that being that at this early stage in FTL drive development, whatever the fuel is that is used is still quite volatile and dangerous, and despite whatever containment measures have been put in place to secure it, you still wouldn't want your crew area on a spacecraft to be anywhere near it for fear of containment leaks or breaches. It also means that should there be a catastrophic critical failure of the drive or containment, that the drive ring could be jettisoned for the safety of the ship.

Well that is more than enough of my waffle, I hope you enjoy the art, and I'll be working on continuing with this interesting project soon.